# De-skilling in theater programs?



## ruinexplorer (Dec 30, 2014)

I was reading this article that seemed to ring true with a lot of what we discuss here on the forum. I think this applies more than just to the scenic elements, but skill sets in lighting and sound are equally at risk.


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## Morte615 (Dec 30, 2014)

I don't see it as De-skilling so much as Re-skilling. We are shifting our focus from one set of skills to another. Instead of a person learning the ins and outs (and safety) of a jig saw to get intricate cuts. That same person is now learning how to design, program, setup, and run the same project on a CNC Router.

There are areas where you can still get the hand skills that are mentioned, and even some schools are incorporating them. Maker Spaces is one such, and as someone who has worked with one before I can tell you that some members are as young as 8 and 9 while going as young as 60! But in today's litigious society the legal cost and hand holding that has to occur makes these types of situations expensive for most schools and communities to implement. Which is one reason so many of these types of places are crowd sourced now.

I actually see a resurgence now in hand skills in these places. The biggest problem is that Maker Space style locations are so few and far between.


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## chawalang (Dec 30, 2014)

I agree with what Morte615 has said, I view this as a form of re-skilling to meet the demands of not only new technology but also new expectations within the industry. The same could be said about the introduction of moving lights and various consoles. I knew some old timers ( I use that as a term of endearment ) back in the day when I was a wee baby stage hand who refused to use them, I still encounter this time to time. The same can be said about carpenters I have met who are anti automation because they believe it will kill their jobs. These are just examples on how one should not be a luddite, things will always change and one should be prepared to learn a new skill set to remain viable.

I believe hand skills have changed and for the generation that comes after me it will be even more different than today.


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## robartsd (Dec 30, 2014)

Yes, there is a re-skilling involved, but as the article points out it is replacing the "workmanship of risk" with the "workmanship of certainty." I fear for some the lack of experience in the "workmanship of risk" will stunt development of their creative potential; of course technology also provides new oportunities for creative expression (especially for those who have difficulty developing hand skills). Also as technology pushes production toward the "workmanship of certainty" the need for colaboration on creative projects is reduced.


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## MNicolai (Dec 30, 2014)

Teaching to the lowest common denominator. In my BFA program where my emphasis was TD, I was specifically urged not to produce drawings with any complexity of design or craftsmanship. We ended up with fewer elegant design solutions on stage as a result. This was fueled by that the scene shop was organized around the principle that an endless supply of labor existed in our department -- that is, you can have as many freshmen Intro students conscripted into indentured servitude as you like, but don't count on having more than 2 or 3 ring leaders trying to keep them all at task on any given day.

My core grievance with my BFA program was that I felt I did it for the paper. My internships provided me far more practical experience and skills than my BFA program did, and the skills my BFA program (and many life it) purported my eventual career would hinge upon did me no service in the least.

Little side note: I actually got in a little kerfuffle the other day during a show I was doing the overall production design for (lights, set, sound, effects). One of the people on stage was second guessing the people I was assigning to tasks during the show. She was concerned that mere mortals could not be taught how to operate a counterweight set or load a dry ice fogger. Just about had to kick her off the show because she was terrible for morale, making everyone think that the snow effect (snow bag rigged between two battens) on stage was a matter of life or death only to be attempted by somebody with years of experience and training.

Some days it feels like the approach becoming prevalent is, "If you don't already know what you're doing, we cannot afford the minor risks in quality associated with teaching you today."


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## gafftapegreenia (Dec 30, 2014)

My feeling has long been that most programs find it easier, for a myriad or reasons, to produce (incompetent) designers and actors rather than well trained technicians. Heck, even my alma matter has instituted a "you can't only major in Theatre" rule, which to me just admits failure of a program, but a willingness to keep taking people's money. De-skilling is only part of a bigger societal problem. But that's just how I feel. 


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## MNicolai (Dec 30, 2014)

gafftapegreenia said:


> My feeling has long been that most programs find it easier, for a myriad or reasons, to produce (incompetent) designers and actors rather than well trained technicians. Heck, even my alma matter has instituted a "you can't only major in Theatre" rule, which to me just admits failure of a program, but a willingness to keep taking people's money. De-skilling is only part of a bigger societal problem. But that's just how I feel.



What I was told was, "We're a liberal arts school offering broad strokes of academic experience. We are not a technical school focused on teaching finite technical skills."


