<p>Blossom, that’s an excellent point and exactly what a couple of those aspiring actors/actresses in NY told me. Two that I know work as cocktail waitresses. They basically keep their days free and work into the wee hours of the night. It’s not bad pay, either. But this is just a way to survive. Still the question remains how long they are willing to stay in an interim state if they don’t seem to be succeeding in getting parts, though of course even if they are fairly successful in getting roles and earning money from acting they are going to be “unemployed” on and off forever.</p>
<p>ive been working in professional theatre for the last 10 or 12 years and about 90% of the actors ive worked with have a “real” job that supplements their income. I know quite a few paralegals, because they can work at night leaving the days to audition and can always find work between shows. To be completely honest though, the degrees don’t matter for theatre. I guess if you need to learn about the theatre than take the classes but a degree in theatre is not going to get you anywhere. I know regularly employed equity actors who majored in art history to biology to physics who are far more employable in the theatre than many of the bfa mfa holding actors. Unless you are going to a conservatory or a top program, get a real major.- just one jaded technician’s take</p>
<p>Mackinaw wrote:</p>
<p>“Still the question remains how long they are willing to stay in an interim state if they don’t seem to be succeeding in getting parts, though of course even if they are fairly successful in getting roles and earning money from acting they are going to be “unemployed” on and off forever.”</p>
<p>This is an interesting point. There is the issue of “side” jobs or flexible jobs during the years someone is auditioning and trying to make a life on stage. I’ve discussed the types of flexible ones and how even those jobs MAY also be able to be in a related field of the arts. Perhaps at some point, someone stops working in productions or stops auditioning on a regular basis and gets another job. Maybe that person is married with kids and can’t travel or whatever the reasons that come up. My take is still that a college degree even in this field, still gives that person options for a career or job. So, I see the whole situation as a win one or at least no different than many college majors where there is no guarantee of work in the exact major. </p>
<p>But the idea of being “unemployed on and off forever” is ACTUALLY the life of a performer and that is one that MANY artists ARE willing to lead. The nature of being a theater performer involves constantly going from job to job. That’s the reality of this field, even for those who DO manage to make a career of it. </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>PS…thanks for posting this article last night and it indeed is an interesting one. Besides being interesting, it quotes my child’s dean and artistic director of her program and so I forwarded it to her last night. She never sends me emails but just did, thanking me for the article and saying she JUST incorporated it into an essay she is writing (I have no idea the topic). So, uh, thanks, it came in handy in a way that I had no idea it would. :D</p>
<p>*But the idea of being “unemployed on and off forever” is ACTUALLY the life of a performer and that is one that MANY artists ARE willing to lead. The nature of being a theater performer involves constantly going from job to job. That’s the reality of this field, even for those who DO manage to make a career of it. *</p>
<p>YOu are pretty much going from part time job- to part time job, even if you landed a gig in a sitcom running on NBC on thrusday nights- there is no guarentee it will be there next year.
We know people who are artists. writers, actors, musicians, filmmakers,dancers,jobs where you depend on someone paying you to create and that may depend on fashion, on the economy, on your ability to make connections.
Virtually all of them have more than one way to make money.
ONe of my D high school teachers is also a poet- and has won a national award, her elementary school art teacher- started a successful graphic design firm, musicians may have day jobs, many teach- or expand their talents to other directions.
Even a successful actor needs to know how to sing/and dance as well as act.
A friend of my daughters who just graduated with a degree in theatre- got a job in NY as director for a teen theatre camp & is doing odd work while he works on writing.
If anything it teaches you to be flexible.
If you absolutely bomb, and find parts are impossible to get, there are a ton of ways to stay connected to the stage if that is what feeds you.
These days nobody has a job that they can count on 40 hrs a week for 30 years, people in creative professions may even come out ahead becuase they don’t expect to live that way. :)</p>
<p>I think don’t get an arts degree and expect it to get you a job.
the most successful( well known etc) artist we know- didn’t attend college- he attended voctech school and apprenticed for his dad.
My daughter loves art- is great with design- but for her- she decided to do art on the side rahter than science.
