<p>My D and I are reworking her acting resume and need to figure out how to most effectively communicate what she has done over the past few years.</p>
<p>Since the middle of 8th grade, she has performed in 9 plays and 5 musicals. She has worked tech on one high school show and been part of a volunteer stage crew helping the middle school with 8 of their productions. She also acted in two student films.</p>
<p>The past three summers, she has attended 4 university acting programs and 3 summer Shakespeare programs.</p>
<p>We need to focus all this on a one page resume to communicate that she would like to pursue an acting/performance degree.</p>
<p>I would love any guidance you could give us. I feel a bit lost at the moment.
Thanks!</p>
<p>I’m new to this so I can’t help. My daughter was premed until 1 year ago. Has done some drama, choir and 2 majors productions. She has great academics but no resume like your daughters. any idea if my daughter has a chance at NYU or Juilliard for drama?</p>
<p>alwaysinmycar, I would be glad to try to help, but I am not clear as to what you are asking. I would simply divide the resume into sections and put the plays and musicals under “theater;” the student films under “film,” and the tech experience under “technical experience.” Make a section at the bottom for training and put the university programs there. You should easily be able to fit this all onto an 8 x 10 resume. If you think it’s too much, get rid of the stuff she did in 8th grade or if those were larger roles, be more selective in what you include later.</p>
<p>My son is modelling his resume on the Tisch sample ones linked in the previous post. </p>
<p>So he is not putting dates for his performance roles, but only for his trainings. Is that standard for the industry ( I’m a finance type and we love dates on resumes!)?</p>
<p>Daughtersdream, thanks for your response. The way parents support each other on this forum is amazing.</p>
<p>This is a new process for me this year. My theaterical expertise is more along the lines of feeding the actors, finding unusual props/costumes/set materials and painting things black. </p>
<p>My thoughts are: from what I’ve read, your daughters strong grades could certainly be an asset and create opportunities for her in non-audition programs where admittance is academically based or for audition based programs where academics weigh heavily in the decision (or when admission to the university is required separately to be admitted into the program) I think Tisch probably falls into that category.</p>
<p>Other programs are going to have the actual audition be the determining factor for admittance. Certainly, experience and training will be tools to draw on when auditioning, but in the end it’s whatever happens in the audition and what the auditioners are looking for - that could be anyone’s guess. I would put Julliard in that category.</p>
<p>The archived threads are a great reference if you haven’t read them. The insights, encouragments and reality checks contained in them are so valuable. I for one am deeply grateful to those who posted on them.</p>
<p>NotMamaRose, thank you. What you described is basically the way we currently have her resume structured. I think I must have been overanalyzing the situation a bit. I was concerned that too many entries might be distracting and that having a lot of technical would make it look like she wasnt as serious about acting as other candidates. Reality is she loves acting, will do anything to help a show and would work 12 hours a day or more if given the opportunity.</p>
<p>Jbehlend, thanks for the resume format link. I will definitely check that out. Laurarudish, thanks for the info on dates. I wasn’t sure about that piece of it either.</p>
<p>When my son put together his resume for applications/auditions, he had way too many performances to put on one page and include his training. He decided to put the larger roles that he had and the roles/productions that meant the most to him–either because he learned a lot or had the most fun or showcased his talent the most. He also allotted space to his one directing credit (though he has applied to BFA acting programs) because the experience taught him a lot.</p>
<p>The resume is really to provide a starting basis for the interview. Those programs that don’t do interviews seem like its all on the audition and it doesn’t matter whether you have 5 or 15 roles under your belt.</p>
<p>daughtersdream–if her GPA and test scores are really high you should also look at Northwestern–it is nonaudition and the theater program tells you upfront that if you are smart enough to get in there, they can teach you to act. Of course, most of the people who go into the theater program have some experience.</p>
<p>When you get too many productions to fit on your resume, you need to begin leaving out the ones that you did as a student, first leave out the ones you did in high school, then leave out the ones you did in college.</p>
<p>And yes, if you are more interested in acting work then technical, you should start leaving out the technical jobs you have had.</p>
<p>But always remember that there is no single correct format for a resume, you should simply invent a format that works to organize the information that you want to put in the resume.</p>