Its ok. At least you weren't a techie like i was. Admittedly I did it as a volunteer (so that slightly younger kids could be in a FREE summer theater program). @@tylerbenderr In my city it costs like 500 to be in the other 2 theater programs (both of which definitely make enough money from admission prices and all the vendor fees) But since everyone who worked at mine either didn't get paid, or only got paid like 1/5 what you should be paid... the kids didn't have to pay to be party of the troupe I volunteered for 4 years from when I was 12 till 16 ... building stuff has always been a passion of mine. Working under very talented T.O.'s and stage designers was a great way to learn... and teaching the younger kids how to build stuff was rewarding
I dated a “thespian” in college, and he absolutely wore the scarf, fingerless gloves, and a newsboy cap, and thought himself so edgy and deep… adult me just cringes at the memories of how cool I thought he was.
I have a strict rule when I do shows/plays/etc: I have never dated someone I am in a show with while the show is ongoing. The feelings are not real. The closeness is artificially created by the rehearsal schedule.
Right and if stuff does go wrong then you’re stuck in the show and rehearsals with them. That could end up being awkward. Sometimes you will have great friendships and main even some romantic relationships that started off as being in the same play. You gotta hang out a good bit outside of theater spaces to know if both of you do actually click and work together. The energies ppl have at rehearsal can be so different from outside of rehearsal
@maem7462 I have dated people *after* the show was over, with great success (9+ month long relationships). But it required seeing them for who they are and not their character, and not jeopardizing the good vibes and group effort that every show is.
@@SleepySuperhero Right and that is totally fair to do. I haven’t dated anyone that I’ve been in a show with. I’ve had some great friendships that come out of shows. We happen to get along very well during the show(s) and eventually we hang out during more times of the year
@@Moonyeyedmeteor if I didn’t I would have been benched for not doing schoolwork and the next year the drama teacher had a baby and quit teaching so we pretty much had no drama department after that year until after I graduated lol
Former high school stage manager here. Can confirm it was way too much power for me to have at that age. But my grades were great, and nothing inappropriate happened with any of my directors. lol. I loved every minute of high school theater but I am also glad to have left it in high school.
Was about to say the exact same thing. We had very similar experiences it seems. I also left it in HS. Started Stage Managing in 7th grade but the director (the drama teacher) did a lot of the show day Stage Manager work in middle school. I wasn't allowed or expected to call a show till 11th grade. My grades were great. And yes the power was very real. It really helped me with my confidence, which was why I never acted ironically. Our director was cold but fair and expected us to be professionals and would absolutely never, sorry for anyone who experienced what was described in this vid, not cool drama teachers, way to start drama.
I’m “related to a director”. My mom did costumes on TV and Broadway. My dad did not succeed in becoming an actor, but became a teacher and directed his school’s musicals. I was literally raised on Sondheim shows. I love this shit, and have 0 idea how to be a normal person. Also I met Stephen Sondheim once and shook his hand and it was the best thing to ever happen to me.
Senior year one of the kids playing lead in the play had a mental break and genuinely lost their memories from the collective stress of theatre, classes and college prep. Theatre is a interesting world
@@tylerbenderr Yup, they were in my Psych class, had to had an assistant shadowing them to make sure they were getting to the right classes for a while, etc. I think the memory loss was some of junior year and most of senior year but I didn't know them that well so not sure the extent of the memory loss. Not sure if they recovered their memories but they got back to a stable normal life as far as I could tell!
@anabritelora I wanna say no; I think their memories from most recent months were the ones they lost the hardest, so anything lines they learned probably went too. I think they had to drop out from the play for health? But this was 8 years ago, so this parts more or less speculation, i didnt work or watch either of the plays senior year
My favorite theatre story from high school; We were doing Grease and desperately needed more guys to be on stage for Greased Lightening so we humbly went to the basketball team and begged them for just the 1 song.. By the end of it 4 of them decided to join chior and 2 of them continued on to do theatre every year they had left.
Lmaoo some of us wanted to join theater but it interfered with our sports schedule. Or maybe we didn’t have enough confidence to join because we would get clowned. But by senior year we were confident enough to do it. I was a football guy but man acting in my Shakespeare class was so much damn fun
one of my closest friends is “the dancer who can sing” archetype and you described it so well. We were in Cinderella over the summer and she was the dove. She didn’t have a single line, but trust she was front and center doing pirouettes and leaps in every number lmao
As someone who has never been to the US, I find this really fascinating. I am a theatre kid by heart but here at my German high school we did really old boring plays 🙄 no musical number in sight…
as a former techie: please do not bump into things that were working on not because it took so long but because you might get hurt. Also actors treat us like shit which is why we’re so mad.
I'm so glad you put stage manager at the bottom bc it's so accurate. The stage manager at my high school was really intense and unlikeable. And for some god forsaken reason she returned the year AFTER she had graduated to "help" backstage during my senior year musical. I remember a moment right before the curtain went up -- and we're all in the wings doing our best to be silent -- she loudly RAN backstage and literally shoved people out of her way like she was the most important person there.
I very much enjoyed this iceberg. Creative content and weirdly specific things you don’t sit down and think about but they are SO TRUE. I love it. Took me back
Oh my gosh the one where you said she acts like a mom!! My best friend got dumped by her boyfriend during one theater production, and he was the lead, but she was always so kind to everyone and was an older sister so she tried her best to keep everyone in check and was always making everyone feel welcome.
