<p>I keep hearing about kids that graduated and after 4 years in a BFA never got cast in a mainstage.
Guaranteed casting sounds nice and civilized, but is it preparing our kids for what lies ahead?
Discuss!</p>
<p>Guaranteed casting simply means the students will be in productions. It doesn’t mean that they will ever necessarily have major roles. I’ve known of very talented students at schools with guaranteed casting who hardly ever had more than a few lines in a play.</p>
<p>It is valuable to be on stage in many productions because of what the experience teaches about theatre. The main focus of a BFA program is training. The productions are mounted to help students learn, not to give them a preview of what professional life in the theatre will be like.</p>
<p>NJTheatreMom, exactly. Guaranteed casting does not mean guaranteed starring. You will be cast, you will be part of a rehearsal process and performances, and you’ll learn from that. Often the rehearsing will be more geared to study and learning than it would be in a normal show. There will be more discussion between actors and director, and the process will be more important than the end product. It’s much like another acting class, with the director as professor and the class studying the whole arc of the play, scene by scene and line by line. And that helps prepare them for what lies ahead because it helps them learn.</p>
<p>I agree with Gwen Fairfax and NJTheatreMom; if the degree is a BFA in performance, then performance on a mainstage with a live (and presumably paying?) audience should be part of the training. It probably goes without saying that the audition and casting processes will be contentious and challenging for students, and they won’t always get the parts they hope for or believe they deserve. They need to learn about that too. Putting your work out in public has long been held to be part of a strong arts education no matter what the field.</p>
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<p>Is that really what it is like? If so that’s cool. I have images in my head when my daughter was (briefly) performing with a theatre group here that guaranteed casting for one and all and if you weren’t a lead, or were not involved in the scene, there was a heck of a lot of just hanging around waiting for your turn to do something while the director worked with the leads. </p>
<p>Tisch has a hybrid I guess. There is nothing guaranteed about ever being cast in their mainstage which they call Stageworks. But there are studio shows for every studio and those you are guaranteed to be cast in at least 1 every semester??? (Mommy5??? Alwaysamom??? SoozieVT??? I’m actually not sure) Then of course there a ton of other shows that could be student directed or in other studios but open to others. Long story short, not lack of options but you have to chase them.</p>
<p>I kind of like the lack of guarantees in the mix. Makes you get used to the chasing and makes your skin toughen up when you realized that no, you just had that killer audition, are perfect for the part and STILL did not get it.</p>
<p>At my son’s BFA program they had guaranteed casting and did six or so shows per quarter. Most were directed by grad students in the directing program. Some of these productions were performed in studios and the admission was free. Others were in more sophisticated venues.</p>
<p>I think everybody learned a lot in every show. My son only had one major role in four years, when he was a senior, but he still considered his participation in all of the productions to be more than worthwhile.</p>
<p>He graduated this past May and during the summer was in a professional production with a fairly long run. He said it was so different because, in college, performing in productions always involved learning. With the professional production, it was a job. Some days the cast of the professional show did not feel at all like performing, but they were obliged to throw themselves into it wholeheartedly anyway.</p>
<p>(With regard to hanging around while the director works with the leads: I think that happens more in youth theatre or community theatre where the whole cast has to be there for the entirety of each rehearsal. For higher level productions, the scheduling involves certain cast members being called at certain times.)</p>
<p>No, not all the Tisch studios have guaranteed casting.</p>
<p>My daughter is at Shenandoah University, and while there is not guaranteed casting, there are acting opportunities all over the place. She has had a wide variety of parts in the school productions, both leads and secondary’s, as well as being in numerous student directed shows and pieces and as part of the Shakespeare productions.</p>
<p>My kid is at a program without guaranteed casting. To be honest, she applied to both kinds of programs. Guaranteed casting (or not) was not a factor in her decision. She could see the benefits and potential problems of both types of systems. At her school, even if you are not cast in a production during a particular semester, you will be involved in production in some capacity. And there is ample opportunity to step up your involvement by working as assistant to directors, designers, etc. As an actor and playwright she sees substantial benefit in being involved in all of these roles.</p>
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That actually varies from school to school. It’s probably never 100%, but some of the smaller programs with guaranteed casting where students mainly work with within their own class make an effort to get each student at least some experience playing major roles. Sometimes you’ll also find that someone with a smaller role in a particular play will be understudying one of the leads if the roles aren’t truly double cast from the beginning. Then the roles may be reversed in the next play up for which the person with the smaller role might be simultaneously preparing a lead. This experience can be very valuable in the world of the big regional repertory theatres where the company members are often responsible for several different roles in different plays at once.</p>