BUt for some that isn’t an option- art fills their days 24/7- its always good to have the flexiblity to earn money though- starbucks doesn’t pay too badly and art supplied are expensive!</p>
<p>
My daughter works in this sector, as an industrial designer/graphics designer, after graduating with a BFA from RISD a couple of years ago. I think she wants steady work, but especially interesting and challenging work – and she’d trade the former for the latter. She doesn’t want to be tied down. Working on freelance basis, she’s gradually building up a set of people she works for/with but not quite on her own developing clients and doing contracts. That should come with time, but in the meantime it’s continued self-promotion, multiple employers and (still) learning the business. She doesn’t really seem to mind, because she is learning and adding to her skills, which also means meeting different people and finding out what’s really needed in the market.</p>
<p>I’ve been hanging out here nominally because #2 will be looking soon. For better or worse, she’s got the performing arts bug.</p>
<p>This board is a unique source of information for someone with these interests, and it has already helped us in several instances.</p>
<p>I am concerned that we will be throwing a large portion of our life’s savings towards her pointless pursuit of an unrealistic, almost immature, goal that she will never be able to fulfill.</p>
<p>She will of course learn some things along the way that may, incidentally and accidentally, be useful in the other areas where she will eventually actually wind up. But in the end I fear it will prove to be a suboptimal use of her efforts and our financial resources. Not totally worthless, just suboptimal.</p>
<p>Still our approach is that it is, for the most part, her choice. I just worry.</p>
<p>moneydad,
You are quite right to worry.</p>
<p>I would never encourage anyone to enter this business, only advise and support those who feel it is what they must do.</p>
<p>I feel your pain,
xxx,Mary Anna</p>
<p>I am concerned that we will be throwing a large portion of our life’s savings towards her pointless pursuit of an unrealistic, almost immature, goal that she will never be able to fulfill.</p>
<p>As parents we walk a tightrope of wanting to encourage our childrens aspirations, however pie in the sky they may be, but then want them to button up and have money to pay the rent and buy hot meal.
We do know friends who have gone to art schools- RISD and Kansas City- and so far they are doing well.</p>
<p>We also know a few( classical/jazz) singers- which is harder to make a living at- one has gone to an arts/music school, and is slowly getting gigs here and there- but works in a dress shop, the other was turned down for the conservatory, and has been building her repetoire to try again.
I don’t think we can necessarily predict, what paths may turn out to be the best use of our time.</p>
<p>To bring up a drop out from Reed, Steve Jobs, stayed on campus and took calligraphy, which played a big role in the Apple OS.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for others children, for my daughter I encouraged her to go to a regular 4 yr college instead of an art school, becuase I didn’t think she had the drive to help build momentum for that sort of career. It seems to have been the right decision for her, she is happy doing biology, but she is also very creative ( which helps her science) and crafty.</p>
<p>They are adults now though or just about- and if they have something that they have to do , it is try to live their life as they see fit.
We can’t make their decisions for them.
We can say- this is how much we can help you with financially- we can even put strings on it- but we shouldn’t tell them what career to go into.
We all make mistakes, but some of them may be serendiptous, and some we just live with.
I think one thing we can do though- is teach them the value of work. That no job is demeaning unless you make it so. If working at Starbucks gives you the freedom to audition, and that occasionally pays off great!.
If you decide to take a job running a summer camp for 10 year olds, but you make a connection with a local volunteer troupe fantastic!</p>
<p>I think what is important is that we all find something worthwhile in our day. In my neck of the woods, I see adults who have been in the workforce for 30 years- but now having to reassess, and students right out of college thinking they will be an executive in 2 months- just really beating themselves up, because they can’t live up to this expectation they hold.
I wont speak on adults who have many skills sticking in a pattern that is selfdestructive, but for young people who are just starting out, I think it is fine to start down a path that doesn’t have a lot of guarantees.
