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A Practical Guide to Starting a Career in Technical Theatre: Section 1

In A Practical Guide to Starting a Career in Technical Theatre, Steve Shelley distills the methodical and tactical steps required to secure a first job and begin building a career into seven distinct "toolkits." This introduction provides a brief overview of the topics explored within this particular toolkit.

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Today's Educational and Professional Theatre: Finding Your Fit

This section begins with an overview of educational theatrical institutions – universities, colleges, and conservatories – and examines how their economic engines operate and how they may affect you and your career. It also includes an assessment of theatrical post-graduate and professional realities in the United States.

Section One will help you evaluate whether you";re ready to leave other careers or educational theatre, the depth of your commitment to theatre as a career, and whether your aptitude and temperament are better suited for freelance work or for a staff position. It will also outline some of the skills necessary for thriving as a freelancer in technical theatre.

Finally, this section will lay out some of the tactics and financial choices you will encounter before graduation or a career shift, or when stepping out of an academic environment.

All of this information is presented in order to help clarify a fundamental choice: stay in your current career, stay in school and continue your academic path, or complete your studies and enter the professional world.

While the primary intent of this book is to offer practical strategies for building a professional career, part of this section is focused on the preparation and behind-the-scenes work required long before (and long after) you take on any job.

Whether you decide to further your education and training, or transition into the professional world is completely immaterial – and should not be the subject of debate by you or anyone else. If you like your current environment; if you have the space to create in ways that supports your sense of self and your relationship with others; if you feel fulfilled as an artist – then the setting is secondary. Be the person and the artist you want to be, and be happy.

If you feel ready to enter the professional world of technical theatre, on the other hand, this section may provide initial task lists to help begin that transition.

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A Practical Guide to Starting a Career in Technical Theatre is published by Field Template Press, and is available for purchase or download on Amazon and other fine literary websites. Visit the book’s website here:

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