I guess the question that I get asked most often is, how do I get money? How do I get funded? It’s a great question. Many times, I wish I had better answers. Basically, I guess there are different approaches. It is vital to discuss funding for any performing arts education including online performing arts education.

Tips To Finding Funds

Apply for Grants

Depending on where you are, for example, if you live in Europe, there are a lot of grant opportunities. If you live in the States, there are fewer, but there are still some grant opportunities. Basically, the first thing that you do would be to apply for all the grants and keep it up. Keep applying and reapplying, eventually, you’ll get one.

Do Crowdfunding

Now, for the cases, for all the times that you don’t get the grant, which are quite a majority in our history, we did some Kickstarter campaigns. We were able to crowdfund. This works for many small companies. Sometimes, you can get a partnership. It is very valuable to be in partnership with cultural foundations, cultural institutes, and different institutions.

Get Sponsors

There are many institutions that chip in, maybe a rehearsal space, some money for the set, or payment for the artists. This is how you kind of puzzle together a bigger budget. Of course, another possibility is finding actual sponsors. If you’re a good manager and if you’re a good promoter of what you’re doing, you can get big brands excited about being associated with your experience. That’s when they would sponsor, and your life would become a lot easier.

Start With a Zero Budget

The other approach is going basically on, which I discovered here in New York City. Never crossed my mind before, but I feel like it’s a very important approach to, at least, know. The idea of creating something on a zero budget. You can start with a no-money budget and see what you can do without anything.

It’s crazy, but it turns out that you can do without anything. Almost anything that you can do with a small budget, with a medium budget, and at the end of the day, with a big budget. It’s really a matter of perspective.

A former student of mine just did this show. They worked with a guy named Dave LAST NAME? Malloy? who is a book writer and lyricist. It was an a cappella show called “Octet.” It had eight singers who would start singing in harmony on a dime. They all had earpieces because he figured out a way to give them their notes remotely and even do a countdown so that they knew when to come in on time.

From the audience seating, you’re watching this show and wondering how they do it. Since I knew him, I wrote him and said, “How did you put this together?” He told me that it really took a while to figure out, but that it’s magic by the end.

Tech Solution Considerations

There are these technical things you need to take into consideration during your studies and career. As my former student explained, you might need to stretch something out, or show that the actors entered from the house. You might need to show that the way the audience came in is how the actors came in. You realize you’re going to need light in one spot and all of this drumming. You realize that you need to bring all of these elements together.

You need to figure out how much time it’s going to take them to all come through the house, up the stairs and come onto the stage. You need to determine what happens next and the cutoff. At that cutoff, you need to decide when the lights are going to hit and when the stage manager is going to call for the next lighting cue, which might be a blackout or a quick or slow transition.

All of these technical elements take time to prepare. A lot of them are decided and prepared during rehearsals, but they only really happen during the technical phase of preparation for a production. During that phase, everybody gets into the theater for the first time together. It’s that period when things start to change to make certain that everything happens in time: Members of the crew hang and focus the lights. It’s the first time that you’re on the stage with the lights. It’s the first time you’re on the stage with the costumes under the lights, which is an experience that the actors have to get used to before opening night.

Performing Arts Education

Your online performing arts education can give you a solid tech solutions foundation. It won’t only provide you with a history and evolution of technical solutions in theater and performing arts. It will also prepare you, depending on your career track, with knowledge and skills that you need to provide these and additional tech solutions to others working on a particular production.

When you’re making music for a production, sometimes, the person who creates the music arranges it. Then, the question is, OK, how do you take that arrangement and throw it on other instruments with consideration to the size of the budget and the size of the house the show is being played in? Online performing arts education is a great start, but in a professional setting, the musical director will take that information and synthesize it with the storytelling. As far as actors go, too, the musical director is frequently in on the casting as well; when I’m directing the music for a show, I usually am.

I’m inclined to be in communication with the writers (or the director, if the writers aren’t around), discussing the intent for the sound, the kind of actors, the kind of people, and asking “how does this come across?” while I’m shaping the music. I shape the music according to the energetic flow of the show. Musical directors might conduct a show, though sometimes there’s a separate conductor, but either way, each show has its own tempo, and there’s always a sweet spot for that tempo.

