I get a lot of sass for being a theatre major. People love to tell me that I'm going to be poor the rest of my life, that I'll never be happy, that I'll be struggling to find work, the list goes on. But I'm not worried. I know I have gained invaluable skills as a theater major that have already prepared me for the post-grad life, and whether or not I do end up working in theater, I'm confident I have what it takes to secure a job. Here are some strengths I have as a result of my theater education:
1. Communication
We as theater majors spend our lives learning lines and translating text onto stage. And that's only actors. Directors have to communicate ideas from their vision and weave them into an already-existing show. Designers must communicate time and place, in conjunction with the director's vision. Stage managers communicate with every person involved in the production on every level to get their meticulous work done.
2. Special Skills
I don't think there is a profession that builds more skills than theatre. In my two and a half years in college so far, I have learned everything from how circuits work to identifying what era a column is from. We sew. We build. We discuss existentialism in modern drama. The special skills portion of my resume is lengthy because a theatre major must be a jack of all trades.
3. Handling Criticism
Theatre is 50 percent criticism. People will always be telling us how to improve, no matter if we're a carpenter or the director. And you know what? We deal with it. We accept it and we move on. Nothing phases us. We are confident in our work and that's all that matters.
4. Being Well-Read
Plays are dense. Maybe they're shorter than novels but a good playwright can pack a lot in, and it's the theatre major's job to dissect it. I know more about history from reading plays written in the past than I would ever know from sitting in a history class. And this information is not surface level; theater majors delve into their work and are always ready to pull out that information.
5. Resilience
Theater majors can be tasked with some outrageous things. Rain on stage? Check. Sword fighting? Check. Live animals? Check. Nothing spooks us. Nothing is impossible. A "no" is a rare word from the mouth of a theater major. Our answer is always, "I'll figure it out."
6. Taking Rejection
I will not pretend that theater isn't filled with rejections. You can't win them all, and not everyone is going to love your work. You will be turned away from a project, not picked for a show, fired, etc. But theater majors don't hang their heads. They walk tall and try again. They know they have something amazing to offer and they don't let people try to tell them otherwise.
Theater majors are amazing. We can take it all and get up the next day as motivated and confident as the day before. We believe in ourselves when no one else will. We are superheroes.
