Theater: A Useless Degree?

Any discussion of useless college degrees will inevitably include theater specifically or performing arts in general, but is it as useless as those lists claim?

I've written before about the connections between acting and writing fiction, but that isn't the only area where my theater training has come in handy.

Deadlines

Theater centers around the hardest of the hard deadlines: opening night. There is nothing that focuses the mind like knowing that on a certain date at a particular time, there will be a group of people in front of you waiting for you to perform. No extensions, no excuses.

Sometimes, that means meeting the deadline by a hair: stage paint that's still wet and actors sewn into their costumes. It can also mean cutting anything that isn't done and ready, from costume accessories to bits that never came together, lighting effects to stage dressing.

Knowing that whatever isn't done by opening night won't get done teaches prioritization. That paint effect that creates just the right impression can get cut, but the walls can't. The perfect hat for a character isn't a "have to have" but covered butts are "must have." Lines have to be memorized, but landing that joke might be a plague throughout the run of the show.

Still, people go to great lengths to meet that deadline because let's face it, the things that get prioritized aren't very satisfying. People do theater for that paint effect, the perfect hat, and landing the joke. So, it can be round-the-clock hours, people sleeping backstage, and doing whatever it takes to try and squeeze in those details before that opening night deadline.

It's a very useful skill to be able to prioritize and work to a deadline, and it's come in very handy in the corporate world. However, the harder lesson for me was when not to. In theater, the only cost of those cuts is a bit of pride and disappointment. In business, the cost of cutting corners, like testing or security, can have significant long-term consequences.

I love that theater taught me the skill of working to a deadline, but I appreciate my time in business for the learning the wisdom of when not to.

Scheduling

I'm always puzzled when someone says theater isn't a practical degree, when to me, theater is one of the most practical disciplines. For my degree, I was required to learn how to sew on a button, use a power saw, and create a schedule. That's right, I learned how to schedule in directing class.

One of the chief responsibilities of a director is using rehearsal time effectively. Just like all the other roles working to the opening night deadline, the director has to fit everything into the available time before opening night. Especially with larger casts, actors need to know when they have to be in rehearsal and when they don't. If actors have known conflicts that the director has agreed to work around, the schedule has to account for those actors being unavailable.

Just like other roles, a director has to prioritize and ensure the entire play is covered. Other things may have to be cut, but a director can't focus the rehearsals on one act or scene and neglect or ignore another act or scene, so a balanced schedule is crucial.

When I began teaching, I found that the same thing applied to creating a course syllabus. The schedule has to be broken down, cover all of the course objectives, and cover all of the work and concepts in the available time.

I also find it interesting that while scheduling was explicitly covered in my directing course - we discussed how to do it and one assignment was creating a mock schedule to practice - when I began teaching, there was no similar guidance, even though I did take a teaching pedagogy course for first-time instructors. It was my theater classes that made sure I knew the practical nuts and bolts.

Presenting

It's tough to be intimidated by speaking in front of a couple of dozen people when you've been in front of hundreds. Not everyone who studies theater is an actor (I'm certainly not), but most of us still have some on-stage experience. While not a clearly written requirement, it was understood that no one graduated from the theater program I went through without performing in at least one production.

There have been so many situations in my corporate jobs where I've needed to present to a group: introducing myself to my new team, pitching a strategy to management, providing an update to the entire company. That doesn't even count speaking to my class when I was teaching. All of those were made easier by my experience on stage.

That's not to say I don't get nervous presenting. I absolutely do get nervous when I'm presenting, and theater taught me how to handle those nerves. Rehearsal is critical, practicing what I'm presenting beforehand. I learned how to breathe and mentally prepare before going on stage. Perhaps most of all, I learned that I could do it and that I could live through it, even when it didn't go well.

These are only a few of the transferrable skills I picked up studying theater that were incredibly practical and useful in non-theater careers.

So, is theater a useless degree? It really depends on what you're looking for out of a degree. If you're looking to graduate and move into a job with the same name as your major like engineering, then theater isn't for you. On the other hand, if you're looking for skills that will benefit you in whatever careers you choose throughout your life like teaching, project management, product management, and writing, theater might just be what you're looking for.

Signed Deadly Decaf Hardcover

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