Time: it is all we've got. (No, seriously)

As I pack my life away on this glorious summer day I am filled with rage.
I usually chalk it up to stress.
But we were talking about when last we met our intrepid heroes: a sense of time.

Time is important.
Time is Money as they say.
Money is Time as I say.

Time is the most important thing when it comes to creative endeavor.

Whenever I hear someone lamenting about their artistic pratfalls/pitfalls I hear one thing:

If only I had more time!

Bullshit.
You have the same number of hours in your day as Shakespeare, Einstein, and Newton.
We don't have a great appreciation of time.
Start budgeting out your time.

Seriously.
Pick up a pad and budget it out.
Take into account the hours spent bingeing Netflix.
Take into account the hundreds of hours spent trying to find something on Netflix.
Tally it up.
Congratulations that is an artwork you could have finished.

It doesn't have to be much.
Today I am so stressed that I feel my teeth clicking (and I don't even know what that means).
But, I want to make it a priority to always make.
To always create
A. B. C. as the ever wondrous Alec Baldwin said:
Always Be Closing.
I say:
Always Be Creating.

Find a way.
Find a time.
Make it special.
Make it precious.
People will try to take it away from you.
It is important to make a thing.
Doesn't matter what it is.
Don't believe me?
Watch this most precious of Kickstarter videos:

Those are doodles.
DOOODLES! She did at night while her toddler was asleep.

So go out, find a thing, and make it better.
That is really all I have time for.
I'm going to go back and pour out more of my soul into packing boxes.
But even if it is just for a moment, sharing a bit of you, fills you back up.
Try it.

A Discussion on Super Chickens (Pro-tip: It is a Metaphor!)

Today, I am here to talk about this lady:

And why I love what she is saying.
For those who haven't seen the TED talk here it is:

For those who don't have time to watch in its entirety...find time. It is important.
But to summate:

• There once was a chicken farmer (read evolutionary biologist) and he wanted to know what made productivity happen (chickens are easy, you just count the eggs):
• So he made a control of average chickens and left them to their own devices for six generations.

• And then he made a super flock of super chickens composed of only the most productive

• And every generation that flock was weaned of only the best and most productive chickens
• In six generations, the average flock was doing well, better than it had in previous generations.

• In six generations, the super flock of super chickens...they pecked each other to extinction

Do you see any parallels?
Do you?
No?
Hm...there must be some:

The two shaking hands are saying they will eat each other

What we learned: Productivity does not come from superstars or super-geniuses, but from the group.

So they took these studies and went further and found that the most productive/creative groups:

Do NOT:

1. Contain a single person with a remarkable IQ
2. Or contain a group of people with the highest aggregate IQ

What they found was that the most productive/creative think groups:

DO:

1. Show high degrees of social sensitivity to each other (empathy)
2. Give roughly equal time to each other (no leaders no followers)
3. Have more women (....)

(I love the Ms. Heffernen because she acknowledges we have no idea why that third bit of data popped up; most likely it has to do with diversity of opinion.)

The point is, the more successful groups have nothing to do with individuals and always had more to do with the collective, of being heard, of really listening, and building a community.

What does this have to do with theatre and life?

If you know me, then you may have an idea on why I love this talk so damn much.

Corporations do not have ideas...only people do.

If brevity is the soul of wit, this woman beats Shakespeare to a pulp.
That in a nut shell.
We have operated under the star system for too long. In corporate America, in theatre, in film, in art.
We look to the superstars for our answers and if the research is telling us anything, they are incapable of telling us; they are too busy competing with one another.

We have to start building a community of professionals who work and create collaboratively, where everyone stands together and has an equal say and voice in the process.
We need to radically rethink what it means to be a leader, in theatre, I would say, a director.
No longer can answers be expected to come from the few, those who are 'most qualified' because it is through building something together that we are able to flourish.
Diversity is the greatest resource that we can use and our entire culture is based on reducing it.
Don't believe me?
Three words.
Sixth Mass Extinction. 
It literally means the diversity is being reduced.

So how do we do this?
I love this talk because the answer is everything I preach: TIME.
You need Time to build trust, to build community, to build social capital.
We need to start making Time in theatre in our communities in our corporations because without it, there is no trust, no breakthroughs, no new ideas.

No idea comes into this world fully formed. It is much like a baby, stumbling, messy, and confused. It is only with time and care that it is able to grow and become the best that it can be.

This isn't my usual preaching (or maybe more so, I can never tell) because I watched this talk and went...yeah.
That's it.
Watch the talk.
I have no other words.
I think the subject of my next post will be my ideas on how to help build that sense of Time, how we are already doing it, and how we can improve or change the model.

