How would theatre makers like to be trained?

 Convener(s): Nick Wood

Participants: Jennifer, Ros, Michael, Alyn, Catherine, Jen, David, Denise

Please add your names

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

In discussion the following recommendations were made for theatre training:

• Environment in which possible to move at your own pace
• Be able to change direction when I wanted
• Be exposed to ideas
• Be exposed to other disciplines
• Learn to do it my way
• Feel I’ve made choices, have ownership over training choices
• Ability to be influenced by a large collective and work through ideas with other people
• Good one-to-one tutors advising you, drawing you out, not telling you what to do
• Meet people with life-time’s dedication – inspiring in their discipline
• Ability for teachers to learn from their students
• Learn to be pro-active, make a living
• Recognition that you’ll be going in to a business environment
• Learn that theatre can happen in more places than theatres
• Learn where you are going to take your skills
• A good course would create a lot of needs … leading to self-sufficiency
• Mix time in School with time in practice (EG one year training, then five years practice, then two years training)
• Learn that you never stop training
• Learn to be self-motivated
• Placements – do a walk on role as part of your training
• Be in front of an audience
• Be protected
• Learn to make transition from protected world to being vulnerable in front of a whole load of people
• Personal growth
• Business skills need to be taught
• Less of a culture that the business world is not for them
• Learn to take theatre in to the corporate world
• Learn to stop running away – build a symbiotic relationship with corporate world
• Learn to engage with corporate world
• Learn methods of evaluation from corporate       world
• Train for more than one thing
• Promote the right degree of expectation – not too high, not too low. It’s work, it’s straightforward
• Learning to be an artist rather than director, lighting designer etc.
• A course for theatre-makers (covering all disciplines)
• Training which doesn’t hamper you by defining what you do too tightly
• Training which prepares to go on training yourself
• Even more freedom, tutors saying they’re sharing their knowledge – not telling you what to do or how to do it
• It’s about being in an environment with a whole lot of people doing something every day for three years
• Leave with a peer group, not isolated
• Company that graduates can go straight in to
• Today feels like being at drama school again, feels safe like being at college again