There are many valuable lessons found in online performing arts education. Based on his experience in performing arts, Gianni Downs tells us, “There are three major stage configurations. There is the proscenium stage, which is essentially what you might think of as a theater. A lot of the Broadway houses are proscenium stages. You might see musicals produced on a proscenium stage.” These are set up so that the audience is on one side, and the action is happening on another side, often with a frame around the action. That is the proscenium arch itself. This is a very common type of theater and is very useful for hiding scene changes. Musicals spend a lot of time in proscenium stages.

“A proscenium is an arch,” says Jeff Kaplan, who has years of performing arts education. “Next time that you’re in a theater, look at the shape above the curtain. It makes a picture frame. So, the idea is that you’re looking into a diorama. You’re looking into a world. And traditionally, the performers are inside that world, and you and the audience are on the outside. That forms the fourth wall, but that’s not the only way that you can do it.”

Gianni Downs picks up from there. “Another common theater-type is the 3/4 thrust. You’ll see a lot of regional theaters and off-Broadway theaters will use a 3/4 thrust stage. This is where the action will project into the audience, making a horseshoe shape of the audience. So, the audience sits on 3/4 of the sides of the action of the play.” This is often more used for straight plays or more intimate plays. A very famous 3/4 thrust is the Guthrie Theater, and it might provide a good reference for what that looks like.

Jeff Kaplan then finishes, “There’s theater-in-the-round, which is pretty much what it sounds like. The audience is on all sides, or maybe 3/4. Arena Stage in Baltimore is a very famous example of that.” Circle in the Square in New York is largely a theater-in-the-round. That’s a fascinating experience in which there’s no front where you’re all inside of this world. It’s like a virtual-reality theater.

Typically, a producer is somebody who’s leading the ship. When you’re the producer, in many cases, you’re both everyone’s friend and everyone’s enemy. You’re also the person signing their paychecks. Sometimes, you may even be their therapist. Being a producer can look many different ways.

Particularly in the world of the independent theater industry, because the budgets are smaller and it tends to involve renting a space, it’s inevitably going to be a smaller creative team. As a producer, you’ll need people to do a bit more than they expect to be doing, and it’s only because you want to get the show running. Because of this, though, you have to be flexible, and be able to avoid getting stuck in a rigid space.

As a producer, you tend to be the one that everybody looks to. Personally, I have been a part of productions where I haven’t necessarily attended every rehearsal, because I haven’t needed to; there’s a director that was hired, and there’s an entire creative team. However, I’m there at auditions, I’m there at the first rehearsal, and I make myself available.

I don’t find the need to be micromanaging at every rehearsal, though, because I’m not a micromanager. Because I know this about myself, I know I don’t need to attend every one, but I do make a point to let people know that I’m available for whatever comes up. When stuff does happen, it isn’t the time for a meltdown—as the producer, nobody cares about your feelings. You need to fix it. You need to get it going, and make it work.

To learn more about the world of being a producer, both standard performing arts education and online performing arts education can be very beneficial as a starting point.

A scenic designer needs to have several different skills. You can think of a designer as a Jack or Jane of all trades. You have to know a little bit about color theory. You have to know a little bit about how to draw as well as art and architectural history. You have to know how buildings are constructed. These are all things that you can learn on the fly, but it’s a good idea to practice them as you’re starting out. I recommend that everyone aspiring to be a scenic designer take some drawing classes. Doing that alone will help propel you toward a career in theater design more quickly.

One you’ve developed some basic skills, you’re going to need to learn how to draft. You can do so using a pencil or pen, but most people will be using AutoCAD or Vectorworks or some other CAD drafting program. Fortunately, these are technology skills that are actually quite easy to learn. In fact, you might start with a program like SketchUp and import something that you designed there into another program so that you can turn it into a more clear drawing. This way, it will be easier to understand when you give it to others.

You might also need to learn how to paint digitally. Oftentimes, I will choose to work in different programs. For example, I’ll do my drafting in Vectorworks; then, I will do my painting in Photoshop. After that, I’ll combine the two and make a 3-D model with either Vectorworks or SketchUp. From there, I’ll make a walkthrough of my set so that a director and the actors can see what it will look like from various points in the house or even on stage.

I’ve had 3-D models used to sell products. I’ve had 3-D models used in film. I’ve even had to create 3-D models to be used in projection work behind live theater as well. As a theater designer, you never stop learning because technology changes all the time, and your ability to communicate with other people needs to adapt as well.

To learn more about the world of theater design and the performing arts, consider getting started with online performing arts education. This form of performing arts education allows you to gain valuable experience and learn from the comfort of your own home.

One of the questions that always comes up is, “How can I have a sustainable life in the theater?” This is a key question. It is key not only because it allows us as artists to engage in the work that we do, but also because it supports our livelihood.

