1) you need to familiarise yourself with the industry as much as you can, read and learn everything there is to know as this will give you an upper hand when trying to get into acting. 
 
 Reading all about the different practitioners is essential as they all have their own ways of doing thing when it comes to acting, reading about different acting techniques will tie in with this and form a better understanding on the industry.
 
 It would also be wise to read as many plays as you can, familiarise yourself with classing plays.
 
 2) Acting classes/drama groups are essential. You cannot become an actor without having any experience what so ever, having been to acting classes or received some sort of qualification will make you more employable as an actor as director will take you more seriously if you have this on your CV. The best way of getting a good qualification as an actor is to go to a dram school, there are many to choose from all of which specialise in specific areas of the performing arts so finding the right one for is crucial, if a drama school isn't something that you think you would like to do you could go to a university and gain a degree from there.
 
 3) You location will have a huge impact of the kind of jobs that you will be going for and that you will book as an actor, if you live in a large city such as London then there are plenty more opportunities and jobs available for you, that doesn't mean you decide you want to be an actor so you must move to London. But you should look for as many jobs that are available near you, in-paid jobs such as student films are excellent ways to get experience.
 
 4) Having special skills on your CV will make any director more interested in you, being able to act, of course is extremely important however your special skills are almost just as important. Some of these skills could be singing, dancing, accents, and languages. Even things such as horse riding, juggling, martial arts. Some productions will need actors that have specific skills to the production that they are working on so if you can offer these skills it will make you much more employable.
 
 5) Possibly the most important thing for an actor is to be able to take rejection, unless you are extremely lucky then it’s not likely that you will book the first job that you audition for so getting used to rejection and not letting it stop you is important. If you really want to become an actor then you should never let rejection put you off and carry on auditioning and improving your skills.

6) Getting an agent is important for an actor, someone that is actively and solely looking for the best opportunities for you is helpful. Agents aren't necessary, you can become an actor without one but they make the process of becoming an actor much easier.

I read another article on The Telegraph website which is talking about theatre audiences declining by 9 percent overall. The article talks about London being the most popular place in the UK for theatre shows and they have the most theatre goers than other parts of the country where the number of audience members have declined by 13 percent, whereas the number of audience members for London theatre shows has only declined by less than 4 percent.

It speaks about what performances have the most increase in the number of audience members, “Visual arts, combined arts, dance and music performances have also seen higher viewing figures.” (The Telegraph, 2018) 

So overall it looks as though location has a big part to do with the kind of audience that a show will receive, London is the most popular as  that is what it is known for and people will travel to London to see a good show for many reasons, the show may only be performed there or perhaps a celebrity that people like are performing in a specific show that is in London.

Another job within the performing arts that would be right for me would be teaching, specifically musical theatre to children, I have always wanted to teach children and with my knowledge primarily being within musical theatre I believe that this is something that I would be good teaching.

For both of these would need qualifications, this mainly applies to becoming a teacher as you’ll definitely need qualifications to do this, whereas to become a musical theatre performer it would b much easier to get into the business if you have studied and you have qualifications in this but it isn’t necessarily essential to have them to become a performer, you can audition for jobs that get your out there and you can find agencies that will help you find the jobs.

Having an actor’s CV is very important when you’re trying to become a professional actor, this can be the first thing that a potential casting director will see about you, having as much experience written on it will be the better for you as this will show the casting director that you have been in other things and are serious about becoming an actor, even if these are very small action jobs, the more that is written on there the better. Your training should also be written on your CV as this tells them that you have studied the industry and you know about how things work.

Having experience as an actor is always better and people will be much interested in you if you have done previous work, likewise having the right training will give you an advantage in getting into the industry so going to a well known university or drama school would be the best place to get your acting training. Drama schools often put you in connection with some sort of agent, or would have some sort of agency attached to their school that will actively look for jobs for you as an actor and look for the right jobs for you.

Leading on from this an agent or agency is almost necessary when it come to making it in the industry, this is someone that will have plenty of contacts will be looking for jobs that are right for you, they will secure you an audition, if required, for the job that they’re trying to get for you.

However these aren’t the only ways that you can get a job as an actor, sometimes you can attend an open audition  for a role, usually they are open to anyone, regardless their experience and training these can be for a variety of things, from small acting jobs to big ones this can b a great way to get into the industry an you will find it easier to get other professional jobs once you’ve had one professional job.

Equity supports a performer in so many ways and can give you vital support that you won’t receive from anywhere else s joining equity I so important for a serious performer, so if you’re training, auditioning or working within the industry then you should join a union.

Equity, will support you as an actor in all aspects of the industry. They can support you with things such as pay, pension, equal treatment and much more. 

Your agent/agency will offer you support as an actor they will be more focused on the jobs that you get or audition for so they will always be there to offer you support.

