| Thesbo: You're not arrogant, and that wasn't a rant, just the nicest piece of writing I've seen in a long time from a young person who wants to be an actor for all the right reasons. Honestly, kid, any school that doesn't want you is blind.
To answer your question about monologues, yes, it's fine to do a monologue from another play by a writer whose work has been done recently by that school. Smart, actually. One has to assume that they like the playwright, or they wouldn't have put her play on the season. But you're also wise to choose not to do a monologue from a play the school has done recently. It's hard for us not to compare your work with that of our student who just did the role; and even if you do it well, the mental image of the other person is a distraction. Same reason we recommend that prospectives not do songs intimately associated with Barbra or Judy.
You're also right about job opportunities. Time was, as the parents on this thread remember, when Accounting majors and MBAs could write their own tickets. It's just not true any longer. They have to compete for jobs just like actors have always had to. (There's a certain sadistic satisfaction in that.) And you're absolutely right about the kinds of skills you've already gained by studying theatre. A business major may know how to read a spreadsheet, but does he know how to read the person sitting across the table? Has he been trained in empathy? Does he know what he wants? Does he know if what he wants is a good thing for everyone, or just for himself? Does he know himself? You cannot study acting and not learn these things, even if you don't become a great actor. And if you learn these things, there aren’t a lot of things you can’t do, with the possible exception of neurosurgery and nuclear physics. If there’s value in reading the great works of literature, isn’t there at least as much value in speaking them aloud, and bringing the characters to life? If there’s value in talking about politics in POLI 101, isn’t there at least as much value in enacting those situations in THR 151? Actors learn about literature and politics and psychology from the inside, from what it feels like to be living those scenes, and they learn it from some of the smartest people who ever lived, Euripides and Shakespeare and Chekhov and Brecht. If someone can make an argument for majoring in some other subject as a <better> way of learning how to live life, let them give it a try.
Now that’s a rant. |