Ode to Opening Nights (A Lament)

Let us talk a little bit about how haste makes waste.
One of the biggest problems I have with theatre is the opening night.
It is a nightmare.
We:

1. announce it the year prior, choosing performance dates, 
2. tell people to put it into their calendar and buy tickets
3. plan vacations around it. 

All before:

1. finding out our creative team or cast, 
2. before our first rehearsal, 
3. before the beginnings of artististry.

Why do we do that?

There is a definite motivating factor: give people enough time, make them aware enough and we will have an audience for that all important opening night.
I have done the struggle, it is hard, believe me.
However, from the creative side, for me, it is a nightmare.
Why would we give an audience  an entire year to prepare for opening night and the performers and creative team only a few weeks at most?

I am forced to conclude economic reasons.

Now kids, this is what we want to avoid.

A show has to be opened and closed in the shortest, most expedient amount of time imaginable.
Why?
Well because of rights reasons; we pay to perform the majority of shows that we do ergo a longer run or changing of the dates is impossible whether due to finances, copyright law, or the agencies that handle the scripts. They have to be notified of the performance dates six weeks prior to the first rehearsal. You have to know when you are going to perform before you can even look at the script that you want to order....Already we have a problem. But we'll come back to it:
Because of rehearsal spaces; we so often rent the theatre spaces we are to perform in, which tend to be large stages or warehouses to accommodate say...an audience? Ergo they cost a lot of green. So they are prohibitively expensive. So we rent rehearsal halls.
Now we have rehearsal hall expenses to worry about.
All of this is before we even get to creative team expenses.
Now the actors want gas money?!

Fathom this:
The design team is paid by design.
That is it.
All of the time they put into crafting their work doesn't get paid (much like actors) however, their work is due prior to the first rehearsal.
Before they have met anyone that will actually be performing in or around their work, they are expected to create it.
Why?
So we have time to build it over the course of the rehearsal process.
Well, the more time they spend on a design, the less they get paid.
And I have had designers say this TO MY FACE.

If I were to spend time in rehearsal, watching the actors, adjusting my design, I wouldn't be paid for it. Sure, it would be better, but that is stealing time away from my next design job, another opportunity for me to make MONEY.

We are so far gone if that is the mentality of theatre.
We do not have time to work on the artistic project we are currently working on.
We are forever looking towards the next project and the next.
No one feels secure artistically or financially.

This is my nightmare.
This is a description of my worst fears on how to work and it is the reality that some in the theatre live every day.
Now, this is not to say others do not find this process enlivening, enjoyable, or rewarding.
In fact, many do. I am simply not among them. I do not artistically thrive under those conditions.
But, I also know I am not alone.

So I want to make my own rules.
My advisors all throughout school said:

Miles, you may need to open your own theatre because you don't like working with anyone.

A little harsh, and just a little true.
But it isn't that I don't like working with anyone.
I don't like working with anyone in this way.

Is there a hope, a dream in any of this?
I think so, but bear with me, it is early days. A diamond in the rough.
Now, this may be the subject of another post, but I will plug my dream here and hope if it speaks to you, send me a message and we will talk about making it happen.
Ideally, we pay everyone on the creative team.
I don't know with what...the government's money? Because I don't have any.
We make a farm.
We eat, commune, and grow things together so nobody goes hungry.
We build houses for people to stay in.
The audience shows up and stays with us, in our homes, in tents outside, in their cars, wherever.
They help tend the farm.
They share in the making of a thing.
We rehearse for as long as we need.
We perform every night.
We perform in repertory.
Opening nights can then become surprising things.
Hey, you thought you were coming to see this play, but actually we are ready to perform this! Would you like to see it?
The audience and the performers become more familial and we share in the work to make theatre happen.

This is definitely the subject of a much longer post, but that is my dream.
It is rough, a little unpolished, but it is mine:
A theatre devoted to its practitioners and its audience.
Where people can come see theatre every night and not know what they will see, but trust it will be good because we are the ones making it.
Where no one is hungry or worried about where they need to go next.
An artistic home where everyone can and hopefully will return.
A rotating repertory in a single location that audience and most importantly artists are familiar.
We rehearse on the same stage as we perform and with the design elements in rehearsal.
We add to the repertory and perform classics and new works.
That is what I would like to make.
I'd like opening nights to no longer be the most important deciding factor in theatre.

Motivation-ability (Or: Why it took me years to get off the couch and start making art)

Today, we are going to talk about a little thing called motivation.
Or hell.
At least it feels like hell.

But what is motivation?
Of what stuff is it made?
Can I have some please?

Looking at past experience I have concluded:
All the people who are doing stuff have motivation.
I do not.
How do I know this?
I am not doing stuff.
Ergo, I must not have motivation.