Every single other theater major when I was in (a miserably tiny) college were convinced they were going to do it professionally and be on Broadway and they were the meanest, most competitive bitches I'd ever met except for like two INCLUDING our only professor. It was a nightmare and the only theater-adjacent thing I've touched since then has been larping. Somehow I learned more from that than I ever did in my classes. I was literally only a theater major because I'm dumb as hell and I wouldn't have to take any complicated math classes.
@@RadiantSaff thanks and yeah, I’m just sort of going with the flow rn. A lot of people in my theatre class are actually so passive aggressive/rude it’s just exhausting
I dated a stage hand drama kid in highschool and when he took me around the drama area at lunch to show me around (very serious for 10th grade) one of the drama kids said “We’re like one big Incestuous family” and I did NOT become a drama kid because of that 😭😭😭
as someone who loves super mario odyssey and watches odyssey content all the time, i did not expect to hear seaside kingdom music in the background of a Tyler bender video, but it was a very pleasant surprise lol. such a great soundtrack
I had a rare football jock to theatre school guy in my school who sang one song the year before for theatre class and then got cast as Marius for our fall musical. He actually could act though and now he’s touring nationally
I was convinced that I wasn’t that deep in the iceberg and then you got to Showmances and you finally made the synapses connect as to why my longterm high school relationship (and rebound of said relationship) was such a tough time.
I received my first check ($250) when I was 11. I was a theater kid and got cast as a classmate of Dr. Freud in a BBC documentary. A few months later my parents took me to NYC (less than an hour away) to see my 1st Broadway show for my 12 Birthday. Annie Get Your Gun with Reba ❤ My full first name has a hyphen and multiple accents so I've always gone by Annie. 😅 A few years ago I sat next to an old man on a plane. We started talking and he was returning from surprising his son for his birthday after work. Work turned out to be in Funny Girl when Lea Michelle also was in the show. He was also on the show Manifest, but since this was the last leg of a stressful trip I decided it was a good time to take a nap! I could ramble on this iceberg forever but I SHOULD go do my errands/save this for later! 😋 Awww now I'm thinking about Mumble from Happy Feet! 😂❤
I was theater tech when I was in high school. Worked my way up to technical director. And the comment of "skipping other classes to do random projects for theater" is sooo accurate. By my senior year, I def spent most my time doing stuff for the theater.
I wasn’t a theater kid- I was an art kid- BUT I had lots of theater kid friends and was roomies with a stage manager major 😂 it’s crazy how I know like every one of these kids!
the sports bro who randomly gets the lead is so accurate. can also confirm as a former ballerina that this is true in many if not all performing arts (any random man who shows up at the studio will be the teacher’s favorite)
As a theatre kid who loves Dan and Phil and knows several other theatre kids who love Dan and Phil you hit the nail on the head and I loved the inclusion of that category
As a neurodivergent child who did 2 years of small town theatre as my parents' attempt to make me Less Shy as I begged to have the least possible lines in a play: If I stayed anywhere near the iceberg in my alternate timeline I'd be straddling Stage Crew and Thespian as someone who has been a 2013 Hipster and genuine interest in makeup/art/costumes.
im a dancer who sings, and i can confirm the way you described it was 100% accurate. i played tanya in mamma mia, but the director still made choreograph two different dance routines
I felt called out from the tip to the bottom lmao (also I think slime tut would be good for the iceberg :) I would say I’m a Gleek and Thespian. I’m only saying Thespian because I am registered as a jr thespian lol.
HA oh all the plays I was supposed to read in my Theatre History courses…to be fair, you try reading (and comprehending?!) the whole Oresteia within 2 days and then take a difficult quiz on it 🙄 Thank god that class was graded on a curve, I scraped by with a C+ lol
I was in High School Musical in my 7-12 school in 8th grade and Gabriella (senior) was dating Ryan (sophomore) and Sharpay acted like Sharpay before and after the show. We also had a jock we had to recruit from a different school playing Troy. The year after, we made a 7th grader stage manager for multiple high school shows when we had high school techies and they were great, but I fear for their health. Also, idk if anyone else's school does Theatre National Honors Society, but we do and I think it deserves its own place in the iceberg. Also, techies deserve the world for putting up with our bullshit.
I live in a tiny bumfuck nowhere town, and theatre was the ONLY thing to do around here. So it actually surprises me that "new personality" was so low on the iceburg, because... like everyone is like that here?? I honestly thought it was just an unspoken constant in theatre kids lmao. A sidenote about that-- seeing the theatre actors during an off season when they're not working on a play was weird as hell. They'd just be working at their job at a restaurant or whatever, and it was like some kind of light or life was just gone from them. And then when they were rehearsing again, that would go away, but it was never consistent. Like, with one person, it was like one month she'd be really maternal and call everyone "sweetie" (because she was cast as a mom in a play), then the next time it happened she'd speak with a lot of old fashioned slang (because she was cast as a young adult in a period piece or whatever it's called). And so on and so forth for all the theatre actors in town. It was like if they didn't have a role, they didn't have a personality, which seemed sad af srry 😬
I used to do stage crew, but then the director was an absolute troll, gave me ptsd and slight depression and anxiety. NEVER DOING CREW AGAIN. Well, I just got the lead in a musical soooo. TAKE THAT UNNAMED CREW DIRECTOR
Hi 👋 It's me the "new personality" theatre kid (who's also studying musical theatre in NYC right now). For the record... I wrote a 30 page mini memoir about my experience in Little Shop of Horrors and how playing Audrey shaped me, and now I love leopard print. I also played Sally once and now I clap whenever I'm happy and I say "that's a good philosophy" an abnormal amount. I don't really make a new personality though-I just adopt traits into my current personality and allow myself to learn from the experience. Most of it was unintentional though-my family made fun of me for accidentally using a New York accent when I was Audrey and the Sally clap was also an accident. What can I say, I get invested in the characters lol. To be fair it was never superficial and I didn't try to make it that way. It just sort of... happened.
