New Mentorship Program
WITH WORKSHOPS, PANELS, MENTORSHIP, AND COMMUNITY
Mentorship changes lives. Help us to connect passion with purpose and support the next generation of artists.
The Actors Center—a national leader in advancing the artistic development for actors—is thrilled to announce the launch of a new Mentorship Program for emerging artists, scheduled to begin in October 2024.
This new 8-month initiative builds upon the diverse, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary dynamic of our existing Resident Company. It takes what we do exceptionally well and offers it to a new demographic for the first time, empowering emerging artists to forge careers that are not only successful, but sustainable and deeply fulfilling.
Navigating the early stages of an acting career can be daunting, with challenges often exacerbated by significant disparities in economic privilege, issues of student debt, and historical barriers to access and inclusion in the industry. The program offers support to 12-16 artists in the early stages of their acting careers, helping to bridge the crucial gap between their training and the industry by providing mentorship from an unparalleled network of seasoned professionals.
The program includes:
- Weekly Programming on Monday Afternoons
- One-on-One Mentorship from our Resident Company
- Invitations to Events, Artist Talks, and Workshops
- Community & Collaboration Opportunities
Participants in the program will be paired with mentors from our esteemed Resident Company, providing individualized guidance that aligns with their artistic goals and personal interests. Participants will also benefit from a robust structure of weekly workshops, group meetings, and panel discussions designed to explore a variety of artistic disciplines and perspectives on topics crucial to the life of an actor, ranging from creative and career advice to self-care and the dynamics of the industry.
Over the course of the program, participants will be invited to events, artist talks, film screenings, and to observe our Resident Company collaborate with guest artists. The cohort will also serve as an artistic community to collaborate with and develop alongside.
The program is an exciting opportunity for actors to deepen their understanding of themselves and their artistic point of view, ensuring that they emerge not only as skilled performers, but as thoughtful individuals, generous collaborators, and visionary creatives, primed to shape the future of the arts.
From Peter Jay Fernandez
Peter Jay Fernandez
Resident Company Member and Co-Head of Acting at Columbia University
I’ve had a very long and satisfying career in an industry that’s very challenging, very precarious, very unpredictable, and very unfair. But more importantly, I feel like I’ve had a healthy career. And when I say healthy, I mean mentally—even spiritually, emotionally—not just physically.
I believe that can be attributed to some of the early teachers I had and a number of the teachers I’ve had along the way. But more importantly, the other artists who came alongside at some point in my life, put a hand on my shoulder and said “Hey, keep doing that. Watch out for this. You’ll trip if you go over there. Stay in it. You can do this. Who are you? You are enough.”
These individuals allowed me to discover who I am, what my values are, what’s important to me, what my individual truth is, and how that comes alongside and interfaces with the other truths of other artists in a healthy way.
I find if we’re not happy—if there isn’t a certain amount of joy in our work—then the work gets dry. It gets flat. It doesn’t resonate. Your truth begins to fritter away. I feel like I’ve been able to maintain so much of my joy—the joy I had as a young actor—because of these individuals who came beside me.
Today, I work in higher education. I’ve been acting for 49 years. I’ve been teaching for close to 20. There’s something about this generation that is very tender. It’s tricky to engender rigor with them. They want to be seen, which makes sense. They want to be identified, they want to be embraced, all of which is true, but we all know that without rigor, without a tough skin and a soft heart, you’re gonna have a hard time out here. Cultivating that these days is very, very difficult.
They’re also going into an industry that has shifted tremendously. It’s shifting in this moment. A lot of them may be technically skilled, but they still don’t know who they are. And if you don’t know who you are in this industry, the industry will quickly tell you who they want you to be today. And tomorrow they won’t know you.
I find that while we do our best to prepare them for the professional world, there’s something about—maybe it’s my age—where they will listen to my experience and they’ll say, “oh, that’s great,” but I know there’s a disconnect. There’s a distance, even when they graduate. There’s a distance between their world—the fantasy world, the personal world of the educational institution—and the real world of the business.
I find the only way to fill that gap in a healthy way is for healthy professionals to be around them that they can listen to. And sometimes that professional is not much more than two or three years older than them. Sometimes it’s 40 or 50 years older than them. I had Morgan Freeman, I had Frankie Faison, I had Mary Alice, Miriam Colon, George Wolfe, Dan Sullivan, Earle Hyman, who came around me.
There’s a gap that we can fill for these young people. Some of them are coming out of undergraduate programs and can’t afford to go to graduate school. Some of them have gone to the wrong graduate program or to the wrong school. They have talent and it may be somewhat disciplined, but the human element is not there. That mentorship is not there. We can fill a gap that is getting larger and larger just by spending time sharing our experience and listening.
This world is so rapidly paced right now. They don’t have time to breathe, and to breathe around other individuals who can bring the right kind of focus for them, the right kind of perspective. I think we can give them that. We can be that blanket that we all need sometimes. We have all of the tools, the heart, the humanity and the artistry right now to help the next generation move forward in a healthy way— a fully lived and dynamic way that will impact others.