American Musical and Dramatic Academy – How to Get The Most From Studying at a School For Performing Arts
Last year I graduated a long and most amazing 3-year course at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, this was an experience which I’ll never forget and easily was the toughest challenge of my entire life. If you are looking at going to study in a performing arts college when I first wanted to offer you some advice on how you can make the most out of it. I loved my time at AMDA, the campus life was great and I have made some amazing friends, the teachers there were outstanding professionals and whilst the course took everything out of me, I wouldn’t change it for the world. To do this you need to be at your best and here is how to get the maximum from this experience.
Thicken Your Skin
This is a world which is highly competitive, so many people trying to be the best, vying for a single role and also vying for the adulation of everyone. As you can expect things can sometimes get nasty, people can be cruel and you may not always win, and that is absolutely fine. The key for you will be to have a thick enough skin to be able to look at these situations and brush them off, getting back on track again the next day. I saw many sensitive people come to the college who simply couldn’t hack it.
Hard Work
If you want to get the most out of this experience then you need to put your blood sweat and tears into it, that is the only way that you will succeed. There are so many classes, so many events, so many practice sessions and rehearsals that you will be left broken at the end of each week, ready to go again on Monday. If you are not prepared to work hard then this is not the course for you.
Drinking up Knowledge
A can only speak for AMDA but I am sure that every other performing arts college has the same high quality of teachers who work and have worked to a very high level in the performing arts. We had teachers who were in Broadway productions and had been part of some of the biggest stage shows that the world has ever seen. To get the most out of your experience then you need to drink up all of the knowledge that they are giving you. Unlike other subjects which can be learned from a book, performing arts is all about feeling and action, this is why the teachers are so vital and so qualified, and you must take every bit of information which you can from them in order to get the most out of this course.
And so these are my 3 tips to getting the most out of a course studying the performing arts, good luck, you’ll be brilliant!
