What many people don’t realize is that many of the greatest artists in history just borrowed the ideas of other artists. This fact looms large in all art forms, including literature, painting, music and, certainly, theater.

Historical Inspiration

Let’s start, for example, with William Shakespeare. People often think of William Shakespeare as the most original, brilliant playwright of all time until they dive into the origins of his works. Yes, he was quite a talented figure, but all of his works were tied into and inspired by source material. Many of his writings were adaptations of previous plays by other playwrights. They also contained elements from the adventures, stories and mythologies attached to famous figures from particular time periods, such as real kings and queens.

Contemporary Examples

This same type of borrowing occurs in contemporary theater. What I love about contemporary theater, especially Black theater and American theater, is that you see these references play out. You see the power of adaptation.

Take, for example, “Hamilton.” It’s an adaptation by Lin-Manuel Miranda of Ronald Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. You can also think about “The Wiz” in this context, right? “The Wiz” is an adaptation of the film “The Wizard of Oz” that was an adaptation of the book of the same name written by Frank Baum. You can see this pattern of citation occurring all over the place.

There are certainly examples in other plays. If you think of August Wilson’s cycle of plays in terms of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” for example, he captured the cultural mythology around Ma Rainey. He gave that history new life on stage.

If you think of the work of Suzan-Lori Parks, you can see that she loves her repetition revisions. She calls them “Rep and Rev,” which describes how she takes source material and plays with it. She has a couple plays inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” One of them, “In the Blood,” is all about a character named Hester, and how she engages in 21st century society, or late 20th century society, instead of puritanical society. Suzan-Lori Parks explores abuses and expectations around gender that still exist and still pertain to female experiences around the world.

Online Performing Arts Education

With your performing arts education, your explorations of these types of references to historical events, peoples and previous artistic works can help you determine the direction of your own art. As you learn, you may discover that someone had previously expressed something about a topic that’s close to your heart in ways that you want to adapt and make relevant to, for example, your life experiences or modern events. Whatever your reason for making these citations, you must learn how to use them without infringement and appropriately credit previous artists.

One of the most important things when pursuing a career as an actor is understanding reputation and that your reputation as an actor is what matters most. However, you don’t need other people’s help to create a reputation. You can do that on your own today. You can do that through creating content and through all sorts of mediums because the mission is not necessarily booking more work.

Instead, the mission as an actor is to become known. You achieve that through consistently reaching out, consistently building relationships, consistently showing up at auditions and being the best version of yourself that you can be. This is where the skill and psychology come in. If you don’t have the skills to back it up, you can promote it all you want and build relationships on social media all you want, but in the end, you’re going to have to have the skillset.

At the same time, if you have the skillset and nobody knows that you exist, you’re never going to actually have the career that you want either. So, you need to find a way to bridge both. Fortunately, there are ways of doing this so you can create your own work. Frankly, it’s very easy nowadays. You likely have a phone in your pocket right now, and that’s all you need to have to create something. Just pull it out, come up with something, and start filming.

One thing that actors tend to forget is that because we live in a world where technology is so democratized, we don’t have to wait to be given permission to work anymore—and in truth, you really shouldn’t. Many of the happiest actors in the profession go out on auditions, get hired, and do the work. But, during those times when that isn’t happening, they’re getting together with friends, they’re practicing self-tapes, and they’re giving each other feedback.

They’re also writing things, or they’re using their iPhones or cameras or borrowing equipment from a friend or relative and learning how to make work themselves. These days, an actor entering the profession after finishing school, or really anyone who’s just getting started in the industry, is really somebody who needs to be a constant generator of their own work and their own success.

It also helps to be spending time every day having conversations with representation or with other actors. Many actors choose to get together every week and read plays together just to continue progressing and keep their minds working on text. Other actors get together regularly and do self-work with other people present, just to practice that unique skill of auditioning. Some people just make short film after short film or web serieses. They do whatever it takes to be consistently practicing.

