<p>My son has done community theater since he was 10, and he loves it. He's a sophomore this year, and to participate in his high school program, we have to sign a contract (and have it notarized) that says he will do no shows outside of school. Is this normal for a fairly active high school theater program? He's quite torn about what to do.</p>
<p>Does he go to a performing arts HS? That sounds awfully strict. Personally I find it really wrong to limit a teenager’s ability to explore opportunities. What a shame. And to notarize it? Makes me glad we come from a small, boring town.</p>
<p>This does bring up the subject regarding college. People should be checking policies of the schools they are looking at, regarding auditioning or performing on the outside while enrolled. These restrictions do happen regularly. I think it makes much more sense on a college level, where they are much more involved in your whole life, and there is a choice involved in attending the program.</p>
<p>WOW!! That is something dcs!! I wonder why? Do they think they will be too busy and not as committed? Huh… my DS is VERY involved in his HS theater and also does outside community theater and Globe stuff. He likes the variety and challenge… not to mention all the more girls to meet…LOL!! It can pose a challenge sometimes, and he has to carefully check rehearsal conflicts, but it has worked out for the most part. That must pose a very hard decision for your DS…how sad!</p>
<p>I find it hard to imagine that any HS theatre program would have enough experience in any way - on stage and off - where a student wouldn’t benefit from working in the community as well. Kids need variety of directors, peers, and material. My D made amazing relationships with adults she worked with in community theatre. </p>
<p>If I were him, I’d stay out of HS theatre and stick with the community work. And it won’t hurt him one bit for college admissions. They do NOT care where you get your experience. I’m sure they see lots of kids who avoid their HS programs, for one reason or another.</p>
<p>My school wasn’t that strict, but I had a similar situation. I did go to a performing arts high school, and one of the rules for staying in was that you couldn’t do professional work or you’d get kicked out. I live in Los Angeles, and it was mostly because a lot of kids audition for movies, etc while doing high school theatre and will all of a sudden have to drop everything they’ve committed to because they just booked a job and have to go on homeschooling for months at a time. They encouraged us to seek outside training, though. They loved when we went to summer programs, did community theatre over the summer, things like that.</p>
<p>dcsparent, I can’t imagine signing such a contract. If it’s a performing arts high school and you can’t do professional work, that’s one thing. But, a regular public high school insisting on such a contract? I’d say run, don’t walk, in the opposite direction. It means your son would be giving over his whole theater life to the one or two people who direct the shows in that department, when better opportunities might come up at any time. What reason do they give for wanting to control the students’ lives outside of school? Maybe there are good reasons, but I can’t think of any. It sounds terribly limiting for someone who really cares about theater.</p>
<p>I think that stinks. I have not heard of that at the high school level. </p>
<p>My D did 5 shows last year, two at the high school and three in the community, took voice and dance lessons and kept a 4.1 GPA. It can be done with commitment, and needs to be done to gain the skills and experinence they need for college. I don’t think it’s fair to limit students that way. </p>
<p>I would ask some questions of the drama club advisor, such as “What is the reason behind the policy?”</p>
<p>I would have a couple of questions.</p>
<p>In my dayjob, I work in the legal field. So I would ask whether the contract really does apply to community theater, or just to paid work. I know that there are high schools that have that policy with professional work (it was sometimes mentioned in the old TV series FAME).</p>
<p>Some community theaters are incredible, others are really bad. Some high school theatre programs are incredible, others are really bad. I have no way of knowing how good your community theater and/or your high school programs are. If you need to choose between them you are going to need to evaluate them to see which one to pick.</p>
<p>Also remember that a number of college level acting programs have a similar “no outside shows” policy (but many do not). Your high school may just have just introduced the policy to try to set a standard similar to a college level acting program.</p>
<p>KEVP</p>
<p>After much thought, my son decided to drop the high school program and do community theater for another year. The high school theater teacher was understanding, though his friends at school are annoyed with him. I’m sure he’ll feel left out when they all start rehearsing for shows. But it’s a good life lesson about making choices and dealing with the repercussions!</p>
