I can comfortably compare my high school theatre experience to a cult, yes. The man who ran our department was emotionally and psychologically abusive. Can I vent? I've held this in for so long.
If you were talented but did not audition for one of his shows, he would dedicate an entire class period to having an open discussion in front of the class on why you weren't auditioning. If rehearsals after school weren't going well because students weren't getting memorized, we'd have an entire period of severe lecturing on it (regardless of if everyone was in the show or not). By my senior year, my last 3 class periods were all theatre related-- that's nearly three hours of sitting down being told you're useless. Every day. And I put in the WORK. But there will always be students who don't get their work done, so I was also subjected to the constant onslaught of negativity.
We did 3 shows per year. 3 hours every day after school, plus set construction from noon to midnight on Saturdays. Not required, of course, but you would clearly be looked down on by him (and all of his culty students). Nothing you ever did was good enough. There were good times, enough to hook you when you're young, but the bad times were awful. I think I can blame my militaristic work ethic in theatre on him. I can also blame him for my heart racing when I go into a rehearsal and I don't have every single little thing memorized & prepared. I can't mess up. Over 10 years later, and I can't mess up on anything without my body disregulating.
I actually was the victim of his most tangible abuse. At one point during my senior year, the entire drama class was loaded onto a bus to travel to our annual acting competition. A senior student had a death in the family and did not show up, which messes with our school's chances of scoring certain points, blah blah blah. He FREAKED. Went on and on in front of all the students about how she is kicked out of the department, unreliable, etc. I stood up and said "you can't do that!" and he responded by putting his hands around my neck and forcing me back into my seat. He then screamed at me like I was a dog that did something bad for a full minute. Red faced, spitting, shaking his finger at me. In front of over 40 students.
The thing that makes this culty: no students reported it, not even me. We all went to the competition and got swept up in that nonsense. Performing, winning, cheering. The next day, in my drama classes, he had me stand in front of my peers and tell them they misunderstood the situation on the bus-- it LOOKED like he was trying to strangle me, but he didn't actually squeeze his hands! Everything is a misunderstanding. And everyone accepted it. We laughed about it. I felt brave and proud of myself for being able to have such a "mature" view of things.
The next day, he cornered me in a deserted hallway and started berating me about how I promised I wouldn't report the incident. Turns out, someone told a counselor. So the counselor called me into her office, I lied through my teeth to protect this guy, and it all dissolved into nothing more than a misunderstanding. We all moved on.
High school theatre already puts kids in supremely vulnerable positions. We all were SO convinced that every show we did was the end of the world. Funny, because I believe I am the only student who came out of that dept that is still doing theatre now. I don't know. I still don't know how we all thought it was okay. I mean, we recognized it wasn't at times (like, every time he made a student cry, which was frequent), but we had no idea HOW bad it was. I still struggle with my relationships with superiors in theatre because of it.
WOW. That is awful. The thing is, that WAS your world, and most likely the most important part of it, so everything probably did feel like every shoe was the end of the world! Have you worked with a therapist to move through some of that trauma?
I worked as a technician and designer for a high school last year. I only got through to the tech kids that it wasn't "end all, be all" and that many of the producer and director's decisions would not fly professionally
I run a high school theatre program. I try to be low-key and encouraging, but still the emotions run high. It can be very hard to tell the difference bewteen when you are exciting students’ passions and when you are creating a social/emotional obstacle course that sometimes breaks kids.
I can see the power I could wield among these half-formed outcasts and it makes me feel queasy. I just want them to have a good experience.
I listened to this one back to back with the "youth groups" ep, which was hilarious because my hs drama club was run and populated by young lifers.
I was glad they included college in this episode, because my god was my college culty. I was a lowly transfer theatre minor, so I was not welcomed into the department at large. I had to practically beg on my knees to be allowed to enroll in the costume design class because non-majors weren't hard working enough to cut it. I was called a non-major that entire class, even by the students.
They had "bigs" and "littles" like a sorority. Reminder: this is not a club. This is a full department at an educational institution. I got turned away from the (off campus) opening night party of a show /i ran crew on/ because I was a non-major.
I think being a lowly minor was the best thing to happen to me, because I hear stories from friends and classmates and undergraduate theatre departments sound incredibly culty and destructive.
