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5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Majoring in Theatre
No, none of them have to do with my future salary.
Last spring, I officially graduated with my undergraduate degrees Cum Laude. Hooray!!
The time of putting the blood, sweat, and tears into four years of college has finally paid off and I received my Bachelor of Arts in Theatre with a Performance Concentration. Additionally, I picked up a second major in Communications and received my Bachelor's in that as well.
And before you go off in the responses about why studying theatre may have been a “waste of time and money” I have absolutely no regrets about pursuing it. This was actually something I’ve wanted to pursue since middle school.
But with having this dream for so long came a lot of expectations I started creating. How it ended up being is not at all what I imagined.
That being said, I wanted to share all of the things I wish someone had told me before going to college to study theatre. Truly, there is no other major or program quite like it.
Disclaimer: All of these points are specific to my personal experience with the program I enrolled in. Every college is different and has its own set of standards when it comes to getting a specific degree.
1. It’s Very Similar to Being an English Major
This was, by my own closemindedness, by far the number one thing I did not expect. When it came to the coursework my peers and I went through, there was a shit ton of reading and writing.
I had a handful of semesters where I had to read 3 to 4 plays a week across my entire class schedule. Typically, that was the prerequisite to a weekly essay, Socratic seminar, or other homework assignments.
Better yet, if I wasn’t reading plays for a written assignment then it was for a performance. Depending on the discipline, theatre majors often have to spend extended amounts of time reading plays in order to pull out monologues and scenes for visual presentations and auditions.