5:44 as a dancer who now also dose theater this is so true, the first day my director was asking what we did over summer and I said I went to a few dance competition because that’s just what I thought of first and say asked if I did tap and I said I did then one of the assistants said you shouldn’t have said that. And now I’m doing a tap duet with my friend (who also dose tap) in the show
17:46 this video brought back a lot of memories, although I'm so much older than you, Tyler, that all your pop culture references post-phantom (post- _Lion King_ , let's say...) were all things that happened after I had moved out of my parents' hous, so sometimes it was hard to figure out what you were getting at at first (don't worry about explaining things more, it'll break up your flow, + I'm used to not knowing who famous people are!) Anyway, the high school stage manager item brought back the most vivid memory from those days, about the stage manager for every high school show I ever even _knew_ was happening at my school. I'll call this person "Lou." Lou had graduated from my high school when I was still in elementary school. They were not, as far as I knew, paid by the school, or the district, or possibly at all for their contribution to my small town high school theater program. Lou knew everything about the school's theater building, had the dimensions of the stage memoized, they knew everything about the technical equipment, had a massive collection of their own power tools. They could listen to the wireless conversation happening among the crew from the ear piece to the wireless headset on one their ear (these head sets were analog kids, Lou had a little box clipped on their belt, just fyi) while they conversed with the director standing right in front of them and could understand and remember both conversations. Lou made the kids on the technical crew for every show feel like a hand-picked group of Navy SEALs. Lou was a legend, and... also it was kind of sad? What was Lou getting out of this? The program put on 3 plays per year, a one-act, a musical, and a Shakespeare play, I'm not sure if that's a lot of shows for a school our size, my high school had an average graduating class of around 150? 200? It seemed like a lot even at the time. Lou worked a dead-end job to pay the bills, and spent all their free time back at their high school with us. They lived with their parents in order to keep this program that the school and the district didnt really much care about alive... but why? I'm sure everyone is thinking that Lou was crusing for kids to be inappropriate with in some way... I'm old enough to know that you kind of never know if someone is sexually predatory unless they target you, but you former theatre kids also know that a high school cast/crew have very few secrets from each other, that rumors are constant and even the teacher/director probably knows all your business, even if they don't want to know. I never heard anyone say anything like that about Lou... the closest was the occasional suggestion that they had a crush on the teacher who directed the Shakespeare play. I'm not saying they _couldn't _ have hid 'an affair' w a student or that teacher, just that it would have been hard to do so... so _why_ did they keep coming back? I never knew. I do think that having someone like "Lou" is a better option than giving a 17 year old an overwhelming amount of responsibility and an excuse for a major power trip, though, that's for sure!
my mother is a theater teacher who owns her own theater. i grew up around all of that and struggled with feeling untalented my entire life. its rough. but im so greatful for it.
I’m 58. I was on stage crew all 4 years of high school. Also a member of The National Thespian Society. We went to New York for a theatre tour. We saw “Cats,” “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” and off Broadway, “Little Shop of Horrors.” This was back in 1984, before Disney gentrified Times Square. Your Iceberg is very funny.
I was made co props manager with this other girl and she became THE most toxic stage manager archetype ever. I never did another hs production partly because of her. In college i did a summer costume gig and met a different chick who acted exactly the same so i quit theater for good.
I wasn’t a theatre kid, but I was on the next iceberg over, the Band Kid Iceberg, which shares *a lot* of the same…let’s call it topography. I was whatever the Rachel Berry for Band Kid was; maybe also “Thespian” (aka “Classical Musician”). They’re different flavors of self-serious, so it’s hard to tell. Also, thank you for talking about auditions! Trying to explain to non-musicians about what that process is like is hard; nobody tells Freshman Accounting majors, “Not so fast! We need to see your spreadsheet portfolio before you can call yourself an Accounting major around here!”
Was a stage manager in my final year of high school. Can confirm I was probably a nightmare to be around. My teacher got the school to rearrange my final exams to a schedule that better suited me and our rehearsal schedule, so I wrote my exams on my own timetable. It was rad and it was wrong.
I did one high school production while I was in 7th grade. I remember 90% of these things happening. I had a great time but after a few months away from it I never really desired to go back to theater.
I’m not a theater kid in the sense that I’ve done theater lol, but I resonate with the deep knowledge of musicals, dramatic tendencies and musical analysis lol.
I think I was Renee Rapp in high school, but in college briefly an _a cappella_ person (its own hell - and this was the '90s), then 100% classical...so I'm an opera singer (and musicology nerd). I'm a Wagner/Verdi mezzo, so you can imagine anything lighter than "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" has sounded absolutely ridiculous since age 25. Now my 13yo is finding her iceberg level - she loves comedy, and is a serious tapper, so who knows...
