Many times, acting from an objective, external perspective seems simply like role pretending or mimicking other people. It’s easy to focus on the distance between you and the role. But in truth, being an actor is really about finding a way to reveal yourself through a given role in a screen or stage production.

For too long, acting meant one thing, or the kinds of acting, the kinds of stories, that were being told were only one kind of story. It’s vitally important at this moment, and it’s late in coming, that we find ourselves really encouraging newcomers to find their voice as an actor in the performing arts. It’s important to understand the way your own experiences, your unique point of view, and your individual identity offer something to your playing a role. It isn’t about you ignoring who you are or your story but bringing your perspective and experiences to the part. A quality performing arts education can help you to appreciate the challenges and opportunities of putting yourself into each role.

Your work is important and valued if you bring yourself fully to it and are given permission to do that. The more you are enabled to bring yourself to a role, the more your voice as an actor will be understood and heard. Nothing could be better for the profession or for you as an artist.

For too long, the stories that have been told in the theater, in TV, and in film have been the stories of white Europeans and particularly white European men. Those were the writers whose stories were produced. Here in the United States, it was white people and white men whose stories and plays were told and who were hired for the acting jobs.

Currently, we’re at an important moment of transition where Black artists, persons of color, and indigenous artists are finally, after far too long, being recognized as the vital storytellers they have always been. It’s important to them, as we encourage greater inclusion and people to bring their own identities into their work, that we recognize a unique voice is part of what needs to be valued in the performing arts process. It’s not enough to bring diverse voices into a room. Those voices have to be valued and their stories need to be told. Coming along with that can’t be a request for someone to set aside personal experiences or an untraditional point of view in order to transform into something else.

As you explore your work as an actor, what’s really important is that you give yourself permission to look at a role. Even when you see distance from it, recognize and really believe that your experience, your identity, your point of view, and your history are vital for the way you are going to be able to tell the story in a unique and meaningful way. You can study this process further by pursuing an online performing arts education. Learning all you can about inclusion and diversity in the performing arts will prepare you to make your mark in the industry.

If you’re interested in performing arts education, you need to learn the business side of it all. Take the business courses along with your regular online performing arts education courses. If you don’t want to deal with a spreadsheet or with numbers, consult an accountant or talk to an attorney. A lot of CPAs and attorneys — especially entertainment attorneys — have free panel discussions or some other networking event that you can attend and just sit and listen. Take notes because a lot of the business is just knowing the stuff you really don’t want to know about.

For example, you might not have space in your head to learn business law. I’m not saying to go be a lawyer, but I am saying that as artists, we’re already open. We’re creating. We’re taking the truth and putting it on a higher scale. The work that we are creating is elevated, wherever we’re creating it.

By opening night of a performing arts piece, the producer’s job is still not done. Instead of thinking about closing night, you’re now thinking about how to make sure that the run is productive and that you’re able to get people to come see the show. That’s where the second and third phases of marketing will come into play. You’re now thinking about how to fill these seats.

You should always aim to try to get the first two shows sold out because a sold-out show is a great marketing plan. That is the first and foremost goal you should learn as a producer in performing arts education or online performing arts education.

Producer Malini Singh McDonald has worked on a few shows like that. Once those first two shows are sold out, they were able to then shift to marketing and use some other posters that had been included in the marketing plan. On that note, it may be a good idea to have a few different posters that you can use at different times, so it’s not just one graphic. They use that in addition to seat fillers. There’s a lot of programs out there that you can use to help fill seats.

Surprisingly, what inspired a very young August Wilson as a high school student was not theater, not Black theater, but Black poetry. When August Wilson was in high school, he went to his teacher one day and said, “Here’s my latest project. Here’s my assignment.” It was the original poems he’d been writing.

They were so good that the teacher refused to believe that this biracial, self-identifying African-American teenager could have written this thing. He accused August Wilson of plagiarism. August Wilson said, “No, I wrote it myself.”

The teacher didn’t believe him, so August Wilson refused to go back. August Wilson dropped out of high school, never returned, and went to his mother and told her what happened.

His mother tried to make him go back, but August stood firm. He dropped out and never returned again. Instead, August Wilson spent his late high school age years committed to studying Black poetry and the Black arts movement of African-American theater.

He eventually packed up and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he partnered with the folks who founded the Penumbra Theatre Company. Then he sort of sat there, and watched, and saw performing arts theater occur. That’s where he cultivated his voice.

By the end of his career, he was celebrated for having bridged this decade cycle of one play per decade that captured the history of Black life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He’s now the savior of American theater. He created a huge sensation in the performing arts world, and people still fawn over him and his accomplishments.

He stood before a crowd of those who praised him for saving theater, but who themselves may not have been as actively championing Black theater as they could have been, to say no more needs to be done. He told his story, which helped to pass the torch to the next generation. His story inspired and continues to inspire those wanting to pursue a performing arts education or online performing arts education.

