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I want to become a theater teacher, but I also don’t want to give up performing. How do people balance teaching with continuing to act or perform professionally?

I’m a high school senior interested in both theater and education. I’ve been involved in theater for a few years and have been in many productions. I'm planning to pursue a major in education with a minor in theater in college.

spring26 education teaching teacher acting theater
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Kate’s Answer

I was a full time art teacher for about a decade, and I'm a professional artist, so while I can't speak to theatre specifically, I can speak to being a teacher while continuing your own creative practice.

A full time teaching job is really a more-than-full-time-job. The hours are long and the pay isn't great but the work is so rewarding. I planned to use my "summers off" and school holidays to work on my art, but in reality that time was used either recovering from being exhausted/preventing burnout, completing required professional development/graduate classes, or catching up on all the stuff I didn't get to do because I never had enough planning time in the work day.

Knowing enough people in theatre, the time commitment required for production is intense and may be untenable long term if you're also working a full time job. That said, there are many smaller community theatre groups that comprise other people who have full time day jobs and do rehearsal/performance after work. If you can find a way to not work late at your teaching job, you may be able to make it work.
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Kristen’s Answer

You can still have the time to do plays for yourself outside of school. The nice thing being a theatre teacher is you can pick the dates for your school plays around the dates you will be performing or have tech weeks so they don't conflict.
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