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on 2007/5/10 5:17:45
There are schools and more schools coming up all over, all of them schools to prepare students to take up a career in acting. There is absolutely no guarantee that these schools will really help the growing number of students find a career but the fact is that every school is full, full of students who are full of hope and dreams that a course completed in one of these schools will help them and lead them to find their final goals, to make it as actors and actresses in the future.
In the Sixties the Govt. of India founded its own school, the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. It was a big success. It sent out some of the best actors and actresses, directors and technicians who came to Bombay, joined the film industry and made it big. Then like all other Government bodies and Institutes, the FTII too got caught up in all kinds of wrangles. There was disappointment and disillusionment amongst the students. There were differences of opinion between the administrators, the teachers and the students. Internal politics and favouritism became a way of life. Strikes, dharnas and fasts were regular features. And one day the Government just shutdown the acting course at the Institute. It took it twenty-eight years to realize its folly and finally found the reason to start the acting course with a new set of rules and directives, with a new director and a new batch of teachers but the new change has not shown signs of progress. The acting course has started again and the first batch is just out. But while the acting course was inactive a whole lot of private acting schools came up almost in every corner of the suburbs in Mumbai. They promised the students the sky and there were number of students who were willing to fall for their promises.
The first man to start this brave new effort was the man who first initiated the acting course at the FTII, Professor Roshan Taneja. He quit the FTII and shifted to Mumbai where some of the students trained by him were accepted by the industry and some of them like Jaya Bhaduri, Danny Denzongpa, Anil Dhawan, Vijay Arora, Rehana Sultan, Asrani, Paintal, Rameshwari, Ranjeeta, Zarina Wahab and Shatrughan Sinha among others had made a name for themselves. The professor took advantage of their names and used them to publicise his own acting school, the Roshan Taneja Academy. It was a full house (his apartment in Juhu was his academy). There were a number of aspiring artists who joined his one-year acting course. He then started three-months 'Crash Course' for all the star sons and daughters who wanted to follow in their famous parent's footsteps. The only students from his academy who made it were the star siblings who were launched by their own parents. Hundreds of other students just spent their time and their parent's hard-earned money, reached nowhere and were left heart-broken and in despair.
Professor Taneja's own student, Asha Chandra, a failed actress started her own school. She claimed to have better facilities then her Sir's academy and boys and girls fell for her school but unfortunately she could not bring any of them to reach a stage where they or their parents could be satisfied. It was a school which promised hope but gave very little hope to the young and the hopeful.
At around the same time, another student from the FTII, Kishore Namit Kapoor who failed to make it as an actor of any class started his own Kishore Namit Kapoor School of Acting in the midst of a densely populated lower income group housing colony. He too had students coming to him by the dozens but the only ones who made it from the school where boys like Hrithik Roshan, Bobby Deol and Fardeen Khan who had their careers already planned out for them by their fathers. Kapoor has written his own book on the theory of acting to compete with the likes of Stanislavski. He has also introduced what he calls the state-of-the-art technology to train students in acting! He is a good teacher. He has some good teachers on his staff. He has all the good intentions but the results are not as encouraging as they should be.
And now there seems to be the first ever battle royal for supremacy between two big schools started by two big names. Anupam Kher who was a student of acting at the National School of Drama where he later taught acting and finally became its chairman, has started his own school for acting, “Anupam Kher's Actor Prepares”. His name has attracted a number of students. His first batch of trained actors is out and admissions for the next batch have already begun. He has major plans to expand his school and also start a school which will function like a Gurukul of the good old days. His school is known as a prestigious school, equipped with all the facilities required to train the actors but the real test lies in the results. The future of his school will depend on how the future of the actor trained by his school takes shape in the face of the grim competition among actors.
And now Anupam's School has very tough competition from Subhash Ghai's Whistling Woods International. A school which is like a dream home for the to-be-actors. The sprawling edifice, the huge halls, rooms, theatres, sets and a world class library and some of the best minds heading all the faculties are things to be seen to be believed. The fees are exorbitant but there is an over whelming demand for admission to the Woods. Some leading names from the industry itself are sending their children to his school which speaks volumes for the class of his school and the reputation it has created for itself in such a short time. There are students coming from different parts of the world who are spreading the good word about the school. Ghai has also guaranteed at least one break to every student who walks out of the Woods. The latest to join in this strange and even scary competition among schools is the new school started by Barry John, the acting guru from New Delhi who has the distinction of training the Badshah of acting today, Shah Rukh Khan, Manoj Bajpai and even Anupam Kher among many others which will naturally attract many other young men and women wanting to be other actors like the Khan who is the ultimate epitome of success, a story of a young man being trained by a master in a school of acting and making it very big.
These are just some of the major acting schools. There are a number of them flourishing in the most distant suburbs. And there are jobless actors running acting classes in their own homes. And every school has no lack of students but what about the future of these students in a world where hundreds of young actors are already groping in the dark to find their future.
And besides these acting schools, there are a number of dancing schools, schools for training in action, school for training in singing, gyms, spas and other institutes which promise to train young aspirants in the latest in martial arts. To think of it, at the moment the scene looks scary. The number of schools keep on mushrooming and the demand for actors from these schools keeps on dwindling. The future of these schools seems to be very bright but who is worried about the future of the anxious students who join these institutes with all the hope to make it as stars and great actor one day?
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