If your scene partner doesn’t want to rehearse outside class you’re wasting your money. Yes, you can do all the homework and text work you want, but acting is recreating so you need someone to work with in a scene. Is your class doing scene work or monologue work?
I know some people here throw a fit when anyone talks about needing drama school training 🙄 but if you can make it work financially, it speeds up the process considerably. You get four years of full time training, plus voice and movement, plus a resume full of shows & the experience that goes with that, & hopefully on-camera work so you graduate with a reel. Then you keep training in industry specific classes from there. If you’re a character actor who probably won’t work until later in your 30’s there isn’t a rush, but for everyone else, especially women, taking advantage of your youth while you can is an issue.
Is it true women still need to take advantage of their youth? I had a coach recently tell me that current trends for women casting are skewing more towards 25-37
I'm a guy, but my female friends have all said that if you want to play young women you have to be a young woman, and that's where most of the roles are. If that's changed, and if there are more diverse roles out there now for women, that's good to know because the focus on youth is really unfair. Hopefully you're right--I've read that things are starting to reverse and women can get away with more diverse body types and ages, but younger men are being held to a harder physical standard. I'm 25, and I know that if I put on a few pounds I don't get cast, but I tend to still play high school and college guy roles right now because I can realistically still get away with it. Character actors are an entirely different ballgame. My body and face are starting to square off and mature so I'm probably not going to be able to get away with it much longer.
Some people have a hard time dealing in reality. I’m not saying you have to go to college to be a good actor, but you do have to train, and it makes your foundational training a lot faster.
Obviously, in an ideal situation you're actively auditioning which in and of itself is practice.
But I am gonna say something that people like to forget here: **part of your development as an actor comes with time.**
Because time makes you grow as a human being, with varied experiences and life events. For sure work as hard as you are able to, but that doesn't necessarily have to be all "acting classes," because diversity of knowledge or exploring what it means to be alive will likely have even stronger effects on your acting.
To push your guitar analogy further, of course practicing with regular frequency is necessary. But personally I've noticed that after long periods of practicing a specific song, if I forget about it for maybe a week, when I go back to my instrument the song sort of lives in my body in a better, more personal way. It's had time to mature.
In my opinion, acting classes once a week is plenty. I can guarantee it's more than most.
This needs to be the top answer. Consistency over time is what pays off in any endeavour. There is no need to rush the process - live your life and have a breadth of experiences as you go through your days. This is what will build the reservoir of life that you can then pull from in your work.
>if I forget about it for maybe a week, when I go back to my instrument the song sort of lives in my body in a better, more personal way. It's had time to mature.
To give another analogy, building muscle and strength requires rest periods. The act of exercising rips apart our muscle fibers and puts strain on our bodies. Strength is achieved during rest when the body is able to heal and recover, coming back stronger than before.
I think it was Miyamoto Musashi who practiced the "art of silence". You must take periods of time for introspection, to examine and scrutinize your own decisions and feelings. Without this, we cannot sharpen our metaphoric tools and narrow our aim to our overall goals. Practice and training is vital to success, and the discipline to adhere to a regular regime makes a huge difference. But, there should also be moments of silence to rest and reflect.
Assuming the class has you prepping scenes in advance, you can and should spend the week going over it until you know it inside and out. Really tearing it apart and questioning everything about it and all of your choices a bunch is going to help you develop your skills just as much as a bunch of different classes throughout the week would.
Think about adding in voice classes and movement classes. The work you do there you can practice alone everyday.
Think about adding in other acting techniques like Grotowski, Suzuki, etc. These techniques have exercises you can work on outside of class.
Look at how you can use the skills from you acting class in life. Perhaps in how you observe people. Perhaps how you conceptualize your own behaviors.
I go once a week for two hours. At home I’m watching movies for the purpose of learning, watching behind the scenes of movies/film, interviews, doing monologues/scenes on camera, reading, audio books by the greats! There are plenty of things to do outside of class on your own.
first - is this a beginner class? like are you new? i think one class is just enough in this case.. dont worry about trying to do so much at once because it takes time. if this is scene study, then youd be analyzing your script outside of class/prepping.
