I’m lying on the floor trying hard not to look foolish as a woman’s voice calls out. "Okay I want you to pretend you’re all fish and the pond you’re in is emptying... feel the life leaving your body." I screw up my face in concentration as from outside the door I hear the sounds of the local swimming club going through their routines. I’m up on the second floor of the Box Hill Aquatic Centre, surely if I was a fish out of water I could just throw myself into the pool?

Michele continues to talk us through the last dying motions of a fish as I roll my head to stare at the young woman beside me. She is gulping for breath, her body quivers and twitches and her arms flail helplessly. I manage a grimace, feel the muscles in my body tense, and then I relax as I take my last breath.

Such was my introduction to drama school.

I had contacted ‘Drama with a Difference,’ midway through ’96. I had grown tired of my job as a cleaner, put my budding career as a writer on hold, and enrolled in acting classes. Having memorised my acceptance speech for my Oscar Award, I set off for the bright lights of showbiz.

What I found however when I stepped into the rented studio, was not a chain smoking, hyperactive director or instructor, but a young woman in her early thirties who welcomed me with a smile and a handshake. Michele Williams, a graduate of NCSA, (a leading US drama school) has been running her school for over five years and in that time has seen numerous students go through her classes. Over a six-month period, she guided the half dozen students, (myself included) from a rented studio, to the ‘bright lights’ of the Polyglot theatre in Prahran.

The thought of performing in front of a live audience terrified all of us, but Michele was quick to reassure us that, "performing in front of a live audience is the closest you will come to a near death experience."

With that ‘comforting’ thought in mind, we set of for Broadway, ‘Prahran’ style. The stage was pitch black and the audience barely visible. We sat on steps next to a side door; I smoked three cigarettes in fifteen minutes before my act, waiting calmly with sweating palms for my big debut.

The big moment came in went in what seemed like the blink of an eye; the gun by the way refused to go off, in spite of extensive trials before the show. I guess cap guns aren’t what they were in my day. By the time I stepped onto the stage for my second act a half-hour later, I was a veteran of the stage, a virtuoso of stage and screen, no matter that I fluffed my lines.

The elation we felt at surviving our ordeal can only be likened to the emotions experienced by the survivors of a shipwreck, sheer ecstasy. I hadn’t won an Oscar or a Logie, but I had managed to give a performance in front of total strangers. We were not professional actors; we were ordinary people doing ordinary jobs who had just performed extraordinary feats.

Acting classes may seem beyond the reach of most people but according to David Armstrong of the ‘Academy of Television,’ who hosts ‘Armstrong Live’ on Optus, "the range of students is as diverse as the rest of the world." In the classes run by both ‘Drama with a Difference,’ and the ‘Academy of Television,’ I found people from all walks of life, homemakers, laborers, students and a Police Instructor. The classes run by the Academy have well known personalities such as Ken James, John Woods, Alan Fletcher, and Jan Russ, (casting director from Neighbours) as lecturers; Lisa McCune has also taken classes there.

However, before you book a class at one of the many drama schools in Melbourne, take a few words of advice from an ‘old hand’ at the game.

1. Don’t expect that an Oscar or a gold Logie awaits you at the completion of your course. These kinds of awards come once in a lifetime to a handful of performers, one probably has more chance of being struck by lightning.
2. Be relaxed, you’ll perform some outrageously silly stunts and feel like a fish out of water, but everyone else in the room is feeling just as embarrassed as you are. The mere act of bursting into song when prompted by a teacher takes away the self-consciousness many of us feel.
3. Enjoy yourself, you’re there not just to learn, but to meet other people with similar goals and ambitions. Acting classes provide a satisfying and healthy social outlet, without the hangovers suffered after a night at a club.
4. Take only yourself to the class, not some personality you’ve invented to impress your tutors. Nobody is going to laugh if you stammer your way through your lines or worse still, forget your lines. Your tutors are trained actors who know only too well the trauma one goes through before a performance.

Written by Alastair Rosie © 13/04/98
 
 

NB: Drama with a Difference can be contacted on (03) 9894 3830.

The Academy of Television can be contacted on (03) 9532 8006.
 

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