Performing arts educations don’t necessarily prepare you for finding that sweet spot. I’ve done shows where, afterward, the actors are like, “man, that was too slow,” and I’ve done shows where they’re like, “dude, slow down, it’s like you’re trying to make us go crazy.” Then, there’s just a little bit of work to find that sweet spot. That’s, in my experience as a musical director, how I approach musical direction.

Lighting design is probably, at least in my mind, the most important design aspect for theater. You can do a show without scenery, but you can’t do one without lighting. Lighting can tell a story way better than scenery. In fact, lighting helps focus an audience’s eyes where you want them to look. Lighting is a vital storytelling element. A lot of fantastic creative designers choose a career in lighting design because they know that they can affect the show in fantastic ways that other designers can’t hope to match.

Lighting Design Technologies

Right now, we’re seeing a lot of interest by performing artists and crews in using digital technologies to create lighting instruments. You can essentially use projections to create shapes within any video. The process is effortless in programs like Isadora or QLab. You can perform a lot of basic video design manipulation in these kinds of programs as well.

Yet, you can also create these shapes for any performance using a regular office projector and PowerPoint. I’ve seen professional shows in which crews have done incredible things using these methods. A lot of people think of projections as something that is behind the actors or merely a scenic element. But, you can find proof that projections are actually used as lighting instruments.

You might catch an actor in a projection. You might aim your projector on the floor and create specific shapes or video that actors then interact with at any given moment. You might also create interactive designs where lights and video move around the stage based on where the actors are located or what they’re doing in a scene.

Shining a Light on Success

All of these lighting techniques are happening at the forefront of entertainment. You can see the proof at all levels. It’s kind of an amazing time to be a performing arts creative, lighting designer or a student seeking a performing arts education because there are just so many toys out there that you can access that are often inexpensive and easy to manipulate.

For this reason, I encourage anyone currently working in this field or pursuing an online performing arts education to test any technology that they might find around them. You’ll be amazed at how much you can tell an engaging story that audiences remember using common lighting-related tools that you already have available to you.

What many people don’t realize is that many of the greatest artists in history just borrowed the ideas of other artists. This fact looms large in all art forms, including literature, painting, music and, certainly, theater.

Historical Inspiration

Let’s start, for example, with William Shakespeare. People often think of William Shakespeare as the most original, brilliant playwright of all time until they dive into the origins of his works. Yes, he was quite a talented figure, but all of his works were tied into and inspired by source material. Many of his writings were adaptations of previous plays by other playwrights. They also contained elements from the adventures, stories and mythologies attached to famous figures from particular time periods, such as real kings and queens.

Contemporary Examples

This same type of borrowing occurs in contemporary theater. What I love about contemporary theater, especially Black theater and American theater, is that you see these references play out. You see the power of adaptation.

Take, for example, “Hamilton.” It’s an adaptation by Lin-Manuel Miranda of Ronald Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. You can also think about “The Wiz” in this context, right? “The Wiz” is an adaptation of the film “The Wizard of Oz” that was an adaptation of the book of the same name written by Frank Baum. You can see this pattern of citation occurring all over the place.

There are certainly examples in other plays. If you think of August Wilson’s cycle of plays in terms of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” for example, he captured the cultural mythology around Ma Rainey. He gave that history new life on stage.

If you think of the work of Suzan-Lori Parks, you can see that she loves her repetition revisions. She calls them “Rep and Rev,” which describes how she takes source material and plays with it. She has a couple plays inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” One of them, “In the Blood,” is all about a character named Hester, and how she engages in 21st century society, or late 20th century society, instead of puritanical society. Suzan-Lori Parks explores abuses and expectations around gender that still exist and still pertain to female experiences around the world.

Online Performing Arts Education

With your performing arts education, your explorations of these types of references to historical events, peoples and previous artistic works can help you determine the direction of your own art. As you learn, you may discover that someone had previously expressed something about a topic that’s close to your heart in ways that you want to adapt and make relevant to, for example, your life experiences or modern events. Whatever your reason for making these citations, you must learn how to use them without infringement and appropriately credit previous artists.

One of the most important things when pursuing a career as an actor is understanding reputation and that your reputation as an actor is what matters most. However, you don’t need other people’s help to create a reputation. You can do that on your own today. You can do that through creating content and through all sorts of mediums because the mission is not necessarily booking more work.

Instead, the mission as an actor is to become known. You achieve that through consistently reaching out, consistently building relationships, consistently showing up at auditions and being the best version of yourself that you can be. This is where the skill and psychology come in. If you don’t have the skills to back it up, you can promote it all you want and build relationships on social media all you want, but in the end, you’re going to have to have the skillset.

