What Are Your Summer Plans?
Summer offers many performers a vast open space to fill. Intensive training programs, camps, internships, and special workshops provide a variety of opportunities to hone your skills as a performer, whereas survival jobs offer a chance to add to your dwindling bank account for the upcoming year. You can also tie up loose ends, such as dealing with a chronic injury, and include much-needed downtime. The challenge is to create a plan that suits your unique needs.
Intensive Training
You may have your heart set on attending a demanding 5-week-program associated with a specific school or company. These offer the benefits of forming alliances with influential teachers who may help you snag a future job while improving your technique. However, it isn’t necessary to start these programs before your teens, to take more than one program during the summer, or tax your body with multiple classes throughout the day (e.g., 70% of dance injuries occur after the 5th hour of work).
Arts Camps
Imagine spending 10 days to several weeks studying overseas. ArtsAbroad offers high school and university students high-quality programs in music, dance, art, design, photography, acting and theatre. The camps run the gamut from music, art, and Italian lessons in Florence, Italy to dancing in Cannes on the coastal French Riviera and acting/ musical theatre workshops in London, replete with backstage tours, attending the most popular plays and musicals, and engaging in a mock audition with a West End casting director.
Entrepreneur Boot Camp
While technique and artistry are the bedrock of your success in the entertainment industry (along with being in the right place at the right time), it is equally essential to know how to develop a business plan, finance, market, and manage your work. The New York Foundation for the Arts offers an intensive 5-session course for visual, performing and literary artists, as well as a book from prior boot camps (which can be purchased) that provides a template to develop as entrepreneurs. Additional services include affordable work space.
Other summer options may involve looking for higher-paying survival jobs that pay the bills and tap into different skills, such as being bilingual or knowing how to teach students math to prepare for their SATs. Check out the survival jobs on this website for more information.
Oh, and don’t forget that summer is also a time to have FUN!
