I promise you that somewhere out there in the universe is an MT grad - or a million of them - and I know a few of them - equally as talented as the most successful kid out there, who is now unfortunately living in their parent’s basement, and the family is wrestling with whether or not to help them. This kid pounded the pavement, went to a good school, worked hard…and did all the right things, but not everyone who does that is handed the keys to the kingdom. Often these kids disappear - from CC, from auditions, even from FB, as do their parents as they regroup. People who are on the lottery winning end of things really should not ASSUME that there was any specific reason other than lottery for their success. AND there is somewhere also a kid who DIDN’T do everything right, and yet got tapped with the magic wand and is now on Broadway. And we can believe all we want that it was one way or the other but we will never really know. I have a friend whose theater kid is 15 years older than mine who warned me years ago that “90% of the kids who make it are kids whose parents paid for incredible opportunities for them, can support them while they audition, or who have connections.” Don’t throw tomatoes; that was a quote. But I know of some parents who will do anything and spend anything to help their kid succeed while others completely back off, and I daresay that in my limited time looking around, the former group definitely has an advantage. But does that mean we should do it? There are pros and cons and yes, some is a complete gamble which we and our kids could be on the losing end of. Or the winning. And yes, it is a LOT about the choices we make with whatever money we have and what we value. I have a friend who is quite wealthy but wouldn’t dream of even paying for college for her kid, let alone help him afterward. Yet others feel completely differently and with not a dollar saved toward retirement and rarely a cent spent on themselves, will give every penny they have in order to give their kids a better chance. And kids are different, too. Some will gladly and repeatedly put their hand out while others would die before even dropping a hint that they are living on ramen noodles. We need to know our kid and hopefully make some of these decisions, if we can afford it, based on what is best for them (assuming helping them financially might not ALWAYS be what is best for them). None of this is bad or good but what each person values and who they are, as Soozie said. We all make the best choices we can at the time and hope it works out in the end, but it might not. Let’s face it, a lot of this is luck and getting a few fortunate opportunities which, had the kid had to wait tables 50 hours a week or move home, they may not have had. It’s largely a crapshoot, no matter how talented or hardworking these kids are. Happy Thanksgiving. ~:>
I absolutely agree with @calliene that MT is a lottery career, where plenty of talented and hardworking folks don’t earn a living while a very few lucky winners strike a jackpot. Others find a middle ground, though it is always a bit precarious as contracts are seldom long.
Great points @calliene.
To to show you all how thinking about this stuff is throwing me off my game, I just realized that my daughter actually graduates on May 18th, not June 18th. I was probably setting myself up subliminally to give her a free pass for an extra month or more honestly, buying myself more time to figure out what the heck I should do if things aren’t exactly clicking yet.
The worry doesn’t end as I’m sure my 81 year old mother would attest even when speaking about me.
Happy Thanksgiving one and all!
Well thanks to all that posted on this thread that I started! Lol. I am thankful for this CC forum as it has really helped me put all this MT stuff into some perspective. My D is only a junior & more then once I have brought up the “you know, you can go to college for something else…” talk & it normally doesn’t go anywhere… She looks up other majors even just to see if her other interests could morph into a possible job choice & always seems to end up back at MT. Then if I encourage her to look into other things she gets mad and defensive. I think to be honest, the thought of never getting a decent job in performance scares her to death. I think sometimes if she thought she could jump ship she might…but it has such a strong hold on her, it’s all she’s ever really done. As her college time nears I get more concerned about it but what to do? I am hoping that in the next year and a half some epiphany might happen and she’ll either go one way or another and be strong in that choice .
She’ll find her way - whether a rocky road or smooth. I think we adults just want things to easily for our kids, but “easy” is not what life’s about. A journey you care about is much more worthwhile - even if it changes along the way.
…and what I wouldn’t give to be able to edit post #42. My mother is 78, not 81. I kid you not I wasn’t sure of that either. PotAto, potatO, tomAto tomatoO… let’s call the whole thing off.
Let’s hope your mother doesn’t read College Confidential, @halflokum.
^^^LOL!!
I was thinking about your D, @halflokum and another thought is that she could line up a summer job or gig even though she will have graduated and is looking beyond the summer. Your D has been successful every summer during college and can likely do so again for this coming summer, and that can hold her over to have that in place. I forgot when I was posting earlier and said that my D was cast the week of graduation (the audition invite literally came when we were in the car leaving graduation), that job didn’t start until the fall. But my D had already lined up her summer job before graduating. She was the musical director that summer for NYU’s Reality Show Abu Dhabi, and did that all summer and went to Abu Dhabi in September and then started rehearsals for the tour she was cast in. So, one idea is to still line up a summer job the summer following graduation as one starts to hit the pavement on their career.
