It’s important for me to look at theater as a field. Yes, a part of that is the industry, which can be very exciting. There’s so much more to explore. Theater doesn’t simply involve a kind of making of a show for a particular audience in a particular theater. It can mean many things. This is an essential element to teach in any performing arts education, even in online performing arts education.

“It happens in small communities, in large communities. It happens with professionally trained individuals, also within community members. It happens in spaces that are, again, about the texts, others that are physical. It takes on all these forms. In many ways, the exploration of theater is an ongoing thing that will keep changing, growing, and developing,” says Ruben Polendo.

You must see theater as a field, for those in theater or who have an interest in theater. The exciting thing is that you have an agency to navigate that field as a theater artist. Regardless, we all navigate the field differently.

“Theater has this odd reputation, which I want to dispel. I want to just push that away. That reputation is one in which people imagine being for this rarefied few. That you go there and everyone’s wearing a tuxedo. They’re watching whatever is playing with opera glasses. It’s just the most alienating, foreign not-for-us scene out there,” states Harvey Young.

That’s not the case at all. Theater, from its roots, has been about people coming together to watch performances. It began as street festivals, street fairs. Think of your favorites as an outdoor concert where people gather, and the community is there. People are expressing their delight, their pleasure. That’s the kind of energy that theater strives to capture. To put into a building and invite people.

That’s the core, base, the root. If you think about what theater gives you, the theater provides that chance to be a fly on the wall. It gives you a chance to spy, to listen, to encounter the stories, the experience, the lives of people who are not your own. It’s a bit voyeuristic. That’s part of the pleasure of it too.

It’s like you are getting access to stories and experiences you haven’t seen before. In some cases, if it’s musical theater, you’re watching not only those “fly-on-the-wall experiences.” You’re also encountering true virtuosity. You’re watching Lin-Manuel Miranda freestyle in certain moments. For example, In Love Supreme.

Theater creates proximity. You’re in the same room as the actors. You’re breathing the same air, and you’re in the seeing moment. It’s not like TV. It’s not like the movie theater; you are there. Your interaction, physicality, and coughing can change the spirit, dynamic, and mood of what’s taking place. That’s why people love theater so much. It feels different when you are there.

Walter, at some point in the show gets a check from his mother because she’s like, “I have to support him, He’s a man, he need to feel like a man.” She gives him the check and the friends that he was thinking were going to hook him up, steal the money. They’re gone so then the family has to make a decision. Meanwhile, the homeowner association in this neighborhood where the new house is, sort of, come late to the table to understand it’s a black family and they want no parts of that. They send a representative to come basically buy out the family to give them a check to not move into the neighborhood and so this is also playing itself out.

By the end of the show, they dismiss him and they’re all back together as a family. They’re back as a place that can contain all these tensions that we have watched play themselves out with each individual character who has a collection of traits and a way that they walk through the world. We also see a way that they think about the world and a way that they relate to people, which is in many ways different than any other character. Then the question comes, “They’re all one family, so at what point do they have the connection and where is the connection?”

That’s what I think the play is about and that’s how you sort of as an actor say, “Where do those sort of live?” I would suggest that, even if I was scoring it or if I was musically directing it. In this incident that happens, what is being revealed and what is being played with? What is being exposed? What opportunities do the characters have to transcend where they are, to think new stuff, to take a chance and to think something new? I think that would be an important way to sort of think about it. That’s how I would analyze the script. That’s how I would see my way through this artificial thing called a play, that happens to be called Raisin in the Sun. Online performing arts education suggests asking, what human stuff can be brought out that anyone in the audience can relate to? Because everybody comes from a family, whether they are inside of that family or outside of it. Everybody sort of has a location. Everybody has a way of thinking about the world and moving through the world, which is uniquely theirs. Performing arts have a way of connecting everyone, no matter the background.

The question for all of us is, how do we live together? How do we connect together? How do we connect as a family? What binds us, and then how do we overcome the obstacles that come to us? Do we do that in separate ways, or do we need to come together to do that? That’s one way of sort of approaching a script analysis on this play that I think could be really useful because you see a whole lot of stuff. Then the trick is, where do you see yourself?

“Do you know what this money means to me?” says Walter Lee Younger. Do you know what this money could do for us, mama? Mama, I want so many things.

Lena Younger replies, “Yes, child.”

Walter Lee Younger then says, “I want so many things that they’re driving me kind of crazy.”

One thing you can do in the theater world is to raise money for another organization. That might sound counterintuitive to anyone in performing arts education. Why would you do that? According to Malini Singh McDonald, it can be easy to miss the benefits of cross-promotion and raising money at an event.

Speaking from her own experience, McDonald explains, “We did a one-night event, and it was for the LGBT Center. And what we did was my friend — and actually my conspirator — he had a play that he just wanted to get up and heard.” The two worked together on a reading of the play and created some price points around it.

McDonald continues, “I love a raffle because I can sell raffle tickets. You want me there at your matinee performance doing that. But that is also key because people will spend money on that.”

At that one-night reading, her performing arts team was able to raise money through raffles for another organization. As McDonald puts it, “So now this other organization knows that there’s this play out there, and you use all of that in your marketing materials.”

Robert Galinsky offers similar advice for anyone in online performing arts education. He recommends, “When you’re putting up a production, you’ve got to align yourself with lots of different people, lots of different organizations. I discovered this when I was in Hollywood.”

Galinsky talks about a time when he was putting on a show and doing everything he could to get people in the seats. The show was packed every night until the end of the run.

The plan was to do another run, but he couldn’t imagine putting the energy into getting people into those seats again: “That’s all I spent my time doing [was] driving an audience to the show.”

Instead, he decided to adapt. “I called every organization in LA that deals with homeless people,” he shares, “and said, ‘Let’s do a pop-up benefit show for your staff, your audience and your clients.’ And every one of them responded positively.” Galinsky received feedback like, “Oh my gosh, yes,” and, “That’s a great idea.”

When he started to do his show, he didn’t go through the normal theater channels. Instead, he used the organizations’ audience base. Those people were interested in the subject matter. They wanted to see the show, so it was a perfect fit.

Before taking his show to LA, Galinsky spent months ahead of time researching all of the organizations that served people experiencing homelessness. Once he set dates for his theater, he sent the organizations carte-blanche invitations. Their entire staff and anyone they wanted to invite would get free seats. He explains, “You work hard; you work with this population. I want you guys to have a treat. Come in, see my show for free, and give tickets away to your volunteers, your staff, whomever.”

During this time, Galinsky had an agreement with his investor. They knew that they weren’t going to make their money back on ticket sales, so the investor was fine with papering the house and loading up seats.

Every single night, at least four organizations that served people experiencing homelessness were present at the show. Beforehand, Galinsky told each one that they could have 30 seconds during the talkback at the end of the performance to pitch their organizations. They could tell the audience who they were, what they did and whom they served.

As Galinsky recalls, those organizations packed the seats. To sum up the experience, he reflects, “The thing you have to remember now is I put my butt on the line here, because if the material wasn’t authentic, if the material wasn’t real, I had people who deal with homeless people every single day watching this. They would have been disgusted with what I was doing. Thankfully, the work was good. The work was solid. And they would come up to me and go, ‘I saw my client today. I saw two of my clients on stage. I deal with that guy every day. The one who was begging for cigarettes, I see him every day.'”