At the same time, if you have the skillset and nobody knows that you exist, you’re never going to actually have the career that you want either. So, you need to find a way to bridge both. Fortunately, there are ways of doing this so you can create your own work. Frankly, it’s very easy nowadays. You likely have a phone in your pocket right now, and that’s all you need to have to create something. Just pull it out, come up with something, and start filming.

One thing that actors tend to forget is that because we live in a world where technology is so democratized, we don’t have to wait to be given permission to work anymore—and in truth, you really shouldn’t. Many of the happiest actors in the profession go out on auditions, get hired, and do the work. But, during those times when that isn’t happening, they’re getting together with friends, they’re practicing self-tapes, and they’re giving each other feedback.

They’re also writing things, or they’re using their iPhones or cameras or borrowing equipment from a friend or relative and learning how to make work themselves. These days, an actor entering the profession after finishing school, or really anyone who’s just getting started in the industry, is really somebody who needs to be a constant generator of their own work and their own success.

It also helps to be spending time every day having conversations with representation or with other actors. Many actors choose to get together every week and read plays together just to continue progressing and keep their minds working on text. Other actors get together regularly and do self-work with other people present, just to practice that unique skill of auditioning. Some people just make short film after short film or web serieses. They do whatever it takes to be consistently practicing.

Actors, unlike say, somebody who plays a sport and can potentially go and practice very easily or play in a pickup game, tend to often think about the whole scope of what it would take to create an actual production. Or, they try to get cast and let their focus narrow down to just getting hired to do the job in that one specific way. And when they approach it this way, they miss out on using that time to develop more skills, more productive practice, and doing the things that will actually make them more likely to book work.

To have the best chance of success, they need to see themselves as creators and as somebody who has the power to create things for themselves, even if they’re struggling to get hired in that particular moment.

You can learn much more about the performing arts and how to succeed working in them with an online performing arts education. It allows you to attain all of the benefits and knowledge that comes with performing arts education, all from the comfort of your home.

“The Bench (A Homeless Love Story)” is a piece that has been online performing arts education expert and playwright Robert Galinsky’s calling card for the past few years. Galinsky wrote the first draft when he was collaborating with August Wilson in 1986-87 in New Haven. At the time, he was also working with Lloyd Richards at Yale University’s performing arts education department.

The structure of “The Bench” evolved over time. “It really came down to discovering that there was one character, Joe, who was going through something, traveling a journey, and was potentially going to be changed or not changed,” Galinsky says. “And everybody else was serving that particular cause and that arc.”

At the same time, all of the other characters have something at stake with Joe’s journey. There is something at risk for everybody, and it will result in either a reward or a loss based on what he goes through.

Joe is in love with somebody, but he will not admit it. “It’s a real simple structure, but simplicity is great because now we can see how complex human beings are with their behaviors over such simple things,” comments Galinsky. “The guy can’t admit he loves this woman so he goes out and basically trashes her all the time.”

Joe’s behavior has an effect on everybody else in their little community; because of it, the townspeople do not all get along. They finally tell Joe to man up. “Go tell her you love her. It’s simple as that,” Galinsky says.

It’s “as simple as that” according to the townspeople, but for Joe, it’s not that simple. He lost love in his heart years ago and had been through many different things that destroyed his sense of hope. He didn’t know that he could find love again; in fact, he was afraid to find love again. Ultimately, four other vagabonds gave him the courage to face his fears and give love a shot.

Joe proceeds to go and profess his love to the woman. She rebuffs him and resists. Just like Joe, she is hardened and doesn’t want anything to do with love. It was too vulnerable, too soft of a place to be, and too scary. For her, it was easier to put the wall up and have a thick layer in front of everybody and everything in life.

Nonetheless, Joe persists in his confession, and the woman begins to see him in a different way. He comes to her in a different way from the past, and she relents a little bit. “She doesn’t give him the full on, yeah, I’m with you buddy, but she gives him a little window into the possibility that she might love him back, just a tiny window,” says Galinsky.

Joe has no guarantees; nor does he have promises. He knows, however, that there is a tomorrow. He will see her again, and life just might be different.

Generational change impacts not only society but also the performing arts that reflect and comment on it. This is an important point to keep in mind as you continue your online performing arts education. Harvey Young, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Boston University, and Elizabeth Bradley, Broadway theater critic and professor at New York University, share their thoughts on emerging African American playwrights and how they’re transforming the dynamic of the theater.

