The One Rule for Every Theater Teacher

“What’s the most important thing every theater teacher should know?”

I’ve been exposed to a lot of student teachers lately. Not my student teachers, I’ve never gone through the training to host them, but our department gets a lot of college students coming in for observation hours and we end up with student teachers about every other year. One potential theater teacher of the future, who happens to also be my niece, told me she feels completely unprepared by her classes.

I assured her she was, in fact, completely unprepared, but that was ok. When she asked, when anyone asks, what’s the most important thing to remember, here’s my answer: The process matters more than the product.

Every time.

You can have a show with cardboard sets and missed cues and still create a meaningful, unforgettable experience for students and audiences. Or you can have a “perfect” show that left half your kids out in the cold.

Guess which one I’m proud of?

Why Process First Works

The process is where students take risks, grow, and build confidence. It’s where they find their identity in community. When you focus on product alone, on the smooth squeaky clean production, you lose all of that. But when you build a culture of process first, everyone wins.

Theater is work. It takes dedication and commitment. It takes being able to see an end point no one else can and then steering the ship is that direction as you build it. When you’re doing it in an educational setting, you’re building that ship with people who don’t know where the tools are, what the ship looks like, or how to swim.

We all know this to be true. It looks like chaos. It feels like a constant lurch toward the edge, but what is it really? It's a set of steps, of trial and error, of experiment and course correction, to create a piece of art.

The steps matter as much as the product. Even though no one may ever see the steps. The daily showing up, doing the work, finding the flaws, trying again, making it better and repeating that for weeks is training for the bigger world. The idea that collaboration will take you farther than competition and that every job, no matter how small, is part of the whole, creates an understanding of how to live a better life and go farther in any field.

I’ve worked with students who now design professionally, students who were once told in high school that they should just stay quiet or stay behind the scenes. I’ve heard the horror stories. I’ve seen the hurt. And I refuse to be another adult who tells a kid they don’t belong.

Rewrite the Rules

You don’t need Broadway polish. You need a process that says: “You are safe here. You matter here. Let’s create together.” And then teach the steps required to create great art, with high expectations, and an understanding that the bar is a goal we strive for with joy and excitement. And there is always another, higher bar to strive for. That’s what inclusive theater education looks like.

Action Step: Audit Your Rehearsal Culture

Here’s your invitation to look beneath the surface. Not at the performance, but at what leads to it.

Take 10 minutes. Grab a notebook. Answer these Rehearsal Audit Questions

How much time do I spend nurturing vs. perfecting?

Who gets asked for ideas? Who offers them freely?

Who receives feedback—and what kind?

Who gets invited back? Who chooses to return?

Who’s thriving here? Who’s just surviving?

What could I shift to widen the circle?

You don’t need to overhaul everything today. Just notice. Get curious. This is your real curriculum and you’re the architect of it.

If You Only Remember One Thing

You don’t have to make the most impressive show. You have to make the most inclusive process.

Because the student who held a drill for the first time in your class might someday build sets for Broadway. Or run a community theater. Or teach the next generation of artists. Or have a great confident life because they learned they could accomplish big things. And isn’t that more impactful than the perfect production?

Let’s make sure they leave believing they belong.

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