If they don’t take that chance now, then when?</p>
<p>( of ocurse we all worry- but we would no matter what)</p>
<p>How is it an immature or unrealistic goal that she’l never be able to fulfill? </p>
<p>I don’t think of my D’s goals as immature. She has had them her entire life, has pursued vigorous training with much effort and motivation, achievements along the way, and is driven and focused. I don’t find it immature. She knows what she wants and is responsible about working hard to get it. </p>
<p>I don’t think this pursuit is pointless or unrealistic. It IS realistic because she is WELL aware of the odds. She does not simply think, “I got in a program, now I’ll be on Broadway”. She is SO well versed and aware of the realities of the profession. It is not unrealistic IF you are BEING realistic along the way. </p>
<p>How can you know that the goal will never be fulfilled? SOMEbody is going to make it. There are artists/performers out there. Somebody is going to do this work. Who is to say they won’t be the ones doing it? Maybe it is unrealistic if they don’t have talent or drive but if they have what it takes, and the training to go along with it, they stand a “chance”. They may not make it but they may fulfilll that goal. And if not that exact goal, they may fulfill a goal that correlates or uses those skills, talents, interests. But how can you say she WON’T make it? I don’t say my daughter will make it but I sure support her trying to and if she doesn’t make it on stage, I’m not worried. She has related and other talents. I think my D has a chance to make it and can’t imagine assuming she does not. We know the odds are poor. But somebody is going to make it and we sure support that she has put her life into this goal. I don’t feel like we are wasting a single penny. </p>
<p>I understand your worry. We parents all worry. But I am optimistic about going for it and about all the other possible options that may happen down the line. Even if someone majors in something else, they may not make a life of that major but they make a life. </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>My DS, who is a high school senior, at one point considered applying to a music conservatory or as a music performance major at a 4 year school. His ensemble teacher at NJ Governor’s School had an interesting piece of advice: If you are good in/passionate about any other subject, major in that. You will always be able to find music ensembles or gigs to play in your spare time. My DS is an excellent student and there are many possibilities before him. On the other hand, perhaps he is not that passionate about his music or he’d ignore this advice. I have another child who is majoring in film production; I bet that field is saturated as well although there are many related fields.</p>
<p>I would hope that any parent who has an artistic child has come to grips with their decision to pursue a career ( especially when they are having to foot the often enormous college bills) and is ok with it.</p>
<p>But as parents, you have to be concerned/worried about such a risky proposition. It sounds like many of the parents who post here are at peace with their childrens’ decisions and that is a healthy thing.</p>
<p>As a professional, when students/parents come to me I always make sure they are not entertaining unrealistic expectations. But the relationship between parent and child on this issue can only be assessed by the family after much thoughtful discussion</p>
<p>As a parent, I feel we all love our children and want them to be happy and we want the best for them. Most importantly, we want them to find their own way, whatever that may be.</p>
<p>xxxx,Mary Anna</p>
<p>Monydad,</p>
<p>I feel your pain. In high school, I was equally interested in math/science and the performing arts. In college, I went to engineering school because I believed that would set me up with interesting and well-compensated employment for life. Right now, I feel that I probably made the right decision for the wrong reasons. Faced with a very similar decision, my daughter is at Oberlin right now, with a performance major in double bass and the desire to declare a second major in either math or physics.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what flavor of performing arts your daughter finds of interest, but will explain as best I can in musical terms because that is what I know. As others have pointed out, there are kids who enjoy music and could happily work a day job as long as they can pull out the axe on weekends and play with someone, somewhere. Then there are kids who ARE music, who can envision doing nothing else with their life and want to be among the best anywhere. If you have one of the latter, if disinterested third parties have told you that she is genuinely talented, and if she has already been pursuing private instruction in this field for several years, hanging on for the ride may be your best option at this point.</p>
<p>Put in more analytic terms, we have a multivariable process with complex interactions, many of which can only be described heuristically. The starting conditions are fairly well known, but not perfectly so. You are defining a set of criteria for the system at some later date and want to optimize the process such that those criteria are met at the least cost in resources. Now throw in the highly complicating factors that the “system” has objectives of its own that are almost certainly not identical to yours and that, once set in motion, you are likely to have only infrequent and remote opportunities of influencing the process.</p>
<p>To achieve optimization in such a situation requires more than careful planning. It requires an inordinate amount of luck and at least two miracles along the way. That doesn’t excuse you from continuing the careful planning, but it may make you feel a little better about not being able to control or even predict the outcome.</p>
<p>Acting is the extreme example, but, really, the US has a glut of BWRKs, be they bwrky actors, graphic designers, future diplomats etc. The anxiety fueling the CC boards is proof of that ‘glut’.</p>
<p>I wonder. Is it a mistake to view university education as the career ‘ticket’? Isn’t the highest value of a university education the pure education? Isn’t that what we loved about our university experiences? The pure intellectual rush of it? </p>
<p>Then again, it’s bloody expensive! Plus, like it or not, that university degree DOES serve as the career ‘ticket’, by default. </p>
<p>We’re stuck. Parents have to encourage children to straddle both aims, it seems to me. These young BWRKs will live to be 100 years old. For those four to six years, they ought to be allowed to take on intellectual subjects without worrying about prospective employment. then agian, they also need to develop a marketable ‘skill’ that will boost the intellectual degree to a decent meal ticket.</p>
<p>Monydad,
Don’t sweat it just yet. My Freshman D started out in Theatre just this year. After about 3 or 4 weeks into the semester she called and said “mom, I love this school but I really don’t like the theatre dept. or the concept of Theatre as a major” So, now she’s “undecided”. She is in a sketch comedy group at school so she gets her performing fix that way, but she realized that the program just wasn’t for her. I’m glad she realized this right away instead of 4 or 5 semesters into it.<br>
My suggestion - encourage your D to look at schools with broad liberal arts programs so she can see what else is out there.</p>
<p>Hey Bassdad, stop making me think!! Have to specify the objective function…</p>
<p>This is not the one at Oberlin, by the way, this is #2. She dances. And dances. And acts & sings. Then she dances. But nobody’s said she’s a star or anything. I think she’s really good, but I bet a lot of these waitresses are pretty good too.</p>
<p>FWIW I have it on good authority that the optimization course at Oberlin is excellent. I agree that they probably can’t solve this problem though.</p>
<p>BassDad, my head is still spinning. I’m not sure I understand your analysis and I certainly don’t understand heuristics. I do know that when people put their hearts and minds to their goals luck and miracles seem to happen.</p>
<p>I am always amazed at how many parents encourage their kids to do music, dance and other artsy activities. Then they get worried when their kids want to continue and develop those skills.</p>
<p>Theater has always been like this. At one point in my young life I was determined I was going to be an actress. As it happened, I did wind up working in the theater, in London musical theater for Cameron Mackintosh, and for Off-Broadway theater in New York. But as a go-fer and a grant-writer:). It’s always been hard to get these jobs, there have always been would-be actors waiting on tables in NYC, and you can never dissuade those who want to try. Somewhere along the line, in the class they took for fun, or the temp job they take on, they will find something else they are good at if the acting doesn’t work out.</p>
<p>If, and here’s the thing, they want achievement in something more than they want to bump along trying to act. If all they can think of is acting, they may wind up waiting on tables most of their lives. But if they are that committed to acting, what are you going to do?</p>
<p>I think, if I had a kid who wanted to go into the theater and showed real talent, I’d say go for it, so they never wondered what if. But I would also take every opportunity I could find to make sure they picked up some other skills and if the data started to show that it was very unlikely to happen for them, I’m sure I’d nudge some in the direction of looking into other options.</p>
<p>There’s no way of solving this one with a definitive x=12.</p>
<p>At least acting jobs aren’t being outsourced to China and India!</p>
<p>Or are they?</p>
<p>One could argue that they are. I have been to several conferences lately that point to India for the film industry and Korea for soap operas etc as being new fuel for the world’s entertainment industry.</p>
<p>An education is way more than a ticket to a job. Lots of people have degrees in something and that is not their exact job at a later point in their career or even at the start of their career. An education equips you to be a learned person who can apply various skills to many things. </p>
