Philip

The part i disagree with is the “mechanics of it alone are iffy” section. Yes, the institutions don’t want actors who know business, and indeed can’t run well with artists running them. But that’s because the insitutions have grown too big and beaurocratic to be run by the artists, and this big beaurocratic growth is anti-art at its core.

Actors starting their own companies are failing in the business world because these big institutions are sucking up all the funds, press, and talent while producing less art than artist-run enterprises.

But the big institutions are in decline as well, because the wealthy donors who sustain those institutions are dying. These donors want the semblance and status of art rather than the messy art itself.

When more artists realize that allying with these institutions and serving these patrons is going to hurt them in the long run (because it’s hurting theatre) more of them will learn business, start their own companies, or work with artist run companies instead.

The balance will shift, the artistic energy will return to the medium, which will cause new audiences to perk up and new money to flow in. These kinds of changes can happen rapidly, with a few good catalysts. Every artist who shuns the easy money and fame from the big institutions is an enzyme for system wide change.

This is what artist in the music industry came to understand 10 years ago, and they’ve made serious progress on turning things around.

Actors in most degree programs are taught by academics, who themselves by-and-large have little or no actual experience as working performers.

They’re taught first and foremost that they’re ARTISTS, and that any other consideration, be it how to manage themselves as an independent business, how to actually network in their local performance community, even mundane things like what the latest standards are for headshots and resumes – are not only secondary to their artistic pursuits, but in some instances actually besmudge the “purity” of their art.

The professors themselves have no idea about the current state of the marketplace into which they’re pouring these presumably talented, but otherwise hapless actors like water from a ewer, and as a result, graduates exit major academic institutions literally by the thousands each year, with absolutely no survival skills, and no exposure to the business side of the industry.

Conservatories and PATP’s tend to do a better job in this regard, but even they for the most part treat performer-related business issues with less than the full attention they rightfully, and needfully, deserve.