Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Parabasis: Hard Times Two:

A theatre offering training to its local actor pool can be a good long-term strategy towards building a more robust stable of local talent to hire. But it has to come with actually hiring people as well or else you end up in the situation where people move away because they feel they have to go to New York (or Chicago or LA) to continue to grow as artists. Also, having seen theatre in Seattle and known a lot of theatre artists who either are or were from there, I too chafe at the idea that what Seattle's local artists need first and foremost is more training. There are other cities I've been to that don't have a lot of local talent, and there offering training programs makes a lot of sense... you're building the next generation of actors and also can provide teaching jobs that can help local artists make the rent. But that's not the situation in Seattle as far as I can tell. I doubt the reason Heidi Schreck moved to NY was so she could take more classes.