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## ruinexplorer (Dec 30, 2014)

While I believe that the skillset of understanding how to use a CNC router is extremely valuable, it is a tool for a specific job. I think what is being presented is that there is an attempt to create specialists who may not understand the basics, so there is no foundation. This will ultimately bite many graduates in the butt when they try to find their first job. Not every shop will have top of the line gear, or they will have a mixed shop, thus requiring the knowledge of using other tools. Not only that, but if you get a job on tour, you will not have room for something like that, but may be required to rebuild a scenic element that has been damaged. Many graduates would also try to get jobs at regional theaters who won't have access to CNC routers or other, more expensive technologies. They will be at a disadvantage if they didn't have the opportunity to practice their skill in an enviroment where it is much safer to "fail".

As for the ever changing technologies (like moving lights), I have also known people who wouldn't want to use them. I also know designers that only want to use them, when a conventional would work just fine. I have also known graduates coming out of programs stating that the only lights you need in a plot are ERS and PARs along with some movers. That tells me that they didn't really learn what the different types of light do and the qualities of light they produce. Similarly, a student needs to know that different saws work for different purposes, even though you may be able to get away with just a couple, altering your design to fit the capabilities of those saws.

I have also known sound "engineer" graduates who didn't know how to patch a system because where they went to school, everything was always patched and they only learned how to operate the consoles.

As I work with various universities who are developing projection design into their programs, I inevitably steer them into making sure that the students understand the tools that they are using, not just how to make a picture. The light produced by one lamp technology over another can make a difference in what you see, in addition to the changes between the projected image and what was seen on the computer monitor as it was rendering. 

I guess the issue I have is that I feel that students need the opportunity to have their hand on a variety of equipment to gain familiarity. I don't feel that any program will provide enough training to be an expert, which comes with experience. I do believe that the training programs need to provide students with the fundamentals of their chosen profession, which you may not get properly in the working environment. Learning how to be a part of an assembly line is not what students are paying so much money for college. That is part of the problem the author is addressing.


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## Footer (Dec 30, 2014)

This right here is one of the reasons I'm kind of anti-education at the moment... and I have a BFA I just paid off. 

You go one of two ways in the college world. You go to the Purchases, CMU, North Carolina, FSU, and U of Texas's of the world and get the large metal shops, CNC machines, 3D printers... or the go the small little liberal arts schools with a table saw a chop saw and a room of craftsman hand tools. Both will teach you how to do college theatre. Neither will teach you how the professional world works. Neither will teach you how to build scenery to tour. Neither will teach you how to design scenery or rigging that will go up in 2 hours. None will teach you how to deal with an IA hand who has no desire to work or has way to much desire to destroy your stuff to get his butt home quicker. The first professional shop I worked in I was handed designer drawings and a pile to steel and told "have this to carps by the end of the day". I was lost. I got through it and learned a lot that job. It got to my next one that I learned a lot more. It was in my second job that I had to design stuff for a truck pack. The width of a standard trailer was never even mentioned in any of my classes in school... even technical design. My university also had the "we teach designers" mantra... while the vast majority of working grads are technicians.

When I taught at a high school I was the ONLY person teaching how to use power tools in a 13 high school/100,000 student district. I simply never asked if it was OK for students to be using power tools... I just did it. I knew if I did I would be building every show by myself. I did get a few letters from parents stating they they did not think their daughter should not be using a bandsaw or power tool... I ignored those. At least half of my students had to be taught how to drive a screw. All needed instruction on saws. I guess people are just not learning that from their parents anymore. Then again, I'm the son of an electrician who taught his kid to solder when he was 6. This issue is going to also bleed into our trades as we go forward. The loss of the shop classes is a real issue in my opinion. Luckly there are vocational schools in school districts now teaching this stuff and the harder stuff. The one here in town teaches how to run heavy construction machinery. Without the intro in middle school and high school though I doubt theses programs will survive.


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## techieman33 (Dec 30, 2014)

Footer said:


> Luckly there are vocational schools in school districts now teaching this stuff and the harder stuff. The one here in town teaches how to run heavy construction machinery. Without the intro in middle school and high school though I doubt theses programs will survive.



I wish I had taken advantage of that when I was in school. But I was pushed by my tech teacher and guidance counselor that since I was planning on going to college that it was a waste of my time and I wouldn't gain anything valuable from it. Unfortunately I accepted that. The basic electrical and welding classes I wanted to take would have been far more valuable to me than all of the BS electives I ended up taking instead. The school system really needs fixed. I think a personal finance/budgeting class, and a shop class should be required to graduate. The shop class doesn't have to be very in depth, but they should learn basic hand and power tool use, home repair, a little plumbing, and basic car maintenance. It's incredible the number of people I meet that look at a drill like it's just waiting to hurt them, or have no idea how to change a tire or air filter on their car. You have to crawl before you can walk. I feel like schools are starting students at a run, and they aren't learning what it takes to get there.


