Fame is the Spur

Fame

Birmingham Hippodrome, 1996

Alan Parker’s 1980 movie Fame, which led to a hugely popular TV series in the eighties, was in essence a collection of loosely linked stories about a group of young hopefuls at the New York High School for the Performing Arts, whose energy and enthusiasm formed the basis of a breathtaking series of high-octane dance routines. Maybe because Parker was more interested in the spectacle than the reality, the High School refused him permission to film inside their doors. But the energy and ambitions it tapped into obviously struck a chord: the film won Oscars from Best Score and Best Song, and fired the hopes and dreams of a whole new generation of would-be stars.

“Fame costs…”

The original Fame School is now the Fiorello H LaGuardia School of Music and the Arts, having merged with the more academically-minded New York High School of Music and Art. The new establishment is housed in a purpose-built ten-storey building next to the Lincoln Center in New York, that complex of high-art, high-tech structures that also comprises the Metropolitan Opera House, the American Ballet Theater, the New York City Ballet and Opera and the Vivian Beaumont Theater, to name but a few. The equally famous Juilliard School is also there, but whereas it is an independent institution offering training in music, dance and drama, the LaGuardia is completely state-funded, showing just how seriously the Americans take their entertainment.

For a start the building cost $50 million to put up, and many more millions to fit out. And it is fabulously well-equipped. Apart from the practice rooms for dance and drama, there is a piano lab with twenty-four keyboards complete with headsets, so students can practise in acoustic privacy. There is a repair shop for instruments, lecture rooms and a recording studio. There is also a 1200-seat concert hall whose highly sophisticated electronics the students are encouraged to operate and maintain as part of their practical hands-on experience. The thinking goes that you can only put it right if you knew how it went wrong in the first place.

But fame itself is not what the School is about. According to Jerome Escow, former principal of the LaGuardia, it is merely “the price you pay for success”. And, he adds, it is “a shallow goal, an unworthy goal”. “We want you to be good before you’re famous,” they tell the students of the original ‘Fame School’, and those who aren’t prepared to put in the hours, won’t reap any of the potential rewards.

“…and right here’s where you start paying.”

So how do you get in there? The School receives around 3,000 applications a year from all New York’s five boroughs. The only thing the aspiring students have in common is their talent and their desire to develop it under the guiding hand of practising professionals. The School caters for all branches of the entertainment industry: dancers, actors, singers, musicians and writers. Quality is the aim, fame is only a by-product, and these who merely want stardom could probably find it more easily and for a lot less effort in another line of business.

Auditions are conducted by senior students, not teachers, and for the aspiring 13–14-year-olds the trauma of the entrance exams are only the start. First they undergo a gruelling interview to see whether they have the right stuff. Dancers and actors are also required to submit to a videotaped audition. All musicians and singers are required to be keyboard-literate, even if that isn’t their primary interest, mainly on the same principle that Latin was once a requirement for university entrance over here: it is proof of commitment and academic ability as much as anything else.

Then, as their numbers are whittled down, the survivors are put through a strenuous routine of theatre games and improvisation sessions. The final selection is made on how well the remaining few come across on tape. All in all it is a vigorous work-out for mind and body, mentally and physically taxing, wherein all the aspiring hopefuls have to fall back on are their own resources, talent, energy and nerve. Only eighty new entrants make it through the doors every year.

But performance training is only part of the story. Academic standards are kept deliberately high, not only to encourage vital mental rigour and the habit of concentration, but also to provide a back-up should the initial dream of stardom fail to materialise. Nobody wants the students putting all their eggs in one basket when a single fall might smash all in an instant.

And it obviously works as most students go on to full-time education in colleges or universities, which may be surprising considering the emphasis there is on preparing them for their chosen field of endeavour, ie, hopefully in the spotlight. The drop-out rate is tiny, and 99% of all LaGuardia students graduate. This is a staggering statistic compared to most other New York schools, but the reasons are obvious. Strict discipline is maintained and there is a distinct lack of disruptive elements because all the kids are there for the same reason. And although the students by the nature of their calling may be more volatile and outgoing than most, all find their abundant energies are firmly focused on subjects they love and want to excel at. Life for them is full, there is always lots to do, and no time left over for mucking about, much less getting bored or into trouble.

Teachers are close to their pupils; they each take on responsibility for a handful and follow their careers through the School and frequently beyond. Many are seasoned professionals themselves whose insights come from the sharp end of the business – invaluable to help keep students’ feet on the ground.

Thou shalt not perform in term time

For all the practical training the students receive, actual performance is forbidden during term time, and discouraged at others. Any student lucky enough to be offered a TV or even a movie role while he’s at the School has to leave in order to take it up, unless the filming can be done during the vacation. The senior students themselves are only allowed to perform in their final year in special showcase productions which are eagerly attended by agents, producers and directors keen to spot the next Liza Minnelli, Al Pacino, Erica Jong or Pinchas Zukerman, all of whom went through the LaGuardia experience. With so much careful preparation to benefit from, students who don’t walk straight into either a job in the business or, failing that, a top drama or dance college are the rare exceptions.

Valuable Lessons

But even for those who never quite make it to the top, their four years at the School will have taught them valuable lessons they may not have discovered in any other establishment. They will have learned above all that life is a matter of co-operation and that the world doesn’t revolve around them; they will have learnt respect for other people’s abilities; that talent is nothing without hard work, discipline and maybe a little bit of luck; and they will have the satisfaction of knowing that all they achieve is through their own best efforts and initiative. Fit, focused and fulfilled, they will leave the School with a thick edge over their less fortunate colleagues in the rat race – full of self-confidence, grit, determination and the will to succeed.

It is part of the American Dream to offer its citizens the opportunity to go as far and as fast as their talents can carry them. But as to whether every graduate of LaGuardia will find fame, that’s another question. “Fame comes only when deserved,” the poet Longfellow wrote, “and then it is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.” Still, if the students of LaGuardia – past, present and future – don’t find it, then it won’t be for want of trying.

PS

For all my love of theatre, I’ve only ever had the benefit of a single evening’s formal training, when an eminent tutor from the world-renowned Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol came to give a talk to our little band of amateurs one evening in the 1980s. He was a charming old gent with a twinkle of stardust on his shoulders sprinkled there from the likes of Peter O’Toole and Dorothy Tutin and Jeremy Irons and Miranda Richardson and Pete Postlethwaite and Olivia Colman and any number of the umpteen other eminent thesps who had passed through his hands under the auspices of that august establishment.

Of all the glistening pearls he dropped at our unworthy trotters that night I remember two in particular: the first was that you had to act in such a way that a blind person, a deaf person and a foreign person who couldn’t understand a word of English sitting in the back row would each be able to understand everything you said and did on stage.

The other was to remember to put the meaning into your consonants and the emotion into your vowels.

Now this struck me as such a simple and profound summing up of the entire art that when he asked us if that made sense, I was so captivated that I sang out, on a rising note, “Yeeesss,” and he thought I was taking the piss. So much for a theatre professional’s ability to recognise genuine rapture when they see it…