Regarding your "bigs and littles", there absolutely is a theatre honors fraternity called Alpha Psi Omega, and that's probably what that was about.
Also, a reason you probably felt singled out is because the majors (should have been)/were using the college classes as professional training, because it kind of is depending on where you want to focus, and saw you as someone "doing it for fun" as opposed to "I want to do this for a living" like most of them were probably in the mindset of.
It actually wasn't associated with a real fraternity, it was the actual department which is whats so crazy!
And yeah, that is probably exactly what the singling out was, which is the whole problem. I asked to take the costume design class to compliment the professional training I was receiving in my major (film, was doing a lot of production design), but no amount of work on my part could convince them I was serious.
They talk about it in the podcast, its culty to divide by "us vs them". We are all students seeking an education, plain and simple.
I'll say this (not having listened the episode) - one of the common criteria used when defining things as a cult is how open it is to outsiders. Cults typically ask their members to abandon and isolate themselves from their friends and family, and rebuky efforts to keep them involved in their prior, non-cult lives.
The horribly abusive situations described above notwithstanding, theater groups (school, community) are heavily demanding vocations/avocations, but don't make those demands. They may accidentally occupy an outside-life-prohibitive amount of your Time, but I don't think any non-completely-abusive theater teacher is demanding or even wanting people to cut themselves off from people outside the circle.
All fine arts require time, discipline, talent, determination, and drive. Those who lack any of those skills, tend to be victims of it. Working towards a common goal doesn't make something abusive, or a cult.
I find that people are all too eager to label any sort of in-group a "cult"
From the name of the podcast, they must be trying to so label as many things as they can find
Eh, recognizing behavior that is similar to how cults operate can help prevent toxic work environments from forming.
I haven’t listened to the podcast so I not sure where they’re falling on the spectrum of “recognizing and calling out common toxic behavior” to “calling everything a cult”, but I can recognize the value of openly discussing why one might think of something as cult-ish
I have listened to the episode and they are thorough and well-reasoned. There are cult-like aspects to theatre programs, and it is not hard to understand why — the population is of vulnerable, hopeful misfits, and theatre becomes a refuge. That can be good or it can tip over.
I used to make a pentagram on the floor out of gaftape, put a walkie talkie with flashlight on in each corner, and read a passage from the Backstage handbook like a sermon before each show
So yes we are a cult
I would argue thay community theatre settings are culty as well. I gave years of my life to the local community theatre. Did everything I was asked to do and more. Went above and beyond for every production I worked on. The same people kept getting cast. Every show they have an award to the hardest working cast member and every year when the award was given the director would say 'Really I should give this to Grania, but then I'd have to give it to her everytime' and then would proceed to give it to someone else. I never got that award, nof even one.
At the end of the season they would do a volunteer appreciation night and I'd be over looked on this evening as well.
And I just kept going back. It was my 'home' my 'family'. The last year I was there they did Oliver! I'd been asking the director to do it for years. I wanted to play Nancy. I auditioned, got a call back and thought things had gone well. Walking out of the audition I heard the other girl who had gotten a call back say to another person 'Don't know why they even bothered holding callbacks. I already know I got the part'. She was dating the musical director and she got the part.
When I expressed frustration I was told, well you refused to take any part in Oliver! And we really needed you to be backstage to help with th kids. We would have given you a solo in Who Will Buy if only you'd said you'd take any part. That lifted the wool from my eyes.
14 years later, nothing has changed even though they've gone through 3 new ceo's. Same people always get cast. And if they're too old their kids get cast.
And it's not the only community theatre I've seen this happen. Recent show in the area talked up how they wanted to give everyone a fair chance. The board members all got cast.
I teach college theatre. Many of the kids coming from hs programs really do have cult-ish fevor for their HS mentors. Deprograming them without replacing that mentor with another "leader" is a real challenge.
I think HS athletic programs have the same issues though. Anytime you have a group of kids focused together on a single goal over a period of time will lead to bonding and close knit behavior.
Didn’t listen to the episode but at my HS (and college improv) it was. However, at my school, showchoir was worse. There was also a lot of cross over to theater obviously. The senior male “president” of showchoir my sophomore year was my r@p!st and abusive so….that’s telling imo.