<p>Another educational benefit can be that the plays are often chosen to highlight the strengths and challenges of the members of a particular class other than in “Sunday Best” productions. This may sometimes even involve students playing roles way outside their normal casting range. Like when my class worshopped Richard III second year, yours truly was tasked with playing Rick the Dick himself when it would be highly unusual for me to be asked to play him even in an all female company. It just happened to involve an archetype some of the faculty members who felt I needed a challenge (I was getting complacent) agreed I’d benefit from working with.</p>
<p>Yes, halflokum, it really is as I described. And also as FBF described in that the plays are chosen with the group in mind, meaning to stretch and hone abilities, and to give students interesting, rich roles to work with. I’ve never been a fan of ‘toughening up’ in any respect (well, maybe athletics). But I do think it’s good to have played major roles, and different types of roles when you’re going into the marketplace-- that exercises and enlarges the capacities you really need.</p>
<p>FBF, you that your class workshopped Richard III as a choice the department made to provide educational benefits to the specific class members to the extreme that they had you play a guy. Excuse my naivet</p>
<p>I know a few people who workshopped In the Heights, Next to Normal, and Wicked before they went to previews and then on to Broadway and it is very much like SMASH without the drama. LOL Workshopping might mean something different in the college realm, I’m not familiar with that.</p>
<p>^^ In the context I used, it means to do the play with mainly just the actors and their blocking without any elaborate costuming or any more set, props, lighting, etc. than are absolutely necessary. Basically, you just do the play completely bare bones - usually in a small space. </p>
<p>In the professional world, it can also mean to perform a new play in the same manner so the writer can see and hear his words come to life and make any necessary revisions although that usually starts with staged readings which are a different animal. Actually, they do quite a bit of that at Juilliard with works by the students in the playwriting program which is how they’re pretty much always in a play from the time they set foot in the building 'til they graduate.</p>
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<p>I think this does happen to some kids but further exploration as to the rest of their experience during four years would be needed to determine if this is as large a negative as some may think. Kids learn doing shows, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it must be a ‘mainstage’ show. The number and type of performance opportunities will vary from school to school. This is something that should be part of the research when compiling your list as to where to apply. A live and paying audience will be in attendance at more than just the mainstage shows at some schools.</p>
<p>English comedian Alexei Sayle once said (referring to theatre) “anybody who uses the word workshop who’s not connected with light engineering is a twat!”</p>
<p>All of these words get overused and abused by the theatre “pseuds”. It may be slightly legitimate to talk about it as a process in developing a play, that a new play is “workshopped” before it has a fullscale production. But in practice it seems to be a fancy way of saying “we aren’t going to try very hard on this production, but you are not allowed to hold any of the problems this produces against us, because it is just a ‘workshop’.”</p>
<p>I have seen productions that had actors and blocking, but otherwise no more costumes, sets, props, lighting than is absolutely necessary, but this isn’t always called “workshop”. Like one production I remember of “Hamlet” at the National Theatre. There is a move in England towards “two planks and a passion”, which is similar to the term in Chicago theatre (and also Chicago architecture) that “less is more”. But there is still a goal of working hard and creating incredible theatre. This is why I associate the word “workshop” with the “pseuds” who just want to be part of theatre without actually doing the work needed to create great theatre.</p>
<p>In a school setting I think it’s more of a learning thing. They may not have time and budget to mount another full scale productions but it’s another chance to gain experience and student actors, directors, etc.</p>
<p>At Columbia College Chicago, we always staged full scale productions. You learn a lot more from doing that you do from “workshopping”. In the theatre you NEVER have all the time and budget you want, so it makes more sense to start learning right away how to stage a fullscale production with limited time and budget.</p>
<p>College students tend to go through avant garde stages. Workshops are a chance to produce, direct, act and explore new and old scripts with no concerns that it make money or is even liked in the real world. You see colleges workshop shows that aren’t ever slated for the mainstage and will be seen by no one but reluctant roommates lol. However, it’s a valuable learning experience.</p>
<p>Professional companies workshop all sorts of stuff from new works to ancient works. It’s not unusual to workshop a classic that is being adapted or added to… or if the idea is really out there lol. Sometimes they’ll workshop shows that are fantastic but would never sell to their specific audience base. Lots of actors make their start with large regionals by first being used in workshops (even if their particular workshop is never fully produced.)</p>
<p>Successful actors, directors, designers… they make their own opportunities. They know how to network and pull int he talents around them. They foster collaborative relationships. They can make work when no other work is available. Independent, student run workshops is an excellent experience at the college level. Simply doing mainstage shows produced by staffers isn’t adequate preparation for the real world.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know why you would learn more from a full-scale production. An actor learns by acting…the label on the thing is not important. And for me it happens in bursts, like short revelations that can come at any time in anyplace. Most of the time even during a full on show there’s not much learning happening, just a lot of doing or not if you have a smaller role. I learned more in one week of master classes than I did in all 4 years of high school drama so it’s not a time thing… it’s just a clicking that could just as easily happen in a workshop as a mainstage show.</p>