A number of creatives I know have this selfsame problem:
Lack of motivation.
We call it by many names:
Laziness, lack of skill, lack of connections, lack of...you see what I am getting at yet?

We all lack something.
We must; we are human.
At least I pretend to be.
But we mourn what it is we do not have: an agent, a book deal, a Broadway gig, ad nauseum.
Why do we do this?
Because it can be very painful to realize one's limitations.
But why are they limits?

Do we not possess this mythical stuff of which others are made?
Decathalon runners have it. Shakespeare had it. Isaac Newton had it.

You beautiful bastard.

What makes them so special?
In truth. Not very much.

Motivation is a myth.
One we all buy into.
We say terribly weighted adages like: "Get MOTIVATED!"
In really high-pitched voices early in the morning when everyone should still be asleep.
Why do we say this?
Why do we treat motivation like a commodity?

Because that is how we have been trained to perceive it.
The thing that unites all the gifted in our society is that they were doing something else, they 'got' motivated, and then did something else.
My contention is the joy is in the doing.
We simply haven't found something to be joyful about.

I did yoga for years.
Practiced little, cared less.
I thought it was me, and technically it was.
When suddenly I had a stark realization: I. Hate. YOGA.

Fuck you, kindly.

Simply loathe it.
And it has nothing to do with me, it has nothing to do with my teachers, but it has everything to do with Yoga.
(static, unmoving postures, that you simply hold and breathe, oh and meditate, still the mind, but don't think about anything as your joints scream in protest and gasp, gasp like a fish out of water, and namaste)

Why did I do that?
Why did I pursue something that for years made me unhappy?
Because people told me I just had to get into it, get motivated, practice daily.

The reverse is true:
If you love something, you can practice daily.
Now, this is not a get out of jail free card.
You still need to practice.
But look at your daily practice.
Are you reliably exercising?
Are you practicing your craft?
If no, why not?

I hated movement for years, couldn't stand the terminology used, the exercise regimen (mostly yoga, but also Pilates: for those who don't know Pilates was a German man interred in a Nazi PoW camp who came up with a series of exercises to do in his prison cell and with hospital equipment...and I wondered why I didn't like it).
So I had to find my own practice.
I have been studying Jerzy Grotowski's work for a little over a year now.
I have never exercised/practiced my technique as reliably.
Looking at movement as an expression of internal stimuli, overcoming mental bias, and most importantly: as research has really allowed me to flourish.
But I didn't need to get motivated, I enjoy the work, I aspire to it, I revel in my accomplishments.

So screw getting motivated.
Find something that you genuinely want to do and do that.
Nobody can force you to do anything you don't wish to do:
Horse, water, drink, adage.
I hate the gym mentality, I hate the gym atmosphere, you could not pay me to step inside a gym.
Now, I practice my movement outside on the grass.
I get spectators.
I work in such a way that augments my creativity and my acting and doesn't hinder it:
e.g. sitting/standing, squatting on a workbench.

As a final note, this is not to say that my way is the only way to practice; I focused a great deal on physical movement because that is what I have found the most joy in recently.
But finding your own effective route to practicing is the most important secret to defying the motivation myth.

Paralysis in Rehearsal (or at the typewriter, workbench, gym, kitchen, bedroom, you get the idea)

You are [insert craft of choice] and you find yourself drawing a blank.

The scene begins, you walk out on stage look at your scene partner and flat, emotionless Shakespeare vomits out of you.

You sit in front of your book-maker of choice and stare at an empty page. The blank page stares back.  Time passes.

Repeat ad nauseum.

Why does this happen?

How does this happen?

Is there anything we can do about it?

All mental blocks are physical.

This is my new mantra.

That and: 

All physical blocks are mental, but that may be the subject of another post.

So what does that mean?

The body and mind are not disconnected; they are not disparate; they are not unified.

They are, in point of fact, one.

So what do we do with that?

Well, to put it simply: any time you are now stuck on a mental problem, try changing what you are doing.

I mean this literally.

Change.

Stand if you are sitting, sit if you are standing, run if you are walking, crouch if there is nowhere to sit, cartwheel, dance, do anything except what you are doing.

Because that is how we get stuck.

That is how the blank page never gets filled.

You stare at a blank page.

Won't this be productive? An hour passes. Shit.

Do something!

Even if it is the act of typing nonsense gibberish at least you are turning it from a blank page into something you can work with.

This I have found is the single greatest trick to my work as an artist.

Do something.

At least then it is craftable, changeable, malleable, dare I say, alive?

One of the most remarkable improvisational workshops I have ever taken was where the master watched the scene carefully.

Let it go until it, in his parlance, 'died'.

