a poor player

Dunkirk NY – As a teacher of actors and acting, I always try to have an eye out for any information or statistics that will give my students a greater picture of what’s in store for them upon graduation. I do not like them to think about their careers in a vacuum, nor do I like to feed them myths or illusions about their chosen profession. Since I am of the firm belief that many theatre departments nationwide are training their students without regard for the realities of the profession and the changes that have occurred over the past 30 years, the more data I can accumulate to make my case, the better. Theatre education in this country needs change at every level, and it needs to change not only because we want to produce higher-quality theatre across a wider swath of this country, but because we need to provide career options beyond the standard “pre-professional training” model which is focused almost exclusively on finding success in the NYLACHI scene.

The indie scene has seen a great rise in visibility over the past five years or so, due primarily I believe to the rise of the internet, theatrical blogging, and the web presence of such sites as TimeOut NY and TheatreMania. I think it’s also becoming the place where most graduating seniors bent on heading to NYC to begin their rise to fame and fortune find their first taste of doing theatre in NYC. As such, it bears significant study and observation.

A recent demographic survey released on January 20th by the Innovative Theatre Foundation, which is the producer of the NY Innovative Theatre Awards, is a survey that I think has flown under the radar a little bit in terms of its information and what it has to say about the “average indie theatre person.” I think that’s important because the most immediate place in NYC that any young actor is going to find theatre work upon getting their BA/BFA is in the indie scene. The data is not only telling in terms of what it tells us about the profile of a typical indie actor, it also says something about the nature of what we are doing as educators. Let’s see if we can get some sort of profile of the “average indie actor” by looking at what the numbers actually mean. And for now I will stick with actors because that’s what I primarily do – train actors. So, if you’re an indie actor in New York City:

• You’re highly educated, female, and you’re white. 84% of all OOB actors have a college degree: 60% with a bachelors, 21% with a masters, 3% with a PhD. 77% are white. 5% are African-American, 4% Latino. 53% are female, 46% male.
• You’re young. 67% of all indie actors are between the ages of 21-40, a 19-year span. The highest age group is 26-30 year-olds at 24%. The average age is 36, the median is 33. There is an attrition rate of 50% from the 26-30 age group (24%) to the 36-40 age group (12%). All the percentages over 40 are in single digits. Only 20% of indie actors are between 40-55, a 15-year span.
• You’re single and childless. 51% of you are single, and 18% are living with a partner (not married). 92% of you have no children. I am assuming this 92% childlessness rate runs across all age groups.
• Your average income is between $30-50K annually. Your average annual salary is about $38, 209, which comes out to about $18.37/hour (as a reference, the contractor re-modeling my bathroom makes $35/hr). But you’re doing better that the median hourly wage of all actors in this country, which is $11.61 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Before you get too excited about that, though, realize that you’re probably living in Manhattan (54%), where according to the Real Estate of New York’s rent survey for January 2010, the lowest rent for a non-doorman studio apartment is in Harlem at $1,312/month. In addition, your money is not being made through the theatre work you do – only 8% of the actors in this survey made all their money through their theatre work. 40% had a full-time job outside of theatre, and 31% had part-time work, for a 71% rate of employment outside theatre. Also, most actors indicated that acting was not the only thing they did as a theatre practitioner. 25% of you also do administrator/producer work, and another 22% also identify as directors. The survey is not clear about how much of the income that the 8% who make all their money through the theatre actually make it through acting alone, without income from these other theatrical identities.
• 48% of you managed to get into AEA, 45% did not. Union workers made an average of $32,092 per year (again, not strictly in the theatre), while non-union actors made $30, 786. So for the privilege of being a union member, you made $1,306 extra, which probably went to paying your union dues. Don’t spend that all in one place.

So, in summary, if you’re now in college studying as a theatre major at the graduate or undergraduate level planning to break into the theatre scene in NYC via the indie route, the statistics say that, for your educational and monetary investment, here’s what statistically you are/will become: a white, female, single, childless degree-holding actor holding down two or three jobs, and making $18.37 an hour at the career you educated and trained yourself for, all the while living in one of the most expensive geographic areas in the US. The stats also say that by 40 years old you will have left the indie scene at the very least; the odds are you will have moved on to something else entirely.

Is this what we really want to have happen to the human capital that makes up our richest resource for a vibrant theatre?  -twl