Oh my lord when you are one of 10 girls vying for a specific role and then the jock who can't carry a tune gets handed the male lead for existing. Just re-traumatize me
I was not a stage manager (I turned down the job) but I was technical director. Your description is spot on 😂 The stage manager did college classes and was only there for rehearsals, so I did all the work. I barely went to my other classes and I ended up very mentally ill. I've spent the years since learning that not everything is my responsibility, my professors are not my personal friends, and catching up on all the sleep I lost in high school. I was such a jerk about the attendance sheet and the rehearsal schedule and now I'm having to relearn empathy 😂
As a theatre kid from the 1900 hundreds I remember - • Old people old them some Brigadoon (there it a street in my town named Brigadoon and I must rest the urge to sign the name whenever I see it) and Our Town. • There was always that one girl who learned sign language (but actually knew no one hearing impaired) would do it along with their audition and always tried to get it included in the play somehow and could often be really ableist (the sign language girl I went to school with had a mom that hated me, tried to get me kicked out of different schools and summer stock productions and did successfully manage to get me ‘benched’ for the rest of the year once for school productions) • CATS 😑 That was the one musical EVERYONE knew back then.
1. No one hates other theater kids, more than theater kids do. 2. You called me out on being stage crew, having a B.F.A, having a showmance, and being a thespian. OUCH. OUCH. OUCH OUCH!!!! STOP THAT IT HURTS SO MUCH!! THIS IS WHY THEATER KIDS HATE EACH OTHER. NO ONE ELSE KNOWS HOW TO CUT US THIS DEEP!!
There was a jock who joined theater and he got a lead every single time and the funny part is his dad forced him to do theater.also we had a t pose kid and he scared literally everybody everyday because of he was obsessed with the horror stuff and was like kinda a dark kid…
Stage manager here, power is kinda KEY to make sure your play is at least okay. BUT they’re people too. Be kind! Don’t be rude and pretend you’re the best. But make sure to keep them in line. It’s fun tho!😊
4:02 I was in music man, i was that one of the mayors daughters friends and OMG it was SOOOOO boring to like watch on the set I feel bad for my family lol. Some of my friends in the play were like “oh my new fav musical is music man” like bitch don’t lie💀
THE CAST LIST FOR MY SCHOOL PLAY IS COMING FRIDAY WERE DOING GUYS AND DOLLS 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 (start a yippiee chain in the replies) so i’m watching theatre vids bc my theatre kid core is bursting inside IM TO EXCITED
I am definitely the dancer first haha! I’ve been into theatre as long as I have dance, but I chose to do dance during the year growing up and theatre only in the summer. I still do theatre in college, but am always the featured dance ensemble who ends every number in the splits haha
![ROSÉ(로제) - APT. (Band VER.) (With. 이영지) [더 시즌즈-이영지의 레인보우] | KBS 241129 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IW8qaemx74g/mqdefault.jpg)
Tag me on Instagram stories & share where you are on this iceberg 👏🌟
our stage managers are SO mean and scary but likeee i love them still!
Tyler being a theater kid surprised no one
DAY RUINING COMMENT
@@tylerbenderrI was a theater kid too & I can see it😭
@@tylerbenderrgirlie, theatre kids have a theatre kid radar.
Especially with that intro (I'm a theater kid too)
Its ok. At least you weren't a techie like i was.
Admittedly I did it as a volunteer (so that slightly younger kids could be in a FREE summer theater program).
@@tylerbenderr
In my city it costs like 500 to be in the other 2 theater programs
(both of which definitely make enough money from admission prices and all the vendor fees)
But since everyone who worked at mine either didn't get paid, or only got paid like 1/5 what you should be paid... the kids didn't have to pay to be party of the troupe
I volunteered for 4 years from when I was 12 till 16 ... building stuff has always been a passion of mine.
Working under very talented T.O.'s and stage designers was a great way to learn... and teaching the younger kids how to build stuff was rewarding
I dated a “thespian” in college, and he absolutely wore the scarf, fingerless gloves, and a newsboy cap, and thought himself so edgy and deep… adult me just cringes at the memories of how cool I thought he was.
HAHAHA YES
I have a strict rule when I do shows/plays/etc: I have never dated someone I am in a show with while the show is ongoing. The feelings are not real. The closeness is artificially created by the rehearsal schedule.
Good plan. This causes so much chaos
Right and if stuff does go wrong then you’re stuck in the show and rehearsals with them. That could end up being awkward. Sometimes you will have great friendships and main even some romantic relationships that started off as being in the same play. You gotta hang out a good bit outside of theater spaces to know if both of you do actually click and work together. The energies ppl have at rehearsal can be so different from outside of rehearsal
@maem7462 I have dated people *after* the show was over, with great success (9+ month long relationships). But it required seeing them for who they are and not their character, and not jeopardizing the good vibes and group effort that every show is.
@@SleepySuperhero Right and that is totally fair to do. I haven’t dated anyone that I’ve been in a show with. I’ve had some great friendships that come out of shows. We happen to get along very well during the show(s) and eventually we hang out during more times of the year
real 😭
I was a jock who was forced into stage crew because I was the only one that could read a tape measure and use a table saw.
real lmao
But you still did it. Did you ever agree to help them again? If yes? You might be a ‘ cousin’
@@Moonyeyedmeteor if I didn’t I would have been benched for not doing schoolwork and the next year the drama teacher had a baby and quit teaching so we pretty much had no drama department after that year until after I graduated lol
tyler refusing to research dan and phil had me screaming
bless
I scream-barked with laughter.
Love that she plugged their Tour, too!!!❤🎉
honestly its for the better, she doesnt need to be cursed with knowing all that
@@IncrediblyNerdy but her video covering the history of fan over-involvement would be fire…. tyler needs to watch the valentine’s day video
You can’t forget about the only person in the dressing room who can do braids
also matronly senior girl
I was that girl and god I couldn't get a break in certain shows💀😭
me fr
Former high school stage manager here. Can confirm it was way too much power for me to have at that age. But my grades were great, and nothing inappropriate happened with any of my directors. lol. I loved every minute of high school theater but I am also glad to have left it in high school.
