Philip Carlson
The Actor’s Center Journal Vol. 1 Num. 1 September 2009
Letter From The Editor
What Are We Doing?
In 1970, John Gielgud wrote to his friend Irene Worth that he had been given a tour of one of America’s premier acting conservatories and he commented, “Wonderful classrooms, two theatres, superbly equipped—about 70 students who seemed to be a nice lot, but what it must have cost and where will they all find work after a four year course!â€
In 2009, an important New York casting director remarked to a friend of mine, “I just saw 86 college senior actors, graduating classes from two well-known schools in one afternoon. What are we doing?â€
What are we doing, indeed! The school presentations are much on the minds of agents and casting directors these days. God knows, they are on the minds of the MFA candidates who will be presented. Much hinges on these presentations. Which agencies will get the best actors? Which actors will get the best agents? Who are the best actors? Which are the best agencies and which agents are good at and willing to develop emerging talent? Otherwise known as actors. Do the graduating students know anything about agents? Do the agents know anything about talent? These are pertinent questions, because over 90 schools presented their graduating classes to agents and casting directors in New York last spring. Conservatively estimating each of those classes at 20 students per class, that’s 1800 new actors being released into the talent pool this year. Is there work for that number of new actors? Do we even need hard figures for how many actors worked in Equity, SAG and AFTRA last year to know that the answer is an immediate and unqualified ‘no’? No. The answer is no.
When I began work as a talent representative in the 1970’s, there was something called the League Presentations. These were twelve schools deemed to have the best programs and the most gifted graduates whose graduating classes performed scenes all day on a Saturday and Sunday, usually in May, for literally almost every agent and casting director in New York. Several Artistic Directors or representatives from LORT theatres around the country also flew in for the event. All of us in the audience had given up an entire weekend for this annual rite but no one questioned the value of seeing the best young actors from the best schools strut their stuff. And we knew they were the best schools. They were in the League Presentations, after all. We were grateful the League had taken the time and the trouble to find where the best training was being offered and then to offer the recipients of that training to we who were charged with putting them to work. If the training started slipping at some of these institutions, if a particular school stopped addressing the needs of what we in the profession were looking for, we trusted that they would be asked to leave the League and would be replaced with another program more alert to what we required. The League was a vital and essential resource for us.
We presumed there were people on a committee somewhere who decided which schools belonged in the League and which did not. I don’t know who they were but I trusted that they were qualified to make the call. We all did. Now, is such a call wholly objective? Of course not. The people making that call were informed and knowledgeable, but they were human beings, and a large component of any decision they came to was subjective. Was that fair? Well, is life? Is the theatre? It was the system. And the best part of the system as it stood was that almost every agent and casting director in New York who might have been able to help shepherd those young actors into the business was in attendance because we trusted the League. Not to mention Artistic Directors of many of the LORT theatres who were also there, though they stopped coming after a few years since most of them no longer had companies they needed to fill. And a few more years after that, the Leagues themselves began to fall apart because too many other schools were demanding to be let in and too many of the ones who were already in were not sustaining the quality of their programs and they refused to leave. The audience no longer trusted they were seeing the best of the best.
Today, most agents and casting people go to see the classes from what are commonly perceived to be the three top programs (and more on that in a later issue), and a large number of agents and casting directors go to something called the New Leagues, which presents eight additional and highly regarded schools. Then there are the other 80 some odd schools who rent a space and present their graduates. Sometimes many agents and casting directors show up for these presentations (maybe a certain school graduates someone who becomes a star and that school becomes a must-see for awhile). Sometimes only a few people from the business show up. Sometimes no one who might actually lead those graduates being presented to a job bothers to come at all. And yet, these schools are charging money for their programs and promising their graduates a showcase in New York. The promise of a New York showcase has become a recruitment tool, but all that is promised is the showcase—not an audience and certainly not an audience which might be able to help.
