From Emily (she/her):
I have recently seen an influx of theater professionals starting secondary careers. Becoming software engineers or therapists or wedding planners. I was really impacted by the show "I'm Assuming You Know David Greenspan" which raised the question over whether you could ever achieve financial success and security in the theater industry.
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Dear Emily,
Fefu 1: I will say this; A secondary career is necessary for those who need a steady paycheck and health care…which is most people. Many successful theater artists I know have more than one income stream and this keeps them sane and secure. The only people I know who have an amount of financial security in theater are over 40, have worked their whole lives in this industry, and are still hanging onto the middle class. The people I know who have financial security based on theater alone work solely on Broadway and are directors and designers and usually have a Tony Award…and LA jobs too. ‘Security’ is a term I’d use loosely, since it can all go away at any moment in the entertainment industry. The other theater artists I know who are financially secure either come from money, or are partnered with someone who has money.
Speaking for myself, I have 2-3 jobs at a given moment. I work full time in a day career, part time in a theater organization, and have 1-3 freelance projects a year. The way I stay sane is giving most of my time to the job that gives me health care (day career), and making sure I spend outside hours on my other gigs. Guarding your time appropriately for art and a living is a constant negotiation, but worth the balancing act.
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Fefu 2: I got laid off two weeks before my 35th birthday. By that point, nearly all of my friends had already left full-time theater work, their departures staggered across the previous years like slow motion dominoes. The only upside to this comically dismal time in my life was when my best friend, a former master electrician who left the industry two years earlier, told me, "Welcome to the other side, where you never have to say, 'I can't, I have rehearsal' ever again." (I still say this, but definitely less often than I used to.)
My friends’ reasons for leaving theater varied, but there was a common thread: the desire for a different life, one with higher wages, flexibility, and actual accommodation and benefits for working parents.
Your priorities will shift over time in ways you cannot anticipate, and this betrayal of your younger self's certainties is not a failure. When I was 22, financial security meant having enough money to pay my bar tab without checking my bank balance first. But by the time I reached my mid-thirties, still grinding away in the trenches of regional theater, I was craving something else entirely, something I couldn't even articulate at first because I'd never let myself want it. Even when I was making $30,000 a year, I always paid my bills. But I wasn't able to build robust savings, couldn't absorb an emergency without panic, and I was bone-deep exhausted by the mental arithmetic of every purchase.
I felt like a real sell-out when I took a full-time non-industry day job, having internalized every toxic suffering artist narrative. But I was surprised to discover how much more creative I felt when my mind wasn't colonized by financial stress. In the last five years, my savings account has multiplied 7.5 times and my retirement account has doubled. I can afford unexpected expenses and small luxuries. Having a full-time day job also enables me to say no to freelance work that doesn't fully thrill me, or that undervalues my expertise. It took me a long time to stop worrying about traditional perceptions of artistic success and to be brave enough to admit that I'd outgrown a former version of myself. Give yourself more grace.
