Here's how you can diversify your skills in theatrical production through cross-training.

I have worked as an actor, director, producer, technical director, stage and tour manager both in theatre and film. When I started out as a student (years ago) my goal was to have a renaissance education in my art form - meaning I would have a working knowledge of all aspects of my art - theatre. I built sets, stage managed, hung lights and learned all aspects I could about what I wanted to do for my life's work. It not only taught me about the other jobs in my field, it occasionally provide a income when the acting was not going well. If you only understand what you do in the art, then you are a limited artist and short-sighted as well. Do everything, learn everything, and prosper!

Having been a performer this has given me a great advantage in my career now as a Health and Safety Specialist in theatre and production. Understanding the creative process, stresses and strains, thought process of performers greatly helps me to identify the risks and how to put I place sensible controls.

There are so many advantages to a theatre education even if you don't want to have a career or even a hobby in theatre. I teach online theatre courses (ask me about them as I teach both individuals and groups). Play Analysis can help you in writing anything, figuring out the plots of movies, figuring out how things happened in real life, and more. Dramaturgy helps you to research anything. You learn to research and become familiar with presenting information in different forms. You become familiar with writing press releases and making student worksheets. Copyright for Creatives helps anybody who makes any type of original work. It's one of the most important classes that you'll ever take.

Also consider how the design of a show can help other areas such as profit, logistics (if touring), safety etc. This is such an important stage which is not just about the creative process.

This can be applied to music, too. If you learn how shadows and lighting works you will have fresh perspective how to underline that with music to get even greater effect to it

Coming from a performance background and stepping into an Entertainment Creative role there was clearly a lot more to understand about how productions are run and the inner-workings of creating shows. I downloaded the program QLab and put the effort in to understand how things work and what the industry standard is. Using online resources like YouTube and QLAB Cookbook I now have a fairly advanced understanding with the program. It wasn't until I started picking the brains of the technicians around me proficient in the program, that I understood why things are setup the way they are. With an eagerness to learn & coming from a place of wanting to understand helped me communicate more effectively with in-house technicians on future installs.

Having the basic understanding of technical procedures and programs allows for better collaboration and conversation across departments. If management understands the technical needs better, meetings can be more efficient, and they can advocate to higher management on behalf of the technical demands of the production. If designers and directors have this knowledge, the asks to the tech team can be more specific and realistic to the spaces and timeframe. I believe that learning as many tech elements as you can allows you to be more prepared and helpful with unexpected challenges.

I recently wrote an article about how safety should be part of the creative process. I have had the pleasure of working with directors who take safety seriously and actually listen to the teams around them.