Now some of those schools may have excellent programs. Some of them may have very talented young actors. But if the school itself does not have a reputation which will pull in agents and casting directors at showcase time, then those students will not be seen by people they need to know and, in fact, may have a tough time getting into an agent or casting director who has decided not to look favorably upon their school. Schools, other than the top three, come in and out of fashion and the reasons are completely capricious. Clearly actors were able to get work long before there was ever such a thing as League Presentations, but these emerging actors are told they will be introduced to the business people they need to know and much of the time, most of the time, it simply isn’t true.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad—survival of the fittest after all—if a large part of the reason many young people choose conservatory training is so that they will get that New York (and in most cases LA) showcase as a reward for their efforts and their money. Is the showcase a good reason for going to a conservatory? Of course not. It’s a terrible reason. But the reality is, the showcase is the reason many young people go to a conservatory and spend anywhere from $75,000 to $100,000 to be trained as actors only to put on a showcase where almost no one who can do them any good comes to see them. Naturally, many aspiring actors choose conservatory training because they aspire to be artists. But the showcase in New York (and LA) is a drum that is banged very loudly by all the schools and it is, in almost every instance, a waste of time. This, I feel, is shameful.
In England, there are three or four acting schools which are well thought of. If you attend one and graduate from it, chances are you will have a career as an actor. If you do not go to one of those schools, you may well have a career, even a distinguished one. But there is no guarantee. Here, all the schools seem to say they offer a guarantee and that is because of the showcase. Is this not America? Not being able to attend one of the top three schools may, in fact, not be such a bad thing. Being forced to choose a less decorated school may be bring to light those seekers possessing the determination and the assertiveness to actually get work as an actor, not an entitled slacker with a degree from a prestigious school who waits for the phone to ring. Certainly the top schools can point to a large number of graduates who work as actors but the rosters of the top schools are also littered with people who have drifted away from the profession after a year or two or three of trying. I know. I have represented several of them. And in many cases, some extraordinarily gifted people who had no idea why the business wasn’t welcoming them with open arms simply walked away—and long before their student loans had been paid off.
So what am I really saying? I am saying first of all that the showcases ought to represent the best of the best and training should be training. There is and ought to be no connection between the two. And the schools have got to stop exploiting the perceived but erroneous connection between them that exists in the minds of young people with stars in their eyes. It is pandering of the worst possible sort.
Secondly, something has to be done to stop the proliferation of MFA programs which seem to pop up simply because a school decides they can attract enough students with sufficient funds to justify creating a program. And having created it, they need to be actively discouraged from continuing the cycle of using the mere fact of a showcase in New York (and LA) as a reason to go to that school. I am sure that most of those schools, when confronted with the proposition that they are using their showcase merely as a sales tool—and a misleading one at that—would respond that they are simply trying to be competitive with all the other schools that offer showcases, i.e., all the other schools. They themselves are in it for the art. Well, I ain’t buyin’ it.
Back in the Stone Age, even before the League Presentations, a select number of people from Theatre Communications Group, whose primary job was to supply actors to LORT theatre companies, would choose the top actors from the top schools to go to Chicago and perform for the Artistic Directors of all the theatres around the country. Not the entire class. Only those they deemed the best. Talk about elite! Well, why not? There could be five designated nominators each year (sort of like Tony nominators) who would see every school’s presentation. Well, not every one. That’s impossible. But maybe an agreed upon 35. OK, 40? And from each school they would select the most gifted students. (The most gifted in their considered opinion, need I even say?) Then those students would be presented after the very last school presentation (say in June) under the aegis of some existing or yet to be formed organization and the entire industry would be asked to that. You can bet they would go. Sure there are problems with that. They can be worked out. Something has to be worked out. The system we have is corrupt and is further corrupting the way that talent is identified and developed, or discarded, in this country. It’s not just the young actors who are losing out. It’s us. The audience. The culture. Remember the first time you saw a great acting performance? Remember the last time?