We can look at what would be defined as Vedic theater throughout online performing arts education. This particular theater is from the region that is what we would now call India, though, of course, those geographic boundaries haven’t been exactly the same over many, many, many hundreds of years. Thus, we refer to that area as the Vedic world.

There’s this amazing narrative that comes out of a really important text that was to be formulated much later, which comes out of the Vedic world. It’s called the Natya Sastra. The Natya Sastra is actually considered to be the sacred book of theater, according to Hindu philosophy. That’s already pretty cool, and as a theater maker, if there’s a sacred book of theater, I’m on board. One of the stories (there are many stories of this) in mythology is that, in fact, humanity had come to a point where it was starting to destroy itself. This is in antiquity, also regarded as the “ancient past.” And according to the mythology, the gods were very concerned. These, of course, are the Hindu gods and they have a meeting to gather and discuss what the future of humanity could and would be.

The story tells this amazing notion, an incredibly beautiful and charged idea, that one of the deities, a god named Shiva, would actually move humanity forward. The god Shiva would prevent humanity from destroying itself and instead, would actually propel its growth. He presented this idea, which excited the gods. And the question was, “How do we give it to humanity? How do we share this incredible gift?” And so Lord Shiva has an idea, he will plant that entire notion that he’s created in the brain of one human being named Bharata.

Bharata Introduces Performing Arts

Now, the word Bharata has a lot of roots in it with different definitions depending upon the region and time. Though it’s the name of this character in the story, it is also an old word for person, man, or human. Furthermore, it’s a very old word for artist. What the story is telling us is that the gods are planning to place this on an individual that they define as an artist. They place this idea in that individual’s head and so are born what are called the children of Bharata – which I think is really cool.

The Children of Bharata and Their Role in the Arts

Each of these children actually represents a part of the art forms and the idea is that they are similar to the next child that’s born. The youngest of the children is a child called music. They are supposed to be the purest and one of the most foundational. The next child of Bharata, which I think is really remarkable, is poetry. The idea is that poetry has music in it, so you see this kind of structure within structure. The next child that is born is called sculpture. I would call it visual art. The idea is that visual art has poetry and music within it. The next child that’s born is storytelling, which I think is a remarkable thing because that idea is that storytelling has visuals, poetry, and music within it. And the eldest of the children, that’s born with all of them inside of it, is theater.

This is the great gift from Lord Shiva. It entails the idea that theater is granted as a space that actually holds all of the other art forms and really propels this notion that it is for the intent of the growth of a community. I think it’s a really cool idea whether you subscribe to that philosophy or not. For me, it really brings forth the puzzle of theater, which is that it’s inherently this remarkable interdisciplinary art form that is intended to actually take a varying shape depending on its community, on its culture, and on its moment in history. Through Bharata and their children, we see it as a place of music, poetry, visual art, and storytelling.

The more interested you are, the more interesting you become. For actors, that’s particularly important because you want to be able to create a performance with your heart, mind, body, and voice that people will be able to picture themselves in. You can learn all this in your online performing arts education.

That’s the ultimate goal: to affect change in people. That’s why the theater exists. It’s like putting up a mirror and having people question something that they might not have questioned in the past.

What you have to offer as an artist is your weirdness, your unique point of view. It’s who you are, your sense of humor, the way you view the world. Think about comedians. For example, some comedians are funny because of how they view the world. They can make you think, “That’s funny. I never thought of it that way.”

You need to understand that your individual perspective is your currency as a performer. That’s what makes you unique, and that’s what’s going to give you a long career because you’re going to be different than everyone else. And that difference is something to celebrate. Cultivate that because there’s no one who can be a better “you” than you, and that’s going to make you stand out. Whether it’s on camera or onstage, they’re going to go, “Oh, that’s different!” And that’s what you want.

As you continue your performing arts education, remember this: Don’t try to fit a mold. Just be you.

Discussing performing arts, “I think that live performance is incredibly democratic,” says Scott Illingworth. “Unlike film or television, which have unique storytelling tools such as cut and frame, live performance allows the viewer or audience member to make their own choices about what they pay attention to — the parts of people’s bodies, which person they pay attention to, how they turn their attention back and forth between performers over the course of the event.”

While offering performing arts education, Illingworth goes on to explain, “It’s hard to state how significant that is in terms of the audience experience. At any given moment, you could be paying close attention to an actor’s face and what’s going on. Then suddenly, you find yourself drawn to the tapping of their foot. It requires, therefore, that actors are incredibly clear in the use of their entire bodies.” Illingworth concludes by stating that it also permits audience members to tell or experience the story in the way they want, based on the things that draw them in. He thinks one of the reasons it continues to last is that people keep finding new ways of rewarding audience members for that kind of experience and attention. This sort of lesson is also taught in online performing arts education.