Was about to say the exact same thing. We had very similar experiences it seems.
I also left it in HS. Started Stage Managing in 7th grade but the director (the drama teacher) did a lot of the show day Stage Manager work in middle school. I wasn't allowed or expected to call a show till 11th grade. My grades were great. And yes the power was very real. It really helped me with my confidence, which was why I never acted ironically.
Our director was cold but fair and expected us to be professionals and would absolutely never, sorry for anyone who experienced what was described in this vid, not cool drama teachers, way to start drama.
I’m “related to a director”. My mom did costumes on TV and Broadway. My dad did not succeed in becoming an actor, but became a teacher and directed his school’s musicals. I was literally raised on Sondheim shows. I love this shit, and have 0 idea how to be a normal person. Also I met Stephen Sondheim once and shook his hand and it was the best thing to ever happen to me.
Senior year one of the kids playing lead in the play had a mental break and genuinely lost their memories from the collective stress of theatre, classes and college prep. Theatre is a interesting world
omg bruh what
@@tylerbenderr Yup, they were in my Psych class, had to had an assistant shadowing them to make sure they were getting to the right classes for a while, etc. I think the memory loss was some of junior year and most of senior year but I didn't know them that well so not sure the extent of the memory loss. Not sure if they recovered their memories but they got back to a stable normal life as far as I could tell!
Ok but could they remember their lines? 👀😅
@anabritelora I wanna say no; I think their memories from most recent months were the ones they lost the hardest, so anything lines they learned probably went too. I think they had to drop out from the play for health? But this was 8 years ago, so this parts more or less speculation, i didnt work or watch either of the plays senior year
My favorite theatre story from high school;
We were doing Grease and desperately needed more guys to be on stage for Greased Lightening so we humbly went to the basketball team and begged them for just the 1 song.. By the end of it 4 of them decided to join chior and 2 of them continued on to do theatre every year they had left.
Love that you went directly from "gleek" to "literally any straight male character in glee"
as soon as i saw the thumbnail, i genuinely went "oh no--" then tapped the video to find out how big of a callout the iceberg will be
welcome hahahha
@@tylerbenderrI saw Hamilton and knew I’d immediately get shot down
That “jock guy who randomly gets cast as the lead” was 100% what happened in my high school! You described that experience so perfectly hahaha
thank you for that lmaooo
That happend at my high school also!!
Steve Holt!
Lmaoo some of us wanted to join theater but it interfered with our sports schedule. Or maybe we didn’t have enough confidence to join because we would get clowned. But by senior year we were confident enough to do it. I was a football guy but man acting in my Shakespeare class was so much damn fun
If you release shirts that say “charismatic as a pair of dollar store flip flops”, I’d buy that shit and wear it proudly
merch???
@@tylerbenderryes please
one of my closest friends is “the dancer who can sing” archetype and you described it so well. We were in Cinderella over the summer and she was the dove. She didn’t have a single line, but trust she was front and center doing pirouettes and leaps in every number lmao
As someone who has never been to the US, I find this really fascinating. I am a theatre kid by heart but here at my German high school we did really old boring plays 🙄 no musical number in sight…
nooo that's the worst
The jock who became a theater kid in my high school program was also super nice!
as a former techie: please do not bump into things that were working on not because it took so long but because you might get hurt. Also actors treat us like shit which is why we’re so mad.
I'm so glad you put stage manager at the bottom bc it's so accurate. The stage manager at my high school was really intense and unlikeable. And for some god forsaken reason she returned the year AFTER she had graduated to "help" backstage during my senior year musical. I remember a moment right before the curtain went up -- and we're all in the wings doing our best to be silent -- she loudly RAN backstage and literally shoved people out of her way like she was the most important person there.
This is very true to form
I very much enjoyed this iceberg. Creative content and weirdly specific things you don’t sit down and think about but they are SO TRUE. I love it. Took me back
nothing made me hate theatre kids more than being in theatre
Precisely
Oh my gosh the one where you said she acts like a mom!! My best friend got dumped by her boyfriend during one theater production, and he was the lead, but she was always so kind to everyone and was an older sister so she tried her best to keep everyone in check and was always making everyone feel welcome.
Every single other theater major when I was in (a miserably tiny) college were convinced they were going to do it professionally and be on Broadway and they were the meanest, most competitive bitches I'd ever met except for like two INCLUDING our only professor. It was a nightmare and the only theater-adjacent thing I've touched since then has been larping. Somehow I learned more from that than I ever did in my classes. I was literally only a theater major because I'm dumb as hell and I wouldn't have to take any complicated math classes.
I was the nightmare oof
I wanted to do costume work and decided against it because the teacher was SO toxic.
As a brand new theatre kid thanks for explaining what in the world is happening
Hopefully this helps you decide if you should run or stay hahahaha
I’m trapped in this class I didn’t even ask for 😭. I’m so uncomfortable, do you guys have any tips?
@@theshiba9464 what do you mean class? Like school class
@@theshiba9464 best advice is maybe try not to take anything too personally from the theater kids lol
@@RadiantSaff thanks and yeah, I’m just sort of going with the flow rn. A lot of people in my theatre class are actually so passive aggressive/rude it’s just exhausting
I dated a stage hand drama kid in highschool and when he took me around the drama area at lunch to show me around (very serious for 10th grade) one of the drama kids said “We’re like one big Incestuous family” and I did NOT become a drama kid because of that 😭😭😭
so we just all had the same childhood fr??
