From College Majors That Are Useless - Yahoo! Education :
Obviously, EVERY college theatre major is an actor.
Obviously, EVERY college theatre major is an actor.
Useless College Majors
- Thread starterderekleffew
- Start date
If there is one thing I've learned from both Glee and High School Musical, its that lighting rigs and audio reenforcement magically appear whenever someone starts singing.
From College Majors That Are Useless - Yahoo! Education :
Obviously, EVERY college theatre major is an actor.
I do so much acting around directors, producers and other designers I might as well be
Obviously, EVERY college theatre major is an actor.
I'm not in college, but I have to act all the time. Act like I like the show, act like I am awake, act like the show is even slightly better than mediocre, the list goes on and on. Fun fact, the dictionary for iOS actually has a mediocre actor as an example for using the word correctly. lets see how many people are going to go check now...
shiben
Well-Known Member
shiben
Well-Known Member
Another thing to note: The figures are all taken from 2008/2009, right when the recession was beginning. So how are the figures in any way relevant, especially when at least here we start to see growth in the industrial theater field, and the economy is slowly beginning to improve? Also, how did Horniculture come in at 5th when Theater came in at 3rd, with a 16% job growth prospect? I think the entire article is flawed, and totally ignores things like philosophy. Who hires philosophers? Oh wait, its viewing college as a trade school that takes 4 years to go to. But thats at best a flawed view of how college is supposed to work...
I think a larger amount of people major in theatre, attempt to become an actor and fail, than those who major in philosophy with the goal of being a philosopher. Conventional teachings are that theatre degrees do not lead to a job, whereas liberal arts degrees will. So people who want to major in theatre but don't really want to go into it are dissuaded from doing that, skewing the results.
That said, they're viewing college as a 4 year trade school. Also, from my understanding, a lot of places don't care what sort of degree you have so long as you have a degree. But I'm a high school student so I'm probably not the ideal source on that one.
The theatre world is a unique animal. While it's true that a degree is nowhere even close to a guarantee of success in this industry, not having a degree is not even close to a guarantee of failure. In the 22 years, so far, that I've been in this industry, I've seen very talented people with highly specialized degrees leave the industry because they couldn't earn a living. At the same time, I've seen high school dropouts with very successful, 30+ year careers doing theatre. As I have said many a time before, there is no one size fits all, single path to success in the entertainment industry. Everyone's path is unique.
shiben
Well-Known Member
I have always though, having been in Engineering and a huge number of Liberal Arts classes, that Theater really is one of the best Liberal Arts degrees you can get, in terms of learning a lot of things. You need to understand something about History, Language, Art, Philosophy, Psychology, Engineering, Science, and many other things. How is that not A a liberal arts degree and B incredibly useful for things other than theater? In design class you learn to research things in a deeper manner than read a bunch of books about it. You develop the skills to emotionally connect with material that you dont know that much about. You learn how to deal with stress and deadlines, all while working with big personalities (both sides of the lights). In acting you learn about how to carry yourself, how to communicate and how to speak in front of people. You also learn to take direction. In tech you learn to apply things you have learned to a real problem, as well as how to work with your hands. Stage management is a crash course on running projects, and managing teams. How is that a "useless" degree? Actually kind of rankles me the more I think about it...
porkchop
Well-Known Member
Good sir, I beg to differ. My employer only thinks that what happened.
I tend to believe it is magic. Because everybody wants it to happen like that and some how most of the time I get it done in time. I'll be fine making the magic happen even though nobody knows that we're here doing it as long as the check writers remember me.
shiben
Well-Known Member
Im just gonna say this: If you go and express your emotions on a stage with 200 PAR EAs and 2 dozen MLs, I will gladly help it. However, dont expect your 200 PAR EAs to be set up differently and with a full gel/focus swap and twice the movers and some cool staging effects three hours later when its time to do your after school activities. I mean, it can be done, but having a few dozen hands in is gonna be expensive...
shiben
Well-Known Member
Although it occurs to me, they have a pianist who just seems to hang around and do nothing but wait for expression of self via song to occur, and he seems to randomly have the music for that song, so either hes just psychic, or the school has a team of psychologists ready to predict teenager's emotions, and they could probably then afford to have a crew of 30 standing by at any time to quick change the LX plot...
Really though, teenagers have about 3 emotions.
You may want to see [thread]24325[/thread]
"I don't always feel other emotions, but when I do...I break into song with a multi million dollar tech crew behind me"
I think the show is silly and fluff( just like some musicals) I'll watch every once in awhile just to see of they do any decent covers, but that guy is my favorite. It's already kind of unreal because we all know they wouldn't have the cues and set up for a random breakout song, so playing it up by having him and the band there awaiting their every need makes me laugh.
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