<p>I wanted to make that clear right off the bat. I have no clue on this issue. I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I’m simply a very uneducated person who’s curious about theater majors.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t mean to hurt anyone. I’m simply trying to educate myself.</p>
<p>So, now for my question: I’ve heard that CMU has one of the most intense and hard theater programs in the country. I’ve always wondered, what kind of work does that entail? What makes it “hard”? I’m an aspiring CS major, so I’m just trying to garner a little information about something I know nothing about.</p>
<p>I can respond both as a parent of a recently graduated CMU Drama Major (Design) and a lifelong entertainment professional in Hollywood myself. I also teach a film design class at the college level on Saturdays. The common misconception non artists have is that the arts are easy because they are “fun”. Art majors in general work harder than about any others. The theater majors at CMU not only have the commitment to their academic and studio classwork and homework, but also a huge time commitment to the productions they are assigned to support. They must be in the shop or at rehearsals every day until at least 11PM including Saturday and Sunday in the weeks leading up to a production. They cannot be late or absent unless verging on emergency, and must call in to their production leads in that event. If they don’t demonstrate enough talent, ability, commitment and stamina, they will be asked to take a year off to reconsider their career choice. Creativity is REALLY HARD WORK. There is no making up a missed workshop or life drawing class. They must present their work to the faculty at the end of every semester for critique, and are constantly judged for their creative and collaborative abilities. They are not allowed to work during the school year due to the overwhelming time commitment required of the program. I can’t think of a more stressful and competitive career than the arts-I tell my students “Do not pursue this career unless you truely love it and can’t see yourself doing anything else.” At the end, very few make a significant amount of money, so the reward is not in the financial security, but the satisfaction of working on something bigger than one’s self. I’m sure everyone at Carnegie Mellon works very hard, but don’t assume that higher mathematics or software design is any harder than designing or performing a show.</p>
<p>I applied to be a directing major at cmu and id say what makes it hard is the competitiveness and commitment</p>
<p>-There really is no “right” answer for theatre, its all interpretive and creative. But you have to impress people with your creativity all the time. A lot of politics is involved, and fighting your way to the top with what you can do is hard.</p>
<p>@kittymom: I never assumed that it wasn’t hard work or that CS was harder. I was simply trying to understand in what way it was hard. Thanks for the info though. That does seem like quite a load.</p>
<p>I can second that from my work in high school theater. I’m going to be a CS major next year, but I’m hoping to be able to do some sort of lighting design or production design minor or double major.</p>
<p>In my high school we have some great resources for our theater program, but its not a huge program. We do have an extremely capable technical director though, and I’ve done a lot of work learning both set design and my personal favorite field, lighting design. Just through working several high school productions in that role - coming up with a design, plotting it, hanging it, programming it, etc. - I learned that the amount of work and its difficulty level is more than even I expected, and I had an inside perspective before I started getting involved in the higher level design aspects as opposed to the lower level basic stagehand work.</p>
<p>Whoever said ‘creativity is hard work’ is completely right. You can read a script and - if you’re lucky - have a great image in your mind of what you want the design you come up with to look like. But even if you’re lucky enough to have that image from the beginning, figuring out how to realize it is a lot of work, and it takes a lot of technical knowledge and most of all, experience - or networking and conversing with people more experienced than you who can lend a hand.</p>
<p>Cant wait to get on campus next year and find out if I’ll be able to continue in the LD field even though I didn’t choose it as my primary major.</p>