<p>I think he made the right choice. Even if the two current choices are about equal, if he went with the HS program he would be restricted from any other opportunities that come along as well. I can see signing a commitment that their program must come first - to deal with situations where conflicts arise for rehearsals and performances - but an outright ban on other involvements is unreasonable.</p>
<p>If the HS program was much better than the community theater, I would at least ask why they have this policy - but if it is only about potential conflicts either with scheduling or over-commitment, I would question why is only addresses other shows. I could see similar problems with students who are also involved in other extracurricular activities, and in some cases they could be even more of a problem.</p>
<p>Yes, ask to kids to understand the program requires a certain level of commitment, but don’t ask for exclusivity unless there’s some compelling reason to do so.</p>
<p>Since the time I first wrote this post, the theater teacher has softened his stance. He invited my son and a couple of other students to audition for the play that will go to competition. And he says the rules for advanced theater students will be less restrictive next year, which should allow my son to do some outside shows. This was a good lesson for my son on why you should never burn bridges.</p>
<p>It also helps that you have a son and boys are just in high demand! I do get your point though!</p>
<p>My daughter went to a performing arts high school that discouraged the students from participating in community theatre. We never understood this and she chose to participate in both. The community theatre always understood conflicts and worked around them, the high school never did. My son goes to a regular high school with a very strong theatre program and there is wonderful cooperation between the community programs and the high school. My son is having a much better experience.</p>
<p>My son’s high school director takes a more passive-aggressive approach to preventing his students from doing outside shows. Namely, he never issues a real rehearsal schedule. The kids never even know about guaranteed days off so their moms can take them to the dentist. On several occasions, chorus members have been dropped from scenes because they had to leave for medical appointments on days they didn’t know there was going to be a rehearsal, so once they’re in a show they are its slaves. I do not understand why the families put up with this, except that I think the kids forbid the parents to talk to the director for fear they’ll never get cast again.</p>
<p>My son has solved this problem by doing all his acting in community and professional shows (our area has quite a lot of both, with many small professional companies that can only pay actors $300 for 25 performances, for example). He does tech for the high school shows. His schedule is much more flexible except during tech week, and he is much less replaceable. He’s done props, sound, lights, and set design for various shows and learned a lot.</p>
<p>In retrospect and knowing what we know now, my D would have participated minimally in HS. Really, it would have been just enough to be considered an active thespian in order to attend Thespian Conference. She would have spent the majority of her time with our (very good) local theatre company. I didn’t understand how the whole process worked and foolishly believed that she HAD to be involved in HS in order to be accepted into a college theatre program. I wish I could go back and redo the last four years. Things would be very, very different and a LOT of heartbreak would have been saved.</p>
<p>Don’t beat yourself up, ugadog! There are so many “do-overs” many of us might wish for in HS, but we adults know that in the long run, it won’t really matter. I’ll even say that the bad experiences and heartbreak probably have helped your D become the person that she is.</p>
<p>My D spent most of HS focusing on music. She was in numerous orchestras and bands, and was involved prolifically in singing. She also spent 7 years as an Irish step dancer, which is hugely time-consuming. Up until 10th grade she was considering becoming a painter or an opera singer - in fact, several of our first college visits were to music departments. She had always been a theatre buff, had been in some youth productions, but instead of performing, she mostly had watched and read about theatre obsessively instead. </p>
<p>Once she knew she wanted to audition for college theatre, she did her best to build her performing and tech resume. She did as much as she could at our HS (which does at most 2 productions per year), was in several community productions and even got a paid semi-pro show. She didn’t have near the resume many applicants have. She also chose to prep for auditions mostly on her own, for reasons I’ll never quite completely understand. So yes, her choices probably put her “behind,” but the non-theatre experiences had immeasurable value, and none of us regret them.</p>
<p>Could she have had “better” admissions results if she had made different choices? I guess so. But that’s not who she was at the time. And she is having a tremendous college experience at a school that is just right for her, which offers her all of the training and opportunities she will need. </p>
