SouthFlorida.com | City Link Magazine

Patrice Bailey, dean of theater at the New World School of the Arts in Miami, looks proudly at a bulletin board filled with newspaper and magazine clippings announcing recent accomplishments of her students and alumni. Here's one about Charlie Sutton in the cast of Broadway's Wicked. Here's another on Tarell McCraney's being nominated for a Chicago theater award for a performance with the Northlight Theatre. And here's something on Kate Finneran, who has a role in the animated movie Chicken Little and appeared on the Fox TV series Wonderfalls.

Whether they are affected by seeing their peers flood movies and TV shows or simply love to be the center of attention, greater numbers of students are seeking out acting as a viable career. Bailey confirms that New World, which is affiliated with Miami Dade College and the University of Florida, has seen an increase in the number of hopeful students. "We're getting tons of applications this year," she says.

Unfortunately, the exclusive conservatory has only 35 spaces in its freshman class this year. It also has a high-school division, affiliated with Miami-Dade Public Schools, that receives about 300 applications a year. "We get students from all over the world, yet there are students in Miami-Dade County who don't even know we have a college program here," the dean says.

Three New World students -- Dusty St. Amand, Nicole Pettus and Chris Perez -- recently sat with City Link to talk about how they found their way to the school. "It started with a love for performance," St. Amand says. "It started with that initial excitement that comes from being onstage."

But this 19-year-old also sees the process as a life lesson. "After a while, you start to figure out the intellectual side of it: To further understand humanity, you have to learn how to portray it," he explains. "It's sort of a psychological journey with yourself."

Pettus sang in choir as a child, then jumped into musical theater in high school. She discovered a love of acting in college. "Being able to play different characters is really exciting," the 20-year-old says.

A 27-year-old former flight attendant, Perez was drawn to acting as early as kindergarten. "When the bullies would come, if I pretended to be the teacher, for example, they wouldn't beat me up," he explains. "They would just stand there watching me and laughing and then leave me alone. That was my original seed for having a love for performing and entertaining."

Perez, who also does improv and standup comedy, says he used to be very shy, a trait he overcame whenever he was onstage. "I could do things I would never dare do in my real life," he recalls. "It helped me break out of my shell big-time."

All three students say live theater is their first love, though they wouldn't turn down an opportunity to perform on TV or film. But they know that having theatrical training is superior to just having a pretty face and hoping to capitalize on that in film.

"Having done some short films here and there, I know that someone who comes from theater training understands 'it' -- whatever 'it' might be -- a lot quicker than someone who just has a pretty face," Perez says. "The goal is to be a working actor."

The students, who perform in about four to six plays a year and even write and direct their own one-person shows, admit that watching so many young actors on TV and in films does affect them. "It makes me think, 'Man, why am I not on there?' " St. Amand says.

"I feel like it's a countdown," Pettus adds.

"It's hard to get over the competition, though," St. Amand continues. "If I turn on the Disney Channel and see That's So Raven, I'm like, 'She's on there, and it's all because she told jokes when she was 3 and people thought she was cute.' "

Bailey is bullish on the future of theater in South Florida, particularly in Miami, with a new performing arts center scheduled to open next year. "In the state of Florida, we have the largest thespian society in the country," she says, adding that a high-school-level spring meeting in Tampa attracted 6,000 students interested in writing, acting, directing and costuming.

"That's the future there," she explains. "These are kids who are really passionate about theater. They are young artists. And look at all the magnet schools in Florida [for the performing arts]. The state of Florida is very committed to young artists."

Mariah Johnson, an assistant professor at Broward Community College's Central Campus in Davie, acknowledges that many of her students are influenced by the actors they see on TV and in movies. "I have a lot of people who come into my Acting I class who feel very confident that they can be the next Tom Cruise," she says. Nevertheless, their studies in Johnson's voice and dialect classes are extensive and well-rounded. They don't just learn to reproduce an effective Irish brogue but also do reports on Ireland.

Her students say they sometimes get negative reactions when they tell people they are theater students. They are frequently told to get fallback careers and are sometimes not taken seriously. "Last semester, I got straight A's, which [had never before] happened, and I was very excited," one student recalls. "And I was telling my best friend, and she said, 'But you're a theater major.' "

"There's always this impression that what we do is just fun," Johnson confirms, saying outsiders often don't understand the amount of research, memorization, rehearsal and analysis that's an actor must do. "There's this perception that it's really easy. It's extremely time-consuming, mentally challenging and it's hard work, so when people are dismissive, it's hard to take sometimes."

Because of the rapidly increasing opportunities elsewhere for young faces, acting students often leave South Florida. "We've been encouraging students to stay in Miami and get their feet wet," Bailey says. "Just in the last two years, we've had students going to Chicago to work in theater. The new trend, though, has been to go to Los Angeles.

"I get phone calls every other day from somebody looking for kids to be in something," she continues. "I got a phone call the other day from some guy looking for 'a Kelly Clarkson.' And I was like, 'I don't know who the heck you are, you could be a murderer for all I know, and I don't think I'm sending some student over for an audition.' I'm very protective of the students here. Everybody wants a piece of them, and it takes their focus off their schoolwork. It depends who the directors are and what the opportunity is."

Bailey says she worries about students who go to Hollywood, then get chewed up and spit out without having much training and without a support system. She relates a story that visiting actor Austin Pendleton once told her students.

"The Incas every year would celebrate the most beautiful boy or most beautiful girl in their village," Bailey recalls. "And they would host them for one year. They would have extravagant dinners for them, etc. Then, at the end of the year, they would throw them in the volcano. And [Pendleton] said, 'That's what Hollywood is like.' "