If you’re interested in performing arts education, you need to learn the business side of it all. Take the business courses along with your regular online performing arts education courses. If you don’t want to deal with a spreadsheet or with numbers, consult an accountant or talk to an attorney. A lot of CPAs and attorneys — especially entertainment attorneys — have free panel discussions or some other networking event that you can attend and just sit and listen. Take notes because a lot of the business is just knowing the stuff you really don’t want to know about.

For example, you might not have space in your head to learn business law. I’m not saying to go be a lawyer, but I am saying that as artists, we’re already open. We’re creating. We’re taking the truth and putting it on a higher scale. The work that we are creating is elevated, wherever we’re creating it.

By opening night of a performing arts piece, the producer’s job is still not done. Instead of thinking about closing night, you’re now thinking about how to make sure that the run is productive and that you’re able to get people to come see the show. That’s where the second and third phases of marketing will come into play. You’re now thinking about how to fill these seats.

You should always aim to try to get the first two shows sold out because a sold-out show is a great marketing plan. That is the first and foremost goal you should learn as a producer in performing arts education or online performing arts education.

Producer Malini Singh McDonald has worked on a few shows like that. Once those first two shows are sold out, they were able to then shift to marketing and use some other posters that had been included in the marketing plan. On that note, it may be a good idea to have a few different posters that you can use at different times, so it’s not just one graphic. They use that in addition to seat fillers. There’s a lot of programs out there that you can use to help fill seats.

Surprisingly, what inspired a very young August Wilson as a high school student was not theater, not Black theater, but Black poetry. When August Wilson was in high school, he went to his teacher one day and said, “Here’s my latest project. Here’s my assignment.” It was the original poems he’d been writing.

They were so good that the teacher refused to believe that this biracial, self-identifying African-American teenager could have written this thing. He accused August Wilson of plagiarism. August Wilson said, “No, I wrote it myself.”

The teacher didn’t believe him, so August Wilson refused to go back. August Wilson dropped out of high school, never returned, and went to his mother and told her what happened.

His mother tried to make him go back, but August stood firm. He dropped out and never returned again. Instead, August Wilson spent his late high school age years committed to studying Black poetry and the Black arts movement of African-American theater.

He eventually packed up and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he partnered with the folks who founded the Penumbra Theatre Company. Then he sort of sat there, and watched, and saw performing arts theater occur. That’s where he cultivated his voice.

By the end of his career, he was celebrated for having bridged this decade cycle of one play per decade that captured the history of Black life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He’s now the savior of American theater. He created a huge sensation in the performing arts world, and people still fawn over him and his accomplishments.

He stood before a crowd of those who praised him for saving theater, but who themselves may not have been as actively championing Black theater as they could have been, to say no more needs to be done. He told his story, which helped to pass the torch to the next generation. His story inspired and continues to inspire those wanting to pursue a performing arts education or online performing arts education.