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Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Decline of drama at school prompts UK training drive for backstage work
Stagecraft | The Guardian: The decline of drama as a school subject has had a serious knock-on effect on the live entertainment business. While it is harder now for a budding star to imagine a stage career, the more immediate impact is on theatres’ skills and craft departments.
7 comments:
Ana Schroeder
said...
I mean, if the national theatre needs people I am very much available. On a more serious note, arts funding has always been crucial, but its interestingt to hear about it seriously impacting the industry at large. A lot of people, including myself, got into theatre through taking it at my school. Education is a pillar for kids to explore different opportunities, which a lot of the time can turn into careers. Yes it is possible for children to experience theatre outside of school in their youth and many do, however many children who do activities outside of school also have the opportunities and resources to do so. Children in families that do not have the financial or time opportunities that might be neccesary to participate in community theatre, might not have access to theatre besides for schools. This misses an entire demographic of potential theatre professionals, which I think is a shame.
I wasn’t really aware that the number of students enrolling in performing arts programs was declining in such drastic proportions. While the article says it has dropped 68%, I’m not sure if this only refers to higher education, and if the data is just from programs in the UK. I think that K-12 arts programs are definitely the best way for students to discover and cultivate a love of the arts, and perhaps choose to pursue some aspect of it as a career. They mentioned in the article that there are fewer programs geared towards K-12 equivalent schools in the UK, and I’m sure that the same is true in the US, especially for schools with lower funding and located in underserved communities. I think that if middle and high schools have the financial and practical ability, and the qualified personnel, they could foster a creative environment that will immerse students in the world of theatre and the performing arts. Hopefully, this would stop the declining numbers of students pursuing the performing arts as a career.
I've heard about the lack of students enrolling in performing arts but i didn't know that it was such a high percentage, a drop of 68% in the uk is high so i wonder what the drop in other countries is and i wonder if some countries have seen an increase instead of a decrease. I do think it makes sense that people are leaving for live music and film since it has a higher pay, I think that if theatree can rival that pay then maybe the difference would be more even. I think that this decrease in new theatre creatives also comes from the fact that backstage theatre jobs isn't the most diverse working industry, a lot of the time you see the same type of person working in theatre design and production, it's rare to see someone outside of that box who works in the industry. I think that if more types of people went into theatre or were given those opportunities we would see a pretty sizable increase, it's all about giving information to those who have never been given those opportunities to get into theatre
Theater is thought of as a dying art and that directly correlates to the lack of funding in the field. It's really hard to see theater slowly move away from the interest of the public eye but in my personal opinion I think that we did it to ourselves. Theater is thought of as an art by some and more of a fun performance by others. The lack of clarity in the reason from theater means that new audiences don't know what to expect. It is a shows responsibility to reveal its reason for being seen to the audience before they actually go see it. In a world where immediate communication is possible many theaters have started advertising but never to the extent that many movies are. Their are to many new performances of the same play making it impossible for theater to be advertised to the level of the movie industry.
I feel as though it is much easier for a child to see a production and say, “I want to be an actor,” but it is incredibly rare for someone to see a production and be inspired to go into a career of backstage work. Drama in school isn't just a way to inspire children to go into entertainment, but it helps to build public speaking skills, interpersonal skills, and emotional awareness. Art programs (especially drama programs) are very important for students. Another thing that was mentioned in this artice about other entertainment jobs having better pay and taking away from theater is interesting to me, I wonder why they dont just combat that with a more competitive pay for the craftsmen in their theater. I hope that the number of workers going into the production side of theater will increase with new efforts in order to reduce the strain on the other workers in the field.
I think many of us can relate to this article in some regards as people who did choose to pursue the performing arts and live theatre as a career. I know that for me personally, I know a lot of extremely talented people who ended up choosing to not pursue the performing arts, not because they didn't want a career in it, but because they didn't feel like they'd be good at it, or they didn't feel like it was a viable career option, or their parents wouldn't have allowed them to make that decision for themselves, so they were hoping that they could find a way to do it later in life. It just saddens me that some of these talented people I know don't get the opportunity to develop those skills in the way that they should. Our society is so focused on making money and it does not see the value that the arts brings, so it doesn't consider art a viable career because it's not providing any sort of necessary good or service, even though art is something I think that we need in order to feel human.
It is good that the National Theatre is attempting to bring more young students into the field. As a personal anecdote, the reason I chose to go into theatre over say, engineering, science, or the like, was that I could imagine my day to day life as a technician way easier than I could any other job. My high school had a theatre program that my director prided as being close to a professional theatre in the way it was structured and run. From what I have seen thus far into college, it was, I was able to get experience leading teams, making schedules and rudimentary critical paths, though I didn’t know the name at the time. There were call times and budget meetings and those experiences made me realize that doing that sort of thing as a full time career would be amazing. I hope more students in the UK are able to get that sort of experience through the National Theatre.
