Every year, representatives from my department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville go to the North Carolina Theatre Conference to attend the high school theatre auditions. Most of the colleges and universities from across the state sent their representatives to recruit talented young people who are interested in theatre. We all sell our programs, and many of the private schools make scholarship offers on the spot.
I have been wondering about the demographics of this group of young people, who usually number around 100 plus or minus (this year, it was 84). So I gathered together the resumes of the auditionees and started crunching numbers. What I found is interesting in a lot of ways. What follows is a snapshot.
- There are 100 counties in North Carolina; the auditionees come from 18 of them.
- Two counties — Mecklenburg and Forsyth — provide 61% of the auditionees.
- The median household income for NC in 1999 was $39,184; the median household income for Mecklenburg County was $60,608 (2nd in state), and the median household income for Forsyth County was $52,032 (8th in the state).
- The average median household income for the 18 counties who sent students was $51,514.
- Of the eighteen counties who sent students, only one was a county with a median household income below the median for NC; the two students from there attended a private college preparatory school.
- Five schools provided 52% of the auditionees; three of them are schools for the arts.
- 73% of the auditionees had some sort of arts training outside of high school; for the students who attended the arts schools, that figure rose to 91%.
- 20% of the auditionees were people of color; of those, 76% were from Mecklenburg or Forsyth Counties.
Here is a link to the map I created showing where all the schools were who sent students:
Here is the map of the household income in North Carolina — I suspect you will see the parallel:
In the discussion surrounding the impact of class in the theatre, there were many who contended that class played very little role — that it was all about talent and desire. What we see above is that, at least in NC, this isn’t true. If you want to receive a college scholarship, it is a definite advantage to be from a wealthy county and have parents with sufficient discretionary income to pay to give you private lessons or send you to governor’s school. If they can pay to send you to a conservatory like the UNC School of the Arts for high school, it’s even better.
On the other hand, if you are from a poor or rural county, it is unlikely that you will receive such a scholarship, because you will not be at NCTC auditioning. You will probably not have a well-funded theatre program at your high school run by one or more teachers who even know that NCTC has college auditions, and your parents may not have the money to send you to private lessons or governor’s school.
Lani Guinier, President Clinton’s rejected nominee as Asst Attorney General, once said in a speech I attended that those who succeed are those who are given a chance to succeed.
Advantage begins young when it comes to theatre.
#1 by Jeremy McGuire on February 6, 2010 - 8:28 pm
I for one appreciate the work you are doing in illuminating the role of privilege in the successful theatre career. As it has been for thousands of years, the well-off get the advantages of parental support and academic opportunity while the less well off, which is to say the poor, do not. The arts in general and theatre specifically are foreign universes to them; possibilities and opportunities do not even show up on their radar screens. There is no parental support because the arts have nothing to do with scratching out a living.
It would be nice if the same educational opportunities were available to ever child regardless of income or background, but until we get off the property tax base for education that is not going to happen. The well off will always covet the better educational opportunities in their neighborhoods even though they come at the expense of those students in the poorer ones. After all, what’s the point of being able to afford the finest houses if they are not also in the best school districts. Schools are the major selling points for property and no one is going to sacrifice that in favor of an across the board per capita plan for funding education.
#2 by Scott on February 8, 2010 - 1:29 pm
Perhaps so, Jeremy, but perhaps we in the theatre could open our eyes and actually make an effort to democratize opportunities, rather than simply claiming we recruit/cast based on “talent.” The fact is we recruit based on the talent of the student’s teacher, not the student, and on the student’s parents, who pay for private training and the money to go to NCTC.