One knows the power of silence. The other interrupts it with a spreadsheet.
I’ve worked with both.
I’ve sat in rooms with freshly pressed suits and PowerPoint decks loaded with action items, quarterly projections, and slides titled things like “Growth Levers.” I’ve also been in green rooms with theater kids covered in stage makeup, drinking lukewarm coffee, quoting Euripides, and duct-taping a collapsing flat while discussing heartbreak like it’s part of the weather.
When it comes to building something unpredictable, leading a team through creative fire, or managing a disaster with style and grace, I will pick the theater kid every time.
Here’s why.
1. They understand the power of a pause
An MBA is trained to fill space. In meetings. In emails. In breath. They think silence is awkward, or worse, inefficient.
Theater kids? They understand that silence is everything. It can hold grief, tension, hope, or fury. It can draw the audience in closer than a microphone ever could. A pause on stage is not emptiness. It is pressure. It is presence.
In the courtroom, on the stage, in a moment where words might break something fragile, you want someone who knows when to stop talking.
You want someone who knows how to listen.
2. They rehearse the impossible
In business school, they hand you case studies and formulas. You apply principles and expect returns.
In theater, nothing works like it’s supposed to.
The light board fails. The set collapses. The lead calls out sick and someone’s ex-boyfriend is now running sound.
Still, the show happens.
Theater kids don’t just manage chaos. They rehearse it. They anticipate it. They breathe through it without panic. They understand that what matters isn’t control. It’s presence.
That’s who I want at trial when the judge reverses an earlier ruling mid-hearing, or a client changes their story in real time, or the key witness forgets everything they ever knew.
You can keep your models and market forecasts. I want the person who has said “Places, everyone” with two people missing and the curtain already rising.
3. They read people better than a marketing firm ever will
Theater kids can walk into a room and feel the air shift.
They can sense tension before it speaks, disappointment before it lands, joy before it bursts open.
They don’t just watch people. They study them. They become them. They feel them from the inside out.
In trial, in client meetings, in life – this matters.
No spreadsheet will tell you when a jury has turned against you. No flowchart will help you navigate a witness who is breaking down. No quarterly report will teach you the emotional weight behind the phrase “I don’t remember.”
Theater kids don’t just know what someone is saying. They know what they’re not saying, and why.
4. They know how to keep going when everything is broken
The phrase “the show must go on” is not a cliché to them. It is a lived truth.
They have performed with fevers. They have made costume changes in stairwells. They have watched props break, lines vanish, audiences cough, lights misfire – and kept going anyway.
They don’t need perfect conditions. They need a story and a reason.
This is the energy I want in a deposition when the Wi-Fi crashes, the transcript software freezes, and the witness shows up twenty minutes late and twenty years angry.
Resilience is not something you learn from a business plan. It’s something you learn when the only person who knows the last scene is stuck in traffic, and someone hands you a script with three minutes to go.
5. They know how to build something out of nothing
Theater kids know how to take a blank stage and turn it into a castle.
They know how to find meaning in a torn jacket, a flickering bulb, or a chipped mug.
They don’t wait for ideal conditions. They create with what they have. And they create together.
That’s what a great trial team does. That’s what a good advocate does. That’s what leaders do when the budget is gone, the deadline is early, and the stakes are personal.
Give a theater kid a crisis, and they will ask who needs to be helped first. Give them bad news, and they’ll find a new ending. Give them nothing, and they will hand you a ticket to something unforgettable.
So why do I trust a theater kid over an MBA?
Because the theater kid knows how to lead when there is no script.
Because the theater kid understands how to hold an audience without saying a word.
Because the theater kid does not panic when things fall apart. They expect things to fall apart. And they still build something beautiful anyway.
This isn’t about credentials. It’s about instincts.
And if you need someone to walk with you through the fire, build meaning from ashes, and take one last deep breath before the lights go up—I’d suggest looking for someone who knows their way around a blackout cue, a bruised ego, and a story worth telling.
Just don’t be surprised if they quote Sondheim while doing it.
Brian Brijbag 