TheatreArtLife: It somehow always starts like this. I’m venturing out of my theater bubble and into the real world. I’m attempting to have real-world conversations with real-world peoples at coffee shops, or waiting in line at the grocery store. It starts off innocent, then at some point I happen to mention being abroad:
Random dude (Rando): “So, what branch are you in?” “Are you in the military” “Thank you for your service.”
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I often struggle with what to say when asked what I’m studying in school. Even though I know exactly what I’m studying I’m not sure how to describe it. Sometimes I say “design and production for the theatre” sometimes its “scenic design” sometimes its just “theatre” (although then the follow-up question about being an actor usually follows). This article highlights an important point about being a theatre professional that sometimes gets lost in the hubbub of everyday life. Designers, crews, and Technicians are artists and creative persons just as is a Arealist or actor. This is certainly true for the management staff as well. And I’m not just talking about color-coded spreadsheets. Management of dynamics between the cast and crew requires an artistic and creative touch. This is the same philosophy expressed by the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama’s design and production program. Every student is educated first as an artist and a technician through before declaring. Although some argue Carnegie can be a little overboard in that sense, it is a valuable mindset that I believe can help students exceed in their career as well as in life.
Much like Maggie, and much like Anna Tompkins said, explaining that I go to school for theatrical design and production is often an ordeal. Usually, people ask where I go, so naturally, I say, "Carnegie Mellon." Then they assume I'm in for engineering or computer science or something. Then I have to go, "No, actually, I'm in for theatre," because saying "design and production" will probably mislead people into thinking I'm in the School of Art. And then I get asked the ever so common "Oh, so you're an actor?" And then I have to explain further that, "No, I'm in design and production." Which inevitably leads to, "Oh, so you do the backstage stuff?" And yeah, I do the backstage stuff, but that's such an oversimplification. And when people say backstage stuff, they usually mean run crew, designers, or "the person that turns on the lights and stuff." It just gets frustrating after a while, and it's reduced to a much lower level of artistry than performance. So much so that I too forget that technical theatre is an art form, and I have to relearn it often.
I really enjoyed the anecdotal situations that Anna Tompkins included to start off this article. She’s pretty on-point with how she describes interactions with the “muggle” world. When I tell people that I work in theatre, they always assume I do music or performance, but never anything behind the scenes. I’m guessing that this is for one of the reasons Tompkins briefly discusses: we often “lack the same kind of connection with our audience that performers get.” Because the audience does not explicitly see technicians during every performance, they don’t really think about their existence as often as they would the performers they see on stage. Nevertheless, jobs like Anna Tompkins’ in acrobatic rigging make up a significant portion of every performance. I have personally been interested in acrobatic rigging since I started researching the production processes of and lives of people working on the many Cirque du Soleil shows. Tompkins stated at the end of the article that she will be continuing a series of articles discussing her job, and I hope to keep up with reading them to learn more from someone who actually does this for a living.
Reading about Anna Tompkins’ experiences with people not very familiar with or acquainted with the world of theater is one that I’m sure many of us can relate to. Even my own parents need a little bit of explanation to understand what it is exactly I want to do here. What she describes is something that we all probably have a good understanding of, that is people who don’t see the people who work behind the scenes so they are not aware of their existence or what it is that they do. I think sometimes it’s fun to reveal to someone just how much work goes into the shows that their seeing, many people I’ve talked to seem to be interested in the process after knowing a little bit more about it. But sometimes there are people who don’t really understand that well, as Keen referred to when people say “the person that just turns on the lights and stuff.”
While Anna Tompkins may be way more accomplished than I may ever be, I find a lot of similarities between what she talked about in this article on something I encounter on an almost weekly basis. Going to school for technical theater makes it extremely hard to answer the "simple" question everyone seems to want to ask you when they find out you're a college student, or at least of college age. The question. "What are you going to school for?" while simple for some, is not so simple for us. Your average person my be able to say that they're going to school for history or biology or engineer, be that is not something we are fortunate enough to do. When I tell someone I am going to school for technical theater...you will alway have to explain. People ask things like, "Oh so you do the lights for the shows on Broadway and stuff" or, more simply, "You can go to school for that?" On top of that, when I tell people I am a technical direction student, all bets are off. Not only is there no way they will know what that means, but they will probably walk away from the conversation still not knowing. I find this interaction to be very similar to the interaction Tompkins explained in her article.
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