Though the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted in 2008 that employment in the performing arts would not grow significantly in the next 10 years, it forecast 15 percent growth in “water transportation services” over the same period, due in part to “increasing tourism” worldwide and the addition of new U.S. cruise lines to Hawaii.

Of course, that was before the Great Recession, and technically speaking “water transportation services” do not include shipboard entertainment. Still, the business and romantic sides of going to sea remain attractive—maybe especially for performers. More than one person I interviewed for this story compared the experience of going on the boards on board to taking a paid vacation.

The perks are pretty clear: short hours, decent pay (most of which you can save), “having the time of your life” (according to comic Eileen Montelione, 27), making new friends, and traveling around the world. But the big picture is more complex. Employment on a cruise ship actually lies somewhere between Xanadu and “prison,” as one dancer described her experience. You have to be ready for social and cultural isolation (electronic communication is often limited), opportunity costs (you can’t audition for that part that’s perfect for you), underwhelming material, too much downtime, and a shipboard “class system” that makes some performers uncomfortable.

Conditions and expectations vary by cruise line, even by individual ship, and sorting out the various lines, their subsidiaries, and their ships can be daunting: there seems to be a lot of trading around, in a sort of shell game of the sea. But as most of the performers told me, it’s impossible to figure it all out before you embark anyway. At least for their first cruises, they had to take a leap of faith.

Ships are like floating cities, according to dancer Erin Robertson, 26. “You feel isolated,” she says, “but there are all these other people.” Each ship is about the size of a small town, often with more than a dozen decks, passenger capacities of 2,000 or more, and crew capacities of about half that number.

All cruise-line performers work on contracts, whose length can vary from four to 10 months. Some people enjoy the work so much that they string contracts together. Comedian Cody Dove, 35, has served three four-month stints in a row and been gone for a year at a time. Twice. Performers are not allowed to divulge their pay, though one dancer said it ranged from $2,200 - $3,200 per month.

There’s no cost to the performer for room, board, or medical care, but accommodations are small and usually shared with another person. The number of shows per cruise, each of which can last from 7 to 15 days, varies widely even on the same line—it can be as little as a few a week or as much as 15 shows over 9 days. Usually performers have some additional duties that involve interacting with passengers, such as giving workshops, classes, and “chats.” In fact socializing—“appropriately,” of course—with the paying guests is encouraged.

How do you get such jobs? Versatility helps, especially for the dancers, singer/dancers, and singers hired for musical revues. One dancer I interviewed also did backup singing, and another was required to play a role with a New Jersey accent in a mystery-theatre production—definitely a stretch for her. Dancers and singers generally audition live, though dancer Victoria Lynn Bunch got a gig through an audition tape. (“I lucked out,” she says. “I didn’t have to fly in to a huge cattle call.”)

The comedians I spoke to all worked for Norwegian Cruise Line and got their jobs through Second City , which has had a contract with Norwegian since 2005. Ensembles are made up of resident stage alums, former and potential touring-company actors, and hires via auditions.

What does it take to survive on board? It helps to be young—or at least youthful. Comedian/director Piero Procaccini, 33, says, “I personally find ships to be like a return to college. There are parties, relationships on the fly.” But lasting friendships are also possible; he’s maintained an 18-month relationship with a woman he met on board, though he says that, as in other long-distance love affairs, “it’s not always easy.”

The very young can also run into unique challenges, taking on responsibilities far beyond their years. Bunch, now 28 and a dancer with NoMi LaMad, was made dance captain at 21, on her first cruise with Holland America, which meant she was responsible for quality control (reviewing the footage of each show and running rehearsals) as well as reworking the choreography if anyone in the cast was sick or injured.

Dana Johnson, now 22, was hired as a dancer by Royal Caribbean right out of high school, at 18. A teacher of hers, Melissa Peterson, had met her husband during an onboard gig, and Johnson says she was naïve enough to think, “I hope I meet my husband!” Instead she just got homesick (her second trip, a couple years later, was better). “I didn’t know anyone who didn’t go through some period of depression,” she says.

