If You Want to Change Theatre, Stop Auditioning and Start Producing

by Chris Peterson

Here’s something theatre students should hear more often: if you want to change this industry, study producing.

I don’t mean as a fallback. I don’t mean as the thing you do after years of chasing roles that never quite come. I mean producing as a real path to power in an industry where too many people spend their lives waiting for permission.

Because the people who produce theatre shape theatre. They decide what gets funded, who gets hired, which stories get supported, and which artists are trusted. They have a hand in almost every decision performers spend years being frustrated by.

So if you are a theatre student who looks around and thinks the system could be better, maybe your future is not just on the stage. Maybe it is in the room where decisions get made. That does not mean giving up on performing. It means understanding where influence actually lives.

Theatre needs producers who know what it feels like to be overlooked. It needs producers who understand the audition room, the rehearsal room, the unpaid labor, the quiet disappointments, and the way talented people can get boxed out before they ever get a fair shot. That experience matters.

A producer with a performer’s background can bring something different to the table. They can look at a season and ask who is missing. They can build rooms where artists are treated like people. They can make choices with more imagination and less fear.

And producing is creative work. Anyone who thinks it is just spreadsheets and donor calls has never watched a good producer pull a show into existence. Producing is taste. It is leadership. It is problem-solving. It is knowing which story deserves a stage and then figuring out how to get it there.

So take it seriously. Ask your school where producing is being taught. Get close to student productions in a way that lets you see how decisions get made. Learn the business side without acting like art and business are enemies. Read contracts. Understand budgets. Pay attention to who has power in the room.

Because once you understand how theatre actually gets made, you stop waiting for someone else to build the version of the industry you want to work in.

If you are tired of gatekeepers, learn how the gates work. Then become the kind of person who opens them wider.

Theatre will always need great performers. But it also needs artists who can build the stage, choose the story, raise the money, protect the room, and make sure the next generation gets better chances than they did.

That is producing. And more theatre students should be studying it.