Is it too late for me to pursue musical theatre as a career? (18)

[hyperfujis]

Forgive me if this is not the right board to post this. I am a senior in high school, and about a year ago, I discovered my passion for musical theatre, and decided I wanted to pursue that as a career. However, I don’t have as much experience as my peers who also want to pursue musical theatre; I know one girl a year younger than me who already has a vocal coach and conservatory picked out and everything, and I also see younger and younger people on Broadway stages as the years go on. Me? I’ve only ever been in school productions (community theatres in my area are kind of far away, and I don’t have time to drive there and back, or a car for that matter), I don’t have the money to afford a vocal coach, and I’m studying theatre at a regular university since I don’t believe I quite have the chops to pass a conservatory audition yet. I mean, I could always take vocal/dance/acting classes and transfer to a conservatory later on, but would that be viable? Do I *have* to go to a conservatory? If I do by transferring, will it be too late to audition once I graduate? Will I be too old at that point? I don’t want to have to give up my dream just because I pursued it too late. The stage is the one place where I can let loose and be free, and I don’t ever want to give that up.

[Ravenclaw]

There are so many different paths to careers in the theatre. Attending conservatory is one option, though certainly not the only one. Pursuing a liberal-arts based, non-conservatory degree is absolutely a viable path. There are many great actors who studied entirely unrelated fields in college and then took classes later on. There are even some great actors who never formally studied acting. And then there's the whole question of graduate school, as well. Comparing yourself to others your age is never a healthy thing to do.

No, it is not too late to pursue a career as an actor. There are plenty of great actors who didn't start performing until they were in their 40s. And there are people who performed on Broadway in their 20s who gave up on their acting careers to pursue more stable work. There is no way to guarantee success (it's not for nothing that this business has an extremely high attrition rate), but hard work and continued dedication often do pay off. 

You might want to look at the musical theatre message boards on talk.collegeconfidential.com, where they have a lot of information on these subjects.

[EdEval]

Continue to study as you have been.  Look for the casting calls in your local hometown newspaper.  Doing Community Theatre is great experience.  If you live in NYC try the Village Light Opera.  Keep doing that and one day you may able to go to an "open" audition where you don't need to in the union to audition.  Just don't give up and keep trying doing the freebies for awhile until you get that experience.  Keep auditioning.