Pursuing a Professional Theatre Career is Not a 'hobby’

Our industry is suffering. After almost a year of the pandemic, most theatres still remain closed and throngs of professionals in the arts are still without work. Yet, despite the obvious need for state intervention, support from a number of governments around the world has been lackluster, at best. If nothing else, this global crisis has shown once and for all what many of us already knew – the powers that be don’t place value on creative industries.

The irony of this is that politicians and business people are well known for enjoying the finer things in life, from opera performances to box seats at theatres, even though so many of them seem unwilling to stand up for their ’beloved’ arts when we need their help most. We have been betrayed by them, and by all who have written us and our industry off as ‘unimportant’.

The thing is, this tragic state of affairs is actually just a symptom of a much bigger and more entrenched problem. Public perception of the arts is dire and has been for a very long time. Not in terms of people disliking theatre or film, of course, but rather because people have long seen the arts as a luxury, often a frivolous one, which would be expendable in a time of crisis, for example, a global pandemic.

The value of the arts is consistently underestimated. We all know that if theatre and film were to disappear overnight, people would notice. Though time spent on culture may sometimes seem frivolous, it is a vital part of almost all of our lives. There is a reason why we all have Netflix or Prime or Disney+, after all. But unfortunately, these kinds of entertainment are not often connected in people’s minds to live arts like theatre, despite the fact that companies like Disney invest heavily in stage shows and stand-up specials on Netflix usually require a theatre and live audience to record. Those are just two examples of the intersectionality of the arts and entertainment industry that is so often not taken into account when people think about what theatre and live performance mean to society.

Misunderstandings about what it means to work in theatre and live arts are problematic at the best of times. Unfortunately, these are not the best of times… not even close. The pandemic has been devastating for our industry not just because all of our venues and spaces closed under lockdown restrictions, but also because of a dire lack of understanding as to what artists and theatre professionals need to get them through this difficult time.

As far as I can tell, people, by and large, don’t really understand how hard people in the arts work. There is a stereotype around our industry that seems to have convinced people that we are all living the dream and that we work a few hours a night and are set for life. We just turn up, prance around, sing a few songs, smile for the camera, and then go home after 3 hours with our pockets full of cash and our livelong dreams fulfilled.

Yeah… no.

It’s fun, but it’s hard

The theatre professionals I know, some of whom I have had the pleasure to work with, are some of the most hardworking people I have ever met in my entire life. 9 times out of 10, actors, directors, producers, and pretty much anyone who is working on a production would do almost anything to make the show a success, even if that means pulling 20-hour tech runs and spending every weekend going over scripts and steps at home. Just because a performance is only 2 hours or so doesn’t mean that that’s the total of the working day. Actors have to rehearse, directors have to make changes, producers have to organize, technicians have to fix; every single person will have hours of work to do before that curtain goes up and after it falls.

Many of us found our love for the industry as children, quite possibly through our local amateur dramatics societies and groups. Back then, it was most certainly a hobby. But the idea that things are just like that at a professional level, only you get paid, is insane. Just like anyone else, theatre professionals have to deal with taxes, sick days, pensions, unions, contracts, hiring, firing, and office squabbles. Honestly, a theatre is just like any other office, except it has brighter lights and a big curtain down the middle.

The problem is that very few people actually get to see what the inside workings of the industry look like, and so people don’t understand what it is we all do and what we have lost during this global crisis. This is not a case of a bunch of people who lost their hobby and have to go and get ‘real jobs’. This is a case of thousands of professionals not being able to work and not being able to support themselves and their families.

‘Real jobs’

Let’s be absolutely clear, working in the theatre industry, or indeed in any part of the entertainment industry, is a real job. Actors, directors, producers, and everyone else who works in the sector are all professionals who deserve just as much respect for their training and qualifications as anyone else.

In the UK, in response to the initial hardships faced by the theatre industry in 2020, the government suggested that artists should simply retrain and get other jobs. This, unsurprisingly, received a considerable backlash. Just like accountants, scientists, journalists, and lawyers, most people who work in the theatre industry are highly trained and have undergone years of education to get them to where they are. They are experts in their craft and have worked hard to get there. Suggesting that they simply ‘retrain’ to work in IT is absurd. Sure, there’s no reason why they couldn’t do that, but that’s not a short-term solution and it’s not going to be an easy fix. You wouldn’t suggest that all accounts go and retrain as ballet dancers if work dries up, would you? Or that trained police officers should all go and become nuclear physicists? So why is it ok to suggest that the entire theatre industry just abandons their area of expertise and goes away to retrain?

I’ll give you a hint, it’s not ok… at all.

Theatre professionals work incredibly hard to train themselves up to a professional standard and then continue to work hard when they find employment in the industry. Their jobs are highly specialized and require expertise. Not only is it insane to suggest that a whole industry of professionals should retrain, but it also fails to take into account how much damage that would do to theatre once the crisis is over. How will we rebuild our industry if we have all been forced to go and get different jobs in different professions?

At the end of the day, public and government perception of theatre and the people who work in it is a problem that will take a long time to solve, but I think this pandemic has made it abundantly clear just how little society at large understands the industry in which we work. Perhaps the suffering that actors and creatives are going through at the moment will open some people’s eyes to the hardships of the profession. I hope so.

At least, when we rebuild our industry and the audiences come flooding back, we will know that even if they think it’s ‘just a hobby’, they would miss us if we ever went away.