The formation of roleplay acting as a profession
Roleplay acting as a profession developed at the end of the 1970s in the Netherlands. Several police academy courses decided to experiment with the use of external actors to allow police officers to practice with real-life scenarios. This was a success and soon the use of actors in training and workshops expanded to other occupational sectors, such as healthcare.
Roleplay acting courses
Roleplay actors used to learn their skills on the job. Actors accompanied and observed their colleagues or were onboarded by acting agencies. The drama teacher course was seen as the best possible educational background for this profession, since that course focuses not only on acting techniques but also on teaching methods and the use of drama for learning.
This changed at the end of the 1990s. The increasing number of actors that deliberately chose to pursue roleplay acting led to a demand for job-specific courses. In 1998, Miranda Dros from Dubbel E Acteerservice started the first official professional roleplay acting course. Around the same time, Froukje van Houten from the Hogeschool van Leeuwarden started with classes in ‘acting in training’. In the years that followed, a broad spectrum of various commercial and non-profit courses for roleplay acting came into existence.
Acting agencies, trade association and the Dutch Association for Roleplay Actors
In 1980 the first Dutch acting agency was founded: Buro Wittenburg. Other agencies, such as Bureau Veermans, Replay, Dubbel EE and others followed. The 1990s saw a development of increasingly closer cooperation between the acting agencies in order to provide services to large clients (such as the national police and the Ministry of Defense). BOACT, the trade association for acting agencies, was founded in 1999.
On the 10th of September 2001, Mathijs Kompier and Jaap Postma founded the Nederlandse Vereniging van Trainingsacteurs (NVvT, Dutch Association for Roleplay Actors), with the aim of promoting the material and immaterial interests of actors, in particular of roleplay actors and of actors that also work as trainers.
In 2012, the charter of the NVvT was modified: “The NVvT has as its goal the promotion of the material and immaterial interests of roleplay actors; the provision of a platform to its members to increase and enrich their knowledge, expertise and experience; and making the labor market aware of the roleplay acting profession.” The NVvT has developed from an interest group to a trade organization for roleplay actors.
Core goals of the association
Around 2020 there was a growing need for a modern rebranding of the association. Extensive discussions led to the revised formulation of the mission and vision statement of the NVvT.
The association focused on the following four goals: