Tuesday 10 January 2012

Promoting the entertainment biz - school talk memories

To promote the entertainment industry and particularly working backstage in a technical role, I spent five years visiting high schools across NSW speaking to students. Each year we would write to the entertainment teacher, head of drama, head of music and the career advisor offering this free lecture - with 630 schools, that made a lot of letters.

Sure enough, the invites would come, and I'd do maybe 20 to 30 talks each year - often repeat visits for a new class. My target was Year 12, but given the school calendar I would end up with Year 10 and Year 11 as well. My preference was those enrolled in entertainment, or with an interest.

I got my presentation slick, a power point with pictures of me, old shows, disasters at shows, and simple keypoints about the length and breadth of the industry - $5 billion in economic activity, 6,500 full time equivalent technical roles nationwide, the breakup of the jobs. No one ever questioned my research, and the talks always went over well.

But it was the yawing reality of hope, fantasy, ambition, ignorance, wasted opportunity and hopelessness that surprised me. That was just from the teachers. The kids had no idea, and look to their mates, Youtube, rumor and fantasy to try to glean a career path. High school is usually not where decisions or fate determine a career anyway, and the pressure on kids to 'make a choice' is heavy.

In Year 10 kids are brainwashed into making some choice, so there are an ocean of career events. One Year 10 talk in Sydney's west,  the teacher before me labored on and on about his days with some forgotten band, as keyboard player. Sweating profusely in his stretched suit, and looking like he'd added 10 kilo's sometime recently, he bored the kids rigid with his war talk.

'Career Advisers' sadly appear to be misfits within the teaching profession, square pegs who maybe flunked curriculum tests. They do check teachers can read, write and add up, don't they? I mean, proficiency tests during their career? Of course I met some switched on Advisers, but usually not. One invited me all the way to the Riverina, a $400 Rex flight and a 4am wakeup, only to find not three schools consolidated but one confused group of Year 10 who'd been told I would run a workshop for three hours. Which is a far cry from the 40 minute presentation that I delivered, leaving the group shivering in the grey winter half light in a basketball auditorium with one feeble heater. The 'Advisor' was cross that I did not deliver three hours. I was incredulous that she was (a) deluded about the duration; and (b) too lazy to motivate the other two promised schools to attend.

Mainly I met a legion of failed thespians, musicians and dancers who took a teacher job when the band broke up or the auditions flunked. Sure enough, their main focus in their entertainment, drama or music classes was their own specialty, and their own place within the past. Shades of Mr. G, the gay Type A personality nutbag in Summer Heights High.

A few of the teachers actually had good things happening - Cerdon College, Picton High, Blackwattle Bay come to mind.

I probably spoke to 2,500 kids over that five years, and enrolled about 40 of them as a consequence. Considering the course cost them $12,000, that's almost half a million dollars of revenue over five years, in exchange for 100 hours a year, including travel time.

I'd like to think that many more kids than enrolled took note of my message: 'the hours are long, the work is freelance, skills are paramount. Success is not guaranteed. You cannot be a fan, get autographs or go to parties. You will sweat and get dirty'.

Moreso I hope many of the girls got some encouragement when I said they could and should take it on, and we saw a gentle upswing in female enrolments over the time, albeit still never more than 15% female in a class.

But mainly I like to think a lot of kids decided not to chase the dream, because I told them how it was. They probably have rewarding or at least sustainable jobs right now, in some other vocation. At least they didn't waste money and years of their lives.

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