In my experience what a lot of this "snobbery" comes down to is a generational circumstance with particular people. When I was an undergrad I went into college with the idea that I wanted to work in this industry. At the time I honestly didn't know what that really was yet but I knew it was where I wanted to be. As an undergrad I didn't experience the snobbery but did experience myself as an anomaly. My undergrad professors had not really experience a student who was going outside of the school and working for A/V companies, doing rock concert load ins and prepping shows in commercial shops. They came from a world where what you did was a
regional theatre style job. They didn't think less of me for it but did not really know what to do with me. So they guided me the best tat they could and I honestly figured a lot of it out on my own. I experience a very different environment in grad school amongst faculty. I went to grad school with the idea that I was not going into
regional theatre once I was done. I still believe that I was an anomaly because of that but my faculty in the TD program were supportive of it, even to the
point where they were willing to work with me when I picked up part time work with a production company half way through grad school. The TD faculty were drastically different in age but they had an understanding that not everyone one is them. The only odd thing I think they experienced with me was the notion that as a TD or technical manager I was able to oversee other parts of a production that were not just scenic based. As I have experienced in the corporate world a lot of the times as a technical manager you are overseeing scenery, rigging, lighting, video, and audio in conjunction with the heads of those departments.
Where I observed the snobbery was in grad school with my colleagues in the design disciplines. The funny thing was that the design faculty was of a wide
array of age groups as well. As a side note, I tend to think I planted the seeds of thought concerning non
regional theatre jobs in my fellow students heads in grad school. Most of them had no real knowledge that there was so much more they could do out in the world then just
theatre. I like to think that they are better off because of it. A bunch of them are now working in architecture, corporate, and themed entertainment. I had a colleague meet with their advisor about what they wanted to do when they were done with grads school and it did not go well. The student told their advisor that they wanted to go into scenic and production design for fashion shows, galas, retail installations, and product launches. The professor gave the student guff about their decision since the professor didn't understand why the student was getting an MFA in scenic design to do that. I had also observed similar situations when design faculty would metaphorically and sometimes literally put their noses up at the idea of doing work like this on front of students in their class.
So I think part of this is a generational things, there are some faculty who come from a time period where work like that didn't exist. It could be a resistance to change and there may be a fear that something they hold dear and invested their lives into is going away. At the same time in a post Regan, post 9/11, post W. Bush, and eventual post Trump world the landscape of our business has changed drastically compared to when the older faculty in this example were starting out. I think part of the solution is just time, as faculty retire we will have younger faculty come in who are a part of our modern industry which is including less and less
theatre. On top of that I think that there also needs to be a change of culture to help curve this problem. This can be as simple as changing the language from
theatre technology to entertainment technology. Community engagement outside of the academic department for the students to work on projects can be a successful avenue. This could include collaborating with a local theme
park, museum, or production company on a retail display for example. Even setting up formal fellowships with frims, conultants production companies, and the like. I think the try and help this issue internally is to develeope relationships with the art and engineering departments within the university, start cross pollinating. Is there any reason that an
introduction to theatrical design class should not include tha thetare, art and engineering students? This is all prime learning opportunities for all the disciplines to work together on. This will also hopefully break down the stigma across the board of you don't need to learn this or that, just what I do. I think for the survival of academic programs this needs to start happening. A lot of this was really good thoughts that came about from a really good session I went to at
USITT this year called " Is it time to panic!", it discussed the
current state, future and potential viability of academic
theatre departments. So, should we panic?I think we are just starting to get to the
point where the beginning of it may start to set in.