Staging an act

For Zhang Xueqi, 22, the stage is like a second home. She has been dancing since she was 3. However, this particular stage is new to her, as is the performance required. She is neither using her body to tell a story nor to enchant the audience with the steely delicacy of a lead dancer. Instead, she wears rustic clothes and recites passages of words.

Zhang is playing Chu Sifeng, the fourth daughter in the drama Nine Daughters in My Family. The work is the acting school graduation performance for her and 15 of her classmates to celebrate the conclusion of their three-month course in Beijing.

Zhang's parents and her younger sister are among the spectators. It's their first time watching her act instead of dancing, and they are surprised that she can portray a new character with such a commanding performance.

Zhang is a junior student at the Central Academy of Drama majoring in dance drama. She suffered a lumbar injury which forced her to stay away from dance for some time, so she decided to use her recovery time to learn acting in February.

"It's quite different to act onstage. When I dance, I always play a delicate woman, and I have no lines, but when I'm acting, I can be anyone," she says, adding that, in some way, acting can also be more creative.

Zhang says she still needs to learn to not always keep her bearing when acting, which is necessary in dancing.

"I'm also practicing how to let the audience feel 100 percent what I feel with my lines through my acting," she adds.

With many years of dancing experience, she was able to imagine the progression of her stage career, but now, she says, she wants to develop other onstage techniques.

Like Zhang, many young people are tapping their acting potential by taking part in such training programs. The acting training institutes, besides providing more practical teaching, are offering them more opportunities, such as introducing these "new actors" to films or TV series.

Another acting student from the training class is Tian Yue, who plays Chu Bafeng, the eighth daughter, in the drama.

She is a sophomore communication major student at Chapman University, in California. Last year, she came back to China to take a gap year after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, because she didn't want to take the lectures online.

Tian signed up to the acting course. "I had chosen a drama action course in college, but sadly it was taken online due to the pandemic," she says.

Tian underwent two rounds of training and, when the first round ended, she felt that her understanding of acting was just beginning and that there was so much more to learn.

She was determined to pursue an acting career after taking a course about the power of sensation.

"I rarely cry, and I didn't know if I would be able to cry on demand before I took the course," she recalls. "However, during the class, when I was asked to read a story and look ahead without thinking anything, with soft music in the background, I just burst into tears."

That moment, Tian says, she felt the magic and the power of acting. "I had no distracting thoughts then, and every word I said created an image in my head, which is simply magical," she explains.

In Tian's mind, learning to act is good for mental health. For those who usually hide or suppress their emotions, acting allows a release.

"I'm not naturally a hardworking student, but when learning to act, I've been so excited and happy, and even after class, I also voluntarily search for books about acting," she says.

Tian and Zhang rehearsed their drama for a month and took a four-day trip to shoot video clips for the performance.

It's the first time that Tian has acted in front of a camera. In one scene, she is being chased by two soldiers and stumbles and falls. It took Tian several attempts to get it right.

"Even though I got bruises on my knees, I accepted them as a kind of acting trophy," she says.

Tian continued to prepare for the drama until the night before the day of the performance－she spent the whole night discussing it with her partner. During the performance, she was so immersed in her acting that she had no time to pay attention to the reaction of the audience.

The project triggered Tian's interest in becoming an actor. As her gap year has not finished, she says she is still deciding whether to pursue her acting dream or to finish her college study first, but she is happy to have alternatives. "There are many possibilities in my life now," she says.

Career changing

Song Yuhe, 26, was a staff member at a bank in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in 2019. When he saw the recruitment information for the training course being held by actress Liu Tianchi, he thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for him to realize his dream. He quit his job and signed up right away.

He prepared so hard for the interview for Liu's class, he recalls, that one time he kept miming his words outside on the street by his apartment building, he was so immersed in the act that he simply didn't take any notice of the pedestrians around him. Song successfully obtained the offer to be enrolled in the class, so he moved to Beijing.

"The courses are practical for me, someone who had no previous acting experience," Song says. "The teachers taught us how to look better in front of camera and how to communicate with directors on set."

After graduation, Song got a small role in the TV series In Love With Your Dimples in 2020.

Luckier than Song, 28-year-old Yang Shize, who plays a major role in the same TV series, fell into the career due to a chance meeting and has since landed several acting roles.

With a bachelor's degree in landscape design, being an actor was not on Yang's radar until five years ago, when he met Li Mei, a teacher at TC Hug, the acting workshop founded by Liu, while on his way to visit his grandmother. He had been working as a salesperson for two years and was considering a new job in postproduction of films and TV shows.

His handsome looks impressed Li, so she invited him to take part in the acting class.

"I thought it would be fun to learn to act, because I had no experience in acting before. Everything they taught in class was fresh to me," Yang recalls.

He soon got his first role in a TV show, but, on set, he realized how different it could be between the classroom and an actual scene.

"When I first stood in front of the camera, I was so nervous－and everyone on set was waiting for me－that I broke down," Yang recalls.

Yang says he was once quite shy, but being an actor gradually enabled him to open up. As he continues to play different roles, Yang realizes that there is always more to learn.

"I've met actors who are good at dialogue, or who have strong sensibilities. The more I see the strengths in other actors, I realize that there is much that I need to improve," he says.

In Yang's eyes, for actors who graduate from professional academies, they have more control after four years' intensive study, so he needs to work harder to catch up.

On the other hand, his working experience has helped him to understand his characters better than the professional graduates, especially when he plays roles in workplace dramas.

Yang plans to take acting courses again whenever he has time. "It's like a haven for me. It's where my acting career started, and when I feel incapable, I can come back to recharge myself," he says.

Drama education

Liu founded her acting workshop TC Hug in 2017 when she thought she should do something to deal with the shortage of young actors in China.

"All the popular talent shows are looking for idols, not actors. I think acting is a career that needs comprehensive abilities, including performance and understanding, as well as appearance," she says.

Because of her professional training skills on the acting talent shows, many youngsters who want to be an actor beat a path to her door. Liu and her team have to select candidates carefully as there are fewer than 20 spots for each three-month training session.

Liu, who's also an acting lecturer at the Central Academy of Drama, says that professional colleges are looking for candidates who will be lead actors or actresses, and that is why their recruitment standards are so high.

"Who we are looking for are those students who might have a career as an actor in the future; they may not be the leading actors, but they could fill the supporting roles," she explains. "I also seek students who have the potential to be acting teachers."

The curriculum at Liu's workshop keeps being updated, as she thinks that the courses should always match market demand.

"For performing students at professional colleges, when they graduate after four years, they are still facing a gap between acting in class and in front of a camera," Liu says. "The crew always want the actors to be ready for filming on set, so we add rehearsals and actual on-set courses for our students."

When each training session ends, Liu says she'll tell all the students that "it's just a start for them; it doesn't mean they have finished all of the courses needed for acting. It's a continuous process.

"We are not training them to be stars but to be professional actors," Liu adds. "Acting is a career that can last a lifetime."

Liu also welcomes midcareer actors to come to her workshop, and she says she hopes that, in the future, she can provide courses for actors with different levels of experience.

As more acting training institutes are opening in China, another problem pops up, as Liu believes－the lack of excellent teachers. So, she also plans to train more acting coaches, too.

"Without enough high-quality teachers," she asks, "who is going to train the next generation of actors?"

She is still looking for proper ways to cultivate acting tutors, which may include both online and offline courses, she adds.

As well as for professional acting, she has also opened separate workshops for children and adults.

"I think drama is like a game for children," she says. "As it's a comprehensive art, when playing drama, the children may find their interest in a specific discipline, such as dancing, music or drawing."