Student Blog: The Problem with 'If You Can See Yourself Doing Something Else, Do It'

I hate the phrase "If you can see yourself doing something else, do it." It is the worst thing you could say to a young performer, especially when they are trying to decide whether or not to pursue theatre as a career. It is discouraging. It is not productive or helpful.

For some background about me, I did not originally go to college for theatre.I actually went to college as a politics major. A big reason I moved away from theatre is because of "if you can see yourself doing something else, do it." I didn't feel like I was allowed to want to be a performer because I could also see myself working on the campaign trail or in a museum. I thought that theatre was all or nothing. I thought I couldn't be interested in anything else.

Theatre isn't all or nothing though. The theatre industry is super competitive. Most performers don't earn all of their money from performing. Performers need to have a survival job. Why shouldn't they enjoy the work that they do outside of theatre? "If you can see yourself doing something else.." implies that we aren't supposed to be good at anything of importance outside of theatre. Interests outside of theatre make us a more well-rounded individual and a better performer in general. When I spent a summer working as an intern for a presidential primary campaign, I learned as much about myself as a performer as I did when I was in shows. I learned how to better connect with people. I learned about the problems that people who are not like me experience. It helped me better empathize with the characters I play. It also taught me a lot about dealing with disappointment. With theatre, for the most part, you know the end is coming. With politics, when a campaign ends, most people don't know until it's over. It taught me how to work with sudden changes.

I also think that the all or nothing mentality can lead to burnout. If you constantly feel like you have to do theatre all the time constantly, you are going to not enjoy it as much. That was one of the advantages of the pandemic for me. I was feeling burnt out after my first semester of college. The pandemic allowed me to learn the importance of having outside interests. Our industry shut down and we were not able to be in shows or work backstage. We need to see ourselves doing other things to make us happy and whole. This thing for me was reading. I was able to read more than ever before, It allowed me to explore my other interests of politics and history. It allowed me to be okay with not doing theatre all the time.

Our industry also needs people who are educated and interested in things outside of theatre. We need people who are able to tell us if a piece is handling history respectfully and accurately. We need people to engineer new ways of moving sets or performing stunts. We need people who are invested in the health of the performers and can teach performers how to better take care of themselves. We need people to hold the industry accountable to be a safe space for all. We need people who are able to calculate the budget of a show. The theatre industry will not survive if the people in it's only interests are theatre-related. We need a variety of people in order to innovate and grow.

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