Actors, unlike say, somebody who plays a sport and can potentially go and practice very easily or play in a pickup game, tend to often think about the whole scope of what it would take to create an actual production. Or, they try to get cast and let their focus narrow down to just getting hired to do the job in that one specific way. And when they approach it this way, they miss out on using that time to develop more skills, more productive practice, and doing the things that will actually make them more likely to book work.

To have the best chance of success, they need to see themselves as creators and as somebody who has the power to create things for themselves, even if they’re struggling to get hired in that particular moment.

You can learn much more about the performing arts and how to succeed working in them with an online performing arts education. It allows you to attain all of the benefits and knowledge that comes with performing arts education, all from the comfort of your home.

“The Bench (A Homeless Love Story)” is a piece that has been online performing arts education expert and playwright Robert Galinsky’s calling card for the past few years. Galinsky wrote the first draft when he was collaborating with August Wilson in 1986-87 in New Haven. At the time, he was also working with Lloyd Richards at Yale University’s performing arts education department.

The structure of “The Bench” evolved over time. “It really came down to discovering that there was one character, Joe, who was going through something, traveling a journey, and was potentially going to be changed or not changed,” Galinsky says. “And everybody else was serving that particular cause and that arc.”

At the same time, all of the other characters have something at stake with Joe’s journey. There is something at risk for everybody, and it will result in either a reward or a loss based on what he goes through.

Joe is in love with somebody, but he will not admit it. “It’s a real simple structure, but simplicity is great because now we can see how complex human beings are with their behaviors over such simple things,” comments Galinsky. “The guy can’t admit he loves this woman so he goes out and basically trashes her all the time.”

Joe’s behavior has an effect on everybody else in their little community; because of it, the townspeople do not all get along. They finally tell Joe to man up. “Go tell her you love her. It’s simple as that,” Galinsky says.

It’s “as simple as that” according to the townspeople, but for Joe, it’s not that simple. He lost love in his heart years ago and had been through many different things that destroyed his sense of hope. He didn’t know that he could find love again; in fact, he was afraid to find love again. Ultimately, four other vagabonds gave him the courage to face his fears and give love a shot.

Joe proceeds to go and profess his love to the woman. She rebuffs him and resists. Just like Joe, she is hardened and doesn’t want anything to do with love. It was too vulnerable, too soft of a place to be, and too scary. For her, it was easier to put the wall up and have a thick layer in front of everybody and everything in life.

Nonetheless, Joe persists in his confession, and the woman begins to see him in a different way. He comes to her in a different way from the past, and she relents a little bit. “She doesn’t give him the full on, yeah, I’m with you buddy, but she gives him a little window into the possibility that she might love him back, just a tiny window,” says Galinsky.

Joe has no guarantees; nor does he have promises. He knows, however, that there is a tomorrow. He will see her again, and life just might be different.

A tremendous collaborative bond between design team members is essential for a successful production. The team can consist of a designer to do the mise en scene, scenic surround and setting; a sound designer, since soundscapes are becoming ever more important; a costume designer; a lighting designer and a projection designer. These are all people who can conceptualize where the writer and the director want to go and the kind of imagery and atmosphere that are necessary.

In some kinds of creative processes, the director may meet for many weeks with the design team before they ever meet a company of actors, and all that work may be done beforehand and just presented to the actors on the first day. With other kinds of processes, the designers are in the room from the very beginning and assisting while the piece is being invented and coming together. The later scenario is often called “devised theater,” which is a form of collective creation in experimental theater.

Traits of a Unified Design Team

We must think about the quality of the design team: Is the design team complementary to the actors who go out there on stage with the weight of the storytelling mostly on their shoulders? Are they happy to be working together? Are they all committed to the work in the same way and for the same reasons? Is there both a selflessness and an assertiveness about what they’re bringing to the process?

These questions help us to determine if we will see, as every day this magical alchemy knits together in the rehearsal room, the sum of the parts becoming something actually transcendent for an audience.

Unfortunately, you can have what I call “dream teams” that go nowhere. You can have the best producers and the most in-demand director. You can have justifiably venerated senior members of the acting profession. You can have the hottest new talent making their debut. You can put it all together, and you just come up with complete goop, because there are no guarantees. Yet, if you have a unified quality design team framework in mind, the likelihood that something will knit together is probably greater than not.