Sometimes I’ll meet the parent of a young student considering pursuing a performing arts education, and that parent will turn to me and say, “Well, my kid wants to go into theater, but we all know that they’re not going to make any money, and they’re going to starve, and I don’t want them to go through that.” They add, “And we all know theater doesn’t really matter. We all know that it’s just kind of decoration.”

Well, they’re talking to the wrong person, because I go a little bit over the top on this. Number one, the idea that theater doesn’t matter is altogether wrong. It’s just wrong. The theater is not only an important art field because I’m involved in it, and I care about it, so I think it’s important. Actually, history has proven it a vital space for community discourse and for the investigating of ideas in a community.

Further proof is that if you think of any really stringent political dictatorship in the history of the world, one of the first things that they will do is either get rid of all the art forms or try to control them. Trust me — if the performing arts didn’t matter, they would expend no time on even being concerned about them.

But they do matter. They matter because they change history, because they change thought, because they change opinion, because they change our minds and our hearts, and because they bring a community into a conversation. And so, to me, theater is essential. The fundamental idea driving the heart of theater is that artists either will celebrate those beliefs, or integrate those beliefs, and that is what drives our work.

What’s interesting is that when we integrate those beliefs, it actually creates the society’s new beliefs. And that begins to create a cycle of how societies really begin to understand themselves, understand their beliefs, and understand how they function.

So, to me, theater is a vibrant space not only for what really is the sustainability of a community, but also for the health of a community. And that becomes a really, important thing. So there we are — theater is important.

Studying theater is important, too. Your online performing arts education can be the start of an ongoing conversation that leads you to play a role in shaping society’s beliefs.

Back a long time ago, the idea of blocking was pretty straightforward. It was really about stage picture. You stand there. Or I stand here. Or you sit on this line. Or I stand on this line. There are moments when making specific movements across the stage or movements on the set are prescribed in a precise way that we need you to do this now because of something that happens in the script.

But the truth is that much of what happens in blocking is a collaboration between actor and director. It is the exploration of the actor’s actions and needs in a given moment in a scene. It’s easy to take for granted something as simple as walking across a room or where you stand in a space. But the following simple examples may help you understand how meaningful blocking can be in the performing arts.

So, if you picture a fairly traditional theater with the audience on one side and the stage on the other, you can then imagine an actor standing in the middle of that space, facing the audience, in a stance that means something, right? This person is alone. Depending on how big the space is, we experience something about the scale of a human being in this space. We might think about how that person is or isn’t like us as an audience member.

Now, turn that person away from you so that they’re facing away. That’s right; they’re facing upstage. Suddenly, I lose all sorts of information. I can’t see that person’s face or expressions. As an audience member, I’ve lost information, but I’ve gained potential interest. You might not be aware of these perceptions unless you have a performing arts education.

Now, what if that person extends their arms really wide, opens their chest up, but I can’t see their face? You can imagine that any one of those choices makes a big difference to how we experience whatever that person says in that moment. But it can be challenging to interpret that person’s stance, movements, and gestures without the help of facial expressions.

It becomes even more exciting and complicated when you have multiple characters onstage. If I have two actors very far downstage, very close to the audience, huddled together, whispering to each other, my experience as an audience member is going to be one of tremendous intimacy.

But if I keep one of those actors very close and send another far away upstage, it’s going to change my relationship with one of them with whom I have a much closer, intimate relationship to that other person who is much further away. I might begin to have an empathic response to the person who’s closer compared to the one who’s more distant.

As an actor, it’s valuable to understand that your audience is experiencing, particularly in theater, your work as a kind of three-dimensional sculpture that’s constantly changing shape. As a director, it’s important to understand that everywhere that bodies are in space communicates something to your audience, as you might learn from an online performing arts education. So, it’s better for that communication to be intentional rather than accidental.

People give theater critics a bad name. More often than not, they think of a theater critic as a person who says just negative things. “[There’s] a stereotype of the place, it’s opening night, and then everyone has kind of raced to the bar essentially, and they’ve looked at the newspaper. And the newspaper says ‘Oh, this play is terrible,'” states Dr. Harvey Young, an online performing arts education professional. “And that’s not actually the job of a theater critic.”

The job of a theater critic is actually to be an honest, objective, and reliable performing arts education source for a larger public. Their purpose is to acknowledge that not all of their readers will ever go see the play, but that they still want to be informed. They want to know more about what is happening.

The critic will tell readers, honestly, what they think of the production and be objective. They are not related to anyone who made the play. They are not an actor in the production. They will just tell you whether or not it is worthwhile for you to spend your hard-earned money and two to three hours of your time to attend the event and to see the show.

