When Marni Penning landed a part in Studio Theatre’s “Admissions,” she took solace in the fact that the schedule of rehearsals would allow her to drop off and pick her six-and-half-year-old son at his school in Falls Church.
But once the performances began, there was a tradeoff.
12 comments:
I am glad that this is becoming more accepted. Having a family should never be looked down upon and I am afraid in theater this is relatively common. I have been told in the past that even wanting a relationship would be impossible if I wanted to go into theater. While theater artists are beginning to have careers while having children, I think there is still a long way to go. As mentioned in the article, people have been, and still are, afraid to even mention a desire to have a family for fear of not being offered a job. I do not know if I want children, but I am honestly afraid to even mention it as it elicits such a strong, and usually negative, response. I believe in this industry there is too much pressure to have your career be your whole life. I think the bigger issue is that we as an industry cannot seem to grasp the concept of a work-life balance.
I've noticed through working in a regional theater that having children seems difficult and taxing if you plan to continue working in theater with young kids. Many of my old coworkers worked day jobs to supplement their income, which essentially meant that they had difficulty maintaining stable relationships and giving their kids enough attention. It was possible, and pretty much everyone did it, but it was hard and the kids suffered sometimes. I've noticed that almost all of my old coworkers are divorced, and of those who were married or are married, more than half of them have married someone who works within the same theaters, since then they would be able to actually see their partner. As outlined in this article, that creates an issue in finding childcare, since the hours are so late to find a babysitter. They were fortunate to be working in a relatively low stakes theater where the employees are friends in conjunction with talent, and our artistic director puts an emphasis on this family attitude, but I can't imagine how difficult it would be to do this in a more intense community. No career should come before something many humans want to do, like having children. Even if you don't want kids, having the chance and not thinking it will kill your career is important.
This article is quite informative. It gives you a history or sorts and a current standing on theatre and its relationship to the people who create it and their lives. It is nice to learn that theatre is changing for the better in that it is really giving people the opportunity to have a family. I think this is very important because there is a very strong stigma around theatre in that theatre people, in all respects and areas, aren’t able to have a family. This is also reinforced in the fact that the majority of people most will meet in theatre are either single or, even less common, married and without a kids. There is a third group which has been deemed the “managed to make a family work” category and it wasn’t until recently that I actually met some of these people. Everyone I knew in theatre before recently were single. While this article is great and really gives information on theatre in how its changing to be more family oriented, I wish it talked about actually making this work. The article even states that there is a tradeoff where betimes are missed and I would like to know how people are working around this because schedules are hard on families and even though they are changing to be better, there is still going to be some working it out and managing it that is required.
This is honestly one of my biggest concerns when it comes to working in this field. I’m very glad that it’s becoming more common, as families with working parents need a strong support system to lean on. I’ve always thought of theater as a career for those who are married to their work. Relationships are incredibly important and help ground you to reality and the importance of having a human connection. Without it, you can go crazy and lose touch with what it means to be an emotional and feeling human. I’m glad that this article has highlighted that having a relationship and/or family in theater is possible. I know myself and having that connection to friends and family is crucial for me to keep motivation and happiness. I personally would put family over a job. In unpopular opinion: after all, at the end of the day a job is a job but you can’t replace your family.
Often time, when you hear about these types of stories in theatre a family, is prioritizes second and the job first. This type of mentality is not only toxic but can cause you to pay a significant price in the future. Recently, I have thought a lot about where I am going to be in the future and how to accommodate such things like a family. Given that the entertainment industry as a whole requires you to move from place to place it can be challenging to find a place in time to settle down and start a family (or semi-stable lifestyle).
I hope that I will spend the first part of my life as a working professional moving around and taking advantage of the ability to work in many places around the world. When the time comes to start a family, I anticipate that I will be in a headspace where family comes first. But until then it will remain on the back burner.
While this article does focus on the aspects of having children, it does pose the larger question of how to create a work-life balance. The idea that a family is not an option because of a certain career speaks on how demanding the industry itself is. There were moments in high school when I would not be home for dinner for months because I had nightly rehearsals for a production. I didn’t really consider the repercussions of it, but it did upset my family that I was less present at home. I often got comments from other family members that I was overworking and didn’t have my priorities straight. I did not let this deter me from doing what I love, but it did allow me to think about creating a healthy balance. When I wasn’t a part of a show during high school, I would try to divide my time among my friends and family equally. I began paying closer attention to how I was spending my time. I still do believe that creating a family is a possibility if one is willing to examine their priorities.
