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This story is part of the Pathways to Placement series, which highlights UNT faculty and staff’s hard work to prepare students in the creative arts for professional success.

When Sarah Rutan says her dance and theatre students are the perfect candidates for entrepreneurs, she’s a living example of it.

“I think our major is just as good as a business major,” said, a lecturer of acting and Shakespeare. “I want to prove it.”

After earning her undergraduate degree, Rutan “died and cried as Shakespeare’s ladies” for seven seasons in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s acting company. She then moved to Los Angeles, where she had to be creative to make a living.

What started as a word-of-mouth dog and house-sitting business turned into home organizing. Rutan used her skills as a stage manager to earn money by moving people into new homes and/or organizing their living spaces.

“It’s the same as a load in and load out for a show,” Rutan said. “Get an inventory list of what you need and organize it by room or scene.”

This work paid Rutan’s rent for three years in LA. She still does organizational jobs occasionally today.

Rutan said she succeeded not only because she had the project management skills of a stage manager, but also because she had an actor’s ability to communicate with clients and workers in an empathetic, open way.

“Theatre people have so many more skills as entrepreneurs than just being artists,” Rutan said. “I find in the actual workforce, my skill set and our students’ skill sets are highly sought after.”

In LA, Rutan also coached businesspeople in giving speeches, presenting information in an engaging way, and improving their performance in video meetings and phone calls. Now, in Dallas, she advises voice actors on accents and dialect work.

Rutan believes her acting students could do the same.

“Every company now is doing their own commercials, usually using people in-house who don’t have the same skill sets,” Rutan said. “The skill set of the actor and the presentational quality is becoming so much more sought after.”

Rutan said UNT’s Dance and Theatre Department’s “new foundation” is equipping students with abilities that sets artistic people apart in any setting. Whether they stay in the field or work in another industry, theatre people “are really, really good” at team building, project management, creative thinking and interpersonal communication.

“I’ve stopped using the term ‘artist’ and started using ‘entrepreneur,’ and my fellow professors have as well,” Rutan said. “We’re talking to students as though they’re the CEO of their own small business.”

Rutan said a majority of classes in the department are experiential based, requiring students to manage their own time and resources, sometimes as group partners.

“A theatre degree isn’t just about standing on a stage, holding a skull and saying, ‘To be or not to be,’” Rutan said. “It is so much more than that. It’s your next inventor, it’s your next politician, it’s the person that does a reorganization for your business.”