Earning a living as a Freelance Director

I just read this blog post in the Guardian from this summer about the secret lives of freelance directors having day jobs. 

This is a problem in the US as well. If you're not financially backed in some way, it's almost impossible to be a freelance director. Many of us take many more jobs than we should have, instead of focusing on one project at a time, leading to some less-than-artistically-amazing work. I sometimes ponder what a wonder it is that any spectacular work happens in the theatre.

I left my last temp job about five years ago. I was teaching Mon-Thurs and answering phones at an accounting firm on Fridays. The small bump in my monthly income was significant to me at the time.

Me and most of my friends have day jobs as college teachers, or on artistic staffs. My mentor, Anna D. Shapiro basically told just those were our options, "name me one director who just lives off of their freelance directing." she challenged me and my grad school cohort. There are very very few. 

In some ways, I felt a little jealous of this director, whose day job is something mindless that he doesn't have to care about. I have loved teaching and being on artistic staff, each for different reasons, but those are jobs you care deeply about and so they can deplete your creative energy. Luckily, I've found myself invigorated by my work in both arenas, rather than depleted, and am often inspired by surrounding myself by young artists, peers, and passionate theatre lovers. So ultimately it works out. 

It's a complex issue when you consider the staff of a theatre all making a more reasonable wage than the artists, who are the reason for the organization existing.  Because my husband is in classical music, and the little I know of that world, I don't think it's necessarily true in their world. I wonder if it's still connected to this idea theatre artists carry around with us that we should feel grateful just to be working. I'm glad that people like Derek Bond are revealing this, I think there's a lot of shame involved that keeps people from admitting that they have other employment.