Theatre Management (International student)

LAC_operon
Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:37:05 +0000

I’m not a “theater person” - but have known plenty.

My impressions - while your HS project sounds like a great HS project, if you are going to have a masters soon, it looks odd to refer back to HS (which was a really long time ago). It would make sense to talk about your HS project if it was part of a long line of demonstrated interest in theater (see the thread about http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/974446-do-you-guys-still-include-things-you-did-high-school-your-resume.html ) - but it seems that your HS project is your only demonstrated leadership to date, which won’t look impressive to admissions committees.

Experience: In my opinion, you need to be a stage manager for this next year. While going to so many plays is impressive - I would think it’s hard to appreciate the number of cues required for one moment in a play (light cues, sound cues, props, set cues, etc. - just for that few seconds an actor walks on stage) just from watching (I assume you know about all this, but I think admissions people might not know if really understand all this if you haven’t been a stage manager recently). So: Stage manage stage manage stage manage. Live, breathe, eat, sleep in the theater. See if you get sick of it. If not, proceed with grad school.

Also: where do you plan on working? In the US, UK, etc. or in your home country? It seems like you would need to start out working outside of your home country do to a lack of jobs (job stability for the long term) even if you can find a few positions now. If so, it might be better to move to the location where you plan to start your career and try and get some jobs working as a stage manager for a couple of years before applying to places like columbia. Your international experience and perspective will be interesting to schools, so long as if you have a good amount of professional theater experience too.

Good luck!