7 comments:
I mean, if the national theatre needs people I am very much available. On a more serious note, arts funding has always been crucial, but its interestingt to hear about it seriously impacting the industry at large. A lot of people, including myself, got into theatre through taking it at my school. Education is a pillar for kids to explore different opportunities, which a lot of the time can turn into careers. Yes it is possible for children to experience theatre outside of school in their youth and many do, however many children who do activities outside of school also have the opportunities and resources to do so. Children in families that do not have the financial or time opportunities that might be neccesary to participate in community theatre, might not have access to theatre besides for schools. This misses an entire demographic of potential theatre professionals, which I think is a shame.
I wasn’t really aware that the number of students enrolling in performing arts programs was declining in such drastic proportions. While the article says it has dropped 68%, I’m not sure if this only refers to higher education, and if the data is just from programs in the UK. I think that K-12 arts programs are definitely the best way for students to discover and cultivate a love of the arts, and perhaps choose to pursue some aspect of it as a career. They mentioned in the article that there are fewer programs geared towards K-12 equivalent schools in the UK, and I’m sure that the same is true in the US, especially for schools with lower funding and located in underserved communities. I think that if middle and high schools have the financial and practical ability, and the qualified personnel, they could foster a creative environment that will immerse students in the world of theatre and the performing arts. Hopefully, this would stop the declining numbers of students pursuing the performing arts as a career.
I've heard about the lack of students enrolling in performing arts but i didn't know that it was such a high percentage, a drop of 68% in the uk is high so i wonder what the drop in other countries is and i wonder if some countries have seen an increase instead of a decrease. I do think it makes sense that people are leaving for live music and film since it has a higher pay, I think that if theatree can rival that pay then maybe the difference would be more even. I think that this decrease in new theatre creatives also comes from the fact that backstage theatre jobs isn't the most diverse working industry, a lot of the time you see the same type of person working in theatre design and production, it's rare to see someone outside of that box who works in the industry. I think that if more types of people went into theatre or were given those opportunities we would see a pretty sizable increase, it's all about giving information to those who have never been given those opportunities to get into theatre
Theater is thought of as a dying art and that directly correlates to the lack of funding in the field. It's really hard to see theater slowly move away from the interest of the public eye but in my personal opinion I think that we did it to ourselves. Theater is thought of as an art by some and more of a fun performance by others. The lack of clarity in the reason from theater means that new audiences don't know what to expect. It is a shows responsibility to reveal its reason for being seen to the audience before they actually go see it. In a world where immediate communication is possible many theaters have started advertising but never to the extent that many movies are. Their are to many new performances of the same play making it impossible for theater to be advertised to the level of the movie industry.
I feel as though it is much easier for a child to see a production and say, “I want to be an actor,” but it is incredibly rare for someone to see a production and be inspired to go into a career of backstage work. Drama in school isn't just a way to inspire children to go into entertainment, but it helps to build public speaking skills, interpersonal skills, and emotional awareness. Art programs (especially drama programs) are very important for students. Another thing that was mentioned in this artice about other entertainment jobs having better pay and taking away from theater is interesting to me, I wonder why they dont just combat that with a more competitive pay for the craftsmen in their theater. I hope that the number of workers going into the production side of theater will increase with new efforts in order to reduce the strain on the other workers in the field.
I think many of us can relate to this article in some regards as people who did choose to pursue the performing arts and live theatre as a career. I know that for me personally, I know a lot of extremely talented people who ended up choosing to not pursue the performing arts, not because they didn't want a career in it, but because they didn't feel like they'd be good at it, or they didn't feel like it was a viable career option, or their parents wouldn't have allowed them to make that decision for themselves, so they were hoping that they could find a way to do it later in life. It just saddens me that some of these talented people I know don't get the opportunity to develop those skills in the way that they should. Our society is so focused on making money and it does not see the value that the arts brings, so it doesn't consider art a viable career because it's not providing any sort of necessary good or service, even though art is something I think that we need in order to feel human.
It is good that the National Theatre is attempting to bring more young students into the field. As a personal anecdote, the reason I chose to go into theatre over say, engineering, science, or the like, was that I could imagine my day to day life as a technician way easier than I could any other job. My high school had a theatre program that my director prided as being close to a professional theatre in the way it was structured and run. From what I have seen thus far into college, it was, I was able to get experience leading teams, making schedules and rudimentary critical paths, though I didn’t know the name at the time. There were call times and budget meetings and those experiences made me realize that doing that sort of thing as a full time career would be amazing. I hope more students in the UK are able to get that sort of experience through the National Theatre.
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