Yes, because I think the audition schedule is pretty dead during the summer anyway. Might as well skip NYC in August, charming as it can be.
Perish the thought @Calliene .
@SoozieVT she is already on the hunt for summer work including a couple of things outside of the city that pay fairly well and include housing. The days of considering low paying internship gigs are over for her. She knows she has to come off a summer season with more money in her bank account than what she started with even if that means doing something in the city that doesn’t pay very well and holding down a survival job at the same time so she can afford to do it. Such will be her life. Such is the the life for thousands just like her. 
In case it’s of use to anyone, there was a good discussion of survival jobs a while back. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/musical-theater-major/1114539-survival-jobs.html
@halflokum I am still giving D money in terms of helping her afford to live in a doorman building in Chelsea (with us as her sometimes roommates on weekends), paying for phone and health insurance and buying some clothing. She is on her own for most other expenses, but does have our credit card for emergencies, cab fare if needed late at night and for special purchases that she tells us about.
I’m not going to lie. She is not living the life of a super struggling artist in a poor neighborhood without money for restaurants and entertainment. We want her to take advantage of this time of life in NYC and to enjoy it.
But that is our choice and we are aware of that. And we are in the position of affording the $2,400 a month that we are paying for our share in “her” apartment (that includes electric and cable.). (She pays $800 a month.) We see it as a temporary situation. Eventually we will take over the apartment entirely for ourselves, but before that her younger sister who will be starting grad school will be moving in, too. Right now D is in the apartment on her own 90% of the time, but we still see it is an extension of our family home. We live in nearby Long Island.
My D is extremely hard working, but even though she works on the business side of entertainment, in reality she is not really making more than about $15 an hour either…for a grand total of about $40,000 a year.
A lot of her friends, whether auditioning and working flexible jobs or working full-time at other entertainment related jobs, are still all earning in the range of $25,000 to $40,000 per year. To be honest, it is a struggle to afford NYC with that income. Something has to give. To live on their own with a budget of let’s say $1,000 to 1,200/ month they are either living in decent neighborhoods in very small shared spaces or fringe neighborhoods that are either gentrifying or are far from Manhattan. Or they up their housing budget and have to compromise on having any $ for entertainment.
For many of the kids, parents step in to help out. Certainly not all parents–either they can’t or won’t. But very many do. The average cost for a one bedroom in NYC is in the $3,000 range. So even to sub divide a bargain apartment, you are generally more in the $1,200 range. And if you want bigger or more security or a prime neighborhood, you are going to be paying a lot more.
Of course, there is the option of not doing NYC at all. and for some that is a very viable alternative.
@uskoolfish So glad to read that I won’t be the only parent doing the above
Don’t get me wrong. Our plan is not to do this forever. Our goal is to have the NYC apartment we are “sharing” with older D and eventually younger D available to us in about 5 years time. At that point I will retire from my p/t teaching position on Long Island and we may move into the NYC apt M-F so that H doesn’t have to commute any more.
I am grateful that we are able to come up with this as a solution and are enjoying the access we have to the apartment now. Many of our friends are purchasing/ renting small apartments in similar arrangements with their kids to help then launch whether they are in theatre or not.
To answer the question of what happens to the kids that need to be self-supporting but are struggling…the one’s that D knows have either changed fields all together, gone back to school in a range of different fields–MBA’s, law school, education–or have moved back to live with their parents and have either changed fields when they arrived home or are breaking into more local theatre markets in places like Toronto and Cincinnati.
Or their parents pitch in with money until they land something. Some kids bounce back and forth between NYC and parent’s homes and do not have permanent housing in NYC but rather take advantage of gypsy housing for periods of time as they audition.
And several friends are self supporting. Most of those have gotten onto Bdway (about 5 or 6 so far.) Some are doing national tours or cruises and are subletting their NYC apartments. They are able to save enough money to return to NYC to audition for months after even though they are working lower paying survival jobs.
@uskoolfish , thank you so much for the detail and the honesty. It is actually truly helpful to hear from a parent who is helping and have an idea of what that actually means to them, the boundaries they put around their participation and the logic for doing what they decided to do. Really, I appreciate it and I think others here will as well.