I am so glad that the theatre community is changing into one where people working in it feel comfortable starting families and having children. I worked with a stage manager recently who has a 9 month old daughter, and she kept telling me about how hard it was for her because her husband was a TD and he mostly worked during the day and then she worked nights, but she also had rehearsals during the day so she felt like she was not getting to know her daughter and there were multiple times where she would be crying to me because she felt like she wasn’t being a good mom but she wanted to keep working in theatre. I hated seeing her go through this and I hated that this was a real problem that so many people are facing. I really am so glad that there is more female leadership in theatre, so there is less of a stigma about having kids while working.
This is a very interesting article, and while it largely responds to actor’s concerns, I think that a lot of this article also applies to the designers and managers in the room. In fact, much of our hours go beyond that of the actor, as often while the actor is on stage, we cannot do parts of our own job. It is good that the theatre industry is moving towards being more accepting of families, and families with children, however slowly. I think that this is especially true in the educational section of theatre, where days are a little more regimented, and timelines more firm, as often times teachers are able to be home in time for dinner, or as mentioned by this article, “bedtime.” I think that theatre in general struggles to accommodate a more healthy work-life balance than is present in most of our lives. I hope that this is something that our industry, and all industries strive for more in the future.
During my time working for a theatre company back in South Carolina, the adults I frequently worked with always threw around the term “theatre widow.” This referred to the other spouse that was at home while one was at rehearsal. The widow aspect comes in because of the time commitment theatre demands, it can feel like your spouse is not even alive when they are in a show. While this was always said in a funny manner, I can not help but hear the shreds of truth buried within the phrase. It is no secret that theatre is a huge time commitment, but children should not be the end of someone’s career. When it comes down to it, if someone in the live performance industry needs to bring their child to work with them, that should be allowed. I am glad to see that there is a cultural shift occurring around this topic and maybe one day this will not be an issue for people in the industry.
As someone who hopes to have a family in the future, I was interested in hearing from someone’s personal experience how they could handle that with their theatre career. Like many other competitive and high maintenance careers, the choice of raising a family is often looked down upon, or seen as something not entirely possible without sacrificing the quality of one or the other. At least it is good to hear that it is becoming slightly and slowly more accepted within the community. I do hope that it will become a more widely accepted concept. If more who want to have a family talk about it it will improve, as proved in the article. As it claims that the reason it is becoming more accepted is because of theatre parents coming together not only to share common experiences but to speak with a collective voice to destigmatize the concept. I was raised by a single mother with a pretty demanding job, a doctor. Though I spent a lot of time with babysitters, and daycare, she was still able to raise me.
This has truly been one of my biggest concerns about entering into the industry. I’ve heard horribly sad stories about how people’s work-life balance in entertainment affects their relationships, and it has always made me worry if this was in my future too. One of the reasons I’ve thought about working in theatre education was stability of income, time commitment, and location: all things which are elusive elsewhere in the industry. This article gives me hope, especially since it was written about the city I’m from and where I would ultimately like to work someday, that hopefully by the time I am working seriously in the field, the culture surrounding families will have changed. I am so glad that people and theatre companies have started making more of an effort to work with people, provide childcare, and accommodate pregnancy at work. No one should ever have to be in a position where starting a family will end their career.
I’ve seen more and more articles about this recently, and I’m glad it’s being addressed in some way. The thought of trying to raise a family or even maintain a relationship with someone with a 9 to 5 job under the schedule that we work at just seems exhausting. From what I’ve seen, even the theater teachers, the nature of whose jobs make their schedules typically more regular, struggle to achieve an optimal work-life balance due to the nature of the job. Even as a student, I struggled a lot last year with balancing my workload with spending time with my family. Having rehearsal every day until 7pm meant that I was on my own for dinner most nights- I’d be up before everyone else in my house and come home late and crash immediately. I can’t imagine the struggle of trying to raise a child under these kinds of working conditions. I truly do hope the culture around family life as a theatre professional changes, and I’m glad there are companies out there working to make it happen.
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