Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Schoenfeld.
Hi Jessica, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was actually a very entrepreneurial child, when I was eleven, I put together “Action Musical Theatre” and charged all the kids in my neighborhood $10 to attend, my mom found out and made me pay them back, especially since my only argument was “We needed it for costumes!” From there though the desire for creating and promoting musical theatre was alive inside me, and I never really gave up on those dreams. It led me to education as a career, and eventually Show on the Road Tampa as it exists today.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I remembered thinking it was a much smoother process than I expected. Originally, we ran through local rec centers, churches, schools, and anywhere else that would give us space, even my own house at some point, but even still we never seemed to have a lack for interest in our courses, and I had the very best groups of students I could have imagined. Not to say there were no struggles, but it tended to be the kind you want in a small business, too many students, not enough time, not enough hands. 2020 of course made a big difference, as we lost 70% or more of our student base, and we went from 12 locations to one. This feels like what I had expected a starting out business to feel like, which I’ll be honest, I would have preferred to keep avoiding.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Show on the Road Tampa is focused on creating a safe, accessible space to learn musical theatre from the ground up. Covering, acting, singing, and dance all in one location, while also allowing students to focus on a discipline, or work towards the coveted triple threat that is almost a requirement for professional musical theatre. Our big difference from other schools in the area is our ability to cater to the full performance range of live performance, where as many places are an acting or dance school specifically, that may add voice lessons, or do occasional performances that tend to be dance focused, we design, block, and choreograph to more traditional musical theatre concepts, and then allow our more dance focused students growth through our competition opportunities. I am most proud of the fact that we really are an open place for anyone to grow and learn, and that our focus is always on the individual growth of the students, supplying them the opportunity to build the foundational skills that they can take with them as they pursue and tackle their dreams.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I don’t personally consider myself a risk taker in my normal life, but I suppose some people may look at the choices I make and think them risky. Even just quitting my job as a teacher at a very good school for the hope of working professional entertainment opportunities and running a still growing musical theatre school was considered a risk, but for me it just felt right. That said, I do believe life is often defined by the risks we do take, and can make the biggest difference. Originally, I wasn’t sure about purchasing a personal studio space, we had done so well using other people’s facilities, we couldn’t help but ask if it was necessary, all the same, I decided to make the jump. That was January 2020, just a few short months later we lost the ability to access every teaching site, and until June we couldn’t hold a single class until we opened up for Summer Camps. Had I not made that risky decision there is a good chance Show on the Road Tampa would no longer be open. So while I don’t think of myself as a risk prone person, I do acknowledge the importance of needing to take them.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@showontheroadtampa.com
- Website: showontheroadtampa.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/showontheroad
- Facebook: facebook.com/showontheroad
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