Yes. Yes.
*
Disclaimer* Being now five years out of undergrad and in the real world, I'm very disillusioned with the university
system. I feel as if the
theatre that I was taught in classes, by faculty, that I paid to learn about, in very few ways resembles the
theatre that I am working today. In college, I can't tell you how a single one of the shows that I was in or worked on sold. Not a one. It didn't interest me at the time because in educational
theatre, audiences are taken for granted. There was a "If you produce it, they will come," sort of mentality. Now, in the real world, I can give you an audience count within 50 seats of probably the last 30 or so shows I've worked on, because in the real world THOSE THINGS MATTER. Just because you have a
vision to share, a message to
express, art to display, or a pirouette to execute flawlessly, it doesn't mean anyone in the community is going to give two sacks full of rat crap. And budgets? What's that? Sure, certain shows in college were given spending limits, but they were arbitrary, numbers given to us with no concept for where that money came from or how the amount was arrived upon. Now? Just yesterday I had a 45 minute discussion with the Artistic Director of the ballet company I'm working for over every single penny of the $2,500 show I'm working on is going to be spent, and you know what she told me as we wrapped up? She told me that she totally supports my ideas and thinks they're great, but if we're going to be spending more than usual I have to make big, bold, ridiculous choices so that they're obvious enough for the board members in the audience to see where their money went. These. Things. Matter. Except in college
theatre, where they were never discussed because they weren't important. We can talk about
theatre as an art form all day long, but whether we like it or not, the "biz" part of "show biz" stands for
business, and there's a huge reluctance to treat is as such. And when you're a starry-eyed graduate fresh out of college, that realization is a hard one.
And now, some thoughts and comments that I'm too lazy to string together into a nicely structured stream of thought, that may not make sense if you didn't read the article. So go read it. (It's good.)
*That "Use me, choose me" mentality is
exactly why I stopped dancing and acting. From about the time I was 14 until I left performance behind for good when I was 23, that's how I felt all. the. time. Desperate. It wasn't a good way to feel, especially during my impressionable teenage years. But the performance world breeds it in spays. Don't believe me? Watch Dance Moms for 15 minutes. It's easy to write that woman and the terrible head games that she plays with those little girls off as hyperbole, just more reality tv, but the truth is, the only difference between that woman and many of the studios, companies, and college faculty I studied and performed with is that she says everything out loud and uses easily followed charts. In the real world, all that still happens, just not out loud.
*The begging. Oh my god, the begging. Now that I'm five years out, there's been a rash over the last two years of former classmates starting their own dance companies/
theatre troupes/improv group/
etc. I guess that's how long it takes for performers to become sick of begging for work and decide that they want to be the ones making people beg. Problem is that all that really happens is they're still begging, only now it's for money.
Weekly I have to turn down Facebook invites for "events" that are really just a former classmate (who never really talked to me while we were in college and I haven't spoken to once since graduating) begging for money. "Just
five dollars," they say, "Just
ten dollars," "Just
twenty-five dollars," will apparently make all the difference between their little company failing and becoming the next Alvin Ailey or Second City. It's getting to the
point where I'm not excited about the art their creating or the message that they're sharing, I'm resentful as hell and secretly hope that their little company fails so they can go back to their job as a waitress and shut the hell up.
*I want to say for the record that I did actually learn a lot about production from my college, but not a lick of it came from the classroom. Everything that I learned that I still use today, every experience that I had that helped move me towards the job I have now, came from working in Pipe Dreams Studio
Theatre on student productions. It was a tiny black box shaped like a wonky triangle with no square corners, a touring
dimmer rack, a handful of fixtures, a CD player, and a couple of ladders. And little to no faculty involvement. Were our shows elaborate, or even pretty? Hell no. Were they safe? Mostly. But without the facilities and equipment of the big
theatre on campus and the ready-made solutions of the faculty, the shows, the problems they produced, and the solutions we came up with were entirely ours. And that taught me more than any class did.
[/diatribe]