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« on: Dec 05, 2012, 03:10 pm »
I'm currently working for the university where I scored my BFA, and the faculty break room has a series of lists with a list: every graduate of the undergrad program for the last decade. Any time a member of staff or faculty hears about a posting attained by a former student, we're encouraged to go to this list and add it.
So, like:
John Doe, Tech/Prod '06, Asst. Production Manager at the Major And Important Centre for the Arts
Mary Sunshine, Script/Crit '07, Freelancer for Alt-Weekly Magazine
Jennifer Sweatpants, Devised '09, pursuing MFA at U Chicago
This list is then compiled and used internally for promotion, to find possible mentors for current students, for departmental records, etc.
The catch: those examples make it sound kind of promising and exciting, but it actually looks more like this.
John Doe, Tech/Prod '06, Unknown
John Doe, Acting '06, Unknown
John Doe, Devised '06, Unknown
John Doe, Acting '06, Acting coach (private practice)
John Doe, Design '06, Associate Designer at Local Summerstock Festival
John Doe, Script/Crit '06, English teacher
John Doe, Acting '06, Unknown
John Doe, Devised '06, Unknown
John Doe, Devised '06, Fringe show (2010)
John Doe, Tech/Prod '06, IATSE
John Doe, Conservatory '06, Unknown
John Doe, Tech/Prod '06, Unknown
John Doe, Design '06, Unknown
John Doe, Acting '06, Unknown
John Doe, Devised '06, Unknown
Now, context: it's absolutely true that theatre is often an impossibly tough nut to crack. All kinds of talented people show up and do all the right things and just don't make it for any number of perfectly sensible and perfectly ridiculous reasons.
But the problem I would identify is, well. Two worst-case scenarios.
Student A: You try to break into acting. You fail. So you go and do something else with your life.
Student B: You attend a High School for the Performing Arts, then you advance to a BFA program in Acting, where you spend ~$40,000 across four years, all of it as student loans. Then you try to make it in the Real World. You fail.
But you keep at it. You hire an Acting Coach. You spend hundreds of dollars to get better headshots. You work in menial jobs to pay rent. You occasionally get thrown a part, but you never advance higher than "Man with Moustache" or "Harem Girl (Non-Speaking)". After 5-6 years of stretching yourself, you get fed up and leave the industry and go do something else with your life.
But... you can't.
Because you're carrying that $40,000 in student debt, you'll never get financing for another degree. And even if you could, your education--that HS for the Performing Arts had you do the barest minimum possible in math and science--would only qualify you for programs in the Fine & Liberal Arts. (In fact, you aren't even qualified to enter many community college programs. You were hoping to do accounting without calculus, or social work without even the slightest background in statistics? Psychology without a background in biology? Not happening.) Somehow it seems unlikely that slapping four years of Creative Writing or Philosophy on top of your BFA will make you more employable.
But unless you buff up your qualifications, what are you going to do? You're basically only qualified to either wait tables or perform on stage, and since nobody is paying you to perform... And, anyhow, how do you combine these talents? Is your dream job really joining the waitstaff of a dinner theatre?
---
It's very poetic to talk about "better to have loved and lost", but somehow I think the latter person would, in retrospect, have happily slipped a little more general education into their High School and University experiences, rather than utterly binding themselves to an industry that simply had no use for them.
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