Today, I taught my production classes about jobs in the professional theatre world.Though I know I just posted a few days ago about how blessed I feel to have the teaching job I have now, I still see one of the greatest accomplishments of my 20's as the fact that I managed to actually work in professional theatre for the first five years of my career. For one, it absolutely made me a stronger theatre teacher. I was able to observe some incredibly brilliant artists and picked up so many tools and tricks to pull out now that I'm teaching and producing a whole season of high school shows. I also am able to speak from experience when advising my students who are seriously considering a career in the professional world, and have even been able to connect some with professional learning opportunities within the Richmond theatre community. But on a personal level, those years gave me some incredible experiences, life lessons, and lasting friendships that I would never have known if I had jumped into teaching right away.
Looking back, I realize it was kind of an insane choice to try and pursue a career in theatre at the time I did. I graduated from college in 2008, which some may recall as the year that the economy decided to go completely tits up. I can still feel the stress of that last semester at JMU: as my more confident actor friends landed touring gigs (I regretfully made the decision too soon to not even try to do the professional actor thing) and friends with more sensible majors were finding jobs in business, healthcare, etc., I was frantically applying to every theatre internship that was still taking applications. As March and April rolled around, more friends started to solidify plans, and I started to panic, still having no answer to the constant question of "what's next" from well-meaning professors, friends, and acquaintances. Somewhat miraculously, the eleventh hour brought two opportunities: a summer internship at a Theatre in Vermont and a nine month "Apprenticeship" (fancier word for an internship), in DC. Both had housing and a small (VERY small) stipend, and both actually wanted to hire me.
So I went for it. I will probably need individual posts for each of the four internships I would ultimately hold in the next two years,* but the overarching impact of those internships, the subsequent assortment of contract jobs, and the final salaried position I would ultimately end up with before making the switch to teaching full time, is that they shaped the work ethic and skill set I have today.
I learned that working for a Theatre is not just fun and games. Some days I ended up doing a lot of mindless manual labor. I stuffed envelopes, I entered patron information into databases, I sold subscriptions over the phone. Other days, though, I got to visit inner city schools and talk about theatre. I got to watch whole audiences of high school students see a professional production for the first time. I took pre-schoolers on silly, crazy imaginary journeys like a real-life Miss Frizzle. I got to help classroom teachers learn how to use theater to better teach Math, Science, English, and Social Studies. I got to go to conferences and seminars with the leaders in arts education at the Kennedy Center. I got to direct things (that's definitely another day's post, too)
It seems that the trend of this blog is me realizing that my experiences have shaped me, and I wouldn't trade them for anything, and blah, blah, blah. I worry that I'm starting to get redundant. But it's all true. There were many moments in the past decade where I felt like my career was a joke, like I didn't know what the heck I was doing in theater. There were seasons where I had no clue what was coming next, and days I cried because I just didn't have it in me to juggle any more jobs or send out another resume. But things always worked out, and each new job brought me closer and closer to where I am now. My only regret is the time I wasted worrying and waiting for the next thing, getting too frustrated with where I was to not embrace the opportunities and enjoy the experiences at hand. Still, I grew and learned in spite of myself and can now dive into the next season with a new attitude.
*Again, looking back, this seems like insanity-- but at the time these were the only opportunities I could find, and in the words of Alexander Hamilton via Lin Manuel Miranda, I was "young, scrappy and hungry and not throwin' away MY SHOT." Mic drop.
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