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How Grad School Changed (and Didn't Change) My Life

For the last three years I have participated in that sacrificial rite of passage that so many theater artists have undertaken (and so many more theater artists have questioned): an MFA program. In my twenties, I was cobbling together a living as an "NYC-based director" (which means I lived near Manhattan and was predominantly working out of town). During that time, I saw several of my friends head off to get an MFA then return to the city. For some, the experience was positively transformational, but several of my friends simply returned three years later older, poorer, and more disillusioned with the profession than when they left. Many were quietly humiliated to have to return to the temping or the barista counter—the only difference now being the three letters behind their name and a percentage of their infrequent artistic paychecks going to union dues and their new-found agent/manager.

Am I being unfair? Perhaps.

You see, as Clayton Lord points out in his Intrinsic Impact essay, any time you try to apply an economic model to an art form, the results are disappointing. Going to grad school merely to "improve your career" is like starting a theater company merely to spur economic growth in a community. It's missing the point, and for a long time, so was I.

Going to grad school merely to "improve your career" is like starting a theater company merely to spur economic growth in a community. It's missing the point, and for a long time, so was I.

A row of buildings at Boston University.
College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University.

But let's face it, you don't commit to a life change like graduate school without some expectation of a better life at the other end. I always am more apt to participate when I am hopeful for a reward. However, it took Jim Petosa, director of Boston University's School of Theatre, to set me straight. In my application interview with him, he responded to my talk of future jobs with a version of the following statement (forgive me, Jim—it's been three years): "The goal here is not to satisfy your career opportunity needs; the goal is to radicalize your directing." I can't remember if he said anything after like, "your career will take care of itself," but once I realized I was dealing with a guy who wanted to “radicalize” my work, I wasn't so worried about how to grab the next gig.

If you think I was foolish for deciding to commit to a program based on a seductive and abstract idea—an idea that after three years offered nothing concrete, that’s okay.

If you’re reading this with some level of suspicion, I don’t blame you. If you think I was foolish for deciding to commit to a program based on a seductive and abstract idea—an idea that after three years offered nothing concrete, that’s okay. By the time I had this conversation with Jim, I was looking for a big idea, not a big promise.

I went to grad school because I needed a big change. I needed to jump back into an environment with structure and deadlines. I needed room to experiment with some aesthetic ideas that had begun to worm their way around my brain. I needed a new mentor who didn't know me from my teenage years. I needed to remove myself from my familiar surroundings and practices in order to transform my approach to text. I needed be around people who were paid to help make me better at what I do. I needed to study under these great teachers and work on my own teaching skills too. And, certainly, I needed more opportunities that come from committing to an expansive and connected network of working professionals.

Did I really need all this, or was I simply convincing myself that I needed the structure because I feared being without it? Could I have found all this without a grad program?

For the past couple of months, I’ve been reflecting on the big lessons I’ve learned in the last three years. For better or worse, I have learned the following:

  • My greatest strengths are also my greatest weaknesses.
  • Knowing better who I am empowers me to make stronger, more intuitive choices.
  • To find value in even the most misguided of productions.
  • I am far more creative when I viscerally engage in the work.
  • Being alone with myself is very difficult.
  • I am often the most productive when I have very little free time.
  • The right seven words are profoundly more effective than the approximate twenty–seven words.
  • After three years of grad school, my wife's feedback is still right.
  • I suck at life/work balance. (So far, it's been like life/work pendulum swing, only the pendulum has been like that ship at the fair that thirty people ride on and it swings a few stories up in the air and as it hurtles to the earth it induces that nauseating sense of free fall.)

Three years of concentration on my craft allowed me to define my deficiencies in my process, explore alternative approaches to working on plays, exposed me to a host of new work and new ways of working, provided me a laboratory to test new approaches, and immersed me in a rich creative environment. Now, I read scripts differently now, ask different questions, speak differently to designers and actors, and differently approach my duties in the rehearsal room. If this is what Jim Petosa meant by radicalization, it happened.

Now, I find myself in another new city, making new friends and armed for whatever may happen. I feel optimistic and empowered. I know this sheen will eventually fade. The economics of a freelance directing life haven’t changed; neither has my responsibility to my family. I’ll still have to hustle. But, naïve or not, I am holding fast to the philosophy that if I keep questioning and experimenting, I will always be able to serve both my art and my family.

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As someone about to begin the odyssey of a directing MFA next fall, this is a fantastic read. Thanks, Jason. And congrats on those three letters by your name!

Jason,
Thanks for sharing this honest reflection. Great fuel for me heading into my final year of the program. Good luck with the "hustle"...stay radicalized!

Best,
Mason

Awesome...and extremely accurate!! I always ask folks about their reasons for going to grad school, and advise them to really search their hearts before going. Knowing why you're going, and moreover going for the correct reasons will heavily influence how they absorb the training and how content they eventually are with the experience. Thanks so much for articulating this so effectively, now I can just send folks to your article instead!!!

succinct and interesting. i also would like to add that whether or not the grad program was for good, i know a rather large number of students who were changed for the better by your energy and guidance. you are missed.

"I read scripts differently now, ask different questions, speak differently to designers and actors, and differently approach my duties in the rehearsal room."

I'd love to hear more about this.

RVCBARD, thanks for asking me to unpack this statement. I have begun to write a response to you several times, but I'm finding that there is no such thing as a simple answer to how I do things differently now. For example, how I differently read plays is related to how I differently speak to designers, but there a many specifics that come to mind that I'd like to elaborate upon. I'll write more on this soon. I promise I'm not avoiding this. I will respond to you i this comment thread in the next couple of days.
-jason

Jason, this is terrific -- very much distills the lessons of an MFA in playwriting, too. This idea of what it is to be radicalized, all the different directions that can go, what it can mean...I'll be thinking about that long after this morning. You remind me, too, of Martin Zimmerman's post here, nearly a year ago, about economics and theater.

Three years after completing my own stint in graduate school, here's a question: what do you do when you hit the NEXT...well, let's call it a plateau. When you need new teachers, more time, a different set of ideas, new friction, more immersion? Because the longer I do this, the more I'm convinced that we have to... not keep going BACK to "the well," but keep finding NEW wells... perhaps this is particularly true for those of us whose participation begins from (or, at least, must include a great deal of) solitude. How do we sustain (or, better: reinvent) a practice of radicalization in ourselves and in our work?

What a brilliant summation! I'm a designer, and I think this equally applies across the theatre spectrum. I'll be sharing this with students for years to come. Thank you!