Coaches, Schools and Workshops, All in One Place
Training now has its own page type with its own structure: institution or coach, what you studied, where, and when. It replaces the free text block most actors were using and it produces something far more readable.
Who actually reads a training page
Not casting, most of the time. They read the reel and the credits. Training is read by three other groups, and each of them matters:
- Agents considering representation. Training tells them whether you have a technique to draw on when a job gets difficult, which is a different question from whether you were good in your reel.
- Directors deciding between two similar actors. Shared vocabulary is a real factor.
- Other actors deciding whether to take the class you took. This is a bigger source of traffic than people expect.
Structure that works
Group by type: degree programs and conservatories first, then ongoing coaching, then workshops and intensives. Within each, most recent first.
Include the teacher's name, not just the institution. "Meisner technique, two years, with [teacher]" tells a reader far more than the name of a school they may not know. In a lot of markets the teacher is the recognizable name and the school is not.
Ongoing study is the point
A training section listing a drama degree from 2014 and nothing since reads as a person who stopped. One that lists a degree plus a current weekly class reads as a working practice. The second is more attractive to everybody reading, and it is also just true of most actors who keep working.
List the class you are in now, even if it is the same class you were in last year. Our older piece on ongoing actor training makes the fuller argument.
What not to include
A one-day seminar from eleven years ago. A masterclass you attended as an audience member. Anything where "studied with" is doing heavy lifting it cannot support. Padding a training list is the easiest thing on a website to see through, and the reader who spots it discounts everything else on the page.
Related
Training pairs with skills and proficiency levels, which is where accents, dialects, combat and dance belong. If you teach as well as study, that is a custom page, and there is more in our guide to building a workshops and training page.
Create your free actor website and start with the class you are in right now.
