What People Learn in Acting That They Will Never Learn in a Classroom

Every year, parents ask me some version of the same question about their kids. Adults thinking about joining a class ask me a version of it too.

'But what will they actually get out of acting?'

I love this question. The honest answer is that acting gives people something almost no other activity can.

Here's what I mean.

Real empathy, built through experience

You can read a book on swimming, and you can be taught on land about swimming, but you can't actually swim until you get in the water. Empathy is the same.

You can teach empathy as a concept. You can explain it, talk about it, put it on a poster.

Embodied experience teaches it far more deeply.

In acting, students are asked, regularly, to step into lives that are not their own. To imagine what it feels like to be someone else. To make that person real.

This rewires the brain.

People who do this consistently develop a quality of listening and relating that is genuinely rare. It shows up in their friendships, their family relationships, their workplaces, and eventually in how they lead.

The ability to fail in front of people

This one is underrated.

In most environments, failure is something to be hidden. Students are assessed on right answers, not brave attempts.

Acting class is the opposite.

In acting, you try something. It doesn't work. Everyone in the room can see that it didn't work. And then you try again.

Done well, this becomes one of the most important training grounds for life a person can have, at any age.

A good acting class has a fail safe built in to encourage risk taking. At the AAA we have the Safety Net Philosophy, along with the saying there is no real failure other than not trying. Once you try, you either succeed or you learn.

The world outside class does not reward people who are afraid to try. It rewards people who can handle falling short and keep going.

Collaboration built on trust

There is a difference between teamwork and collaboration.

Teamwork is dividing a task. Collaboration is creating something together that neither person could have created alone.

Acting demands real collaboration. You cannot devise a group piece solo. You cannot make an ensemble work by doing your own thing.

The improv standard of 'yes, and' is also present here, the ability to take someone's idea and add to it. In life you can't run on 'no, but' energy and still have a cohesive team.

Students learn to listen, to build on each other's ideas, to hold their own contribution lightly enough that the whole thing can become something better.

That skill is worth more in the modern workplace than almost anything on a resume.

Presence

This one is hardest to explain but people see it clearly once they have it.

A good acting class teaches you to own your space. Standing with feet hip width apart, to your full height, says to the world, 'I have a right to be here.' If you can't own your space without needing to take the power of others, it can look like you're saying to the world, 'I'm sorry I'm here.' We don't want that for anyone.

There is a quality that develops in students who have spent real time in acting: presence. The ability to be fully in the moment with another person.

Undistracted, unguarded, just there.

In a world of screens and divided attention, that is a genuinely rare and valuable thing to have, at any age.

In acting and in life

I've been saying this phrase for thirty years: in acting and in life.

Because everything that makes a great actor also makes a great human.

Courage. Listening. Vulnerability. Resilience. Curiosity.

That's what we're teaching, to people of every age. Being on stage or on set is just the classroom we use to get there.

Brendan Glanville is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Australian Acting Academy. For over 30 years he has helped more than 100,000 young people build confidence, courage and authentic connection through acting, storytelling and creative risk-taking. He writes about parenting, resilience, creativity and what it means to raise brave humans in a complicated world. Learn more at actingacademy.com.au.