Actor training in anglophone countries: past, present and future, by Peter Zazzali

For many a reader of this journal, a weary sigh will accompany Peter Zazzali’s declaration early in his new book Actor Training in Anglophone Countries that ‘training in academe has become acommodified industry preparing students for THE commodified industry’(3). Even before the forced rationalisation of the ongoing Covid-crisis the book’s chapter would have made for bleak reading, documenting as it does the‘Darwinian plight’(24) faced by conservatoire schools whose funding and future can only be secured by entering into ever more Faustian pacts with accrediting universities.