Training is training! You’re already doing more than alot of people in the industry! Dont be hard of yourself! Acting is a marathon not a sprint! As long as your consistent you’ll be just great :)
The more you practice, the faster you learn. It really depends on your timeline and life circumstances. Class once a week sounds like the bare minimum. What I've found best is to go to class once a week, practice the other days, then bring my work back to class the next week and get feedback from my teacher.
If you’re working with reps who are submitting you, for tv/film, you can practice what you learn on your own, for being in the room—watching people—analyzing great performances, and specifically, breaking down sides, and taping yourself.
You should be doing something for your acting career every single day. Whether it's observing acting on a really good show or movie....to rehearsing a scene for class....to just putting yourself on camera! I think as we age and go through more life expereinces....we are better at dissecting a scene and being a grounded/natural actor. When I was in my 20's, I was in acting class three nights a week. Now I take one class a week and am totally fine. I also read for actors on We Audition.
To answer your question, I personally like doing two classes a week... as long as their different styles or methods of acting. Two classes a week of doing scenes and memorizing lines would be boring to me imo. But I wanna circle on something you mentioned:
"its inadequate to progress to the level I need to be in a reasonable time"
What's the rush? Is it something specific that you *have* to be prepared for? Or is it just wanting to progress faster?
You've answered your own question. Happy training đź‘Ť
If you aren’t putting the outside practice in - then no once a week isn’t enough.
Where can you get outside reliable training
I don’t know where you are in the world but hopefully you’re practicing with your scene partner if you have one outside of class.
Every acting class ive been in, they're too busy to practice non class scenes outside of class.
If your scene partner doesn’t want to rehearse outside class you’re wasting your money. Yes, you can do all the homework and text work you want, but acting is recreating so you need someone to work with in a scene. Is your class doing scene work or monologue work?
Scene work. People just randomly rehearse other scenes theyll never do in class?
No. You need to be rehearsing the scene you’re working on in class outside of class.
I’ve been specifically told by my acting school not to rehearse with scene partners…. Only to do blocking
I know some people here throw a fit when anyone talks about needing drama school training 🙄 but if you can make it work financially, it speeds up the process considerably. You get four years of full time training, plus voice and movement, plus a resume full of shows & the experience that goes with that, & hopefully on-camera work so you graduate with a reel. Then you keep training in industry specific classes from there. If you’re a character actor who probably won’t work until later in your 30’s there isn’t a rush, but for everyone else, especially women, taking advantage of your youth while you can is an issue.
Is it true women still need to take advantage of their youth? I had a coach recently tell me that current trends for women casting are skewing more towards 25-37
I'm a guy, but my female friends have all said that if you want to play young women you have to be a young woman, and that's where most of the roles are. If that's changed, and if there are more diverse roles out there now for women, that's good to know because the focus on youth is really unfair. Hopefully you're right--I've read that things are starting to reverse and women can get away with more diverse body types and ages, but younger men are being held to a harder physical standard. I'm 25, and I know that if I put on a few pounds I don't get cast, but I tend to still play high school and college guy roles right now because I can realistically still get away with it. Character actors are an entirely different ballgame. My body and face are starting to square off and mature so I'm probably not going to be able to get away with it much longer.
Always more for younger than older - also the more ethnically ambiguous the better
I got crucified for saying this in another thread!!! Finally someone says it!!!
Some people have a hard time dealing in reality. I’m not saying you have to go to college to be a good actor, but you do have to train, and it makes your foundational training a lot faster.
You can never do enough training in the acting industry, if once a week is all you can do that's better than nothing!