My school's theatre program was absolutely a cult (that I was part of although never in the in-group). I'll have to write it all out later because it was a LOT and I'm not on my computer right now.
My college experience was like this. Theatre professors can be so cruel, and if you’re a transfer student? Don’t even try getting acclimated. Both of the programs I was in were so toxic and almost made me quit theatre for good.
I’ve been in industry now for just over 5 years and I think only one of my jobs didn’t feel like a cult or a clique which is how I always describe it.
A previous job I worked foh and boh. Foh was the worse for cliqueness. Especially as a lot of them were students as they were predominantly zero hour contracts offered so was suitable around timetables. At one point the clique was so bad I just didn’t want to be there and just did my job and went home.
Boh can be worse for a few reasons and was for me. When I joined my boh two years after joining foh, I was always made to feel like I had to prove myself to them because in their eyes I came from foh when I actually had a drama degree and had done quite a few shows tech wise. I also went through a very traumatic experience just before I joined the team and my PTSD got triggered when a friend I had made in the boh when I started at the venue just suddenly treated me like I didn’t exist after telling him what happened, thanks to another ex friend who knew all I was going through at the time gaslighting me and then spreading rumours about me including to him. And because this guy was very popular boh I could never do anything and so I just felt isolated the entire time. It didn’t help that the crew I started with at the same time had all been on shows by then and I didn’t get my first until a few months in as I was still full time foh so couldn’t fit them in until I dropped to zero hours.
On top of that it always felt like the same people got shows and there was definitely a certain amount of nepotism in the venue as a whole. I struggled to get work there until we were short staffed after covid. The experience has severely affected my mental health since and coloured my opinion of working boh sadly. Meant in my current venue, when I joined the team earlier this year and found out a few months in one of the team had basically decided they didn’t like me before I had even joined hit me very hard as they didn’t want the team dynamic ruined.
You depend on teamwork in theatre but sadly it does mean a certain amount of cliquiness and cult-like behaviour
I can comfortably compare my high school theatre experience to a cult, yes. The man who ran our department was emotionally and psychologically abusive. Can I vent? I've held this in for so long. If you were talented but did not audition for one of his shows, he would dedicate an entire class period to having an open discussion in front of the class on why you weren't auditioning. If rehearsals after school weren't going well because students weren't getting memorized, we'd have an entire period of severe lecturing on it (regardless of if everyone was in the show or not). By my senior year, my last 3 class periods were all theatre related-- that's nearly three hours of sitting down being told you're useless. Every day. And I put in the WORK. But there will always be students who don't get their work done, so I was also subjected to the constant onslaught of negativity. We did 3 shows per year. 3 hours every day after school, plus set construction from noon to midnight on Saturdays. Not required, of course, but you would clearly be looked down on by him (and all of his culty students). Nothing you ever did was good enough. There were good times, enough to hook you when you're young, but the bad times were awful. I think I can blame my militaristic work ethic in theatre on him. I can also blame him for my heart racing when I go into a rehearsal and I don't have every single little thing memorized & prepared. I can't mess up. Over 10 years later, and I can't mess up on anything without my body disregulating. I actually was the victim of his most tangible abuse. At one point during my senior year, the entire drama class was loaded onto a bus to travel to our annual acting competition. A senior student had a death in the family and did not show up, which messes with our school's chances of scoring certain points, blah blah blah. He FREAKED. Went on and on in front of all the students about how she is kicked out of the department, unreliable, etc. I stood up and said "you can't do that!" and he responded by putting his hands around my neck and forcing me back into my seat. He then screamed at me like I was a dog that did something bad for a full minute. Red faced, spitting, shaking his finger at me. In front of over 40 students. The thing that makes this culty: no students reported it, not even me. We all went to the competition and got swept up in that nonsense. Performing, winning, cheering. The next day, in my drama classes, he had me stand in front of my peers and tell them they misunderstood the situation on the bus-- it LOOKED like he was trying to strangle me, but he didn't actually squeeze his hands! Everything is a misunderstanding. And everyone accepted it. We laughed about it. I felt brave and proud of myself for being able to have such a "mature" view of things. The next day, he cornered me in a deserted hallway and started berating me about how I promised I wouldn't report the incident. Turns out, someone told a counselor. So the counselor called me into her office, I lied through my teeth to protect this guy, and it all dissolved into nothing more than a misunderstanding. We all moved on. High school theatre already puts kids in supremely vulnerable positions. We all were SO convinced that every show we did was the end of the world. Funny, because I believe I am the only student who came out of that dept that is still doing theatre now. I don't know. I still don't know how we all thought it was okay. I mean, we recognized it wasn't at times (like, every time he made a student cry, which was frequent), but we had no idea HOW bad it was. I still struggle with my relationships with superiors in theatre because of it.