I was so thrown, but he explained:

"Comedy/improv, is like an organism. It lives, it breathes, it grows, and sometimes it dies on the vine. It is my job to help you sense when that happens and how to avoid it."

Brilliant.

Art as organism.

Art as life.

The real trick that I find as a director/actor is turning off the Censor.

You may know him by his other name: Satan.

No, I don't mean literally.

But, there is a voice that is systemic in artists, I have found, that constantly whispers creepy (Satanic) shit like: "That's not good enough" "You'll never be that good" "You're not on Broadway"

Really useless crap.

But we LISTEN!

I tell actors in my rehearsal hall every day that what they did, which was silly and ridiculous and stupid was perfect for the scene.

But they shy away from 'that sort of acting'.
Why do we do that?

Because it is silly and ridiculous and stupid.

Our whole life has been about avoiding that sort of behavior in order to blend in and survive.

We need to be a bit more daring.

I'm not just talking about artists anymore.

This is everyone:

Be honest, be truthful, be silly, be courageous. 

It is worthy of art.

It is truthful.

It will help.

And if it does not....

Try something else.

RA: Recovering Artist (It is like AA, but we don't have chips)

Sorry, I know I haven't published in a while, but I promise there is a good reason!
FEAR.
Who said that?
Me!
Who are you?
The voices inside your head.
Can't worry about them, I have to write this article for all my adoring fans.
What adoring fans?
I must have some readership, even if it is friends, family, my immediate community.
So what? Who are they? Do they really matter?
...........
Aaaaaaand Scene.

This was a dramatic reading from inside my head, but it illustrates the point very quickly.
We are our own worst enemy.
I know what you are saying, because I say it: What good is this to me? Everybody says that!

Hold onto your seats folks....you ready? I don't think you are......
Everybody feels afraid.
No really, look around your home, or Starbucks, or dorm, wherever you are reading right now.
Everybody worries their art isn't enough.
That they are not enough.
It is why we lash out, why there is so much pain and frustration in artistic circles and domestic circles.
We are all just screaming for attention and most importantly: love.
"What a radical notion!" he said to the emptiness of interweb space.

But it is true.
We are creative beings.
We are storytellers by nature.
So what stops us from telling stories?
What makes us think our artistic endeavors are not enough?

I have been dwelling on this for weeks.
It is one of the big reasons why I haven't published a damn thing.
And it all comes back to fear.
So I decided to do something about it.
I decided to do my own art.

And that is when I became a practicing artist.
Oh you, me, the bloke on the street corner: all artists.
I believe that in my bones and no one can take that away from me.
But practicing your art, whatever it may be is the most important thing.
So I grabbed this book: The Artist's Way

"A spiritual path to higher creativity" and I started working on what I now call my artist's recovery program.
Now, let me be clear...I hate this book.
I despise it.
And the authoress.

I'm talking to you Jane!
You and your dumb face.
It is, to put it bluntly, (and I apologize for my English) not my cup of tea.
There! I said it!

People often make art into a spiritual experience with colors and energy and...I don't know what the hell they are talking about.
Give me concrete examples that I can process phenomenologically and I am your boy!
No one makes it more "spiritual", and when I say "spiritual" I mean that guy that asks, "Are you a 'spiritual' person", than this lady!
God, which she refers to throughout, is the ultimate creative force in the universe and if we open ourselves up to it, we can become conduits for the divine creative energy.
There. I did it. I gagged. But I did it.

So why am I plugging it?
I am not.
But I will say the lady understands artist block.
I have not written a single thing for my own benefit in over ten years.
TEN. YEARS.
Practicing daily, I started writing again, I am sketching, singing, looking into acro-swordplay-archery-lessons for the first time in a decade!

Now, I do not know how copywright [sic] works so I will give you the toned down version:
Write every day.
Fill your artistic vessel every day and produce something artistic every day.
That is the book in a nutshell.
Plus a whole lot of deity talk.

Every day we face the naysayers and the critics.
And we are worse than all of them because we have been taught to be.
My father taught me that rough drafts are the most important thing in the world.
Which made me terrified of rough drafts.
I graduated with a master's degree in fine arts and I have not written a rough draft since elementary school. Where they were REQUIRED!
Why did I do that?
My dad demanded that I give him a rough draft before I even started working on a project.
Why did he do that?
Because he is an engineer. And a damned good one.
In his craft, he requires blue prints because they are less expensive than models.
I am an artist, I require mess and chaos, my dad requires order and cohesion.
So for years I have been an artist too afraid to write a rough draft.

Still am.
But I write them anyway.
Why do I do that?
Because it feels good today.

Life is full of suffering, most of it our own making.
Trust that we all have problems, fears, but know that it is tempered by love.
Leap. