Mary Anna Dennard has a new book out for young teens – i.e., 8th-9th-10th graders – called “Before I Got In.” I am recommending it to all the parents I know whose kids are just starting on this path. Good sections on “what I wish I’d known” and theatre camps. I can’t post a direct link here, but you can find it on Amazon, with lots of reviews to read.
Agree about preparation! My D knew she wanted to go to college for MT or acting since she was a freshman but I knew nothing about the unique process until end of junior year. Neither of us really appreciated how imperative it is for her to write application essays over the summer and request recommendations very early.
I strongly disagree with paying money to have someone coach your child for college auditions. It takes the “art” right out of the artist. I hope that these colleges can smell a coached auditionee a mile away.
@Barrie08 while my D did not use a coach, I look at it like a college prep consultant who may help a
Student get test ready, edit essays or narrow down a college list. If a coach is good i hope a student wouldn’t looked coached. That said, there are posts on CC with people who felt coaching is/was imperative and others who think it didn’t help or wasn’t needed. It is each to their own.
This is a hugely competitive process and having help to even round out a list of programs or tweak audition materials can be very helpful if a family wants that support.
Again we didn’t use a coach However my daughter has lots of professional mentors who certainly gave her advice and worked with her along the way.
@Barrie08, good coaching isn’t about telling the actor how to say the line. Good coaching is helping them delve deeper into the monologue - “Who are you talking to? What do you want from that person? What happens if you don’t get it? How do you feel about the person you’re talking to?” etc. etc. It helps the actor to sharpen their focus and make strong choices. But it’s the ACTOR’S choices, not the coach’s.
That doesn’t mean that coaching is REQUIRED or necessary. But to say that “it takes the art out of the artist” is false. Even professional actors use coaches before an important audition.
Yes, that’s an acting teacher. I’m talking about the coach that you pay $675 that tells you how to dress, what to say etc. to get into specific schools
That would be a bad coach and not worth the $675 in my opinion.
I don’t think all coaches are like that though.
Luckily everyone can choose how to prepare however they like.
@Barrie08 - everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. Since you only have 3 posts on the forum, might I suggest that you pose yours a little less black/white at the early stages. Your 2 posts on this thread could be read as offensive to many posters within our community.
@Barrie08 - I can see where it is easy to draw negative conclusions about audition coaches, but each year these highly-qualified professionals assist hundreds of students in preparing for and navigating a very complicated and stressful process. If you research the qualifications of the most popular coaches, such as Mary Anna Dennard, Dave Clemmons, Ellen Lettrich (MTCA), and Chelsea Diehl (MCA) you will see that they have backgrounds as Broadway and Hollywood casting directors, professional performers, vocal clinicians, etc. that enable them to offer excellent advice through connections and experience with a significant number of faculty at college theatre programs. Their students are generally very successful in getting acceptances across a broad range of schools.
You can certainly be successful without a coach, but, like any highly competitive and convoluted process, it can really help to have professional advice and support. For example, selection of material is a critical part of the process and a coach can really help in this regard. Deciding which schools would be a good fit is another area where coaches can add a lot of value. There are many other areas where coaches can help, including providing information about what happens in dance calls, in the audition room, how to prepare for interview questions, how to handle wait lists, what typical scholarship amounts may be, etc.
I’m sorry, I feel bad for knocking coaches. I just feel really bad for the students that can’t afford these really high priced coaches, like the ones you mentioned, who know how to train students to ace their auditions. I believe in the artist and would hope that a true artist can come into an audition and have the same chances as a coached student. I am watching all of the kids in our community that have a lot of money, sign up for special pre-screens with colleges if you are a client, I have an ethical issue with that. On the other hand, I know that these programs are really hard to get into and that you want to give your kid the best chance that they have. At the end of the day, it’s not only about the college that you go to that will make you a better artist, it’s the effort you put into the program. I’m sure that college coaches are very beneficial in many ways. Please forgive my earlier statements.
Unfortunately, no part of the college entrance process is a “level playing field.” The process for college admissions is set by the individual schools, and the convoluted nature of theatre admissions is the result of how the fine arts departments choose to operate. Having met many faculty members and department heads in working as a volunteer at a large regional audition for several years, I can see where they struggle to balance the demands of the audition process with their day-to-day jobs as college educators and theatre producers (like any theatre company, they have to put on a full season of productions while teaching classes, meanwhile dealing with the routine administration of running a college department, etc.).
It would be really nice if the process where more standardized and individual theatre departments operated on a more consistent basis for conducting auditions. Until then (if ever), there is certainly a lot of demand for help in navigating the theatre admissions process (and for that matter, the entire college admissions process).
My child did not have a coach. That being said most individuals going through this process have mentors and teachers to guide them a bit. Honestly I think my child would have had the same or a similar result with a coach. There really are so many factors that come into play that there really isn’t a magic pill that will get you into any given program. If you can afford a coach great, but there really is no guarantee I the process
We used a coach, and I feel it was money well spent. She helped create the list of colleges to which my son applied, her team helped him pick and prepare his material, gave advice about audition day, the interview, the headshot, the resume – pretty much everything. For parents like us, utterly unfamiliar with the theater world, this was enormously helpful. I am not at all sure we could have done it without her.
A good coach helps a kid figure out who he or she is – what’s your type? what material are you best suited to sing? how can you best convey who YOU are in the short amount of time available in an audition? The coach can’t “create” a kid out of nothing.
My son’s team got who he is right away, within minutes of meeting him via Skype. They offered him over a hundred songs and suggested he choose a handful that he liked best. He was astonished because every song suited him so perfectly – and most of them were ones he’d never heard of! And the coaching sessions were just like lessons, working with him to help him figure out what he wanted to do with the material – he wasn’t being told, “do this, do that.”
No coach is going to make a kid “ace” all his auditions. How could that be possible? My son got in to about half the schools to which he applied, which I feel is very good. But the coach also steered him away from applying to too many of the tippy top programs, where the chances are so slight. She helped us approach the process realistically.
There is no level playing field. Some kids live near cities and have access to top voice and acting teachers. Some go to performing arts high schools. Some attend expensive theater summer camps. Some have friends and family in the business who can guide them along the way. Some have already had years of professional experience before even auditioning for college! And some have had none of that – and still succeed.
I have read here on CC of a kid who did it all alone. No parental support. No coach. No money to travel to faraway auditions. And my hat is off to that kid, who got into several places and had good choices. That proves it CAN be done. But personally, I am very grateful that we were able to spend the money on the coach – the cost was a tiny fraction of what four years of college costs, so to me it was worth it to maximize the chances both of acceptance and of finding a program that would be a good fit.
And some coaches give scholarships to make their services more affordable – they may not advertise that, but it never hurts to ask.
Just checked back in to see how things are going for this years bunch! Break legs to all of your students! Daughter is a sophomore at Coastal Carolina MT and very happy with her education if anyone needs a contact…