The performing arts critic is not going to be negative. They’ll just be honest. That is the job of a theater critic: to connect with the reader and share their opinion. The thing about theater critics is that those critics who are truly negative never last long. You’ll notice that likable theater critics become the most passionate and ardent advocates for certain productions. “[If] you look at the theater criticism around “In the Heights,” which was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s play before “Hamilton,” that play was nurtured, it was supported, it was sort of praised again and again by theater critics going, ‘Hey, you’ve got to go see this thing,'” Dr. Young says.

The same thing happened with the work of Tennessee Williams. People had no idea who Tennessee Williams was. It was early theater critics who said, “There’s something happening down the street. You’ve got to go check this out.” When “A Raisin in the Sun” first came out, there was a buzz created by critics. It was critics who saw the play in New Haven, Chicago, and Philadelphia, preparing an audience on Broadway for its arrival there.

Lloyd Richards, who directed the play, remembered standing in the ticket lobby of the theater. An African-American woman arrived to buy a ticket and he asked her, “What inspires you to see this production?” She replied, “Well, it was Sidney Poitier. He’s in this.”

“Well, you can see Sidney Poitier on screen for a fraction of the price,” replied Lloyd Richards. Her response was “I’ve heard about this play, and I’ve heard it concerns me.”

That quote, “I’ve heard it concerns me,” is a testament to the power of theater critics to get the word out about why theater matters for people.

When considering the roles of the arranger, orchestrator and music supervisor, Simon Hale thinks it’s useful to explain a little bit about what those three jobs entail. An arranger, he informs us, takes an existing piece of music, a song in this case, and adapts it for another purpose. That can be a pretty radical alteration, or it can be quite gentle. It really depends on the circumstance.

However, it will have obvious building-block components like the key, the rhythm, the structure and instrumentation. All those blocks that make up a song or a piece of music can be completely changed. Obviously, you wouldn’t change any lyrics in a song—though you might change the order of verses, perhaps—but that’s the only thing.

You can change chords if you are going to rearrange something. You can add countermelodies. You can be really radical, actually, and make something sound completely different from how it did originally. But it is still the same song, just in a very, very different expression.

Imagine that we take a picture frame as an example. If you’re an arranger, you’ve got the chance to say, you know what? I’m going to put that picture right on the opposite wall. And oh, it’s not going to be square. It’s going to be 3 feet by 4 feet. And it’s going to be slightly off-center; it’s going to be slightly skewed. And it’s got a kind of gnarly bit up on upper right-hand side. This all sounds a little bit crass, but an orchestrator takes what an arranger or someone else has done and then shapes that into their own design.

For example, as an orchestrator, you’ll be given the picture frame. And it already has a load of information in it—the key, the structure, the shape, all those kinds of things. You have to think, OK, I want this to have a bit of yellow up in the top, around the corner, and a bit of sharp imagery down here. You’re filling in detail and coloring as well as deciding what the essence of it is.

But you’re not deciding major things like the key and the structure. They’ve already been done. That’s what the arranger does. An arranger decides on the shape of the music in a very, very powerful way. The orchestrator takes the music that’s been chosen and designs the specific detailed elements for the boundary. The music supervisor will then look at the overall music department. They could potentially be choosing an orchestrator or an arranger. Those roles could be filled by the same person.

The music supervisor is looking at the overall musical context, making sure that everything is the way it should be, liaising with unions, liaising with the director, with producers, with GMs, all those kinds of things. They’re also, monitoring the show on an ongoing basis to make sure that it stays in the shape everyone wants it to and remains the way it was from opening night.

Relationships with other people as part of a theatrical production are an interesting thing to think about.

If you’d like to pursue a performing arts education and learn more about the various specific roles you might play in the performing arts, the traditional approach isn’t the only avenue open to you. You might find it much more accessible and convenient to engage in an online performing arts education.

Let’s talk about flooring and how it impacts a dance.

Let’s say you’re working in tap shoes. Tap shoes, as we all know, have metal on the bottom of each shoe, right? Well, if you’re tapping, then that surface you’re tapping on is important.

Is it tile?
Is it wood?
Is it cork?
Is it slippery?
Is it sticky?

You need to know the answers to these questions to provide the best performance possible.

Furniture can also double as flooring, which means you need to know how all of the onstage elements interact together. These elements are going to give you wonderful choices. If you said, “Oh, I’d like them to dance on that piece of furniture, or I’d like them to tap on that piece of furniture.” Well, you need to make sure that the particular piece of furniture is, first of all, going to allow you to do that instead of unsafe for a dancer to use and a fall or collapse risk.

Performing Arts Education

Your online performing arts education can help you better understand all of the elements of a stage, set or other performance area. It opens your eyes to what you need to take into account to make a performance a success. It can also teach you how to do a better job at protecting yourself and others from common accidents.

“Props are anything that an actor might touch or handle,” Gianni Downs says. “Sometimes you might refer to them as properties. And you can think of them in a couple of different ways.”

