A few years ago, I came up with the idea of adding the college system of juries to our training with the actors. Essentially you are asking the rising Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors to prepare one audition at the end of the year that will be adjudicated by the entire performance faculty to “insure the best possible placement for performance classes for the next year.” The idea was that there was always a small group of students that had not done their work in the second year of acting classes and were not ready to move on to the third year of acting. This was often due to some skill-work missing, but most often they lacked the passion and commitment to move forward – – so we would place them back into the same acting class they had – this time with a different teacher. The theory is good but the reality was different. Those few acting students who were asked to repeat their acting class seldom learned those fundamentals and often became so resentful that they held back the rest of the class. The idea was not helpful for them and NOT helpful for the class they repeated.
Often the most motivated of actors are upset that they have a small number of students in their class who really don’t care about acting, don’t do their work, and let their bad attitude be known to one and all. The good students hate this – and it does hold back the progress of the entire class. What to do? In college the answer would be simple – you simply kick the underachieving student out of the class. Easy for college – not so easy for high school – and probably not so appropriate for high school. After all, they are all children in high school and do not bloom at the same time. You might really make some mistakes if you kick them out too early.
Then the idea came to me that rather then holding low achieving students back to improve the program – what would work better is PROMOTE the most passionate of students forward to a special class in which everyone shared the same passion, same work ethic, and often similar talent. Hence – Company. It is approaching the end of its one year mark and all looks good. I am hoping as the juries for the department begin next year, the results will be positive. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
One comment on “Hold Back. Promote Up.”
I think it’s a great solution.
We so often see people in various situations suffer consequences because of others – even though they don’t deserve to be grouped into the same category.
It does build resentment. It also extinguishes passion in someone if they feel they won’t have any control over their destiny. This is what happens when we suffer the consequences of what someone else does.
What you’ve come up with is ideal. Let those who aren’t in it have their experience while those who are present and participating reap the rewards of their efforts.
That’s fair.