ACTORS : DO YOU NEED TO GO TO DRAMA SCHOOL?

Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa 

I Introduction - The Question Beneath the Question 

I feel perpetually behind. 

Is a sentence I have both felt in my bones and heard echoed back to me by countless actor friends. The tug-of-war between tradition and non-convention is, I think, the greatest challenge early career actors face. And so I wonder: when we ask the notorious question, “Do I need to go to drama school?” Are we truly seeking knowledge? Or (and this is the more confronting truth for me) are we trying to make our small humiliations feel justified?

I think of the failed auditions, the short films where I appear only in the background for two shots, the awkward pauses when strangers learn I’m an actor and ask, “Have you been in anything I’d know?”  and I have nothing to offer. Sometimes I want to answer not with credits, but with a plea: I may not have the screen time, but talent lives here in this body. As if to say: I am not naive. I am not clinging to a childish fantasy. I am an adult, and adults are allowed to chase dreams too. Aren’t they?

Pursuing acting already means being seen in the eyes of the world, as behind in the “proper” timeline of a career. You spend more time not acting than acting. Your day job is often one that carries no prestige, that rarely requires you to wear a gilet. And within our own acting community, instead of dismantling the hierarchies that infantilise us, we often recreate them. Actors with expensive self-tape backdrops must be taking it more seriously. Actors who’ve worked in America are the ones going places. And perhaps most looming of all: only actors who go to drama school will get jobs.

When an aspiring actor asks, “Do I need to go to drama school?”, they are not asking about education in the abstract. They are asking whether the doors will still open without that key. They are asking if legitimacy is conferred by a building, a tuition bill, a certificate. Or if it can be self-forged in the fires of lived experience. The short answer is no, one does not need drama school in order to make it. The longer answer (the one that matters) is that the craft demands something deeper than institutional attendance. Drama school is a path. It is not the path. This is not to diminish the value of formal education but rather challenge the notion that artistry is inaccessible without it. 

II The Myth of the Gatekeeper 

For generations, the drama school has been framed as the gate through which serious actors must pass. The myth is seductive: get into drama school, endure its trials, emerge anointed. In this story, the drama school is both crucible and credential, the only legitimate launchpad to a professional career. But this is a myth built on institutional convenience, not artistic truth. Drama schools need to sustain the perception of indispensability. It justifies their cost, their exclusivity, their gatekeeping. The industry benefits from this too, as it creates a smaller, more manageable pool of candidates with shared vocabularies and references.

Yet history repeatedly undermines the myth. Many of the most arresting actors from Daniel Kaluuya to Joaquin Phoenix to Helen Mirren, either bypassed drama school entirely or diverged from its standard path. Their training was pieced together from community theatre, writing rooms, open mics, and relentless personal study. Their authority came from the work itself, not from institutional validation.

Get Out (2017)

III The Royal School of Self-Direction

To argue honestly, we must acknowledge the gifts of drama school. The most significant thing drama schools have to offer actors is the structured immersion. Hours each day dedicated to nothing but the craft. That consistent, focused time is the key to accelerating growth and deepening skill. Outside of my schooling years, I can’t recall ever dedicating eight hours a day, five days a week, to practicing anything. Discipline, for me, has always been a fleeting character— here one moment, gone the next. Yet, I believe that when someone truly loves something, they find a way to invest the time it demands. Actors who don’t attend drama school must become both the students and the deans of their own education. This is not a lesser route; it is a different lineage of training with its own rigour and its own unique rewards. This path demands more self-discipline and self-awareness than a traditional programme. But it produces artists who are resilient, adaptive, and less dependent on external permission to create.

IV The Economic of Necessity 

Drama school tuition is often financially prohibitive. For many, the question “Do I need to go?” is tangled with “Can I afford to go?” The belief that formal training is a prerequisite for legitimacy functions as a systemic filter, disproportionately excluding voices from working class, immigrant, and marginalised backgrounds. If we insist that drama school is necessary to “make it,” we are also saying that art belongs only to those who can afford its price tag. But theatre itself was born in marketplaces and public squares, not gated estates. Shakespeare wrote for groundlings who paid a penny to stand. The earliest actors were itinerant, uncredentialed, and often uninvited yet their work changed the shape of human storytelling.

The industry may care about credentials because they are shorthand; they imply a baseline of training and discipline. But artistry does not care about your résumé. A truthfully delivered moment, a character fully inhabited, a scene that cracks open the audience’s chest; these cannot be forged by certificates alone.The challenge for the self taught actor is visibility, not validity. Without a school showcase, you will need to create your own stages: produce your own work, submit to festivals, collaborate with emerging filmmakers, use digital platforms to showcase your range. The industry does not care how you arrive. It cares that, when the moment comes, you are undeniable

Conclusion - Permission is Fiction 

Drama school is not a bad choice. For some, it is the right choice. But it is not a necessary choice for everyone. Art does not live inside conservatory walls. It lives wherever a human body speaks and another human listens. The moment you stop waiting for permission, you have already stepped onto the stage. The moment you build your own rehearsal room, your own syllabus, your own ensemble, you have joined a lineage of artists who learned by doing, who made by making.

So, do you need to go to drama school to make it? No. You need to do the work. You need to keep showing up until your presence is impossible to ignore. And you need to remember that no institution, however revered, can grant you the thing you already possess;  the right to stand in the light, and be heard.

Join the group of actors who are taking a step closer to their dream – at AKTACLASS.