Hand props are props that actors will carry around with them. There are set props that may exist in a room, such as a furniture that an actor cannot move on their own. Then there are decorative props, such as curtains hanging on the wall or paintings that may be present. You can think of anything that isn’t built by the carpentry shop as a prop. These are frequently things that you might come across in your daily life.

Is the couch upholstered? What type of upholstery is it? Is it made of wood? Is it made of metal? These elements may tell the audience in a matter of seconds who the individual in a room is or what the play is about. This is considered to be performing arts.

When it comes to staging design, such small changes may significantly influence. And these are the kinds of judgments that a designer must make regularly.

And it is your responsibility to make those decisions. And your choices should be influenced by the program you’re working on as well as the characters that inhabit it. These skills can be acquired through online performing arts education.

Often, there will be a significant meal scene in many older programs. And this may be for a Christmas party or a particular function. A table scene can often serve as the focal point of an entire play.

One props designer told me that mashed potatoes are used in almost all her creations. As a result, she can shape it into a variety of different shapes. She can dye it in a variety of colors.

It’s also simple for people to consume. Furthermore, almost no one is allergic to it. So you’ll often see mounds of different things on a plate that people are eating. And it could be mashed potatoes.

Alcohol is another thing that is very common in the theater. So many shows revolve around people making poor choices. And those decisions are frequently made while under the influence of alcohol.

As a result, a large part of my job as a scene designer is to plan out where the furniture will be placed on the stage. The director and I will work closely together to determine where items will go, how they will be set, and what angle they will be.

Performing arts education helps in decision making. It’s a good idea to consider what kinds of chairs may exist in the environment you’re building. Are there any weapons? Is this a high-backed chair?

And if you’re going to drink on stage, you should drink something that looks like alcohol but won’t get the actor intoxicated. As a result, flat soda is frequently used. Food coloring and water can be used.

It may be fluids. I’ve heard of people using different teas to achieve different hues. And you can come across property designers who have recipe books for various types of booze, whether it’s brandy, whiskey, or something else. You can be seeking something, or the script might be asking for something.

One of the fundamental truths about the theater is that it’s about community. Even if you have a physical theater, it’s still about the community. My favorite theater is the Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago at the Goodman, where I lived for 15 years. I live in Boston now, and soon there will be a new favorite Boston theater.

When you think about your favorite theater, you remember that it’s a place where the people would gather. That’s why it’s essential for theater companies and programs to engage in the local communities.

Theaters Canvassing Neighborhoods are Crucial for Performing Arts Programs

The primary responsibility of theater companies and programs is to link the physical theater buildings, spaces, and productions to multiple communities within a city. This is the key to a successful and thriving theater. You can’t just imagine a play, open the doors, and expect people to come. You have to engage with the local communities.

Even if the theater has subscribers, their goal and obligation is to impact the conversations within the society. Community education specialists and directors of community engagement will go out and build partnerships within local communities. Sometimes this includes productions where actors will go out and canvas local areas. They will go to places like schools and libraries to talk about the theater content and sociohistorical components of the production. They will discuss their own lives and stories to build connections with the people in the area. They are trying to convey that the community is not just for the actors; it’s for everyone. It’s everyone’s theater.

The fact is that the theater is always in need of new audiences. The theater building may be there for over 100 years, but it’s not enough to bring in the people by itself. The theater crew has to go out and do the work of bringing in audience members. Community specialists are responsible for going out and gathering the culturally aware people that create the evolving dynamic of theater audiences.

The benefit of this kind of canvassing work is that many people haven’t spent much time thinking about the theater, but they have studied it at some point. Remember those Shakespeare plays you had to read in high school. Now, you have an actual theater company talking about literature, language, self-expression, and the reality of transporting a person into the world of theater.

It doesn’t make a difference if you love Shakespeare or not. There is still an appreciation for his theater skills. Those skills of self-expression, telling a story concisely and passionately, and reading history through culture. These are the things that you want people to take with them when they leave the theater.

Theater Arts Bring Communities Together

There is a whole way of thinking with this kind of outreach. For example, interacting with the kids at school can quickly spread to other people that they know. The communication within the kids soon reaches their parents, grandparents, siblings, and neighbors. This sense of community is why this work is so important. Communities can be brought together through the arts.

When people think about the many different roles played in the theater, they often refer to only the actors on stage. They usually don’t think about the people who are out making the theater an active part of their lives. These are the people that work off-stage and behind the scenes.

These are the people that are working in offices somewhere. They talk with people in the neighborhood about what’s going on and the concerns surrounding those things.

The theater stage is also a great place to talk about social issues, including relationships and health issues. The theater is a way to acknowledge real problems that people can relate to. Every family is strained at some point in time. Those individuals who have to portray these issues in the theater can help make a difference in the real world.

All of these reasons and more are why the people who specialize in community engagement are so important. There is no one more active or integral in terms of a larger ripple effect of theater than these folks.