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.

It’s fair to say that color-blind casting is a subject of controversy and debate. Does it add to a production? Does it detract? I think it’s interesting that the conversation in the performing arts and performing arts education seems to be moving toward color-conscious casting so that when you ask an actor of color to perform a certain role, you’re well-aware of all of the kinds of optics, coding and signatures of that casting. There’s a sensitivity and an intentionality around that.

And then there’s that notion that you would discover somebody — that you would find somebody completely arresting and unusual.

One of the very early roles that Meryl Streep played was in a piece called “Taken in Marriage” by an American playwright called Thomas Babe. She was in a small theater at the New York Shakespeare Festival, now known as the Public Theater, for six months or so when she had this role.

And where and how she chose to laugh in that production was so unusual that I looked at that young actor in that part and knew I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I was going to be seeing a lot more of her.

I think casting directors look for that serendipity of something in the body and the rhythm in the voice, in the thinking process that is somehow unique and of that moment. I think there’s a temporality, a sense of this person for the zeitgeist, which is important, as well.

And when you get it right, you can overcome all sorts of other things that might be problematic in a production. I think casting directors are among the many unsung heroes of the profession in the work they do to help directors and producers get it right.

I sometimes call this serendipity actor glue. I know that a new play has been so beautifully cast and the roles so exquisitely realized in ways beyond what is even on the page that I am unlikely to ever see a production of that play that good again because in future productions some of the work that didn’t get finished in the writers’ room is going to become more apparent without that magical actor glue.

The concept is hard to explain in online performing arts education or in a classroom, but we benefit from it when we get to see it in an original production in New York.

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.

For performing arts, “You always want Arts managers as part of your company because they’re the ones who want to figure out how to make it possible for the art to reach audiences and how they can enable the creativity from people that they’re working with to achieve their highest possible level and to be as relevant as possible to audiences,” explains Elizabeth Bradley. “You have general managers and executive directors sometimes producing artistic directors.”

Based on her performing arts education, Bradley clarifies, “If you take an example of a company such as the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Signature Theatre, the Roundabout in New York, or the Atlantic Theater, you’d see these are not-for-profit companies, meaning they’re not run to create profit from a particular commercial offering to a group of investors. They have a mission for public good and education, and they are contributing to the culture through the realization of their mission.”

“The people who lead those companies, from a logistical perspective, make sure there’s enough money to put the season up, that there’s an artistic director or artistic producer who’s appropriately supported, that there’s a marketing team, a publicity team, a fundraising team, and a group sales team.” Bradley continues, “Of course, the very important people who work in a theater venue, if a company has their venue, as the Manhattan Theatre Club and Roundabout does.”

Elizabeth then concludes, “Who’s working in those box offices, what ushers are showing the patrons to their seats, who’s hiring the front-of-house manager, who’s working with volunteers in the company, and who’s running the education department? All of those functions tend to reside, depending on the budget size of the company, with a general manager or an executive director, or sometimes an artistic producer.” These are lessons well taught in online performing arts education.

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.

“Once a production you feel is ready to go, and even before you’ve announced it, you want to put together your team, which is public relations, marketing, advertising, people who will be doing your social and digital, and also your management” says Jeffrey Richards, describing the role of a producer in pre-production meetings that take place prior to performing arts shows and productions.

The Importance of Learning Marketing in Performing Arts Education

“So much has changed even since I began nearly 20 years ago, with the emphasis on how you’re marketing a show,” says Richards, who also says “that emphasis has changed from when people just automatically used to take full-page ads in ‘The New York Times’ to now doing commercials on television and using the internet to a much greater extent.”

Richard explains that other members of the team are also frequently involved in the marketing decision-making. “An author or the playwright or the composer and the librettist team have a say in what the artwork is going to be.” He continues to explain “sometimes you include them on the commercial because you want their approval and to feel comfortable in the way that you’re selling the production. To that extent, I have in recent years asked playwrights to have discussions with the ad agency so that they can understand what the playwright is doing in terms of the playwright’s vision, I can say.”

“So they have an understanding of where they should go, and how they should treat the material. And once you have the playwright working with you, I should say it’s the producer’s responsibility to marshal all of those people and to make sure that you have a coherent framework as you are moving forward [with your production].”

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.

