I am a senior in high school, I do technical work for the theatre program here, which is the best in our district, and I like to think, is quite professional. I enjoy what I do and I have a passion for it. I want to make it a career , but I don't quite know what "it" is. I technical direct nearly every production for the last 2 years. I am in charge of the sceneshop, I design the entire set using CAD, I rewired the entire PA system in the theatre, I do a lot of lighting things too. I always want to learn more, I'm always reading about the newest technology in the field. But I frankly don't know what to major in. I'm afraid that if I go the design and tech bfa, I'll end up not being able to get a theatre job making decent money and end up working for Disney or entertainment giant doing tech stuff. I live really close to Disney and I honestly wouldn't mind doing something like that. I love theatre, but I also want to make a good living. I also love management and administrative tasks like managing a team of people and working with a budget. I just really need some guidance in this area.
What should I pursue????
- Thread starterJadams639
- Start date
Do you have any interest in engineering?
First off did you read Recommendations about College Education? Our best article on the topic is called Getting a Job in the industry. Unfortunately it is in our Wiki and our Wiki is currently broken. I'll post it in this thread when I have a chance.
The short version of those posts: if there is ANYTHING else in life you want to do more than tech theater... go do that instead. Choose tech theater if it's the one thing you can't live your life without. You will never get rich, you may never have health insurance, vacation benefits, or a retirement fund. It can be hard to get work and you may spend a lot of your life living paycheck to paycheck on Top Ramen, hoping to pick up an extra gig here or there. It's difficult to have a normal family relationships because you'll be working mostly nights and weekends. Do not go heavily into debt to pay for your education because you can easily screw up your life for years to come. BUT, if you are willing to sacrifice all that it can be a LOT of fun
Once the wiki link is working for "getting a job in the industry", I'll post a new message here so check back.
The short version of those posts: if there is ANYTHING else in life you want to do more than tech theater... go do that instead. Choose tech theater if it's the one thing you can't live your life without. You will never get rich, you may never have health insurance, vacation benefits, or a retirement fund. It can be hard to get work and you may spend a lot of your life living paycheck to paycheck on Top Ramen, hoping to pick up an extra gig here or there. It's difficult to have a normal family relationships because you'll be working mostly nights and weekends. Do not go heavily into debt to pay for your education because you can easily screw up your life for years to come. BUT, if you are willing to sacrifice all that it can be a LOT of fun
Once the wiki link is working for "getting a job in the industry", I'll post a new message here so check back.
If I could go back in time, I would probably go towards electrical or mechanical engineering. These majors open up many doors, including many stage doors. That being said, I chose to go the theater education route and currently teach a tech theater class, manage the auditorium, and run the tech crews for the school. A part of me wishes that I would have pursued working with the pro's, but the rest of me loves the opportunities to teach and to help young people grow their appreciation for what goes on 'behind the scenes'.
My advice, read the article Gafftaper posted.
My advice, read the article Gafftaper posted.
Please take this in the context of trying to be constructive rather than critical, but what is your training in these areas? How did you learn to rewire the PA, run the Scene Shop, etc.? Who were your mentors? What resources did you use along the way?
You may have had excellent mentors, great training, well respected resources and so on. But I have unfortunately worked with some people where I would have rather had a neophyte with no experience than someone who thought they knew everything except that much of what they "knew" was actually misunderstandings and misconceptions.
I bring this up as the actual value of your experience may be in how much of it tranlates as a positive if you decide to pursue a directly related career path. Your first step on that path may be assessing the validity of your learning and experience. That may be taking a couple of related courses or finding respected related testing and training online. Via those you may verify that you have a great basis to move on in the field or find that you'd have to start over. And that would seem to possibly affect any decision on the career path you choose to folllow.
I get where your coming from, most of my knowledge is from me reading about things, and then applying them. I read books, study diagrams and drawings, or read online. I've had a lot of help from an engineer who works for disney, if I have any questions about electrical things, he is always a big help. I look up to him and would love to be in the position he is in, I just don't know how to get there and what path I must take. I've pretty much determined that I don't want to be struggling to pay my bills, working ridiculous hours, and living off of roman. I want to have a family life, financial security, and yet I don't want to hate what I do. Is there a way to get the best of both worlds? Great money and a fun/challenging job? Is engineering the way to go?
Engineering is a good way to be in theater and have a solid job. Of course remember you can ALWAYS get involved with community theater and have the joy of doing tech in your life as a hobby, while you pull down the big bucks doing something completely unrelated. Talk to your friend who works at Disney about the degree's his/her coworkers have. Already living in Orlando, that makes a lot of sense. I have a cousin who spent his entire career working for Seaworld doing lighting work. It can be a blast. I've also had the opportunity to talk with some Disney designers and they were really cool people doing cool jobs.
Last edited:
First question... do you like your math classes? Do you like your science classes?