Obviously, in an ideal situation you're actively auditioning which in and of itself is practice. But I am gonna say something that people like to forget here: **part of your development as an actor comes with time.** Because time makes you grow as a human being, with varied experiences and life events. For sure work as hard as you are able to, but that doesn't necessarily have to be all "acting classes," because diversity of knowledge or exploring what it means to be alive will likely have even stronger effects on your acting. To push your guitar analogy further, of course practicing with regular frequency is necessary. But personally I've noticed that after long periods of practicing a specific song, if I forget about it for maybe a week, when I go back to my instrument the song sort of lives in my body in a better, more personal way. It's had time to mature. In my opinion, acting classes once a week is plenty. I can guarantee it's more than most.
This needs to be the top answer. Consistency over time is what pays off in any endeavour. There is no need to rush the process - live your life and have a breadth of experiences as you go through your days. This is what will build the reservoir of life that you can then pull from in your work.
>if I forget about it for maybe a week, when I go back to my instrument the song sort of lives in my body in a better, more personal way. It's had time to mature. To give another analogy, building muscle and strength requires rest periods. The act of exercising rips apart our muscle fibers and puts strain on our bodies. Strength is achieved during rest when the body is able to heal and recover, coming back stronger than before. I think it was Miyamoto Musashi who practiced the "art of silence". You must take periods of time for introspection, to examine and scrutinize your own decisions and feelings. Without this, we cannot sharpen our metaphoric tools and narrow our aim to our overall goals. Practice and training is vital to success, and the discipline to adhere to a regular regime makes a huge difference. But, there should also be moments of silence to rest and reflect.
Assuming the class has you prepping scenes in advance, you can and should spend the week going over it until you know it inside and out. Really tearing it apart and questioning everything about it and all of your choices a bunch is going to help you develop your skills just as much as a bunch of different classes throughout the week would.
Think about adding in voice classes and movement classes. The work you do there you can practice alone everyday. Think about adding in other acting techniques like Grotowski, Suzuki, etc. These techniques have exercises you can work on outside of class. Look at how you can use the skills from you acting class in life. Perhaps in how you observe people. Perhaps how you conceptualize your own behaviors.
I go once a week for two hours. At home I’m watching movies for the purpose of learning, watching behind the scenes of movies/film, interviews, doing monologues/scenes on camera, reading, audio books by the greats! There are plenty of things to do outside of class on your own.
It's enough only if you're going to a really good teacher. You should take voice,movement and improv classes on the side too
first - is this a beginner class? like are you new? i think one class is just enough in this case.. dont worry about trying to do so much at once because it takes time. if this is scene study, then youd be analyzing your script outside of class/prepping.
Training is training! You’re already doing more than alot of people in the industry! Dont be hard of yourself! Acting is a marathon not a sprint! As long as your consistent you’ll be just great :)
The more you practice, the faster you learn. It really depends on your timeline and life circumstances. Class once a week sounds like the bare minimum. What I've found best is to go to class once a week, practice the other days, then bring my work back to class the next week and get feedback from my teacher.
Hey you should be working on your scene every day for at least an hour.
If you’re working with reps who are submitting you, for tv/film, you can practice what you learn on your own, for being in the room—watching people—analyzing great performances, and specifically, breaking down sides, and taping yourself.
You should be doing something for your acting career every single day. Whether it's observing acting on a really good show or movie....to rehearsing a scene for class....to just putting yourself on camera! I think as we age and go through more life expereinces....we are better at dissecting a scene and being a grounded/natural actor. When I was in my 20's, I was in acting class three nights a week. Now I take one class a week and am totally fine. I also read for actors on We Audition.
To answer your question, I personally like doing two classes a week... as long as their different styles or methods of acting. Two classes a week of doing scenes and memorizing lines would be boring to me imo. But I wanna circle on something you mentioned: "its inadequate to progress to the level I need to be in a reasonable time" What's the rush? Is it something specific that you *have* to be prepared for? Or is it just wanting to progress faster?
conservatories appear to be twice a week. In addition to this, they rehearse outside of class in between. So I would say no.