How Do I Become an Actor?: June 2011

Being a professional actress is not like being a doctor, where you go to pre-med then med school, get a residency and internship at a hospital, take an exam and if all goes well you are a doctor. There is no "career path" to becoming a professional actress. It is simply not a sure thing that you will ever actually earn a living as a professional actress. However, there are things you can do to increase the chances of becoming a professional actress.

At the top of the list of things is training. Not just acting training, but also training in voice, singing, dancing (ballet, tap, jazz, ballroom, etc.,) music and other perfoming arts. Early in a career, aspiring actresses never know where their first jobs will come from. An actress who is a competent actress but doesn't know how to sing or dance will have far, fewer job offers than a "triple threat" actress who is a trained actress, singer and dancer. Being reasonably competent in as many of the performing arts as possible will make an actress much more likely to get professional work, be it in the theatre, TV, commercials, radio, theme parks, cruise ships, touring shows, voice-over, trade shows, etc.

At this stage in your development as an actress, I suggest you take as many music, dance, voice, singing, etc. classes as you can in your school or in workshops or classes outside of your school. If there are no acting classes available, don't worry about it. You can start your own performance group (either as a solo performer or with other like-minded folks in your area) and arrange performances at local venues. This will be great experience for you and you will learn a lot. It will also teach you how to get your butt out there in front of an audience and get comfortable with performing - which is what actresses do for a living.

If it is financially possible, check into attending an acting/performing arts summer camp to get additional training and performance experience - http://www.redbirdstudio.com/AWOL/camps.html.

Study hard and get good grades in school because that will give you an opportunity to get into a college with a good actor training program (start researching those now so you can be ready to apply when the time comes.) If you do all that, you will have a good start

How did acting (or theatre) begin?

Acting originated on Pelican island, which is an island in the middle of the Missouri river, north of St. Louis. It began there in the year 5003 BC.

Of course there was no written record of what play these first thespians produced, but the recent discovery of ancient drawings on the basement walls of Rudolph J. Penderbottom's quaint little Victorian home in Cahokia seems to indicate the first play (a musical) was a clever cross between Gilligans island and Promethius Bound. Odd as it may seem, this combination proved highly successful and toured up and down the Missouri river, playing to appreciative Native-American audiences. Eventually, the little troup hit the big-time, playing all the villages along the shores of the mighty Mississippi.

The theatre was built upon several, tethered rafts made of bulrushes and river mud. Torches were used for lighting the acting area. Lights were dimmed by various stage hands (raft hands as they were known back then) standing in front of the torches, thus blocking the full intensity of the lights at the appropriate moment. There is no record of what the raft hands were paid, but it is a good bet that union rules would have required extra allowance be paid for working with fire.

The play lasted three and one half days without intermissions. Audiences back then apparently had a lot more stamina then today's pampered play goers. Unfortunately, a mishap initiated by a disgruntled raft hand resulted in the entire production going up in flames somewhere between Hannible and the Lock and Dam near Saverton. The troup was devastated by the financial loss as insurance had not yet been conceived.

Times being as they were, it was impossible to find a financial backer willing to assume the risk. After several unsuccessful attempts to mount lesser productions on neighboring Cora island, the group disbanded. Acting fell into a deep, deep slumber. Upon the charred remains of the bulrush rafts, acting drifted down the Mississippi and out into the uncharted Gulf.

When acting awoke, it found itself in ancient Greece. But that's another chapter in AWOL's Condensed History of Acting.

There's no business like show business.

Which subjects do I need to study in order to be an actress?