Performing Arts Education

Your online performing arts education provides you with knowledge and tools that can someday help you to form and manage or be a part of a unified design team. It can also help you to recognize early warning signs of trouble when members of a team aren’t meshing well with each other, actors or anyone else involved in a production.

With the right education, you can learn how to sell a theatrical production to the largest audience and increase your profit margins.

As a performing arts producer, it’s not just about producing a good story to release to the public; it’s about finding the best team to promote the play and sell it to the public. That’s what people are interested in, the next part that their favorite action star or romance debutant is doing. A performing arts education can teach you how to pick the right team to handle each particular job. With the right people in the right places, you can have more exposure and build up a bigger audience.

To support the author and creative team in performing arts, you need to have your advertising reach your audience through all your marketing channels. Most people have a smartphone and other smart devices, so they often check in on Facebook and Instagram to see what is happening in entertainment and their friends’ and family members’ lives. The advertising team, marketing team, social media/digital media team, and the management team are the ones to sell the show to the public by presenting the starring actors and actresses to their audience.

Advertising and marketing the stars to the audience has nothing to do with the creative elements but more so the artistic ones. After the audience is brought together, the artistic element is passed over to those stars to practice their artistry. As the producer and sometimes the press representative, I have weekly meetings with my teams to follow their direction in the promotion strategy. With technology evolving, social and digital media has played a large part in the promotion efforts. Online performing arts education will help you find success in the entertainment industry.

What is an Actors’ Union? Just like with any other union, these organizations can help performing arts students and actors network and find like-minded people to spend their time with.

“There’s a Screen Actors Guild for media,” says Jeff Kaplan. “There’s also a union for stage called Actors’ Equity.” The majority of Equity actors are not working, so the Equity card that comes with the Actors’ Equity union doesn’t guarantee actors work, but it does help get them access to higher-level productions and jobs.

“They set pay scales. That’s probably the one that performers are most interested in, but they do other things. They provide basic minimums for workplace safety, the number of hours you can work, what time you have to be done, how you resolve conflicts during productions. They have health insurance.”

Joining an Actors’ Union

Getting into one of these unions can be tricky. In order to join a union, you have to perform in plays that are union-only, which results in a chicken-and-egg situation: how do you get into a union-only play if you’re not yet a union member? These unions have apprenticeship programs set up that allow a handful of non-union actors to perform, but the number of actors is kept at that handful in order to keep the union’s roster exclusive.

Is there a downside to joining an actors’ union? The union will provide actors with a lot of opportunities, but it does limit their actors as well. For instance, if you are a part of an actors’ union, you have to get written permission to perform in a non-union play, which is why not everyone chooses to join a union. They like to keep their options fully open, but on the flip side, they are limited to only working non-union plays.

When seeking a performing arts education, whether it’s an online performing arts education or an in-person one, students usually have a lot of questions about unions, like how to join one or whether or not you should. It’s made more complicated by the number of unions out there. “In brief,” says Shanga Parker, “there’s AEA. That is the union for theater actors and stage managers. And then there’s SAG-AFTRA. They’re combined now. Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists-they used to be separate, now they are one. And that is for film and TV.

Each union has a different way of becoming a member. AEA, or the Actors’ Equity Association, allows actors to submit paperwork after being cast in one of their specified shows. Once an actor joins a show that counts for the union and submits the paperwork, they’re considered an Equity Membership Candidate, or EMC. As an actor works on an Equity production, they accrue points week by week. Once they’ve built up enough points, they can join AEA.

However, AEA requires an initiation fee alongside the point requirement. That initiation fee has varied over the years, but it’s usually to the sum of a couple thousand dollars.

SAG-AFTRA works similarly in that you can get cast in a union role and choose to take it or not. The difference with SAG-AFTRA is that membership is affected by something called the Taft Hartley Act, which was written for a different reason but applies to the union. Essentially, the Taft Hartley Act gives you the choice of joining the union upon taking your first union role, but declining is also an option. That said, if you take a second union role, you’re required to join the union at that point, and there’s an initiation fee of a couple thousand dollars as well. Actors need to weigh the benefits of union membership with the initiation fee and plan accordingly.

