My pilot survey was created using surveymonkey.com which was really convienent and easy touse.I found my results were highly informative and I was very pleased and surprised with the opinions I received. I was able to gain a large variety of perspectives from people right across the board from aspiring performers still in training to recent graduates, teachers and well established performers. All giving frank and open opinions on their perceptions of musical theatre and evaluating the effectiveness of their own training. Also looking at what training is available now showing how significant or not they felt these options were in order to maximise future career success/longevity within the arts in particular musical theatre.
The only downside with this pilot survey was the length of time it took for me to get these varying opinions. If I were to repeat this process as part of my real inquiry survey I would expand this survey beyond my SIG sooner and target a cross section of people within my professional networks from piers to teaching institutions via facebook and email.
I didn't feel a need to determine whether my responses were from male or female or identify them personally because I wanted people to feel free to be as open and honest without fear their opinions would be voiced publically or traced back to them. From my survey I gained the following information:
10% of participants were still in training
50% were professional performers
20% were educators/Teachers
20% felt they were between training and professional performer
90% were aged 22-28
10% were 21 and under
Having this age range I found it useful to use my literature reviews to gain more experienced practitioners opinions along side my survey results as I would have liked to have gained a wider age range and this is something that I would try to facilitate in my real inquiry survey. I would approach this again with the ethical view of keeping all identities and personal information confidential and just use their answers for mass analysis.
Also in my survey I found:
80% of people deemed musical theatre necessary for inclusion within mainstream education
20% seeing musical theatre as a very specific area of study and not one that should be included in everyday class room practice.
50% of people felt that there was no inclusion of musical theatre in mainstream education whatsoever.
30% felt there was less than five years
10% felt there 11-15 years
10% felt 16-20 years of
From this I concluded that most people were unsure of the actual amount of inclusion that goes on within in mainstream education and it’s not entirely clear how much inclusion there is with it being down to the individual schools to assess. I only hope that somewhere within the educational system some emphasis is put on the benefits that can be gained through this inclusion and therefore trying to establish greater respect for the industry as a whole.
Using a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest I found in my survey:
50% of people felt there was 5 or less chance of sustaining a career in musical theatre
50% of people were more optimistic and felt there was a 6 and above chance of sustaining a career in musical theatre.
Seeing these statistics made me realise that the harsh reality of the industry being tough to work within is shared by the participants of this survey with half choosing to be optimistic maybe speaking from personal or observational experience this offers hope that their is a chance but the other half seeing it somewhat challenging any maybe looking for others means to stay within a creative arts environment or perhaps moving on to connected areas of teaching.
40% of participants felt it was necessary to have four years or more professional training in order to prepare for a career in musical theatre.
30% feeling three years was sufficient
30% feeling two years was sufficient.
I can see by the variation of opinions my view of their not being a right or wrong answer per say to the necessary length of course needed just putting the decision down to the individual is somewhat shared. The one point that everyone did agree on was that there is definitely a need for professional training to establish oneself as a performer within the arts. I believe the more training that can be gained to more strength of experience you can pull from and utilise in professional practice. So siding with the 40% majority the longer the training gained the better the future career potential will become.
In my survey I listed six methods of training that could potentially add strength in aiding a professional career in musical theatre the following is the order of importance participants felt they held:
1st-National Diploma course
Joint 2nd-Degree / Btec
Joint 3rd-MA /Alevels&GCSE'S
Last- Aprentaship
I was surprised to see the variation of opinions but pleased to see the most popular choice of training was a vocational one which can only be attained at an accredited college. A view which is supported by an overwhelming majority only adding substance to its impact and reassuring my continued inquiry. I can see a correlation with the training methods and career success.
My next survey inquiry question was developed by predicting what I believed the answers of the previous question would be. Weighting the effectiveness of training on Diplomas and Degrees I compiled the following list of courses and sought to find out opinions of the most respected ones for progression into the musical theatre industry. Results from my survey showed the following in order of importance:
1st-Degree in Musical Theatre
2nd-National Diploma in Musical Theatre
3rd-Degree in Acting and Theatre Performance
4th-National Diploma in Acting
5th-National Diploma in Professional Dance
With this information in mind I believe my views of professional Vocational institutes being respected and an important part of musical theatre's ever increasing popularity my decision to include this as a key point in my inquiry and include in my award rationale are substantiated further.
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