10 Tips for Incoming 1st-Year College Theatre Students
(Photo: Columbia College Chicago)
by Shannon Gaffney, Guest Editorial
With the college school year starting in the next 30-45 days, first-year college students are preparing to start classes. While some college theatre programs are more rigorous than others, I offer the following tips to help make the first year both fun and enlightening.
1) Embrace your mistakes, and don’t be afraid to make them. You are going to school to learn how to be an excellent performer – but even when you leave, you will never be a perfect performer. School will not be the last place you accidentally crack on the high note, miss the acting beat, or trip on the time step.
Get comfortable with imperfection.
2) Take yourself seriously. If you believe that what you are doing doesn’t matter, if you don’t think that you have what it takes to “make it,” if you feel like you need a million back-ups to succeed, that is the narrative that will come true. If you want to work in the theatre industry, be proud of that. Commit to it. Start calling yourself an actor (or a director, producer, writer, etc.) right now, and stop saying you are “aspiring.”
If you’re here, then you’re already doing the work.
3) But also take care of yourself. That being said, it is also important for you to find an identity outside of your schoolwork. It can be easy, in our industry, to feel like the best performers are the most overworked – or that you need to put performance before everything else in your life. Yes, you are here to learn as an artist, but you are also here to form a community, to begin to understand yourself as an adult, to discover new passions, and to have fun.
Make sure to give yourself time for rest and recreation.
4) Appreciate your personal passions and talents. Often, musical theatre programs preach that everyone is a number – that you are not special, that you can be “typed,” and that there are a million people like you. While it is crucial to be humble and acknowledge that there are many talented people in this world, it is also important to recognize that you are a unique, complex, real person. Yes, many people are equally or more talented than you are. But you can’t be them, and they can’t be you. It will be yours if you are the right person for the job and the timing is right.
Bernadette Peters said it best -- “If you're like someone else, what do they need you for?”
5) See your peers as collaborators, not just competition. It’s true – after graduation, fellow actors will become your job competitors. But they also have the potential to be the people you go to auditions with, the people you create with, and the people you rely on for support through rejection after rejection. They could be your future roommates or your future business partners.
Start seeing all the ways you can support each other in your journeys.
6) Make friends outside of the theatre department. This can be challenging, especially if you attend a performing arts school or your program doesn’t require significant liberal arts courses. However, the best way to become a performer is to understand other people – which means understanding people who don’t love the same things you do.
7) Take advantage of the whole college experience. There will likely be opportunities for you to work a job, join a club, or contribute in some other way on campus during your program. If you feel like you have time and energy on top of your classes, I highly recommend doing this. Every single experience you have can be valuable, especially when you are coming right out of school. It’s a great way to find your post-grad survival job – or even another passion.
8) Find meaning in everything you do. If you are in a BFA at a liberal arts school, you may roll your eyes at the thought of taking math credits. Or even if you are in a non-liberal arts training program, you may wonder, “Why do I need to learn Shakespeare to perform in musicals?” However, it’s important to find value in your experiences – not for your GPA but for your time and the value of your money. If you can choose liberal arts or elective courses, think very clearly about your goals and how you can align your classes to suit them. If you’re not sure of your goals or don’t have much choice in your coursework, be open to trying new skills.
Please take a look at every opportunity as part of the process.
9) Don’t be afraid if your desired path starts to change. Many entering theatre students have the same goal: to work on Broadway in their chosen discipline. That is a worthy goal – but performance is much more than that. There are many ways to work in the theatre industry, so many places worldwide with thriving theatre communities, and so many directions a career can go. It’s okay for your goals or your priorities to shift. What you wanted when you were eighteen years old does not have to be what you want now.
10) Be the change you want to see in the industry. As you will learn in your program, there is a lot about this industry that will never change. It will always be tough and incredibly competitive. It will always be riddled with rejection. It will always move swiftly and impersonally. And it will never be totally fair. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything that will change. We have the opportunity to break tradition and create an industry that works better for everyone – and if you have an idea that will make that happen, take the initiative and be that person who makes a difference. Don’t settle.
Break a leg this year!