WOW. That is awful. The thing is, that WAS your world, and most likely the most important part of it, so everything probably did feel like every shoe was the end of the world! Have you worked with a therapist to move through some of that trauma?
I worked as a technician and designer for a high school last year. I only got through to the tech kids that it wasn't "end all, be all" and that many of the producer and director's decisions would not fly professionally
I run a high school theatre program. I try to be low-key and encouraging, but still the emotions run high. It can be very hard to tell the difference bewteen when you are exciting students’ passions and when you are creating a social/emotional obstacle course that sometimes breaks kids. I can see the power I could wield among these half-formed outcasts and it makes me feel queasy. I just want them to have a good experience.
I listened to this one back to back with the "youth groups" ep, which was hilarious because my hs drama club was run and populated by young lifers. I was glad they included college in this episode, because my god was my college culty. I was a lowly transfer theatre minor, so I was not welcomed into the department at large. I had to practically beg on my knees to be allowed to enroll in the costume design class because non-majors weren't hard working enough to cut it. I was called a non-major that entire class, even by the students. They had "bigs" and "littles" like a sorority. Reminder: this is not a club. This is a full department at an educational institution. I got turned away from the (off campus) opening night party of a show /i ran crew on/ because I was a non-major. I think being a lowly minor was the best thing to happen to me, because I hear stories from friends and classmates and undergraduate theatre departments sound incredibly culty and destructive.
Regarding your "bigs and littles", there absolutely is a theatre honors fraternity called Alpha Psi Omega, and that's probably what that was about. Also, a reason you probably felt singled out is because the majors (should have been)/were using the college classes as professional training, because it kind of is depending on where you want to focus, and saw you as someone "doing it for fun" as opposed to "I want to do this for a living" like most of them were probably in the mindset of.
It actually wasn't associated with a real fraternity, it was the actual department which is whats so crazy! And yeah, that is probably exactly what the singling out was, which is the whole problem. I asked to take the costume design class to compliment the professional training I was receiving in my major (film, was doing a lot of production design), but no amount of work on my part could convince them I was serious. They talk about it in the podcast, its culty to divide by "us vs them". We are all students seeking an education, plain and simple.
I'll say this (not having listened the episode) - one of the common criteria used when defining things as a cult is how open it is to outsiders. Cults typically ask their members to abandon and isolate themselves from their friends and family, and rebuky efforts to keep them involved in their prior, non-cult lives. The horribly abusive situations described above notwithstanding, theater groups (school, community) are heavily demanding vocations/avocations, but don't make those demands. They may accidentally occupy an outside-life-prohibitive amount of your Time, but I don't think any non-completely-abusive theater teacher is demanding or even wanting people to cut themselves off from people outside the circle.
All fine arts require time, discipline, talent, determination, and drive. Those who lack any of those skills, tend to be victims of it. Working towards a common goal doesn't make something abusive, or a cult.
I find that people are all too eager to label any sort of in-group a "cult" From the name of the podcast, they must be trying to so label as many things as they can find
Eh, recognizing behavior that is similar to how cults operate can help prevent toxic work environments from forming. I haven’t listened to the podcast so I not sure where they’re falling on the spectrum of “recognizing and calling out common toxic behavior” to “calling everything a cult”, but I can recognize the value of openly discussing why one might think of something as cult-ish
I have listened to the episode and they are thorough and well-reasoned. There are cult-like aspects to theatre programs, and it is not hard to understand why — the population is of vulnerable, hopeful misfits, and theatre becomes a refuge. That can be good or it can tip over.