@@tylerbenderr The Attractive Zillennial Gemini experience was\is the same for all of us, and it’s devastating to our inner NLOGs 😭
You know she put in that Kingdom Hearts line just to redeem herself from the Disney Adult iceberg video.
hahaha I was SO sure not to say kingdom OF hearts
@@tylerbenderryou should’ve just kept saying it lmao
The way that this is completley accurate 😭
I would like to add: guy who always just so happens to be nearby during quick changes
no no, that's the same as "let's touch" guy
as someone who loves super mario odyssey and watches odyssey content all the time, i did not expect to hear seaside kingdom music in the background of a Tyler bender video, but it was a very pleasant surprise lol. such a great soundtrack
shout out the editing team
I had a rare football jock to theatre school guy in my school who sang one song the year before for theatre class and then got cast as Marius for our fall musical. He actually could act though and now he’s touring nationally
I was convinced that I wasn’t that deep in the iceberg and then you got to Showmances and you finally made the synapses connect as to why my longterm high school relationship (and rebound of said relationship) was such a tough time.
I received my first check ($250) when I was 11. I was a theater kid and got cast as a classmate of Dr. Freud in a BBC documentary. A few months later my parents took me to NYC (less than an hour away) to see my 1st Broadway show for my 12 Birthday. Annie Get Your Gun with Reba ❤ My full first name has a hyphen and multiple accents so I've always gone by Annie. 😅 A few years ago I sat next to an old man on a plane. We started talking and he was returning from surprising his son for his birthday after work. Work turned out to be in Funny Girl when Lea Michelle also was in the show. He was also on the show Manifest, but since this was the last leg of a stressful trip I decided it was a good time to take a nap! I could ramble on this iceberg forever but I SHOULD go do my errands/save this for later! 😋 Awww now I'm thinking about Mumble from Happy Feet! 😂❤
Nailed the jock who gets a lead! The teacher thinks… “This jock
Is cool. If I give him a lead my show will be cool. I always wanted to be cool!”
I was theater tech when I was in high school. Worked my way up to technical director. And the comment of "skipping other classes to do random projects for theater" is sooo accurate. By my senior year, I def spent most my time doing stuff for the theater.
I wasn’t a theater kid- I was an art kid- BUT I had lots of theater kid friends and was roomies with a stage manager major 😂 it’s crazy how I know like every one of these kids!
the sports bro who randomly gets the lead is so accurate. can also confirm as a former ballerina that this is true in many if not all performing arts (any random man who shows up at the studio will be the teacher’s favorite)
As a theatre kid who loves Dan and Phil and knows several other theatre kids who love Dan and Phil you hit the nail on the head and I loved the inclusion of that category
I love how one tier is basically Troy Bolton’s origin story lol
I love how often you post!🎉
Omg I just love that you guys watch 🙈
As a neurodivergent child who did 2 years of small town theatre as my parents' attempt to make me Less Shy as I begged to have the least possible lines in a play:
If I stayed anywhere near the iceberg in my alternate timeline I'd be straddling Stage Crew and Thespian as someone who has been a 2013 Hipster and genuine interest in makeup/art/costumes.
im a dancer who sings, and i can confirm the way you described it was 100% accurate. i played tanya in mamma mia, but the director still made choreograph two different dance routines
the posters in the back being in the wrong order are making me lose my mind
Same 😭
as a stage management major, I’m so glad the high school stage manager one wasn’t accurate to me 😭 I just didn’t sleep and did paperwork
the thing i miss most about high school theatre is seeing my teacher try to fit a backflip into every number
The great thing about Tyler's channel is it tells me what goes on across the pond as I live in Birmingham UK and it soo much different
as a part of stage crew i feel called out ✋
Oop (you’re in my prayers)
Same fellow stage crew
I just had my west end musical y’all it was so fun ❤
You are describing me right now also my grandma and my aunt direct all the school plays
I felt called out from the tip to the bottom lmao (also I think slime tut would be good for the iceberg :) I would say I’m a Gleek and Thespian. I’m only saying Thespian because I am registered as a jr thespian lol.
10:54 Closing in on a year now! We were Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing!
I always played in the pit, not sure if that counts as theater kid but we definitely got lumped in with them a lot 😂
16:28 this is so scarily accurate holy shit- even getting the musical down
I'm a professional theatre technician with a BA in Theatre and this whole video reads me like the scripts I never did in undergrad 😭
HA oh all the plays I was supposed to read in my Theatre History courses…to be fair, you try reading (and comprehending?!) the whole Oresteia within 2 days and then take a difficult quiz on it 🙄 Thank god that class was graded on a curve, I scraped by with a C+ lol
I was in High School Musical in my 7-12 school in 8th grade and Gabriella (senior) was dating Ryan (sophomore) and Sharpay acted like Sharpay before and after the show. We also had a jock we had to recruit from a different school playing Troy. The year after, we made a 7th grader stage manager for multiple high school shows when we had high school techies and they were great, but I fear for their health. Also, idk if anyone else's school does Theatre National Honors Society, but we do and I think it deserves its own place in the iceberg. Also, techies deserve the world for putting up with our bullshit.
I live in a tiny bumfuck nowhere town, and theatre was the ONLY thing to do around here. So it actually surprises me that "new personality" was so low on the iceburg, because... like everyone is like that here?? I honestly thought it was just an unspoken constant in theatre kids lmao.
