First Year Clichés

When students first begin a professional actors training there are some very typical questions, fears and realisations that they experience.

• Oh my god, I’m back in school again. I’m used to being my own boss.
• Why finally now, after all these years of trying? Did I at last do something right? And before, if I had been doing something wrong, what the hell was it?
• I struggled for this, and I thought once I got into the school, at last my life would be set, everyone could see who I really was, and all my problems would be solved. Instead there is a whole new set of problems I never could have imagined. And plenty of the old ones remain.
• It’s just like with my family: I didn’t choose these seven people to be in my life.
• The teachers are un-ravelling the art of the actor, pulling it apart, and presenting it to me so I can learn it piece by piece, one step at a time. But damn it, it feels like they are pulling me apart.
• I thought I knew the reason they took me in, what they could see in me, what I am good at. Now I realize that what I like about me is not the same as what they like about me.
• I spend so much time thinking about myself that I forget who I am.
• I used to be better at acting than everybody else around me. Now everybody is my equal. Or better…
• Shit. Somebody made a mistake. I got in by accident.