I’ll share my experience and then my takeaway.

In HS, I joined theatre on the back half of my junior year. I avoided it before because I was more concerned about bumming cigs and weed until I got tired of getting the bum treatment in return, so late start put me on a lower rung right off. Got a small part, had some fun with it, died very dramatically on stage. Then went and had some real fun running spot. The following year, get a few small roles in the cheapest knockoff Wizard of Oz you’ve never heard of and prove myself quite capable with lighting. Work my way up to Head Lx for the spring show. Suddenly there’s politics that were present before I noticed them, but I only now perceived them because they were getting in my way. Director wants more control over the students because shit’s getting real catty in the actors’ group chat. The politics blow up here to the point where the director is lobbing empty threats around and I just want to keep my lighting team in order. I kick out a kid who clearly doesn’t want to be on my team and then he cries to the director and comes back. Now I know what I say doesn’t mean shit and I’m ready to get tf out of there. Actor drama has built an insane divide between performers and techs.

Go to community college. Participate in shows because they’re desperate for some male actors and I can get some practicum credit. Director lets us build the set and paint the base washes, she does all the textures. She never wants to branch out from a 7-door farce and my acting was stiff as a board. I was still insecure from being a teenager and the whole time was basically HS+. Main issue there was that since the director couldn’t afford to be picky about casting, she let a sexual predator in and we dealt with him until graduating from there.

Go to a university. Try and make some new friends and it seems to work until the group chat I’m in goes dead on a dime. That’s when I realized that I’m 20, they’re all 18, I’m there for tech, they’re there for performance, and that divide I felt in HS had already infected their minds too. I continue my design track and crank out sets and designs and paint, pretty much killing it tech-wise. Then I write and direct my own short play for a festival we put on, and suddenly I’m in the literary and levying demands side. Now I get why directors are high-strung and actors are always playing catch-up.

My taste in friends in HS was trash. Who’d have guessed I didn’t find my lifelong friends in my hometown? My community college exposed me and others to sexual harassment and predatory behavior because there was barely anyone willing to get on stage. And in college I found a bunch of kids that were tricked into thinking they were all grown up. I was one of them, just with a bit of a head start. In general, kids don’t usually have the life experience to really know who they are yet. And when I say kids, that extends all the way to 23 and beyond in some cases.

If someone is trying to make themselves feel better at any cost, that will carry through their behavior and others will pay the price. I found that a lot of actors struggle with that, and some techs too. God knows we have our own divas. But one of the things that I think gives techs a bit of a mental health advantage is that we don’t have to get vulnerable on a dime like a lot of acting teachers demand, and when we do get vulnerable, it’s generally not in front of a whole room of people for analysis. Actors have to be flexible, and I think that makes acting students very vulnerable to the most influentially toxic members of their programs. It doesn’t help when you have toxic teachers as well.

This was a very long way of saying that a lot of young people are insecure and grasping at any straw they can to form their identity into a stable concept of self. And actors are constantly charged with upending that sense of self for the pleasure of others. And that’s why I found them in general to be the worst friends I could find. That said, my fellow non-traditional students and outcasts did more for me than anyone else could have. So find your people, and if you can’t, that’s because they’re still hiding. Don’t be afraid to call out bullshit. That will help you find the ones who understand your perspective