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A tough act

Acting is an itinerant profession. Actors, directors, designers and the rest move from location to location, town to town and even continent to continent to do theatre, make movies and shoot television series.

DAVID CHILTON

[ 2006-10-11 ]

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From the George Brown College production of School for Scandal with John Bryans and Jennifer Harding. George Browns' Theatre School offers a three-year program.

Flexibility is key, says Diana Belshaw, director of theatre performance at Humber College. She looks for students who are entrepreneurial and creative and who don't mind the insecurity of what amounts to a career built on contract work.

As an example of what she means, Belshaw says 100%of her graduating class last year was employed in their chosen profession. They worked in fringe theatre, short films, plays they had written themselves and so on. True, they had to work at other jobs on the side to support themselves, Belshaw allows, but they were active in theatre and film nevertheless.

AUDITIONS

Humber's three-year program is just one of the acting programs in Toronto. Others include George Brown College, York University and Ryerson University, and those and others all attract far more applicants than they accept.

James Simon, artistic director of George Brown's Theatre School, says the college takes 32 to 34 students into its three-year program froman applicant pool of 700 or so from across the country. Last spring, for the first time George Brown held auditions and interviews in Vancouver and Halifax, Simon says, and plans to do the same next year.

Shawn Kerwin, chair of York's theatre department, says the university accepts 135 students a year who share a common first year. In second year they decide whether to specialize in acting, directing or theatre studies. Those who want to act must pass an audition, of course, and their acceptance rate is a tiny one in 16 or so. However, those who don't pass can audition again, Kerwin says, and she emphasizes that they remain theatre department students.

Both Simon and Belshaw say more and more of their students already have a university degree and thus are a few years older than the high school grads who also apply.

"When they comein later they have travelled and experienced life," Simon says, echoing Belshaw's comment that a more developed personality gives teachers more to work with.

Beyond age and life experience, however, other qualities are also important. "We're looking for potential," Belshaw says. "We're not looking for skill level at this (beginner) level."

At all three schools there tends to be more women than men enrolled, although the balance is not far from being even. This year at York, the incoming class is about 50-50, Kerwin says. Fees at George Brown and Humber are about $4,000 a year; at York, tuition costs the sameas any other arts student would pay, about $5,000.

"VERY FEW JOBS"

All three theatre school leaders are straightforward about their students finding work immediately upon graduation.

"There are very few jobs," Belshaw warns, who nevertheless points out some of her recent graduates are doing well, including Sean McComb who's in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at Stratford this year.

One student who hopes to join him is Rick Jongejan, a third-year student at George Brown. Taking a break from a college rehearsal of War and Peace , Jongejan says he always liked acting and was encourage by a drama teacher at school.

Jongejan says he worked in tech support for three years after high school and acted in community theatre and with a semi-pro group. But he realized he needed more training so he looked to George Brown. And with graduation on the horizon these days he's looking at head shots, finding an agent and earning enough credits for the all important Actors Equity union card.

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