Friday, December 06, 2019
The Success Advantage Every Theatre Major Has Over Others in the Working World
Inc.com: In my life, I've been involved nearly 200 theatre productions. I was heavily involved in high school, and was a theatre major in college. Even while I was in the mortgage industry, I continued acting and singing in local productions. Additionally, I was the artistic director of a growing community theatre, and founded a successful mystery dinner theatre company. It's a passion that has given me great joy, and also served me well throughout my career.
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5 comments:
I can concur that learning how to take criticism is a skill I have learned and improved tremendously since I have been in theatre, more so at the college level than at the high school level. There was a Susan Tsu Basic Design project my first semester that included a sort of portfolio presentation open to the public, and Peter Cooke very pointedly told each of us individually how much improvement our designs needed and the criticism was totally unexpected for all of us. However, it was a really valuable lesson in being able to swallow criticism and save face – it is a skill I struggled learning, coming from a high school program that tended to coddle their students and toxically trashed those who gave criticism. I think something else that theatre, and theatre school in particular, has taught me is how to deliver criticism to others in a way they will accept it. We do a lot of critiquing of other people’s work, and there is a fine line between criticizing and coming off as trash talking r ignoring the intention of the designer. Being able to have someone receive your criticism without emotionally shutting out your words because they came off hurtful is just as much skill as knowing how to emotionally detach yourself from your work – art or otherwise.
I’m not sure I agree with this article entirely. Yes, criticism is important in the arts. But where I take issue is when the author talks about the way it gets delivered. No, you don’t have to filter it, but you also don’t have to be harsh about it either. A person can deliver feedback in a positive way that doesn’t make the receiver feel like they are being attacked or singled out. We have to remember that when giving any type of feedback, there are different personalities and each one is going to take and process that feedback differently. A person who is in their 40’s is not going to receive the same feedback in the same way that someone who is in their 20’s might and vice versa. While the ideals mentioned in the article about compartmentalizing, and filtering are important, it needs to be stressed that some people don’t know how to give good constructive criticism and that can often damage working relationships. If the person receiving the feedback feels attacked by the feedback on a regular basis, they may start doing less, participating less. If a person gets their ideas shot down constantly, they will be less likely to continue to contribute. A good feedback (think also criticism) tool is the sandwich method. Something you did well, an area or something you can improve on, something you did well. This method allows the criticism to be delivered but in a way to allow the person to continue to feel valued and willing to further contribute.
I guess I hadn’t realized that not every field has quite the amount of almost constant feedback and inter-departmental communication that we have working in theatre. On a good day you have to have really good communication skills never mind when things go wrong and start to implode. I think that this constant communication and feedback loop does equip us in ways that other types of career may not. It really should all be about the final product and contributing to the show overall instead of individual needs. I think we’ve all worked with someone who wants to push forward their ideas as being the foremost important and sometimes do so at the detriment of the production as a whole and how difficult these situations can be to deal with. It does a lot of good for understanding collaborative environments to have the reason of accepting that even if you’re idea is good and valid it may not be the best for the situation and you’ll have to push it aside for the greater good. Just in general the amount of collaboration needed in theatre allows for skills in communication, feedback and adjustment to be on a higher level than some other industries.
Oh gosh, I wish everyone in theatre were as good at taking criticism as this author would have us believe. Perhaps performers are better at it; when observing notes sessions, I often have seen actors receiving criticism with blank faces. Often, in the disciplines I have worked in, people are more precious about their work. Sometimes they feel hurt, they get defensive, or they get argumentative. It is not easy to let one’s ego go for the sake of the broader production, and it takes a great deal of trust in the leadership of a show in order to follow their advice. If you are a person who is deeply invested in your work, theatre can be full of little heartbreaks as you abandon ideas and even fully realized projects on the way to opening night. As a person who has worked fairly extensively on works in development, I am accustomed to devoting many hours to a project that doesn’t make it to lunch in the rehearsal room. No matter how callous you may be, it is always a little disappointing.
I completely agree with KT about the helpfulness of Basic Design and criticism. I am going to expand to say that the whole Design and Production curriculum really helped with getting criticism and confidence. I tell every person I can how helpful the Design and Production curriculum was at growing my skin. I will never forget when Joe Pino made a joke on the second to last week of Hedy Lamarr’s Owl that we have to read War and Peace or some other long book and have the weekend to shorten the story into a seven-minute piece and the class really thought he was asking for this and took a minute to collectively prepare for this project before it was told to be a joke. This article breaks down taking criticism amazingly. I think in general every time I take criticism I could take more of an effort to remove the emotions. I think this article makes a great point about filtering the advice you get.
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