Any work in Perth?
Sat, 15 June 2002, 08:08 pmWalter Plinge25 posts in thread
Any work in Perth?
Sat, 15 June 2002, 08:08 pmIs there any work in Perth for Teenagers? 14-16 years old? I love Perth but there is just nothing here for us. Are there really more oppertunities in sydney? is it worth considering moving there once we have finnished school? thx 4 any feed back.
One day, you're gonna get caught with your Rants down...
Sat, 22 June 2002, 05:17 amG'day Tomas, Crispy, Amanda and Talei....just thought I'd join this conversation - one of the rare times where I've actually met all the contributers to the debate in person....
Thanks for the David Mamet quote about "fall backs"....I've been paraphrasing the same idea for years, and didn't realise there was such a succinct way of putting it.
I have two takes on the concept...one is that I really learnt to walk the tightrope of my acting career by doing away with any safety net. Sure, it's a bigger risk, and not everyone's up to it, but that was the single best way that I found to learn quickly and effectively how to make a career in theatre...I gave myself no other option. Consequently, for years I never had to do anything else.
The big advantage was that by never doing anything else, but putting absolute concentration and dedication to the one thing, I became pretty good at tightrope walking.
But the flip side of my coin (every coin has three sides....wait a minute, a 50 cent piece has ten...) is that I've now found that sometimes it's just as much fun to fall from the tightrope into a net. The nets I've put in place involve playing music, or working as an outdoor ed instructor (...or instead of a net, I jump from the tightrope into a pool, when I'm a scuba instructor!).
I started to see that the "fall" part of fallback jobs isn't necessarily the big bad evil it's made out to be...falling into something soft is fantastic. It's only landing in something hard that's a pain in the neck.
In fact, it's the word "job" that I object to, not "fallback". Starting with acting, I've now had several diverse occupations, none of which I ever considered "a job".
Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it, if you try.
I started the study thing; really enjoyed it, and found it valuable...but as it turned out I didn't need it. (I never graduated). After a year in the industry I found I had stuff I could teach actors who had graduated from WAAPA. (and they had stuff they could teach me)...it was a great leveller in my perspective of training/experience.
I think that having "a degree" translates roughly the same as having "three year's experience". It's a particular type of experience, probably more structured and specialised than you can find elsewhere, but essentially equivalent.
Perhaps, Crispy, a degree scroll means bugger-all in the world (I always thought that's what BA stood for), but sometimes your practical experience is no better guarantee of getting the job/role. Art is often rather intangible, and it usually comes down to being in the right place with the right skills at the right time, with little regard to experience, seniority, preparedness or fairness.
Studying a degree other than drama is an approach I've never heard argued so well. But it's no more or less valid than studying drama, or working in the industry, or another industry, or not at all. Nothing's set in concrete; the individual, innovative path has to be tailormade for each of us.
Amanda's observation/experience argument is a good, interesting, but I think inconclusive one. To have had first-hand experience of a situation is probably going to help you as an actor, so long as you have the skill to recreate that experience. But when it comes to acting something beyond human experience, like your own death, we're all just making it up.
A close second is to observe a situation, experiencing it second-hand. But I've been called upon to perform as an alien, and as a whale, for instance...neither of which I've been able to really observe, and I'm not sure it would've helped me much if I had. Again, I was better off just making it up.
A lot of us with any reasonable acting talent actually get by pretty well with THIRD-hand experience....we know a fair bit about how to portray someone poverty-stricken, or with a mental condition, or from another culture, because we've seen it on TV.
Almost all good drama is about the human condition. Unless you're a particularly literate quadruped reading this, you probably don't have to learn much to become human. So I reckon a good deal of the experience you need to act is already in you, the rest is just technical details.
Cheers,
Craig
PS - last chance to see Stories From Suburban Road in Perth tonight (Sat) 8pm!
Thanks for the David Mamet quote about "fall backs"....I've been paraphrasing the same idea for years, and didn't realise there was such a succinct way of putting it.
I have two takes on the concept...one is that I really learnt to walk the tightrope of my acting career by doing away with any safety net. Sure, it's a bigger risk, and not everyone's up to it, but that was the single best way that I found to learn quickly and effectively how to make a career in theatre...I gave myself no other option. Consequently, for years I never had to do anything else.
The big advantage was that by never doing anything else, but putting absolute concentration and dedication to the one thing, I became pretty good at tightrope walking.
But the flip side of my coin (every coin has three sides....wait a minute, a 50 cent piece has ten...) is that I've now found that sometimes it's just as much fun to fall from the tightrope into a net. The nets I've put in place involve playing music, or working as an outdoor ed instructor (...or instead of a net, I jump from the tightrope into a pool, when I'm a scuba instructor!).
I started to see that the "fall" part of fallback jobs isn't necessarily the big bad evil it's made out to be...falling into something soft is fantastic. It's only landing in something hard that's a pain in the neck.
In fact, it's the word "job" that I object to, not "fallback". Starting with acting, I've now had several diverse occupations, none of which I ever considered "a job".
Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it, if you try.
I started the study thing; really enjoyed it, and found it valuable...but as it turned out I didn't need it. (I never graduated). After a year in the industry I found I had stuff I could teach actors who had graduated from WAAPA. (and they had stuff they could teach me)...it was a great leveller in my perspective of training/experience.
I think that having "a degree" translates roughly the same as having "three year's experience". It's a particular type of experience, probably more structured and specialised than you can find elsewhere, but essentially equivalent.
Perhaps, Crispy, a degree scroll means bugger-all in the world (I always thought that's what BA stood for), but sometimes your practical experience is no better guarantee of getting the job/role. Art is often rather intangible, and it usually comes down to being in the right place with the right skills at the right time, with little regard to experience, seniority, preparedness or fairness.
Studying a degree other than drama is an approach I've never heard argued so well. But it's no more or less valid than studying drama, or working in the industry, or another industry, or not at all. Nothing's set in concrete; the individual, innovative path has to be tailormade for each of us.
Amanda's observation/experience argument is a good, interesting, but I think inconclusive one. To have had first-hand experience of a situation is probably going to help you as an actor, so long as you have the skill to recreate that experience. But when it comes to acting something beyond human experience, like your own death, we're all just making it up.
A close second is to observe a situation, experiencing it second-hand. But I've been called upon to perform as an alien, and as a whale, for instance...neither of which I've been able to really observe, and I'm not sure it would've helped me much if I had. Again, I was better off just making it up.
A lot of us with any reasonable acting talent actually get by pretty well with THIRD-hand experience....we know a fair bit about how to portray someone poverty-stricken, or with a mental condition, or from another culture, because we've seen it on TV.
Almost all good drama is about the human condition. Unless you're a particularly literate quadruped reading this, you probably don't have to learn much to become human. So I reckon a good deal of the experience you need to act is already in you, the rest is just technical details.
Cheers,
Craig
PS - last chance to see Stories From Suburban Road in Perth tonight (Sat) 8pm!
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