Theatre instructor skills for your resume and career

Theatre is a collaborative effort. Having skills in team building and participation are most helpful, which translates into communication, empathy, and respect. Time management and organization are also key for every technician.

Basic skills in more than one department are helpful. The more a technician can understand other areas that may overlap, the better the chance of more opportunities. This does not exclude the importance of focusing on one technical area, but the technician who understands how that one area, or several areas, influences each other, the better the technician will understand the collaborative nature of theatre.

During a gap year, graduates would do well to focus on two areas: Building skills in their chosen field and building usable skills in an alternate "survival" field.
- Jobs in the TV and Film industry are already starting to return. Graduates in acting should focus on skills they might not be as practiced in; on-camera classes, voice-over training, commercial audition technique, etc. The pandemic has forced a kind of instant accessibility, and training opportunities with top professionals in every area of the performing arts are available from the comfort of one's own home. Of course, not everyone can afford classes right now. In this case, performers could use this time to focus on creating their materials. If you own an iPhone, you can make a movie. I don't know how to, but I know most of my students could figure it out with minimal effort!
- The pandemic has forever released performers of the idea that cultivating survival skills is an artistic cop-out. Instead, artists must be highly trained in their chosen field and be skilled in other workforce areas.
- Performing artists are keenly aware of the lasting effect Zoom, and other online platforms will have on the performing arts. Interest in and mastery of these technologies and the possibilities available on and through these platforms will be a necessity moving forward.

Those graduating with degrees in dance will need to be as versatile as ever. Indoor theaters are mostly closed during the pandemic. Choreographers and directors shift their focus outside and to video to keep doing work and finding new ways to present movement material to people in different situations. The dance surfaces themselves are challenging norms. Instead of a sprung floor covered with Marley vinyl flooring, dancers may be dancing barefoot in the sand, swimming in the water, dancing in trees, or rolling on concrete - all potentially in front of a safely distanced small audience or through the lens of a camera. Site-specific and digital performances are not new concepts, but we are leaning on them heavily now.