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## Footer (Dec 31, 2014)

techieman33 said:


> I wish I had taken advantage of that when I was in school. But I was pushed by my tech teacher and guidance counselor that since I was planning on going to college that it was a waste of my time and I wouldn't gain anything valuable from it.



Many of these programs are a place to put the "dumb" kids who are not college bound. You know, the kids who will go learn a trade with union membership and earn a steady middle class paycheck the rest of their lives. Ya, the dumb kids. 

My senior year they build an industrial tech campus at a neighboring community college. They offered a cisco networking class. It was a 3 hour class every day. We were bused over after lunch. I learned a ton in that class (even though it is all useless now minus the layer 1/2 stuff). I remember my friends asking me why I would do that... now I'm laughing about it and they wished they did it. My ETCP certified wife ( @MrsFooter ) also wishes she did the same thing in high school but the vocational school was for the "dumb" kids... she was a smart kid so she didn't go and took another French class instead. She then had to teach herself electrical theory at age 27 and still can't speak French. 

That is the other thing... the language thing needs to die. No one is learning a language and is acutally able to speak it. Everyone else in the world is learning English from nearly birth. We are wasting 1/6th of our HS education on something that we will never use and will not be helpful in the future. My brother works for Nissan... the company that is Japan based does all of its business even in Japan in English. English is the language of business internationally. A good listen on this: http://freakonomics.com/2014/03/06/...ly-worth-it-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

I would argue shop class AND home economics would be a ton more beneficial over a language... but the language thing sticks anyway. 

At least in Illinois you were required to take consumers ed and drivers ed to graduate. I feel those were both good classes. I tested out of consumers ed, but at least it was offered.


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## derekleffew (Dec 31, 2014)

Footer said:


> ... That is the other thing... the language thing needs to die. No one is learning a language and is acutally [sic] able to speak it. ...


Or, in the case of English, write it. http://www.controlbooth.com/threads/cb-technical-forum-or-english-class.8599/


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## Esoteric (Dec 31, 2014)

Interesting. I worked in that shop many, many hours.

When I taught tech theater it was a two teacher course. One of us (not me) taught arts and crafts basically (mask making, things like that) while the other took the 5 or 10 kids seriously interested in learning how to design and build things and taught them to operate power tools.

When I got to UT we had to take 2 semesters of production (now it is 4), but it seems interesting that kids coming into the program don't have the skills that we had.

Mike


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## Timothy A. Samuelson (Jan 1, 2015)

We were just talking about this at a meeting with the fine arts faculty and the administration of the school I got hired at this past summer. They took the steps to hire myself and another technician directly out of the industry to start handling technical things around campus. I had never heard of school doing this. We were originally brought on to deal with events on campus and to design and build the different shows throughout the year. After seeing the first show we designed, we told the gawkers of the administration how we had done this entirely by ourselves with equipment the school already owned, and more importantly, they were skills we could be teaching to kids. The school will be offering a technical theater course next year. I don't know where I would be in my career if I didn't know how to use power tools by the time I was in high school. Everyone in high school would be going out to parties and such and I'd rather be at home building something I designed. I guess the thought of not practicing those skills is so foreign to me that I can't even comprehend it.


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## icewolf08 (Jan 5, 2015)

Theatre is a business of collaboration and Art. Computers, CNC routers, moving lights, automated sound desks and such can make our jobs easier, but if we let them remove the human element, the art, then we have effectively replaced ourselves.

Sure, if you work Rock and Roll where it is all about spectacle, sending off a set of drawing to a fabrication shop is just dandy. Maybe you work for Cirque and you need super precision hardware so that all the crazy effects can be done five times a day safely. When it comes to real theatre though, even commercial Broadway theatre, the human art element still needs to be there.

I think it is a sad day when we replace a board op with a show control system. I think it is even a sadder day when we are training new designers and technicians to be desk jockeys at a computer. Anyone can be taught to draw a file in CAD and send it to a CNC machine or laser cutter or maker-bot. But when you take all those pieces, "designed" in a hopefully correct model of the theatre, and actually try to assemble them, how often does it really go as planned? I think the desk-jockey designers are less ready to handle the artistic needs as they arise in build and tech. The technician who runs the CNC machine is often less proficient with the closet full of hand tools when changes need to be made in the couple hours between notes and next rehearsal than the technician trained to build with the closet full of hand tools.

