Professional Development for Talent

If you're looking for career development and ways to increase your employability, I remind you of the old joke about the musician who arrives in New York City and asks a lady on the street how to get to Carnegie Hall. "Practice, practice, practice," she said.

The web has many places that offer to help you get acting work -- for a price. But this page avoids such things. Instead, what follows are websites that, in some way, might help you become a better actor, narrator, or whatever. The list is selective, and there is a point to that: the real answer to making it as professional talent is not on any computer. It's out there in front of an audience (or a movie camera, or microphone, as the case may be). So check out the following links -- but then focus on one thing, like the lady said: Practice!

• Ken McCoy's Brief Guide to Internet Resources in Theatre and Performance Studies at Stetson U. is not really brief, but it is selective, well-chosen and extremely useful.
• Performing Arts Sites is a great resource, part of a large and growing public service site provided by Carnegie Mellon University.
• Actors, Directors, and Producers is an excerpt from "The Occupational Outlook Handbook" from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These guys know exactly how hard it is to get work in show business.
• A Digital Bibliography is Franklin J. Hildy's online addendum to Brockett's History of the Theatre, by Oscar G. Brockett (Allyn & Bacon, 1999). This fine resource is divided by both geography and time period.
• TheatrGROUP in St. Louis offers useful advice related to "The Method," as well as a page explaining how to Get Started as an Actor.
• Acting Workship Online provides several exercises and articles for beginning actors, and a large collection of useful acting-related links.
• The Improv Page Excellent site for improvisational performance training.
• The Academy of Theatrical Combat teaches you how to fight on stage without hurting people.
• STUNTnet presents many resources for professional stunt talent, all in one place.
• On-Broadway is "dedicated to the shows, musicals, and history of the Great White Way." Despite its name, it also provides information about Off-Broadway shows and much more.
• The American Theater Wing now presents a snazzy-looking official guide to the Tony Awards, including a searchable database of past winners.
• Some folks talk so well, they win prizes doing it. The University Interscholastic League offers lots of information about competitive speech and debate. Northwestern University's Douglass Project also has a good collection of resources on public speaking and related topics.
• Shakespeare The complete works, marked up, digitized... what would the bard have thought?
• It's Hard to Say Jump to the Voice-over Performance section for this attack on verbalistic unintelligibility.