<p>I know we feel like we have been in charge of our kids - and we regret some of the influential decisions we have made over the years - but mostly in HS I think kids do what they want and are capable of, and they end up in college where they belong. The outliers who don’t get in anywhere usually also don’t have caring adults who are watching over them. Clearly you have been very supportive of your D, so try not to look back, and to see every choice and experience as part of the growing process, which certainly is far from over just because HS graduation is coming up.</p>
<p>The performing arts high school my son is looking at has a variety of rules and procedures about outside work. Their biggest worries seem to be 1) Kids getting conflicting coaching, it seems they are particularly worried about this for musicians who are forbidden to take outside lessons in voice or their primary instrument, 2) Kids taking on so many responsibilities that their academics suffer, kids on academic probation are prevented from doing any outside work and 3) Kids being unavailable for rehearsal. </p>
<p>That said, other than the music lesson thing, and kids on academic probation they don’t outright forbid it, they merely require students to clear it. When I asked about the tech theater kids, they said that their requests are generally approved. I didn’t ask about actors since I don’t have one.</p>
<p>EmmyBet, extremely wise words.</p>
<p>Thank you! It helps that I have one a couple of years out of college now, and my theatre kid almost halfway through. HS is just SO over. </p>
<p>I think my theatre kid had to give herself permission to take a risk - she is very talented musically, but sometimes it isn’t what you’re most talented at that you should devote your life to. She is finding strengths in acting (and I predict directing, writing and design) that she never knew she had. Anyone who would pigeonhole a kid by what they could do in HS just doesn’t live in the real world. </p>
<p>One concrete way we understood this was through her voice lessons. She was very classically focused, and her teacher told her countless times that the female voice doesn’t mature until late twenties/early thirties. And the work my D did in community theatre - really wonderful opportunities, onstage and off - showed her what a lifelong commitment to creating and performing can mean. My D has always been the type who can only do things when she is ready - a late walker, a quirky learner, etc. Sometimes as a parent I wished she could just knuckle down and DO what she “should” do. But I am really over that. My kids have taught me a lot.</p>
<p>I like the comments about schools that do this right - where they remember this is about learning, including other things than just performing well. Way too often, especially in HS arts (and sports, and so on), people forget that they are educators first.</p>
<p>My D2 had to learn way too early about foolish adults, but perhaps it’s been a good lesson for her. When she was in 4th grade, she got into the regional youth symphony. She had been playing violin for 4 years; since they officially started strings in school in 4th grade, she decided to start over on the cello (eventually she dropped violin for cello and played in the youth symphony on cello, until she fell more in love with the saxophone). At the end of year concert she was excited because she’d just gotten the acceptance, and she hoped the teacher would recognize her achievement. I thought for a moment, and decided to let her know she shouldn’t count on it. I told her people don’t always value the same things, and that an accomplishment outside of school might not really matter to the person who taught there.</p>
<p>Sadly, I was right. When the concert came and awards were given, my D was recognized neither for her acceptance into the youth symphony nor for her considerable ability on the cello. For the next 4 years she was placed way in the back of the school orchestras, so she would keep the group in tune and playing the right notes, and she was never thanked, let alone praised, for this.</p>
<p>Lots of people have told us they wished she could have gone to a performing arts school - there are none near us, so it was a moot point. I guess it could have been cool, but I don’t regret that she didn’t. She worked to find her opportunities, and learned a lot about all kinds of ways people enjoy the arts in the real world. College is an excellent time to have that kind of singular focus, and she finds even there that she tends to keep a broader perspective on what to do afterwards, on collaboration and competition, than her peers who still have a HS mindset.</p>
<p>I didn’t allow either of my kids to do community theatre while they were in school. They did go to a PA high school and our community theatres aren’t that great around here. Even if they had some rare parts for teenagers, only one of the theatres was semi-close to our house. I wanted them to focus on school. Both of them did and each got some great merit scholarships! The kids who did community theatre had terrible grades in high school. Colleges are more interested in kids who can balance it all and luckily, my kids had some great opportunities at their school to perform.</p>