So, I think that it is great when we have tools that make our lives easier as long as they are not replacing people or reducing the skills that people have.


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## NevilleLighting (Feb 19, 2015)

I don't think that colleges are necessarily becoming de-skilled. I think technology has become much more complicated and layered. I'm an bit of an old timer, a free lance designer and a professor so I have multiple perspectives on this. Most of what I do today I did not learn in college. When I was in school I looked down on my theatre education because I was learning so much in summer stock. Now, looking back I see how much the fundamentals I learned in college still mean to me. Summer stock did not teach me about art history, script analysis, color theory, etc. summer stock didn't teach me the history of film, how stars make light, how to develop a concept and design. However, summer stock did teach me a lot about paperwork, professional practices and efficiency. 

As a long-time professional and as a professor I can tell you that most of the technical skills we teach you today will be outdated in 10-15 years, or less. Also, we are limited on time, mostly by the students. They are busy with jobs and working on shows. They want me to teach them Photoshop but when I tell them that will take a semester they become far less interested. Hopefully you go, or have gone, to a college that gives you good, strong fundamentals, pushes you and then, honestly, gets the hell out of your way and allows you to push your own envelope. 

What I see here on ControlBooth is a great, shared thirst for knowledge and learning. In this field, which is so technology based, you have to consider yourself a lifelong student. They day you know it all is they day you become irrelevant.


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## robartsd (Feb 20, 2015)

NevilleLighting said:


> gets the hell out of your way and allows you to push your own envelope


My favorite quote from an introductory college class, "Don't let your schooling get in the way of your education."


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## ruinexplorer (Feb 21, 2015)

NevilleLighting said:


> As a long-time professional and as a professor I can tell you that most of the technical skills we teach you today will be outdated in 10-15 years, or less.


 
Part of the author's point is that the skills that seem to be lacking are those that do not get outdated, but focusing on new technologies may. Many of the tried and true skills of theater tend to be overlooked in order to teach what is currently trending.. We as a community seem to agree that the college education is a different education than the experience gained in working situations such as summer stock, internships, or on-the-job training. However, the unique opportunity that college offers, the ability to take risks, tends to get lost in many programs. It is acceptable to take the time to hone a basic skill in an educational theater, where taking your time to learn something simple in the professional environment could cost you your job. The college experience should give a rock solid foundation (which includes theory and other fundamentals) for the experience to build upon in the "real" world. This, at least was my experince through both my education and in working professionally.


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## StradivariusBone (Feb 23, 2015)

Footer said:


> I would argue shop class AND home economics would be a ton more beneficial over a language... but the language thing sticks anyway.



The language thing sticks because it is an easy metric. You can't metric a kid's ability to play an instrument or interpret a blueprint as easily. But you can give him or her a standardized test that shows gains/losses over a period of time in Spanish II. 

Teaching HS, I feel like the last line of defense before these pre-adults are released into the wild. Most of my kids arrive, never having hammered a nail or knowing how to cut a straight line through plywood. I don't expect that they will continue in tech theatre, but I do tell them regularly that this crap will help them save money on home repairs and/or attract a husband/wife (sawdust aroma is an aphrodisiac). 

But it is staggering to think how in maybe 30 years or so, our schools have gone from preparing children to become citizens (and doing it relatively effectively) to producing individuals who know a lot of crap and can prove it on paper, but have no idea how to pay bills, fix their cars, or even do their laundry. A friend of mine who is in his very early 20's just lost his father to cancer. It was stunning to him (and the rest of us) that he had no idea how to make dinner, apply for car insurance, etc. His dad did it all for him out of a love for his son and wanting to help him and shield him from the crap of life, but he had a really steep learning curve in a short time under a great deal of pressure. 

Part of that is the parents, but I take tech theatre as a chance to show these kids what a real working environment is like and try and give them a glimpse of what the world will be like when they have to put on their own big boy pants. The fancy toys are important, but this is a perennial concern. There is always a need for accommodating the changes in tech in our lives, but the more we embrace it, the better off you are. Things aren't worse now because kids have Facebook and iPhones. It's just different, and we change or we get left behind.

The biggest takeaway I hope my kids get is that they get this bug inside them that tells them to try something, even if it's only once and they completely hose it up, but try to do something once for themselves before calling in the contractor to do it for them.


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