“A dancer is expected to embody the vision of dance,” says Jeff Kaplan. “They’re expected to take movement so they are the personification of that art on stage. Particularly in modern dance, choreographers tend to see themselves as facilitators, so they might take a group of dancers and say, ‘OK, I’d like you to journal a little. And then from what you write, we’re going to take out moments, next we’re going to take up verbs, we’re going to take out nouns, and lastly, we’re going to turn them into shapes. Now, you go over there and create eight accounts and we’re going to look at it and glue it together.”

He goes on to explain that in the ballet world it’s still more traditional for the choreographer to tell the dancers what to do. The choreographer is in charge of creating the original work. This is even taught in online performing arts education.

So unlike other performing arts, like a play, you are creating what you perform. Unlike a symphony orchestra, where you get sheet music, the content doesn’t exist yet. So in dance, the day-to-day work happens in the studio. It happens collaboratively. And you’re working as a team to create and perform something new from the knowledge with performing arts education.

One thing covered in performing arts education is the different types of dance. So, what are some of the different genres of dance? For this type of thing, it helps to speak in very broad categories, just to let people know what ballpark you’re talking about. And perhaps the form of dance that most people might have heard of is ballet. Ballet emerged out of the courts of Europe, and it’s certainly strange to think of a modern-day president doing plies and tendus. But it did, in fact, start in the courts of France, as the nobles would dance with each other and spread gossip while they were dancing.

It was all about seeing and being seen, and it was also a form of exercise. It became codified in places like France, which was the cultural capital of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. But ballet is a very codified form of movement in which there are five possible positions of the feet—each of which has a name and both a correct and incorrect way of doing it. You learn those sequences, and you find that it favors a certain type of body. You need to have a certain rotation from the hips, and you have to have a certain type of flexibility, and your feet even need to point a certain way.

Another form of dance is jazz dance, which emerged in America corresponding with jazz music, although it has departed since then and is more presentational. Jazz dance is also more entertainment-focused. It lends itself very well to musical theater. It emerged, in many ways, as a synthesis of Afrocentric dance forms and African dance forms, as well as Irish sensibilities of rhythm and even a relationship with tap dance.

With jazz dance, you move parts of your body independently at different rhythms, and it’s also very much character-driven. There are names of steps with jazz dance, as well. There are famous choreographers and styles of jazz, ranging from very lyrical and resembling ballet, to others that seem much more urban.

As for hip hop dance and related forms such as krump, pop-locking, and others come out of the experience of youths in American cities, and that typically has a very strong relationship with popular music, culture, and fashion.

Another is modern dance, and it emerged out of trends in America, as well as Europe in places like Germany. Modern dance is very much a rejection of ballet, in which it asks why we only need five positions of the feet. It asks why we need to wear shoes, why we need to dance to music, or certain kinds of music. If you were to imagine that you were born on a desert island and nobody had ever taught you how to dance, how would you dance? It’s very much about finding the patterns and finding your own movement preferences. Modern dance also tends to be very much influenced by the choreographer—influenced by the way that they move, as well as the influences that they have.

So, those are a few of the more well-known dance genres, what they entail, and how they originated. You can learn much more about dance and other performing arts-related topics by exploring the world of online performing arts education.

Scott Illingworth shares with us that in moving from audience to participant as a performing arts director, the period of time you have with a script is a unique and individual, and only you can utilize it for insight and productivity. For a director, the journey is similar to that of an actor at the beginning of a production. This is because, in many ways, the director is the audience until the viewers can be present. It’s important to start, bit by bit, from the place of what the story is about and what the audience needs to understand. What are the critical events? What are the significant moments?

From a performing arts education perspective, a director will question how the audience is going to experience the story based on their level of insight. It’s hard to recapture that initial impression if you don’t make notes and think about the meaning during your first time through a script. But once you’ve done that, it’s a director’s job to help the rest of the team— that includes designers, actors and technical staff—to begin to construct a shared view of the world in that story.

Sometimes the created world of the plot is clearly obvious from the text. But many playwrights don’t have such specific information in their text about what the world should look like or how the viewers should perceive it. So, it’s important that you collaborate with other team members like designers to ensure that you work together to build this imaginary world you’re inviting the actors into as part of the process.

He says, “Another thing that directors don’t always think about is something that I’ll often refer to as ‘the machine of the play.'” He thinks that a really well-written play or well-written film script is like an incredibly intricate machine. All the pieces perform certain functions. They’re all meant to communicate particular ideas along the way. The lines are specific. They’re chosen to take the audience on the journey of this story. So, like any complicated machine, if one of the pieces is out of place, if it’s not doing its job quite right or if it doesn’t fit properly with the other elements, that’s something the audience will experience really quickly. An online performing arts education can help directors become familiar with this approach to reading a script before production begins.

While working on a play, it’s important that the director apply this constant process of zooming back out to see if the machine in its entirety is still working. Then, you will zoom back in to tinker with specific elements, whatever they are, that are not working correctly. Sometimes it’s about working with an actor or actors on a scene. Other times, it’s about rethinking something you thought was understood at the beginning but have grown to understand differently over the course of the process. Presenting a successful big picture on the stage or in film begins with the director’s minute examination of the script.