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.

I do a lot of research about the time and the place when I start a new piece of material or undertake a new character. I feel so lucky that I live close to the Met because I can go and look at paintings. Especially with “Hamilton,” I can see paintings from that time, see how they make me feel. I can feel what women are saying within those paintings, within those portraits, because that’s all we have from that time. The research process is half online performing arts education and half real-world experiences and feelings applied to your character.

I try to look as much as I can to people that know more than me about the time period, about all of the facts, to get to the truth. Then, I have to really look into myself and see what my subtext is. What is underneath all of those facts? Is there an accent? Where is she from? When was she born? What’s underneath all of those things?

Sometimes a character can be very relatable to my own life, like Nina Rosario. I felt so connected to that character, because I’m the first one in my family to go to college. I always did things not just for myself, but with the notion that I was doing something more for my family and my community. That was a big part of my upbringing.

Nina was so much like that, and she took a lot of the weight of the world on her shoulders. I understood where she was coming from. I knew what her intention was, and I knew what her truth was, because it was just part of me. So, I had to bring that to the performance, which can be the hardest part, being vulnerable, being open to whatever’s going to happen.

I’m not robotic. I like to go in and breathe with the other actors and see where they are that night and what they’re giving me, and see how that moves me, how that moves my character, and see what I give them back. You can learn a lot from a performing arts education and also learn a lot from your fellow actors and their processes and performances.

It’s a very organic feeling every night, and I love that. I wouldn’t want it any other way. When you have an acting partner that also works that way, it’s just magic. The basic way that I try to build a character is really from the ground up and through honesty and through my truth.

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.

American Theater has this odd attachment to its own mortality. In the 1940s, Arthur Miller was writing plays like All My Sons and Death of a Salesman in America. This was a prime time for American theater. These plays were taking charge across broadway. Arthur Miller made statements about how he wished the theater across the pond in the UK was happy like the theater in America.

Good Theater Never Dies

By the time you get to the 1930s and 1940s, you’re looking at the emergence of Odet’s plays, Arthur Miller’s plays, and Tennessee William’s plays. These were all very popular at the time and still today. Eugene O’Neill appeared twice in the 1910s and 1920s. He then came back after he died in posthumous performances like Long Day’s Journey.

Performing Arts is an Experience that Dates Back to the Early Greeks

What makes American theater great is the sense of sitting around, hearing the stories of your neighbors, all while actually sitting next to your neighbors. This concept goes back to the earliest moment of the Greeks. The most important and magical moment in theater is when you walk through the door. It’s the experience of what you are doing and what you are about to be doing. This represents tracing of the past to the present. It’s something that’s not unlike what the ancient Greeks encountered and experienced back then.

Theater Is a Community Experience

So you walk into this playing area, look around, and see your neighbors. You look on stage and notice familiar faces from the community. You hear stories of adventures that you are going on vicariously through these people. The drama transports you beyond the stage and arena into a world beyond the theater. Together, you are seeing life being portrayed.

When you’re analyzing a script, I think you might do well to sort of pick one of those characters and track all those tensions, and then pick two characters and understand how the conflict’s happening. Then pick the family and understand where the conflict’s happening. It’s a show full of a lot of conflict. Characters are in conflict with each other, inside the family and outside the family.

On top of it, the mother decides that she’s going to buy a house. She’s going to buy a house in a white neighborhood. So, everybody has to ask, “What does it mean to, sort of, grow?” But there’s a plant that’s struggling to live, struggling to live in the sun, struggling to live in the sun like a raisin in the sun. Is it going to be the raisin or is it going to grow?

It doesn’t have a lot of sustenance, but it’s got love. It’s got attention. It’s got what the family can give it. So, on some level that’s what the show is about. It’s also about the family to sort of come apart in certain ways, so that they can then come together again. That’s what I think the play is about, and that’s how, as an actor, that’s what I would suggest. If I was scoring it, if I was directing it, I would say, “OK, where do those tensions live? This incident that happens… what is being revealed, and what is being played with, and what is being exposed?” What opportunities do the characters have to transcend where they are, to think of new stuff, to take a chance and to think of something new?

That’s how I would analyze this script, that’s how I would see my way through this—through this artificial thing called a play that happens to be called “Raisin in the Sun.”

[In performing arts,] what human stuff can be brought out? That’s how I would approach the script analysis. I challenge you all to try to uncover that stuff for yourselves.

“Let’s talk about an agent in the performing arts field,” says Bret Shuford. “If you have an agent and you get an agent — and I will say this — it is much easier to get good work than it is to get a good agent. If your goal is to pursue getting an agent, let that one go. Go for the work. Because if you get good work, you’ll get an agent as a result. If you’re going for the work, that’s going to make getting an agent easy. That’s also going to help your agent. You’re going to build a stronger relationship with your agent because you have a great resume.”

When you’re with an agent, they will send you an appointment. Now it’s all done by email, but I do remember when it was done by phone. And when they send you an email, you want to communicate with them if that time slot works. They will give you a dedicated time slot for you to go in and audition. They will also send you a PDF with the files that you need to prepare. And your job is to prepare as much as possible up until the day that you go in. So that means working with a coach, hiring someone just for an hour to go over those sides, getting a vocal coach if it’s music. And you’ll need to learn that music.

“There are lots of ways to get auditions,” adds Philip Hernandez. “If you have an agent and a manager, then they will be on the hunt for things for you. The breakdowns will go to them, and then they will shuffle off anything they think is appropriate for you. They’ll send it your way. That’s one way.”

There are lots of other ways and lots of self-taping these days. You can go on Actors Access, for instance, and you can have an account there, a profile there. They have a profile for you so that people will be able to look you up. Then, if there are appropriate roles, then you’ll be able to be submitted for those. You’ll get a notification that says you have an audition. Then you do the self-tape, which you do at home, and then you send it in. They’ll give you the sides, the copy, all of that stuff.

Finding representation is one of the things you’ll learn when you get a performing arts education.

“Among the careers in performing arts management, of course, the closest to the building of the actual production would be the stage manager and the assistant stage manager because they will be with the director, the creative team, and the actors all the way from the first rehearsal to the dress rehearsal, the first preview and the closing night,” Elizabeth Bradley says. “They are, truly, in a sense, the hub of the wheel and the steward of the quality of that creativity once the show runs.”

“A stage manager is not only in the rehearsal process,” Mary Ann Kellogg adds. “They are responsible for scheduling the day, making sure everything runs smoothly, the director getting what they need, the actors getting what they require to do the job, and the dancers being warmed up. And all that has to be scheduled so that the stage manager goes from the very beginning to the end of the process with the director.”

The director and stage manager work together as they hold auditions, come up with a cast, and begin to break down the script, which they call being on-book and being off-book, a situation where you’re working with actors who are doing scenes and speaking dialogue.

The stage manager has to organize all those departments. So, if you have a singing lesson, if you have a costume fitting, or if you have a private coach, that needs to be scheduled. And the rehearsal day needs to be scheduled for which scenes and who’s in those scenes. Everyone needs to be told and scheduled before the day begins. Take this into account as you continue your performing arts education.