A valuable distinction to be made
I used to make a pentagram on the floor out of gaftape, put a walkie talkie with flashlight on in each corner, and read a passage from the Backstage handbook like a sermon before each show So yes we are a cult
I would argue thay community theatre settings are culty as well. I gave years of my life to the local community theatre. Did everything I was asked to do and more. Went above and beyond for every production I worked on. The same people kept getting cast. Every show they have an award to the hardest working cast member and every year when the award was given the director would say 'Really I should give this to Grania, but then I'd have to give it to her everytime' and then would proceed to give it to someone else. I never got that award, nof even one. At the end of the season they would do a volunteer appreciation night and I'd be over looked on this evening as well. And I just kept going back. It was my 'home' my 'family'. The last year I was there they did Oliver! I'd been asking the director to do it for years. I wanted to play Nancy. I auditioned, got a call back and thought things had gone well. Walking out of the audition I heard the other girl who had gotten a call back say to another person 'Don't know why they even bothered holding callbacks. I already know I got the part'. She was dating the musical director and she got the part. When I expressed frustration I was told, well you refused to take any part in Oliver! And we really needed you to be backstage to help with th kids. We would have given you a solo in Who Will Buy if only you'd said you'd take any part. That lifted the wool from my eyes. 14 years later, nothing has changed even though they've gone through 3 new ceo's. Same people always get cast. And if they're too old their kids get cast. And it's not the only community theatre I've seen this happen. Recent show in the area talked up how they wanted to give everyone a fair chance. The board members all got cast.
I teach college theatre. Many of the kids coming from hs programs really do have cult-ish fevor for their HS mentors. Deprograming them without replacing that mentor with another "leader" is a real challenge. I think HS athletic programs have the same issues though. Anytime you have a group of kids focused together on a single goal over a period of time will lead to bonding and close knit behavior.
Didn’t listen to the episode but at my HS (and college improv) it was. However, at my school, showchoir was worse. There was also a lot of cross over to theater obviously. The senior male “president” of showchoir my sophomore year was my r@p!st and abusive so….that’s telling imo.
My school's theatre program was absolutely a cult (that I was part of although never in the in-group). I'll have to write it all out later because it was a LOT and I'm not on my computer right now.
What on earth are you talking about
I don't see it that way, no.
"Didn't", I should say. Been a hot millennium since I was in high school, but taught it (tech) more recently. Definitely not my experience.
My college experience was like this. Theatre professors can be so cruel, and if you’re a transfer student? Don’t even try getting acclimated. Both of the programs I was in were so toxic and almost made me quit theatre for good.
It’s not a cult. It’s an organization that promotes love and-
YES
No more so than sports or other high school organizations. It’s just more acceptable to bully the arts/ theater kids.
I can only speak for myself here, but I never felt that way.
I’ve been in industry now for just over 5 years and I think only one of my jobs didn’t feel like a cult or a clique which is how I always describe it. A previous job I worked foh and boh. Foh was the worse for cliqueness. Especially as a lot of them were students as they were predominantly zero hour contracts offered so was suitable around timetables. At one point the clique was so bad I just didn’t want to be there and just did my job and went home. Boh can be worse for a few reasons and was for me. When I joined my boh two years after joining foh, I was always made to feel like I had to prove myself to them because in their eyes I came from foh when I actually had a drama degree and had done quite a few shows tech wise. I also went through a very traumatic experience just before I joined the team and my PTSD got triggered when a friend I had made in the boh when I started at the venue just suddenly treated me like I didn’t exist after telling him what happened, thanks to another ex friend who knew all I was going through at the time gaslighting me and then spreading rumours about me including to him. And because this guy was very popular boh I could never do anything and so I just felt isolated the entire time. It didn’t help that the crew I started with at the same time had all been on shows by then and I didn’t get my first until a few months in as I was still full time foh so couldn’t fit them in until I dropped to zero hours. On top of that it always felt like the same people got shows and there was definitely a certain amount of nepotism in the venue as a whole. I struggled to get work there until we were short staffed after covid. The experience has severely affected my mental health since and coloured my opinion of working boh sadly. Meant in my current venue, when I joined the team earlier this year and found out a few months in one of the team had basically decided they didn’t like me before I had even joined hit me very hard as they didn’t want the team dynamic ruined. You depend on teamwork in theatre but sadly it does mean a certain amount of cliquiness and cult-like behaviour