The first thing you want to think about after you figure out for whom you are making a performing arts production is the quality of articulation of the story that’s being told. If you’re dealing with a script, and it’s written in vernacular, everyday language, is it as strong as it could be? Do you believe that the writer has a singular voice and talent that is ready for and deserves to be nurtured by full production?

Sometimes producer Elizabeth Bradley thinks that some of the most promising early playwrights are lost because they’re simply produced as needed and not produced as ready. Another problem that can occur is that they’d be much better writers if they were produced more frequently, earlier on, because, like everything else, it’s a craft. You get better at it, but where a particular writer will fall on that spectrum comes down to the play, the writer, and the piece.

In performing arts education or online performing arts education, you’ll learn to explore all of these essential questions. Do you have the right match of director? Does the director actually have a sense of conviction of what the sensibility of the piece needs? Can they partner with the writer? If they’re doing a revival of a classic play and they’re completely reinventing something, is the reinventing trenchant? Is it necessary?

When Malini Singh McDonald did Black Henna, for the first show they did a reading, and then they knew they were going to do a full production. They knew the first step would be to think about how much money this was going to cost. That’s always the first step in performing arts. How much money is this going to cost?

It’s so important to think it through, and luckily there are budgets that you can find in online performing arts education to give you an idea of how much each area is going to cost, more or less. Areas to consider are your space, your rehearsal space, because those are two separate things unless you can get a package, PR, music, and licensing.

In McDonald’s experience, they kind of had a budget but then forgot some line items like insurance. They begged, borrowed, and stole before coming up with their current style of finding investors. They just reached out to people and said, “Hey, we need X amount of dollars to get us to this point.” Thankfully, people loved them, and they loved people, so a lot of people were able to just give them the money.

Having learned from this experience though, they ended up in future productions really getting clear about the budget and then thinking about how they’re going to actually fund it. Not to say they don’t beg and borrow anymore. There are times they need to ask for more money because something comes up. One thing to learn in performing arts education is to always expect the unexpected.

For example, let’s say you budgeted $2,500 for this line item, and then it turns out to be $4,000 just because stuff happens. Plan ahead, stick to your budget, but budget for the unexpected.

What was very different for me in preparing for a musical that isn’t always covered in performing arts education is something called a sitzprobe. I had never heard of it before, but it’s when you go and, for the first time, you actually sing with the orchestra. You’re in the room with them, and it’s terrifying and thrilling.

The other thing that needs to be covered more in online performing arts education is that it’s such a big group of people on such a large stage that they literally have handlers backstage. You don’t even have to know your cue. Somebody literally comes into your dressing room, takes you where you’re supposed to enter, and pushes you on at the time you’re supposed to go. I mean, there are no accidents here, and I know it wasn’t just for me. I know that’s what they do because I’m pretty good at knowing when to walk on the stage. But it was both frightening to give up that control and kind of comforting to be taken care of in that way.

One thing that’s important to think about in your online performing arts education is that there are many differences between designing costume for film and designing for the theater, the opera, or music. “I think the biggest difference is that in theater, you see the whole costume, you see the whole person, and you see actors all together,” says Durinda Wood. “Shoes are also really important because they are usually in the audience’s eye line.”

Durinda explains how background design affects designing costumes for the theater: “The background is very stationary. You know exactly what that background’s going to be. … Artistically, it’s much easier to design for theater and opera and know that your vision is going to be the way that you designed it.”

“I love theater and opera. I always thought that I would be a theater designer,” Durinda says. She notes that “one thing about the opera is that the singers are just singers. They’re not necessarily actors. And they’re much less demanding, I would say, about their costumes. I think they really just want to be able to sing. That’s their most important thing.” She adds that sometimes simple changes are called for, like loosening a collar or vest to allow an opera singer enough room to vocalize comfortably.

If you consider a career in costume design as you pursue your performing arts education, it’s nice to know that Durinda also says she’s found that both opera singers and theater actors enjoy working with costume designers and treat them with respect.