Harvey Young sees a passing of the torch from August Wilson, whose plays chronicled the 20th-century African American experience decade by decade, to notable Black playwrights giving voice to the African American experience today. “You see Suzan-Lori Parks, you see Lynn Nottage, receiving additional support and mentorship. You begin to see folks like Katori Hall emerging as well,” Young says.

“You can see every 20 years, there is this generational passing in which the lessons, the struggles as well, the histories, the life lessons go from generation, to generation, to generation,” he observes.

“If the job of art is to tell society what it can’t know without art, I think that the white American theater has stepped back far too long from that responsibility,” says Elizabeth Bradley.

She comments on the contributions of the new generation of Black voices: “The playwrights who have emerged in the last four to five years, whether they have been working quietly away and we just haven’t discovered them, or they are new voices such as Lynn Nottage, who has had a very long career. A more recent career is that of Jeremy O. Harris. Dominique Morisseau is another example of a very important African-American female writer.

“Of course, Suzan-Lori Parks has been heralded for decades now and is a Pulitzer prize winner. Katori Hall is another example. With plays like ‘Fairview,’ and plays from the African diaspora like ‘African Mean Girls’ or the ‘School Girls’ play, there has been a push forward. Tarell Alvin McCraney with ‘Choir Boy’ or Branden Jacobs Jenkins with ‘Everybody.'”

Bradley continues, “It has been manifest that there is a depth of talent on the musical side. For example, there’s Michael Jackson — not the one with the white glove, but the one who wrote the musical, ‘Strange Loop,’ which is the most recent Pulitzer Prize winner. “These voices are coming to the forefront, and they are going to change the conversation between artist and audience,” she concludes.

Look for this and other generational shifts as you continue your performing arts education and pursue a career in the field.

One of the most challenging things about an actor approaching a script is that by time they finish working on it, they’re going to be living inside a role with a really unique perspective about that story. But in order to do that well, they have to start from a much more zoomed-out place.

That moment when you first read the text, you can never get back. And so it’s really important that when you first read it, as you move along, you take notes about the things you expect to happen, the things that surprise you, the way you think the relationships are happening inside the script, where you think the story is going. That is the journey your audience will take when they eventually come see the production or the film or watch the TV show. And there’s no way to recapture that experience when you already know how it ends.

Once you’ve gotten that initial, raw response to the text from an audience’s perspective, then you can begin to explore the text in a few different ways. In the performing arts, it’s important that actors go on a journey of curiosity to explore the things they don’t understand about the world that the text inhabits.

Maybe it’s about specific places that they don’t know anything about. Maybe it’s about the job that the character has. Maybe it’s about the nature of the relationship between the character and other people. No script is without a huge number of things to get curious about and dig into as a part of the research process in your online performing arts education.

Gianni Downs tells us that if you’re working in New York, almost every house is a union house. That means there are specific people who are trained and paid to do certain jobs. So, for instance, as a designer working on a Broadway show, you aren’t supposed to touch certain things on stage because there’s someone else who is employed to do so and knows how to do it safely.

Because of this, you want to be very conscious of what you’re doing in any house with which you’re unfamiliar. You want to make sure that you talk to your production manager, and also talk to the union heads who might be there with you. You need to find out what you’re allowed to do and which things require that you ask permission before you proceed.

These things are also true across the country. Yes, New York has many union houses, but most of the other major cities do as well. And those unions also might control different aspects. So, for example, you might work in a scene shop that isn’t union, and you might load a set right to the doors of a theater. Then, the union crew will take it and load it the rest of the way from there. That’s because the actual theater itself is a union house. Your scene shop, however, is not union. This type of thing is a pretty common experience for people who are doing shows and traveling from space to space.

Perhaps you’re in some sort of tour or you have a small professional theater, and you’re renting other houses to do your productions. “You can also be unionized in your shops themselves,” says Downs, “and these are people who have been trained and have joined the union, whether it’s IATSE, or in my case, I’m a USA 829 member.” This will not only dictate what you’re able to do professionally, but it will also help when you’re negotiating your contracts. As a union member, you’ll have certain guarantees within your contracts that will help you negotiate with potential producers and employers.

You can learn more about these concepts with performing arts education, or even learn from home with online performing arts education.