(don’t) quit your day job

this post was inspired by Keira’s post over at The Daley Rant

In addition, I was having a chat with one of my good friends about choosing theatre as a career path. He was relating to me that his partner was getting quite anxious about the possibility that he never wanted to work a ‘normal’ job, and would be content to hold down part-time or casual work because it allowed him to keep working on his theatrical career.

This followed a chat that I was having with the girl about how she wouldn’t tell her parents I wanted to pursue a career in theatre… at least not when I first met them.

I’ve always wanted to have a career to ‘fall back on’. When I first decided I was going to study, and then pursue a career in theatre  way back when I was 13, I knew that I would have to have a ‘real’ skill to fall back on. I relied on my (and my father’s) interest in computing to get me by. Cue having to drop all my ‘real’ subjects in the HSC due to bad marks and then failing my first year of computing at university. I don’t have a capacity to do things that I don’t particularly enjoy.

Scrap that.

I don’t want to waste time doing things I don’t enjoy doing.

Luckily for me, I have another passion that does pay the bills and can also tie back into theatre. Where I am at the moment, I feel like I’m selling out slightly (working in agriculture was not where I saw myself), but I content myself with the fact that I won’t be here forever. I will, at some point, shed my corporate nature and work somewhere I enjoy 100%. I know that I can do this, so I will.

But what about people who are truly attempting to make it in performance? or producing? or directing? Even better than that, what about the people who are determined to keep doing this on a smaller scale, so they can work on new, challenging or interesting projects in an increasingly homogenised industry? It’s incredibly hard to make a living out of this industry and I guess that’s why so many people succumb to soul-crushing 9 to 5. It’s inspiring to hear that people are genuinely giving it a go, and achieving some level of success with it.

So… the point of this post?

I don’t think it’s as important to have something to ‘fall back on’ as I once did. Having had some experience in a few different roles, it’s almost impossible to have a career-based day  job and give performance a go. If you want to make a career out of theatre, then producing, directing or performing is more than a full time job, it’s a complete lifestyle.  It’s incredibly difficult, especially when rent is due, but that’s an aspect of it that you have to consider.

If it’s your passion… if you live and breath it… if you want to live that kind of life then forget something to fall back on.

and if worse comes to worse, there’s great money in prostitution…

…i mean cinema.