Is it worth it?
Hi yall. I'm in college rn for geography and minoring in theatre. Our tech stuff isnt as great as others but they're doing quite a bit to change that. I actually was double majoring but decided to do it as a minor bc it was making me nervous that they were changing so much of the curriculum without really communicating it. My area of interest is sets and lighting. More sets than lighting but love both. We don't have dedicated design classes for sets or lighting anymore. So most of it is hands on experience.
I've worked on two shows and the communication was HORRIBLE. First show I did a lot of the brute work bc I was the only one who knew what I was doing and the other run crew did not. The second was a senior project and the directors did not know what they were doing. Its not helping the dept doesnt teach audio and apparently no one knew audio and kept getting upset at me despite it being audio connection problems which were completely beyond me.
It was like this in hs too. I went to a hs with a pretty good theatre dept. Like we even had a technical director. I did back stage stuff a lot for a year then they changed how they find ppl. They used to do interest forms but after that first year they moved to who they know. I wasnt the most social at the time so I didnt do tech theatre again. It often went to friends or ppl they kept for a while. I mostly did front of house. But even then that was a nightmare.
Ig I'm always annoyed that I'm not taken seriously in tech theatre. Idk if its bc ppl dont like me or if its just communication in theatre. I realized I dont like working at nights (for longer than a week). I love doing sets and lighting and hope if I'm designing or constructing or programming its mostly during the day and nights for tech week. Ik thats probably not gonna happen but maybe idk.
I for sure have a lot of bitterness about being in theatre especially the tech side. I did acting as well but again not as much of a passion as sets. There just always feel like theres ppl complaining about others and poor communication that gets on my nerves. Im also autistic so I feel like I'm always reacting to ppl and trying to figure out how to communicate in a way that wont piss ppl off. Idk. What do I do? Is this worth it? Do I do a different career? I considered events, films, other live events?? Does this ever get better outside of educational theatre spaces?