Quick, hopefully easy, question: How important is having an MFA in acting?
Great question. And here’s the quick, but complicated, answer: An MFA in acting is important to the people to whom it’s important.
Here’s what I mean by that. Some people will really value seeing the letters “MFA” on your resumé. Others won’t even notice them. Nope. Not even if you graduated at the top of your class at one of the most prestigious programs on the planet. It’s just one of those things that matters to some folks and doesn’t register a blip on the radar for others.
As a “grad school gal” myself, I have to say that I can’t even imagine my life without having earned a Master’s Degree. I only pursued acting for a few years after graduation, but that was enough time for me to see the true value in having an advanced degree. And it has nothing to do with acting. It was all about the quality of survival jobs I could get, while pursuing my acting career. Okay, but let’s get back to the real question (which isn’t about survival jobs, because you’re actually wondering if your MFA is going to help you land acting gigs. I know).
Basically, your MFA is what you make of it. If you took advantage of the wonderful opportunity to stretch yourself as a performer in ways you probably will never get the chance to do (outside of acting class) once you’re in Hollywood, you’re going to be approaching your craft with a fantastic foundation. When it’s all about type and look and hype, you’ll have an edge because you’ll also have outstanding craft upon which to draw. The negative side of an MFA that I most frequently hear about is along the lines of this: You spent a couple of years in a bubble doing things that have absolutely no relevance to the way you have to hustle in order to pursue an acting career in the real world.
But the same could be said for any degree, really. Academia vs. The Real World is a long-standing sparring topic between academics and non-academics in every discipline.
Where your time in school can really pay off, once you’re pursuing acting in a major market, is in the networking realm. This is where you can get an edge just because you happen to be in front of an agent, casting director, or filmmaker who also called your campus home, long ago. It’s not just the school, though! I joke about the Atlanta Posse that’s out here, but it’s not a joke. We all love to make a very large, very scary world feel smaller and one of the best ways to do that is to find something we have in common with others. Heck, just this past weekend, I brought an agent friend to a wrap party for a film I’d cast. Turns out the director and the agent went to the same college. They’re now officially BFF! There’s something to be said for being true to your school.
Okay, so now my quick answer is getting way long. Bear with me. While the league schools will bring the graduating class to LA each spring for the showcase season, the smart actors in the bunch will continue to network with fellow alumni. For example, each year I participate in a panel discussion with other industry types for the Harvard and UCI MFAs, who do a showcase together both in LA and New York. I got the hookup for this through a dear friend of mine who was a showcasing MFAer a few years back. The cool thing is watching how many graduates of both programs come back year after year for these discussions and networking opportunities. That’s smart! Your time with your school doesn’t have to expire just because your student ID is no longer valid!
In fact, just last month I attended a wonderful showcase put on by the LA-based graduates of NYU. This wasn’t a, “We’re brand new to town! Get to know us,” showcase. This was a group of actors (some of whom you’d stop on the street for an autograph, or at least you’d do a double take and say, “Oh! It’s that guy“) that wanted to work together again, bring some new material out to the industry, and continue to network with fellow graduates. I think it’s brilliant! AND you don’t have to have some fancy degree from one of the top theatre schools in the country in order to do this sort of thing.
Remember that great group of actors you worked with on that improv show five years ago? Get the gang back together and see what you can put up now! Even if you don’t have the means to mount a show together, you can still network with one another, share contacts, help each other with audition sides or choosing headshots, or just have a group to connect with on a regular basis. There’s something really powerful about that sort of thing. And the thing you have in common can be anything from a hometown to a previous project to, yes, grad school.
How’s that for about a dozen answers to questions you didn’t ask? I hope I’m leaving you with at least the understanding that your choice to get an advanced degree is what you make of it, in this town. There’s no one who is going to call you up and cast you outright, just because you have an MFA. It’s all about the common threads you weave with others, here.
Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!
Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000473.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.