From Coding to Characters: Blogger Dylana Orozco’s Journey into Theater

Creating codes or creating characters? Why choose? Let’s do both! Featuring Shea King, our extravagant theater professor at TMCC.

Even though my major is Computer Science, I’ve been exposed to Arts since an early age as well as to computers, so I like to think that I’m a multifaceted person with an artistic side and a scientistic side.

For this reason, this Spring semester I decided to take a theater class at TMCC. I was definitely scared about this because as an international student I would struggle with memorizing monologues in English or to do improvisation in a language that I’m not completely fluent in, but to my surprise, my theater professor made it really comfortable for me after one week of class. His personalized way of teaching and all his natural charisma made me feel excited about this class, and I was confident enough to do a whole performance in Spanish for one of our practices.

Since I’ve been intrigued by his extravagant personality, I decided to interview my theater professor Shea King to discover a little more about his background and his professional work as an actor and director.

So, here we go!

Theater professor Shea King

Shea King was born in Hollister but grew up in Los Baños, California. He did his undergraduate studies at Humboldt State University and got his Bachelor’s in theater. He did his graduate work at the University of Idaho where he got his MFA in directing. Primarily his career has been focused on directing plays and acting, but in the last year and a half he moved to educational theater and now he is an instructor of theater at Truckee Meadows Community College while he also continues directing shows outside of classrooms.

Dylana: What made you choose theater as your major? Was it a difficult decision for you? Were you interested in a different field before choosing this one?

Professor Shea King: It was not difficult! I knew I wanted to do theater since I was a kid, I was probably 7-8 when I started in my first play and from then on I was in plays in my community. Even when I was a teenager I got to do a performance with UC Berkeley, and I knew I wanted to go to college and wanted to study theater. It was never a doubt and I was pretty focused on it. I was fortunate that during summers I would do internships as well as casts for professional shows.

Dylana: What is the biggest misconception that people have about your job?

Professor Shea King: There are two parts — as an educator, the misconception is that they think that what I teach is simple. Sometimes it is difficult when I’m talking to other disciplines about the academic merits of what I teach, because we also have history, diversity, and cultural components that I try to teach in my class as a skill. In terms of my industry, I think the big issues are that people think that you are a successful actor if you work on Broadway or in TV and movies, when the majority of professional actors don't work in New York or in television. It is a really big industry, and there is a lot of variety to what we do.

Dylana: How long have you been working at TMCC and why did you choose TMCC?

Professor Shea King: This is my fourth semester teaching here. It was a tough decision, but this position met the criteria I wanted — teach in a 2-year school and be focused on teaching and not spend most of my time researching. Also, I liked the opportunity that I had here to build and restructure a unique full-time program. [I wanted] to fulfill a lot of training skills and show that there are different ways to approach teaching theater and prepare students for the industry. Also, the campus here has been really supportive and welcoming to what we’re trying to do; so far I think this was a good decision.

Dylana: Do you usually have international students in your class? What is your favorite part about it?

Professor Shea King: Yes! Even when I taught in Washington I usually had quite a few each semester. I love it! I think it’s one of the coolest things that can happen when you’re in any Arts Program. I think theater is about understanding life and bringing that life to an audience and having someone from a different background, culture, or country who has a different perspective of how things happen is essential. Because no matter who you are, you can’t be stuck in a bubble and pretend that everyone is the same, so bringing international students bursts your bubble and shows you how we all have differences and similarities. Having them in the room sharing their parts of themselves in the theater is really eye-opening to me.

Dylana: Professionally speaking, what has been your most remarkable experience?

Professor Shea King: So far, I will speak from my time here at TMCC. Because we are building a program and trying to boost interest in it again, seeing students from all different parts of campus and community find us and bringing them back to theater again has been really rewarding. To see students reconnect with the program that they thought TMCC didn’t have anymore has been really special because I know that if I went to college and wanted to do something that wasn't available to me it would be pretty devastating, so being able to re-open the doors to them has been part of my favorite things so far.

Dylana: As a student from a Latino country, I grew up thinking and hearing people telling me that if I study anything related to the Arts Field I wouldn't be able to be financially stable. Do you think that here in America that way of thinking differs and if it doesn’t what do you think about that?

Professor Shea King: I would say that in general the thinking is the same, but also you have to recognize that America is one of the only developed nations that doesn’t have state-funded Arts programs. We don’t have a National Theater or anything funded by the state that represents America in an artistic way. We don’t have any institution that represents theater. The biggest issue is that communities don’t support local theater companies or local arts like college shows. 

The reason why people still believe that is because they don’t understand how a theater company works. Not everyone is an actor. If you look at one play at a theater company there are probably 20 to 30 people working on it that you don’t see on stage, and all of those positions are paid and skilled labor, but because all we can see is the acting we think that there are just six actors in the play, but there is a whole team of people. 

Being in theater is like every other business, sometimes opportunities happen and sometimes they don’t, but there is a whole variety of the things we do and it is not about just one thing.

Dylana: What is a skill that every actor/actress needs to have to be successful?

Professor Shea King: I like to talk about three key things I think you need to work in Performing Arts: you need to be kind, grateful, and prepared. Many people who work at the top of our industry, if you think about it, most of them are really nice and humble. It is really about your personality and being good to people because we have to work together so much and your reputation is really important. As long as you are kind and grateful to be there and you are prepared to do the job or to ask for help, you will be fine. Of course, there are base-level skills like memorization that we all can have as actors, but you can be the most talented person ever but if you are a jerk, you probably won’t succeed.

We need both art and science

After this interview, I can say how grateful I am for being able to try different fields and keeping them both present and of equal importance in my lifestyle. I think that arts and sciences fields give me a better perspective on how they connect to each other and how they both are components of our daily lives.

Dylana Camacho Orozco from Costa Rica is an international student at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada.