Youth Theatre Directors Need to Be More Patient

Hannah Crawford, Guest Editorial

I’ve dedicated the last decade of my professional career to working with primarily non-profits, community theatres, or smaller professional theatres that are just trying to survive. One thing I’ve seen in common is the shortage of instructors—one instructor for a whole class or play of students. This is bound to cause some impatience and frustration due to not having an adequate number of instructors to deal with a cast that size.

Or smaller professional theatres striving to be as professional as possible, spilling that perfection over to their youth theatre and demanding perfection where it cannot be given. Because kids, quite frankly, do not have the kill level of years of experience that adults have. 

Even though I didn’t have an impatient director as a kid. I did as a baby college student. One who told me that she would definitely make me cry because of how hard she was. As I worked with her, and yes, I did cry because of how hard she was on me, I knew that’s not the kind of director I wanted to be with the youth I knew I wanted to work with.

I took the lessons I learned from her during my four years in college and determined that  1.) I would not be the kind of instructor who intentionally knew they would make their students cry, and 2.) I would always be upfront with my students and set clear expectations for the type of instructor I would be. 

Cultivating Theatre Kids Developmental Stage 

To put it quite simply, kids are not adults. Although I love sharing the above example, we must remember that I was an adult. If this were to have happened to kids, I can tell you it would have broken them. 

Kids coming into theatre face a few different challenges. Not only are they just starting out in theatre and need to learn the basics, but they are also starting out in life and need guidance there.

You might think, “Hannah, I’m not their parent.” And you’d be absolutely correct in that. However, if you’ve been in theatre for any time, you know that theatre is a tight-knit family that looks after each other. 

Over the years, so many of my students have found theatre to be the “home” they’ve been yearning for. We must be patient enough to help cultivate their young, impressionable lives in theatre and how they act as humans while in our care.

You’d be surprised how often the two go hand in hand in youth theatre. 

Creating a Supportive Environment 

Few things annoy me more than seeing youth theatre directors who are plain mean and impatient. Yes, I get it; not everyone is cut out to work with youth theatre. But that doesn’t give them the right to be a you-know-what. If you don’t have the patience to work with youth, don’t. It’s quite literally that simple.

From years of working in youth theatre, I have noticed that kids often have very unrealistic expectations put on them. There is pressure to be as good as adult productions, to act as an adult would, or to come up with solutions on the spot. 

Last year, I worked with a local theatre for an adult production. I often drove there straight after work and waited until my rehearsal started. It was the best time because I could watch the youth theatre rehearse for their shows.

On more than one occasion, I was surprised to hear how frustrated the director got with the cast—not only for how they were performing but also for the kids' inability to keep quiet backstage. What was ironic, though, is that there were no adults backstage. Without adult supervision, you cannot expect 30 kids to be backstage and quiet. It’s just not going to happen. 

While we can expect adults to be quiet after one conversation or to have the common sense to be quiet (even then, that doesn’t always happen.),  kids are still learning what is socially acceptable and what is not. All the kids know is they are excited to be with all their friends. So, they will need that supervision backstage and constant reminders to be quiet. And we, as theatre instructors, have to be patient enough to keep reminding them. (And this doesn’t mean being a pushover. More on that point in the next section.) 

We must create and maintain a supportive environment for kids to grow at their current level. We have to set attainable goals for our students. Sure, we want them to succeed and reach the professionalism level that will take them places. However, they have to get there first. No one wakes up one day and lands a management job. They have to work towards it. This is the same with our theatre kids. 

Don’t Mistake Your Patience for Weakness 

Don’t get it twisted here; patience does not mean weakness. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t play around with my theatre kids. There must be a firmness, however, at their level. Set clear goals and expectations for your students. Here is a list of things that have always worked for me. 

• Give them homework to do before the next rehearsal. Don’t just assume that they know what to do. 

• Consistently remind them when they have to be off book and monitor the students you can tell will need extra help. 

• Send notes home weekly and hand them to the parents, not the kids. (I cannot tell you how important this one is. It is impossible to talk to every parent after every rehearsal. Hand the slips out to the parents, and then grab one or two parents you may need to speak with.) 

When you set clear expectations like this, it is much easier to put your foot down when it’s called for. When Johnny Junior comes to rehearsal and hasn’t done his homework or Sally Ann isn’t off script, it’s time to show you’re not a pushover. Be firm, and don’t let them think they can get away with it just because they are kids. 

One of my all-time favorite examples of patience not being taken for weakness was a theatre show I worked on years ago in youth theatre. In short, the main character got violent a few days before our opening night. She thought I would have no choice but to keep her on because she was a kid and the main character. Boy, was she wrong. I would rather cancel an entire show than have a student think I was too weak to stand up and call them out on it. Needless to say, that student was kicked out immediately. 

So whether you’re currently working on a show or heading into one, let’s turn our focus more to cultivating our young people where they are at. We do this by creating a supportive environment that isn’t focused on perfection but rather on their growth and enjoyment of theatre.