AboutPeter Messaline Expertise Career advice for high-school students and beginning performers.
Canadian tax advice for artists of all sorts.
Research resources for those looking for performance-related answers.
Experience I am a Canadian performer, tax preparer and writer.
I have supported myself as an arts entrepreneur for thirty-five years.
I am the most-published writer in the business of being a Canadian artist.
I have written on arts tax matters and prepared performer taxes for fifteen years.
Organizations belong to ACTRA, CAEA, AEA, British Equity.
Publications CAEA Newsletter
ACTRA Branchline
The Agents Book
Actor's Survival Kit
Tax Kit 2000+
Making It (Federal government career management for culture workers)
Expert: Peter Messaline Date: 8/18/2007 Subject: Acting in college
Question I am planning to attend college in a large city, probably new york, but am wondering what I should to for my acting career. I wish to study creative writing in college, but also take acting classes outside of school. I guess my main question is are there acting jobs out there that I can attend while I am still in school and what are the best steps to take after highschool towards acting.
Answer If you are in high school wanting to be an actress, you should be looking at theatre or film acting courses. If you want to have a fall-back position, take a course has enough academic content that you can add a teaching certificate to it.
There are acting courses of all sorts in most large cities, including some that would help in your actor career. But there are none that you could do as well as an undergraduate course.
There are a thousand ways towards becoming an actor, but the huge majority of working actors have an acting qualification. Useful acting courses, which typically audition their candidates, are very difficult to get into. They will be looking for good grades and some evidence of acting activity in anyone they audition.
If you haven't already, join clubs, join amateur companies, get some basic theatre training, so that you'll know a bit what it's about. Read all you can about being an ordinary working actor in the States nowadays. Look at the SAG and Equity websites, and Google "Bonnie Gillespie", who has a number of useful informative sites and pages.
It's difficult to know why you'll be taking creative writing. There are a number of undergraduate courses out there, and the one at Chapel Hill seems very impressive, but that is a very different sort of creativity. When you graduated, you'd have skills and contacts useful as a writer, but less so for a would-be actor.
All in all, I think your best route would consist of getting a creative writing course at a college with an active drama course, and make acting, and actors, your extracurricular activity, your hobby.
