Our artistic director Gifford Elliott looks at recent writing that rang true to us about the state of theater making and the rewards of self-producing.
Recently, keeping in mind our interest in independent theater making, an article from American Theatre, Unfinished Business: What Theatre Schools Should Also Be Teaching by Rosie Brownlow-Calkin, caught our eye as well as a letter to the editor in response. We thought we’d share them with you, dear readers, since we know many of you take an interest in self-producing and the state of theater making at hand.
Brownlow-Calkin’s article takes a look at the corner that academic institutions has backed themselves into when preparing students for a ‘constantly changing industry.’ She asks what would be most helpful for students making the jump from school to career. As a holder of a BFA in acting, I particularly enjoyed the beginning allusion of a ‘professional preparedness’ talk to actors resembling a high school Sex-Ed talk. It took me back to my last year of school where some talks of the outside world felt more like, lovingly, a waiving of liability. There was much emphasis in the curriculum on a bottom line that your career “is what YOU make of it.
That was in 2015 and it saddened me a bit reading that not much has changed in the past decade. (Give the article a read to hear from recent grads and teachers who bring hope to the discussion but also harsh realities.) One suggestion in the article, strength in community, was an impetus to making this post as it overlaps with our writing about self-producing: Network to net resources: The Strength Of Weak Connections which is also Way #5 in our new book 13 Ways of Looking at Self-Producing.
A letter response from Scott Walters, Emeritus Professor of Drama at University of North Carolina Asheville expands on the article in a way that rang true to our collective experience as a theater company in the contemporary world of theater. His words are what my fellow grads and I have been shouting since we graduated:
The prescription—that students ought to be taught things like “how to shoot a self-tape or build a website” and how much rents are in NYC—fails to acknowledge that the system itself is dysfunctional and exploitative. Anyone who spends even a few minutes with the employment numbers published by Actors Equity should be deeply disturbed that more than half of Equity members don’t make a dime from working in theatre. And of those that do make any money, the average annual income is less than six months of rent. Saying “life in the business will be tough” isn’t just an understatement, it is malpractice.“
You can teach a theater artist as many tools as possible to operate within the current boundaries of the industry but teaching them the foundation blocks of self-producing and encouraging them to find their audience and community, wherever that may be, is imperative. Today, many of fellow graduates still working in the performing arts have relocated or found troupes outside of the bicoastal trappings of NY and LA.
If interested more in words and reflections on Self-Producing then we’d love for you to check out 13 Ways of Looking at Self-Producing. As a company that has put on our own shows, we’d love for anyone interested to learn from our successes (and mistakes).
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