<p>A person can be talented or skilled in something, like musical theater (sub many other arts), but it doesn’t mean that is the ONLY thing they are capable of doing. Many kids I know who go into this field, happen to also be excellent academic students. While theater is the first thing that comes to mind when someone thinks of my D, it is not the ONLY thing. She’s done some things to do with political activism. She is a leader. She enjoys history. She happens to be a gifted writer. Just today, her writing teacher at college told her she was one of her strongest students and that her writing is impressive. While it was affirming to have her first college teacher give such feedback and given she went to college early and from an unknown rural public high school, I didn’t really need to hear that to know it because I know she could easily go into a career that involved writing but has chosen musical theater as her ambition at this time and her heart and soul are in that. But she loves to also write shows (and other things). If she does not make it on stage, she has other abilities and talents. She doesn’t NEED a fall back option. She is not one dimensional. If need be, and she doesn’t make it on stage, there is a lot she CAN do and would ENJOY doing. </p>
<p>I cannot fathom discouraging a kid who is driven to pursue this type of field. I would not want to. It is who she is. Nobody who knows her ever questions that she went to college for this because it is part of her IDENTITY. I can’t imagine not wanting her to be who she is and pursue it to its fullest extent if she has that drive. She’s known what she has wanted to do since nursery school. How do you stop that? Why would you want to? That’s my personal view but not geared to someone else. I do believe, however, that behind many successful performers in this field, are people who supported them on the way up and were not naysayers. I recall Kristen Chenowith’s acceptance speech of her Tony Award and her thanking teachers along the way and mom and dad for all those ballet lessons they took her to. </p>
<p>I could see possibly redirecting a kid who has an interest in this area but is unsure, has not pursued it to his/her fullest extent, lacks motivation or work ethic or very little talent and it is just a passing idea or interest. But for those kids who are sure without a doubt that they can’t picture doing anything else and could not give it up, I can’t see not being behind them 100%. I don’t care WHAT major my kids do in college. I only care that they have drive and initiative to pursue an education to work toward their goals whatever those goals are. I can’t imagine discouraging particular fields and the kid is left later in life asking what if’s. It’s their life. I had no idea what my children would grow up to want to do but whatever they are doing, we are behind it and actually think what they are doing is neat. </p>
<p>Also, as those on the MT Forum know, there is a decision to be had as to whether to pursue a BA or a BFA degree. For the mom who posted about her D changing her intended major from theater, that’s absolutely fine. She is likely in a BA program and that was the RIGHT path for her it seems. A BA program is appropriate to those who are not ready to make a long time commitment to theater and allow for a change of major. A BFA program is not for everyone. It takes a commitment before applying to a field, and is a rigorous intensive professional degree program and should only be entered by those who ONLY want to do focus on theater and are sure they want to pursue this intensive training in a professional degree program. A BFA program is for someone who cannot imagine doing anything else but to become a professional actor. It also takes a certain kind of work ethic. It is not like normal college. The hours are much much longer. The prospects are uncertain when they get out. They will deal with rejection over and over again. There is a lot of selectivity involved and the “competition” is prevalent as there are many other very talented people, even if in a congenial program. It’s not for everyone. </p>
<p>But for those whose inner core is theater, you can’t rip that out of them. For us, as parents, there is not “pain” as mentioned in other posts that our child chose this. We knew she would.It is WHO she is. We never discussed what major do you want in college. She knew it. We knew it. Everyone knew it. There was no surprise or discussion. It was a continuation of a path she’d been on for quite some time. We think it’s great that she is pursuing her passion and working hard and achieving in it. Who knows what the future may hold? But we’re confident that her education is worth the time, money, and effort and that whether or not she makes it on Broadway or on other stages, she will be a success in life, no matter what she does. If it is not on stage, that’s fine by us. But if it is not on stage, I’d rather the reason be that it did not happen for her but not because she did not try. It may not be a life of riches in terms of income or job opportunities but hopefully it will be a life full of inner riches that fuel her passion. </p>
<p>It is hard sometimes, for those who don’t have a kid in this sort of field to question things like job prospects and choices made. But this was not a choice in high school to pick a college major. It is a choice to continue on with who she already is. </p>
<p>A college education is way more than the major and what job you get when you get out. And a person is much more than their college major. Many can do more than one thing.</p>