Thoughts About Going Back to Full Time Stage Management from a Money Perspective | brokeGIRLrich
For the last several months I’ve been working very part time for my supervisor’s theatre company here in the UK.
Between balancing school, my part time digital workshop work back in the US, and the theatre company… I wasn’t really doing alright. I had to talk to him about quitting at the end of my contracted period.
That group has had several funding issues and as I was talking about not renewing my contract, he said “hopefully we get this next round of funding and we can bring you back at a higher rate.”
In my endless attempts to avoid conflict (very healthy, I know), I said, “sure, we can talk about it if that happens.”
But as I thought about it, I realized it was really unlikely.
To work for them and not lose my mind, I’d have to cut back on my digital workshop hours.
Do we think little theatre company that was paying me about minimum wage will suddenly hop up to £50 an hour?
I don’t think so.
And I have been glumly mulling this over ever since.
I don’t know if I’m currently in a PhD slump (I am told they are kinda common, so I’m just powering through till it gets interesting again) or what, but I’ve been thinking about post-PhD life a bit lately.
And, honest to goodness, all I want to do immediately upon graduation is just work the digital workshop job (if that’s still a thing 3 years from now) and be left the heck alone for a while. I want to do my job and have no one requiring things of me at all hours of the day and have no one else’s lack of preparation causing me to receive a billion messages after hours or trying to production manage a last minute booking of a show we travel that came through just days before it was supposed to happen.
…while I make way more money with way less stress than returning to the arts.
Which makes me really kind of sad. How is life just so much easier by saying thanks but no thanks to artistic work?
I don’t want to go from comfortable to struggling and working a ton of hours a week just for the satisfaction of creating things. I think it might be 100% better to do it as a hobby.
And this is coming from someone who was making an adequate living as a stage manager as we rolled into the pandemic. Like – I cannot believe how much easier corporate life is.
And in the UK, things are even worse. I am tempted to try to sub on the West End after I graduate because… it’s the West End. That’s kind of cool.
Did you know they are all pretty much making minimum wage on the West End? Seriously, to sub as a show caller for a single show, I would probably make between £70-90 a day. That’s to call an actual large musical. This is a fairly niche and high skill job.
How. Is. That. A. Thing.
Friends, I don’t know where I’m going with this rant other than a slightly sad frustration that now that I’ve tasted decent money and work that has clear boundaries (and I’ve got level with you, I think that is even more attractive than the money – don’t get me wrong, I like the money too), I don’t particularly want to go back to the arts.
And that leaves me feeling like a piece of me is dying and that makes me kind of sad.
This is further compounded by how on earth do I go into academia and teach people the skills to trap them in the same life?
I also think a bit of this rant is that I was at my first academic conference this month and after listening to everyone complain about the academic job market I felt very… blah about everything. And it’s not like I didn’t know because I do know that I’ve really just traded one career for another that is equally insane – and not even properly traded because to teach in the arts usually means you also have to maintain some elements of your own practice within it too…
Bah.
