Monday, November 7, 2011

A Safe Place for Vulnerability - Two Year Acting Programs in NYC

By Maggie Flanigan


Two year acting programs are commonly known as the conservatory approach. These two year programs are targeted towards professional actors who recognize their need for continual study and improvement. For centuries, aspiring fine art professionals have sought apprenticeships from trained masters. In NYC, student actors who are looking to improve themselves in their craft should certainly consider a two year program.

Any successful actor must realize that they can never know everything. Actors who appear to have "natural" talent more than likely spent years developing these skills. Separating yourself from the distractions in life and dedicating your time solely to study requires dedication and strength. Two year acting programs can make all the difference between being just an "hobby" actor and a professional.

The Meisner technique fits in quite nicely to two year acting programs. The technique teaches students the basic methods first with the lessons become more and more complicated as each skill is mastered. Meisner training is very rigorous and can feel almost military in intensity. An essential part of the training is the breaking down and analysis of each student's personality and identity.

The goal of military training is to repurpose the soldier's identity around the military. These two year programs in NYC are designed to teach actors to thoroughly understand themselves on a deeper level. This allows actors to become one with their characters instead of allowing their own emotions to hinder their performance.

Emotions and desires are an integral part of the human person. These qualities can be both an advantage as well as a disadvantage to actors. Acting requires that actors understand their personalities and be able to control them so as to better portray their intended character.

It is all too common for actors to develop poor habits. In short classes, actors might be able to partially address these habits. In contrast, two year programs give actors the time and opportunity to completely address these issues and form better habits. Correcting bad habits and forming new ones is not an easy chore and doing so requires that the actors make themselves vulnerable and truly bare their souls and true personalities. A two year acting program challenges students to bare their vulnerabilities and put themselves under the microscope all in an effort to make them more capable of creating lifelike characters for the audience. Coaches in quality two year programs work with the student actors to help them to rid themselves of their poor habits and build better ones, allowing them to create better characters and work well with the other actors in the production.




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