My daughter has many friends that graduated in the past two years whom have stayed in the city. They are all working in some capacity and not all of these were theatre majors. Several including one of her current roommates and a number of other very close friends actually didn’t major in theatre. The stories of how they are “making it” (from my daughter’s perspective anyway but she is close enough to ask these friends) run the gamut. The basic theme seems to be that the friends are for the most part indeed getting some form of help.
Knowing how expensive NYC is and more or less what things cost, this isn’t a complete surprise to me. Yes, the $15/hour full time job is only $40K/year. And there are also so many jobs that pay $10, $11, $12… It’s not a sustainable nor winning formula even for someone lucky enough to have only an $800/month share of rent in a great apartment in a great neighborhood courtesy of a forward-thinking deal with family nor a $600/month rent courtesy of being willing to live without luxury in an apartment that is otherwise nice but with a railroad bedroom that is only slightly bigger than one’s bed. Both of these monthly rents are actually quite remarkable for a recent grad living in NYC and maybe even for Chicago, Boston and other major metros. The trick of course to get ahead is to find the job that pays 2-3+ times that per hour and not move. I’d venture that the number of students that have something like that in the bag the moment they graduate are few and far between if they are pursuing careers in theatre. So the struggle continues.
So glad my husband doesn’t read cc! It’s tough enough getting through the school years without thinking about having to keep on supporting two MT kids way beyond graduation in the most expensive of all cities! Maybe I’ll just go back to one of my earliest thoughts when d first committed to MT–she’s young, she’s pretty, she’s smart, so there must be a great guy out there who would love to support her! Just kidding… back to saving pennies.
^^My daughter is marrying a fellow BFA (in Acting) graduate. Just sayin’.
S is young, he’s good looking, he’s smart, can croon killer love songs. . . Wealthy women and talented young men created a Renaissance a few centuries ago, maybe he can benefit from a similar arrangement. . . Mom is NOT thinking that.
Actually, my thought is that the “rebirth” is going to take place in less expensive cities - already IS happening in many places. If the “big” cities continue to starve their artists and the industries that support them, the smart ones will pick up and relocate the shop elsewhere. $10 - 15/hr goes a lot farther in “the desert” (places like Cincinnati, for instance). Forward-thinking investors are resurrecting old theaters - and building exciting new ones. With 5-6 well-regarded MT/Acting/Music/Tech programs close by, our town is over-run with talented performers, musicians, technicians, directors. “Tired” performers and others in the Arts are relocating from NYC/LA so they can have a “real” life and continue their craft, perhaps teach or open up a studio, at the same time. And some high-powered Arts lovers are very vested in making their hometown flourish creatively. We can already see “community theater” productions that are not far off Broadway quality. In five years or so, I believe they will be nearly indistinguishable. Several shows have been workshopped here and then made the move to Broadway (some are Tony winners). I’m willing to bet Pittsburgh, Louisville, St. Louis, etc. have similar stories unfolding. In the future, I may only “need” to go to NYC if I want to see “Famous-Name-Star” in ANOTHER Broadway revival.
Parents of MT/Acting college students, and soon-to-be college students, take heart. Your kid may be able to have the career of his/her dreams AND afford dental care. They will still need to work their rear ends off, and may only make $10-15 hourly, but $30-40,00/year is a living for a single young person in a mid-sized city. A few friends could rent - or even buy - a whole house in an urban area. And the longest commutes are 30-45 minutes on a “God-awful traffic” day. You can still afford expensive, fancy coffee drinks and even find food you can’t pronounce the name of. And parents, you may not need a cross-country/oceanic plane ticket and a few nights in an astronomically-priced hotel to see your kid over the holidays.
I know, the Cincinnati/Pittsburgh/Louisville/St. Louis experience is not the same as NYC. And having an in-city apartment to “share” with your kid is WAY cool. . .
I agree and would add Minneapolis and Chicago to your list. Both have fantastic theater scenes and are much cheaper to live in than NYC.
I see the same exciting things in regional markets that @mom4bwayboy describes above, and honestly when you overhear conversations in the Times Square ticketing lines it’s hard to convince yourself that NYC has the most sophisticated audiences around. D has always said she’d rather be a professional actor in Toledo than a waitress in NYC, so while I think she’d love to live in NY some time it seems that at least for now she takes great pride in getting ahead financially by doing performing work she loves. Happily, “Living the Dream” means different things to different people.