A sidenote about that-- seeing the theatre actors during an off season when they're not working on a play was weird as hell. They'd just be working at their job at a restaurant or whatever, and it was like some kind of light or life was just gone from them. And then when they were rehearsing again, that would go away, but it was never consistent. Like, with one person, it was like one month she'd be really maternal and call everyone "sweetie" (because she was cast as a mom in a play), then the next time it happened she'd speak with a lot of old fashioned slang (because she was cast as a young adult in a period piece or whatever it's called). And so on and so forth for all the theatre actors in town. It was like if they didn't have a role, they didn't have a personality, which seemed sad af srry 😬
I used to do stage crew, but then the director was an absolute troll, gave me ptsd and slight depression and anxiety. NEVER DOING CREW AGAIN. Well, I just got the lead in a musical soooo. TAKE THAT UNNAMED CREW DIRECTOR
Hi 👋 It's me the "new personality" theatre kid (who's also studying musical theatre in NYC right now). For the record... I wrote a 30 page mini memoir about my experience in Little Shop of Horrors and how playing Audrey shaped me, and now I love leopard print. I also played Sally once and now I clap whenever I'm happy and I say "that's a good philosophy" an abnormal amount. I don't really make a new personality though-I just adopt traits into my current personality and allow myself to learn from the experience. Most of it was unintentional though-my family made fun of me for accidentally using a New York accent when I was Audrey and the Sally clap was also an accident. What can I say, I get invested in the characters lol. To be fair it was never superficial and I didn't try to make it that way. It just sort of... happened.
I feel like “orchestra kid in the pit of every musical” is on the 2nd tier of the iceberg
Our school was too poor for orchestra so I’m unfamiliar tbh
5:44 as a dancer who now also dose theater this is so true, the first day my director was asking what we did over summer and I said I went to a few dance competition because that’s just what I thought of first and say asked if I did tap and I said I did then one of the assistants said you shouldn’t have said that. And now I’m doing a tap duet with my friend (who also dose tap) in the show
17:46 this video brought back a lot of memories, although I'm so much older than you, Tyler, that all your pop culture references post-phantom (post- _Lion King_ , let's say...) were all things that happened after I had moved out of my parents' hous, so sometimes it was hard to figure out what you were getting at at first (don't worry about explaining things more, it'll break up your flow, + I'm used to not knowing who famous people are!)
Anyway, the high school stage manager item brought back the most vivid memory from those days, about the stage manager for every high school show I ever even _knew_ was happening at my school. I'll call this person "Lou."
Lou had graduated from my high school when I was still in elementary school. They were not, as far as I knew, paid by the school, or the district, or possibly at all for their contribution to my small town high school theater program. Lou knew everything about the school's theater building, had the dimensions of the stage memoized, they knew everything about the technical equipment, had a massive collection of their own power tools. They could listen to the wireless conversation happening among the crew from the ear piece to the wireless headset on one their ear (these head sets were analog kids, Lou had a little box clipped on their belt, just fyi) while they conversed with the director standing right in front of them and could understand and remember both conversations. Lou made the kids on the technical crew for every show feel like a hand-picked group of Navy SEALs. Lou was a legend, and... also it was kind of sad?
What was Lou getting out of this? The program put on 3 plays per year, a one-act, a musical, and a Shakespeare play, I'm not sure if that's a lot of shows for a school our size, my high school had an average graduating class of around 150? 200? It seemed like a lot even at the time. Lou worked a dead-end job to pay the bills, and spent all their free time back at their high school with us. They lived with their parents in order to keep this program that the school and the district didnt really much care about alive... but why?
I'm sure everyone is thinking that Lou was crusing for kids to be inappropriate with in some way... I'm old enough to know that you kind of never know if someone is sexually predatory unless they target you, but you former theatre kids also know that a high school cast/crew have very few secrets from each other, that rumors are constant and even the teacher/director probably knows all your business, even if they don't want to know. I never heard anyone say anything like that about Lou... the closest was the occasional suggestion that they had a crush on the teacher who directed the Shakespeare play. I'm not saying they _couldn't _ have hid 'an affair' w a student or that teacher, just that it would have been hard to do so... so _why_ did they keep coming back? I never knew.
I do think that having someone like "Lou" is a better option than giving a 17 year old an overwhelming amount of responsibility and an excuse for a major power trip, though, that's for sure!
my mother is a theater teacher who owns her own theater. i grew up around all of that and struggled with feeling untalented my entire life. its rough. but im so greatful for it.
I’m 58. I was on stage crew all 4 years of high school. Also a member of The National Thespian Society. We went to New York for a theatre tour. We saw “Cats,” “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” and off Broadway, “Little Shop of Horrors.” This was back in 1984, before Disney gentrified Times Square. Your Iceberg is very funny.
I was made co props manager with this other girl and she became THE most toxic stage manager archetype ever. I never did another hs production partly because of her.
In college i did a summer costume gig and met a different chick who acted exactly the same so i quit theater for good.
The Hollywood sign in the background is scrambled and I can't unsee it. Love the video though 🥰
4:02 I was Marian, you take that back 😂
I wasn’t a theatre kid, but I was on the next iceberg over, the Band Kid Iceberg, which shares *a lot* of the same…let’s call it topography. I was whatever the Rachel Berry for Band Kid was; maybe also “Thespian” (aka “Classical Musician”). They’re different flavors of self-serious, so it’s hard to tell.
Also, thank you for talking about auditions! Trying to explain to non-musicians about what that process is like is hard; nobody tells Freshman Accounting majors, “Not so fast! We need to see your spreadsheet portfolio before you can call yourself an Accounting major around here!”
