Why Gen-Y Needs To Learn To Fail (And Why It’s Ok)

Tonight is a very exciting night for me, but it’s also a very scary one.

After a week long hell of technical rehearsals, tonight I make my debut as a production stage manager in Kensington Arts Theatre‘s production of The Rocky Horror Show. For the past three months I’ve lived a life of 14 hour days between Virgina and Maryland, and while there were fun times and memories during the rehearsal process- those feelings of fun were replaced with high tension and sensitive feelings coupled with a few nights of sleeplessness. It’s the kind of stress that makes you question why you signed up for this thing in the first place.

For me it’s been very stressful because it’s my first tech run (and now performance run) as a stage manager. I’m no stranger to theatre, the best moments of my high school career was producing over seven plays in my last two years at CHS; however producing and stage managing are two totally different beasts.

I really tried my best not to seem totally inept at the position. I read books, made tons of lists, and tried to go above and beyond every-time I could. It was helpful that I knew what to do during the rehearsal period since I had some experience on a show that shall not be named. Despite this, the past week has been very tough on me- because I’m not used to failing. As much as I tried to not act like a complete rookie, I blew cues, mismanaged actor calls, and got in the way of the tech designers I’m trying to help. A stage manager needs to be cool at all times- and I was boiling over as I couldn’t handle everything that was being thrown at me.

But that’s ok.

The great Matthew Berry once said that, “If you are trying to do something and you haven’t failed at it yet, you aren’t trying hard enough.” After dress rehearsal last night where my video projector malfunctioned and communications headset died and I was finishing last minute videos until five minutes before places; I drove home thinking what a terrible job I’ve done this week. I wanted things to go perfect this week and I’m learning that things never go perfect on a tech week.

Why d0 I want things to be perfect? Because I want everything in my life to go well. Generation Y has been brought up as overachievers that believe we can do anything we want, and if we don’t get it right immediately we panic. Everybody gets a blue ribbon and everybody is coddled to think they can succeed- which is good but it needs to be grounded in values of hard work and the occasional failure along the way. I want to be a good stage manager, I want to earn the praise, respect, and acceptance from my peers. When you were in school it wasn’t that hard, except in the real world, you don’t always get that the TLC you were fed as children. As a result it takes me a longer to not take criticism personally, I can’t help but feel that I’ve become more incompetent when I work my ass off just to get new note on my performance.

In the end however I stop and realize why I care so much? It’s because I want to be good- I want to be a great stage manager that people can count on. That means I need to make mistakes and I need to learn from them. I can’t help but imagine there’s a whole generation of people that will graduate college and quickly realize that real life isn’t as coddling as it once was. There are going to be moments where you fail, sometimes terribly. In that case you have to ask yourself how bad do you want it?

Because if you aren’t failing, you aren’t trying hard enough.

Related posts:

1. Tech Week = Hell Week
2. How I Decided To Become A Theatre Techie
3. What Does It Mean To Be A Professional
4. Learning To Say No
5. Grace Under Fire