Scott Illingsworth tells us that an actor will eventually understand the arc of the story and the world that a character inhabits. That’s the moment to begin zooming in a little tighter on their character’s experience of the script. That’s the time to begin exploring some of the things we often think of more as acting exercises.

He goes on to say, ” I think, especially because working on a role often starts with a piece of text — and sometimes, even the process of looking at the scripts can feel like an academic or analytical process — that it can be easy to forget, in those early stages, that acting is a physical art form. It’s a craft of constructing something over time the way any trade constructs things over time. And the way you construct it is with your body.” This is important to any performing arts education, including online performing arts education.

Working on a role often starts with a piece of text. Sometimes, even the process of looking at the scripts can feel like an academic or analytical one. It can be easy to forget, in those early stages, that acting is a physical art form. It’s a craft of constructing something over time. In the same way any trade constructs things over time, you construct with your body.

Scott thinks actors should develop a tool toolkit that includes using their bodies to explore the world from the beginning. He often discusses with his students how important it is to understand the way your mind works with the rest of your body. “For a long time, we talked about acting as either thinking or doing,” he explains. “We talked about this separation between the mind and the body or working from the outside in or the inside out.”

He feels that the more we understand human beings, the more we understand that this separation is false. Your thoughts influence the way your body exists in space and what you do. All the experiences and events that happen to your body change your thoughts. It’s a continuous integration cycle. It’s important that actors understand this as soon as possible. It should be before they get into a room with other actors or before they get on the set.

It means things like taking a script and traveling around a studio, or even your home, as you explore the world. Does this person change spaces? Do they move from room to room? Are they doing an activity during this scene? What does it mean for you to explore that same activity? What does it mean to say these words while you do some of the things this person does?

Even something as simple as that, acting out the things that the person does, puts your body in space doing things while you speak those words. “And it has a profound impact on people when they really begin to understand how physical an experience acting is for both the performer and the audience,” he concludes.

When determining how to approach a script in Performing Arts, one should take a play like “A Raisin in the Sun”—Lorraine Hansberry’s very, very famous play from the early ’60s. The play starts. You’re reading the pages. What you’ll see on the page first is a little epigram. You’ll see what is almost a little poem, and it’s written by Langston Hughes. It’s basically what happens to a dream deferred. Does it fester-does it “dah, dah, dah,” or does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

That point is meant to set the mood of the play. It’s meant to make you think. It’s meant to hint at what will happen in the play. It is also there to make readers question who is Langston Hughes?

That’s the first place to start. Readers in online performing arts education should adopt the mindset: “Let me find out about who this Langston Hughes is and why would Lorraine Hansberry put that poem on page one before the play even starts?” Then you start with the play, and you look at the stage directions and see what that tells you.

The stage directions tell those in performing arts education that you’re in a sort of a cramped, crowded, tenement apartment in Chicago in the late ’50s or early ’60s. Readers know that it’s cramped because you see a little boy asleep on the couch, and that’s where he sleeps every night. You see another room on the stage. You see a woman who wakes the little boy up.

The reader now understands what’s going on in the story. By the description of the apartment and the stage directions, one understands the family doesn’t have money. Knowing these facts is important things to understanding the characters in the story and the basis for the play. Readers see a black family that doesn’t have money, living in a very crowded situation. You see the wife waking up the son and then waking up her husband.

As the play moves along, readers understand the grandmother — the father’s mother, the little boy’s grandmother — also lives in this cramped apartment, and the family defers to her in a certain way. Very early on, the reader understands that the day portrayed in the play is a very big day. This is a day the family has been waiting on; the grandmother is supposed to finally get the insurance check she’s been waiting on since her husband passed away. The check is supposed to be substantial, and getting this money is going to change the lives of the entire family.

Understanding the family’s misery is due to poverty, what day it is, and why getting this long-awaited check is so important to the family helps readers to analyze the show. Readers will understand that Walter — the father — is a character who is unhappy with his life. However, Walter doesn’t seem to understand how to get the thing that is going to make life better (namely money). He feels constrained by the role society has put on him in his work as a chauffeur. Walter is not the type of person who can simply walk into a bank and secure a loan. The family is growing but unable to get another, larger apartment.

The family doesn’t have money. The expected check could be the ticket to any number of things. For the grandmother, it may be the ticket for a better life for her herself and for her family. For her son Walter, the check is likely to be the ticket for him to make a better life for the family.