Workshop leaders are there to support actors, they provide actors with workshops for a range of styles from classical to contemporary, there are also workshops for things such as physical theatre, actors could also take dancing and singing workshops to widen their skills and abilities making them more employable.

Other actors would also be there to offer you support, they can offer support in may ways, experienced actors in the industry will have plenty of knowledge from their own experience so they would be able to offer you support.

On the arts council England website you can apply directly to see if you are eligible to receive a grant for your project .To get work funded you can apply to the arts council England for a grant, on their website you can access a funding finder page that will guide you to the right funder for you project. “Grants for the arts was our open access funding programme for individuals, art organisations and other people who use the arts in their work. It offered awards from £1,000 to £100,000 to support a wide variety of arts-related activities, from dance to visual arts, literature to theatre, music to combined arts.” (Arts council England, 2018)

Arts Council England invest money from the government and the national lottery to support the arts in many ways, here are some of the upcoming ways that the money will be used. “For the next four years until 2022 we’ll invest across three key funding streams:

Another way that you could get funding for your project is to set up a page on just giving to see if people would be willing to support your project by funding it. These pages can be set up for many different things and anyone can contribute to peoples fund raising so this can be another way of getting your projects funded. 

Over the past year my performance skills have improved significantly. I have taken part in multiple workshops and performances which have contributed to my development of my performing skills.

For the past year I have been part of a musical theatre company which has been the main contributor to my performing skills improving. I have, since becoming part of the company, learnt to read sheet music and improved my singing voice, improved my dancing skills in a variety of genres from musical theatre, to tap and my acting skills have grown from playing a variety of roles within the shows that I have taken part in. My confidence on stage has grown immensely throughout all areas of performing, singing, dancing and acting as well as learning to pick thing up at a quick pace, we don’t have long to put on a whole show so the rehearsal time that we have isn’t very long at all so we have to adjust to picking up choreography, music notes and our lines very quickly. Each of the shows that I have done as part of the company have help me in different ways, I started with the concert which was completely music based, this was the main contributor to my singing and music skills improving as I learnt to read sheet music within the rehearsals for this show. The next show helped with more so with my acting skills, Whistle down the wind required a lot of emotion to be shown through my characters facial expressions and body language. This show was also very challenging vocally which was continuing to improve my singing skills. For sister act there was a lot of choreography to memorise is such a short space of time, this helped me improve my dancing skills as well as picking up on choreography quickly. Whilst we were dancing we were also singing, for some of the sings this was very difficult to do so think was challenging me to improve my skills on sing and dancing at the same time.

As well as being part of the musical theatre company I am also part of a drama group that put on 5 plays a year, the skills that I have gained from this group differ significantly to the skills that I have gained from the musical theatre group. The skills I have gained from this group focus more on acting than anything else; we take part in a variety of workshops that help us to pick up on the characteristics and the personalities of our characters, so I have learnt to look more in-depth at a script to find out thing about my character that perhaps you wouldn’t notice from the first look. Some of the workshops that we have done have been on Shakespeare, we have looked at a range of monologues written by Shakespeare that suit us, we have then looked into the meaning behind the monologue so we take some time to really think about what Shakespeare was trying to get across in his plays and apply that to our performances. We have done many improvisation workshops which have been full of a variety of improvisation techniques and activities which have all helped me to improve my skills within improvisation. 

There have been a few workshops that I have done as part of the college, we did two at the TV workshop in Nottingham, these were improvisation based workshops, I enjoyed the first one that we did as it was new and the activities were interesting. One of the activities that we did was someone in the room was tapped and had to lie and say they wasn’t, we all then had to guess who was tapped and who we thought was lying, there were a couple of bother activities similar to this one. I didn’t enjoy the second workshop because this was very similar to the first one and I didn’t feel like I was doing anything different and new and it felt very repetitive, I didn’t take much away from these workshops as I had done the activities before in previous workshops that I had been to. Another workshop that we had was one focused on the elements; I didn’t enjoy this workshop as I didn’t feel it helped me with performing in any way. We were given the take of taking an element, earth, fire, water and air and showing that through our body movements, we rotated between the elements so that we did them all, we then used the elements and gave them personalities, we had to become a character and include the element within their personality. I didn’t take anything helpful from this workshop as I didn’t see a way in which I could use this for the characters that i would be playing in the future.

Another show that I watched was The importance of being Ernest, this show is a play and was set in the Edwardian times, this show made me realise that it is important to think about the time in which the play is set in as the characters will be acting completely different compared to characters in shows that are set nowadays. So this is something that I will be thinking about when it comes to performing in shows that are set in a time different to now and think about the way that my character would be interacting with others, how they would be holding themselves and how they would speak.