I have been very lucky with the opportunities that I have had in my life. I studied Philosophy at University, which was very much what I wanted to do, I moved to Prague in 1990, and started teaching English and acting in local amateur theatre projects. Then the film industry exploded in Prague. In the 1990s big-budget productions were filmed here and some of them had small speaking roles for local English-speaking actors like myself. So I became, almost by accident, a professional film actor as well as a teacher. Also by accident, as I have had no formal training, I happen to be a very good actor and was eventually invited to take part in professional theatre productions. However, I never stopped running The Bear Educational Theatre and things eventually came to a point where I had to make a choice. Should I stay focused on teaching and educational theatre or should I focus on developing a career as a professional actor? This article describes the reasoning behind the choice I made. It is in five sections …
- What it is like being a professional actor.
- Similarities between teaching and acting.
- Differences between teaching and acting.
- An easy decision to make.
- Final word.
What it is Like Being a Professional Actor.
The first thing to talk about is the acting. When I was still an amateur actor I asked friends who were professional theatre actors – How do you do it? Their answers were generally not very helpful, something like – I don’t know, you just do it. Now that I am a professional actor myself, I do not have much better advice to give. It is a lot about experience, feeling comfortable on the stage, trusting that it is going to work, feeling that you belong there. In that regard it is much like teaching, you become comfortable with the work through experience. Some actors have a technique and put their performance together bit by bit, but others just do it. I belong to the second camp. I enjoy looking at a script and then imagining the personal energy of the characters, why are they saying these things, are they bold, nervous etc. I usually come to a conclusion about a character fairly quickly and, to the best of my ability, just do it.
I enjoy acting in the sense that I enjoy the moments on stage when I am playing the characters, I enjoy the moment in a film when the director says ‘action’ and I have to perform right there and then. I find it relatively easy to distance myself from the distractions of the lights and the audience or the film crew and focus on being the character and the story.
I am not so keen however on the lifestyle of a professional actor, because I like acting and in reality a professional actor does very little acting. They spend most of their time promoting themselves, looking for casting opportunities, working out in the gym, and doing various other things things that I do not enjoy so much.
Similarities Between Teaching and Acting.
There are many similarities, indeed so many that I personally consider teaching and acting to be different branches of the same thing. The title of my book Teaching Is Entertaining reflects this. The feeling I have when I walk on a stage to start a show is practically the same as the feeling I have when I walk out to start a lesson or to give a presentation at a conference. In each case there is me in front of a group of people and I am in a state of gentle anticipation as I prepare to deliver the performance that is expected of me.
I firmly believe that teachers have one foot in the entertainment industry, they just don’t realize it. They have an audience (class) and expectations that they have to meet. They are also ultimately responsible for the atmosphere in the class just as the actor is responsible for the atmosphere in the theatre. If an audience is bored and not engaged, the only one who can do anything about it in that moment is the person on stage. If a class is disengaged and not responding (and probably not learning) then it is up to the teacher in the room to do something about it.
This feeling of agency is quite powerful. I remember complaining once to an friend that actors do not get to make important decisions about the shows they are in, that these decisions are in the hands of the director and the producer and the actor has to do as they are told, even if the decisions are ridiculous. My friend answered that he still prefers being an actor simply because he gets to be the one who has agency at the moment when it matters, when the show is on and the live audience are there watching. I think teachers experience this feeling too, the satisfaction of being the ones in the arena, the ones making it happen in real time.
Differences Between Teaching and Acting.
One difference in the lifestyle is that teachers are always busy preparing lessons, teaching, marking homework, and doing other administrative tasks, while actors spend a lot of their time waiting and sitting around. This happens during rehearsal but also during shows, especially if the actor is playing a smaller role. It happens on film sets and it happens when the actor is between jobs. This is another difference, job security. A teacher generally has a job for a long period of time, actors are typically moving from one short-term job to another (they hope).
The most significant difference is what each profession is trying to achieve. An actor is part of a larger project that is trying to entertain an audience, probably by telling a story. A teacher is engaged in a different and more complex job of helping people to learn. They may entertain a bit, but entertainment is not the end goal, education is and in my experience, making education happen is a difficult long-term project that requires a wider range of skills than just acting or directing a film or theatre show.
Then add in the fact that while an actor in a professional production gets a lot of support from a director, a script-writer, a props manager, a make-up artist, a costume designer and many others, a teacher has to manage everything on their own, preparation and performance. This being the case you would expect that teachers would have a lot more respect and social status than people in the performing arts, but even that is not true. Most people in wider society respect a professional actor more than they do a professional teacher.
An Easy Decision to Make.
So, on the one hand you have a profession with a reasonable amount of social status and a lot of sitting around, on the other a profession that offers constant work and not necessarily a lot of respect or social recognition. Students and even parents can be short of appreciation of the work that teachers do. Notwithstanding that the choice for me is clear and it is teaching every time.
The main reason is the purpose, I find educating people to be ultimately more worthwhile and satisfying than entertaining them. I enjoy acting, but I find the lifestyle of a professional actor to be deeply unsatisfying, not least because most of what you end up doing is self-focused rather than other-focused.
As an actor I would have to spend much of my time selling myself, telling people how good I am, training to make myself better and somehow special. Then when you have a job you usually do not even get to see the people that you are playing for, you are on stage up above the audience with lights in your eyes or even worse in a film, where the audience are not there at all. As an actor I have little relationship with the people I am playing for, I do not see them and can only imagine what effect if any I have had on their lives.
As a teacher I am standing right next to the people I am working for, I know that what I am doing makes a difference to them in terms of raising the quality of their life in a tangible way and in the case of younger students, I even represent a part of their childhood. I find this significant and meaningful.
Final Word
There is something special about acting and it is not coincidental that actors play a special role in society and sometimes become national figures in a way that teachers rarely do. I enjoy acting very much and am very grateful for the opportunities I have had. But, at the end of the day I think of myself as a teacher rather than an actor and am proud to identify myself that way.
Of course I found a perfect compromise in educational theatre, using theatre and drama techniques to support education. But, I do this as a teacher first. My theatre is one where the education always comes before the theatre.