If you have the drive you can make a good living in this career. But, it takes drive. On the flipside of that, to be an engineer who is employable you have to graduate with a pretty high GPA, get internships, get licensed, and work to get your job. That also takes drive. There are plenty of people with engineering degrees who are underemployed just like people with theater degrees. There are no free rides in life.
Big things are changing in the engineering world right now. Many companies are moving towards the "gig" economy where they employee people for a project and lay them off when the project is done. This bit my father-in-law pretty hard a few years ago. He is a EE who was in R&D. During the recession just about everyone dumped their R&D staff and focused on just getting stuff out the door. He bounced between multiple jobs over a few years until he found a stable one. No job is a guarentee. Odds are if you are destined to be top level engineer you could be a top level entertainment technician.
I love my math and science classes, I'm in trig and physics right now and I do very well. I just got 100% on a physics test that everyone else barley passed. I also understand that I'm going to have to work hard for everything to be the best and be successful. After a lot of consideration I've determined I most likely want to go into some kind of engineering degree. What should I go for? Electrical engineering? I've always been fascinated with electricity.
Electrical and Mechanical engineering are both solid choices. Electrical would lead to more work in designing things like lighting equipment where mechanical would lead to things like designing crazy devices to make things work in a vegas show. But a better question would be to research which is more useful in the general non-theater market in the future.
Thank you for your advise, I am leaning more towards electrical engineering. I'm going to do some more research on it, but I really think engineering is the way to go.
Really dig into what you like to do. I would also look at Marine engineering and Mining engineering, tons a movement in those fields recently. Also, consider that most EE programs work more in nano scale stuff such as integrated circuit designs and stuff like that. They do get into big power but most of the focus is on very small scale stuff.
One additional thing about engineering to remember... no program will prepare you for an actual job. It is understood that when you hire an engineer fresh out of school it will take 6 months to a year to train that person in the specific field they will be working in, hence the reason internships are so important in this field.
Good luck. Watch those student loans.
I didn't mention it earlier but my parents, did the Florida Pre-Paid college plan for me, so I have 60 credit hours (2 years) of any public university in FL paid for. By then I will be living on my own for some time and should qualify for some good grants from the government.
Thank you all again for all your help! Its a hard time when you begin to question your goals in life, you guys really have helped me see more realistically. I really appreciate this board, you guys are great, from HS kids trying to find direction, to pro's looking for troubleshooting advise. You guys are really great.
-Justin
-Justin
Designing dimmers, amplifiers, lighting control boards, sound boards, microphones, automation control systems, designing moving lights, designing full lighting systems... I have a friend who designs circuit boards for Mackie. Every company in the industry has an R&D department and they all have electrical engineers helping design and prototype the next generation of equipment.
themuzicman
Well-Known Member
Disney isn't all that its cracked up to be, I also know exactly ZERO designers who went on to make a comfortable living with Disney. The college designers I know that went on to work for Disney went on and worked in park ops, running the shows they have in the parks. While it seems cool - it is a pretty typical "college job" for theatre. Not a job you'd really want for more than a few years after college -- it is no career.
Everyone I know who went on to work for Disney Imagineering had dual degrees or a degree in a very focused field. I have a friend who does props for the parks/ships, he dual degreed in a good general engineering field and also got a degree in scenic design at the same time. I have several friends who became project managers for projects within the parks and they both got dual degrees in stage management and other vague business related majors.
If you're looking to work for Disney Theatrical, that's a whole other ballpark. They fund their own projects, but Disney hires the design teams and the design teams hire their own staff. In a show like Marry Poppins and Newsies, Disney funded it and had their name on it but they weren't hand selecting the interns in the scenic department, that was done by the designer.
I'd like to put a reality check on these discussions that not everyone that wants to be an Engineering major may be able to be one. Good Engineering programs are highly competitive and often require not only being qualified but also getting accepted as early as possible. I had a number of firends that 'put all their eggs in one basket' by applying only to one Engineering program only to then find their application rejected or that program closed, leaving them scrambling to get accepted somewhere that they wanted to attend. I did not apply early enough for some of the Engineering programs I wanted to get into and as a result ended up having to start as a Physics major and then later transfer to Engineering. And one friend had already put his desired university sticker in his car window assuming he would be going there only to have his application rejected. The point is simply that acceptance to an Engineering program at a desired school is not a given and to start planning and applying early if you even want to consider that option.
Also be aware that some Freshman Engineering programs are general engineering and you do not declare a specific engineering major until later. It's not that unusual for someone to change their minds during that period regarding what discipline of engineering they want to pursue.
Also be aware that some Freshman Engineering programs are general engineering and you do not declare a specific engineering major until later. It's not that unusual for someone to change their minds during that period regarding what discipline of engineering they want to pursue.
Similar threads
