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Last week I attended a very interesting discussion with four trainers from different backgrounds and points of view. There was an enormous, humbling amount of expertise and experience in the room.
The key question was are we training drama (and other performance students) to work in the industry as it is now – or are we behind the times and training them for how it used to be?
Do drama schools and other training providers do enough, for example, to develop entrepreneurial skills so that graduates can create their own work and produce and market it?
I was immediately reminded of Filskit Theatre Company. It consists of a small group of young women, graduates of the European Theatre Arts BA course at Rose Bruford. They are rapidly developing a distinctive style involving imaginative micro-projection and are now busy developing their second touring show.
“We do this because we are passionate about creating work and would rather do that than wait for the phone to ring with the offer of dull work,” one Filskit member told me. She added, interestingly given my recently expressed view that schools are turning out too many performers for an already saturated market: “And there were so many students on the ETA course that year that it made us self-sufficient.”
A number of schools – well aware of the growing need and initially in the face of opposition – now teach devised and or collaborative theatre as a degree option. CSSD, for example, offers a BA Hons in Devised and Collaborative Theatre as one of the “pathways” through its main Acting degree.
Birmingham School of Acting covers some of the same ground in its BA (Hons) in Applied Performance (Community and Education), as does the BA (Hons) in Acting and Community Theatre at East 15. Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts has a BA (Hons) course in Community Drama too. And those are just a handful of examples plucked almost at random. There are plenty of others.
But, having learned all that, does the training tend to make students passive and lacking in the get-up-and-go skills needed to produce and market their own work? Well there’s clearly not much passivity in the Filskit Theatre Company.
Are they unusual? Jeremy Stockwell, who teaches at RADA, thinks that they may be – which is why he and colleagues are starting Red Thread in January, which I wrote about in The Stage recently. He intends, in a one year course, to develop both work creation and business management skills alongside acting technique so that his trainees leave equipped to manage themselves and their companies as businesses.
So what are your experiences? Are you a recent graduate busy making work and do you really know how to manage the whole thing from start to finish? Did your training equip you with the skills you need? Or are you waiting for the phone to ring?
Please get in touch – comments on this blog or find me on Twitter @SusanElkinJourn – and let me know.
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RED THREAD.
The difference that makes the difference.
It is good to note that RED THREAD is viewed as different. And yet some drama schools and universities, writing to us in support, say ‘But, of course, we are doing/thinking of doing the same’. To be honest, in my opinion – they’re not!
I’m glad there are such courses going on. And evidently some of them are excellent, but I feel it is important to be clear about what our differences are in order to establish our unique identity from the outset. And to remain true to our reason and worth.
Of course, one of our main differences is that we are this particular group of people coming together now to answer the needs of the time. We are also offering a proudly non-academic training and development out of and away from the conventional and established system. Clearly the UK tends to value academic training above vocational development. But we feel that vocational development is much more important at this time. Curiously our course seems to appeal to post-grads who have gone through the system and missed out on all this! Furthermore, RED THREAD is set up, run, and led solely by established and active artists and theatre makers. In many respects this sets us apart straightaway! This and the fact we are not validated by, or affiliated to, external corporate or educational establishments gives us – I’m told, by those more ‘maverick’ and free thinking academics – an ‘enviable autonomy’ and freedom which, I believe, is extremely rare and valuable. RED THREAD offers something fresh and uncluttered by bureaucracy and grades. It is therefore lighter, more free and flexible, more relaxed and more intimate than big institutes. Their clear advantage is funding but, with our low-overheads and minimum costs, we can remain self-sufficient even with our deliberately low intake.
RED THREAD is a response to the time. It is about getting people working and sustaining a livihood through proactive, practical, and pragmatic means. Irrespective of academic achievement, it is about skill, talent, imagination, and flare in performance and entrepreneurial thinking.
Jeremy StockwellReport comment