Johnson also experienced some paternalism. “The officers would watch us like hawks” for any infraction of the rules, she says, and sometimes screamed at performers in front of the guests. (But on her second ship, “The officers were our best friends.”) And as a dancer she felt “a lot of pressure to stay thin—it was the elephant in the room. We were only performing three nights a week, and there was a lot of lying around in the sun and drinking. We were required to go to the gym for an hour a day.” In addition to the embarrassment of not fitting in your costume, there were official sanctions against putting on the pounds—though Johnson didn’t know anyone who was fired for being overweight.

Audiences, always of interest to performers, vary from line to line and from one cruise to another. Dancer Robertson, who took on her first contract in 2004 and was off to her second with Holland America when we spoke, says that it’s known for its “more mature clientele.” She “wouldn’t like to be stuck with the college-break crowd,” she says—she enjoys people who are her parents’ and grandparents’ age and appreciates their “sometimes amazing stories.”

How to deal with guests on spring break comes up—a lot. “They are rowdy,” says comedian Montelione, “and they do get inappropriate.” She adds that it can be hard to fulfill the expectations of both “young, inebriated individuals” and “an older, more conservative crowd.” Johnson recalls having to act as a security guard: at the pool, she says, she saw a “guy who was obviously drunk about to climb up on a railing on the top deck! He could have fallen in the water, so I went and started talking to him, motioning behind my back for the guards to come over.”

More than one person I talked to seemed troubled by the hierarchical system governing work hours and privileges. Johnson says her friends in housekeeping or on the wait staff had half a stripe while dancers had one-and-a-half stripes, which meant that some of her friends weren’t “cleared” to spend time with her at the pool. Before she even left on a cruise she was told that entertainers would be hated by other crew members because “it was like we were getting paid to be guests.” Montelione says that 90 percent of the crew consists of cooks, housekeeping, and wait staff, who work longer hours and have fewer rights and privileges. Robertson mentions that all the Holland America stewards are Filipino and work 11-month contracts.

And the isolation? Montelione says, “You may not see land for a couple of days, and your whole body is like, ‘I just want to be on solid ground!’”

Connecting with friends and family at home can be difficult, as cell phones don’t work well except in port and using the onboard phones is pricey. “You are able to e-mail or phone, but they could easily break the bank,” says Montelione. It generally costs 10 cents a minute to get on the Internet, but she says, “Don’t waste your time! It’s so ancient, it’s like pre-AOL. It’s the slowest ever!” She speaks of electronic communication in terms of addiction: “You get superduper frustrated at first. But after two months or so, your body stops freaking out, and you’re free! You’re fine! I came back to Chicago and didn’t know whether it was worth keeping my cell phone or not.”

Of course, there are a few problems we’d all like to have. With the abundance of leisure time, performers can catch up on their reading, do some writing or other projects, get fit at the gym, and work on their tan. And comedian Dove (perhaps the biggest travel hound I spoke with) talks tongue-in-cheek about the difficulties of “re-entering society” at home: “No one’s going to cook all three of your meals that day, and there’s no room steward to make up the bed. If you go to a restaurant, you have to wait for the check and pay instead of just leaving.”

Nearly everyone talks about the joys of traveling, of seeing unusual places and doing unusual things, sometimes at an exceptionally young age. Bunch, who went on her only cruise at 21, says she’s “a small town girl, a small town country girl. I had barely seen America, much less Europe! Because of the cruise-ship contract, I was able to see parts of the world I had only dreamed of before—Paris, Spain, Russia, Rome, Denmark, Finland, just to name a few.” Performers can go on snorkeling and whale-watching excursions, tour glaciers by helicopter, and trek through rain forests.

True, time spent off the ship is often limited. Johnson notes that she was able to spend six hours in Paris, 10 in Rome. But Dove points out that, if you keep touring, you can get different itineraries and see new places. You can also make up in quantity for what you lack in quality. “Over the last two years,” he says, “I’ve been to Naples 32 times. I have a favorite pizza place there—it feels like what it would be like to live there. I have a favorite beach in St. Thomas, and a favorite teashop in Izmir [Turkey]. I have favorite newsstands all over the world.”