Was a stage manager in my final year of high school. Can confirm I was probably a nightmare to be around. My teacher got the school to rearrange my final exams to a schedule that better suited me and our rehearsal schedule, so I wrote my exams on my own timetable. It was rad and it was wrong.
That’s okay same hahaha
The absolute power trip that stage managers have is so accurate.
I LOVE BEING A THEATRE KID
Same
I did one high school production while I was in 7th grade. I remember 90% of these things happening. I had a great time but after a few months away from it I never really desired to go back to theater.
I’m not a theater kid in the sense that I’ve done theater lol, but I resonate with the deep knowledge of musicals, dramatic tendencies and musical analysis lol.
I’ve never felt so called out about almost all the stage manager part 😂 except the relationship stuff. Our teacher barely tolerated any of us
I think I was Renee Rapp in high school, but in college briefly an _a cappella_ person (its own hell - and this was the '90s), then 100% classical...so I'm an opera singer (and musicology nerd). I'm a Wagner/Verdi mezzo, so you can imagine anything lighter than "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" has sounded absolutely ridiculous since age 25. Now my 13yo is finding her iceberg level - she loves comedy, and is a serious tapper, so who knows...
this was honestly too real thank you so much
it's public service tbh
I had a full ride to the University of Iowa to major in musical theater and minor in dance. I love this video, thank you so much Tyler
thanks for being here!!
Oh my lord when you are one of 10 girls vying for a specific role and then the jock who can't carry a tune gets handed the male lead for existing. Just re-traumatize me
ashamed to say that "new personality" called me OUTTTT lmao 😭
I was not a stage manager (I turned down the job) but I was technical director. Your description is spot on 😂 The stage manager did college classes and was only there for rehearsals, so I did all the work. I barely went to my other classes and I ended up very mentally ill. I've spent the years since learning that not everything is my responsibility, my professors are not my personal friends, and catching up on all the sleep I lost in high school. I was such a jerk about the attendance sheet and the rehearsal schedule and now I'm having to relearn empathy 😂
As a theatre kid from the 1900 hundreds I remember -
• Old people old them some Brigadoon (there it a street in my town named Brigadoon and I must rest the urge to sign the name whenever I see it) and Our Town.
• There was always that one girl who learned sign language (but actually knew no one hearing impaired) would do it along with their audition and always tried to get it included in the play somehow and could often be really ableist (the sign language girl I went to school with had a mom that hated me, tried to get me kicked out of different schools and summer stock productions and did successfully manage to get me ‘benched’ for the rest of the year once for school productions)
• CATS 😑 That was the one musical EVERYONE knew back then.
I'm a theatre kid and that Denny's stereotype is accurate I was so upset when my town replaced my Denny's with an ihop
1. No one hates other theater kids, more than theater kids do.
2. You called me out on being stage crew, having a B.F.A, having a showmance, and being a thespian. OUCH. OUCH. OUCH OUCH!!!! STOP THAT IT HURTS SO MUCH!! THIS IS WHY THEATER KIDS HATE EACH OTHER. NO ONE ELSE KNOWS HOW TO CUT US THIS DEEP!!
It’s all so accurate!
The pictures in the back aren’t perfectly matched up and it’s all I can look at.
There was a jock who joined theater and he got a lead every single time and the funny part is his dad forced him to do theater.also we had a t pose kid and he scared literally everybody everyday because of he was obsessed with the horror stuff and was like kinda a dark kid…
the wall art not being in the right order is breaking my brain, i couldn't stop looking at it.
I wish high school musical had all the characters based on this iceberg, it would be fun 😂
1:36 the drop at "normal people" got me giggling like goofy 😂 I say it like thar too
there are SOOOOO many of those dancer girls at my school....and they're always so good at acting too TnT I never stood a chance XP
Stage manager here, power is kinda KEY to make sure your play is at least okay. BUT they’re people too. Be kind! Don’t be rude and pretend you’re the best. But make sure to keep them in line. It’s fun tho!😊
Dan and Phil being a category is so funny... if she is straight it makes sense why she doesn't know them
This coming out right after I had to quit theater is diabolical 😭
dancer (cheerleader) who sings was ME ahaha they didn’t let me have a damn break from those backhand springs or toe touches lemme tell ya.
i ALMOST saw lea michele for around that price. it was when she got sick, BUT julie benko was the understudy and she was amazing!!!
The dancer who can d a triple pirouette: HELICOPTER HELICOPTER
I was the kind of theatre kid who only took the class for their entire middle school years
This is so insanely on point lol
😭🙏🏼😭
4:02 I was in music man, i was that one of the mayors daughters friends and OMG it was SOOOOO boring to like watch on the set I feel bad for my family lol. Some of my friends in the play were like “oh my new fav musical is music man” like bitch don’t lie💀
THE CAST LIST FOR MY SCHOOL PLAY IS COMING FRIDAY WERE DOING GUYS AND DOLLS 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
(start a yippiee chain in the replies) so i’m watching theatre vids bc my theatre kid core is bursting inside IM TO EXCITED
Yippee!!
Yippee!!!
I am definitely the dancer first haha! I’ve been into theatre as long as I have dance, but I chose to do dance during the year growing up and theatre only in the summer. I still do theatre in college, but am always the featured dance ensemble who ends every number in the splits haha
but when are we going to discuss the glee to mental illness pipeline because that shit is one to one
needs to be studied
I love being a Theatre kid turned Theatre adult the sound of musical was my first exposure to musicals at 6 never looked back😂❤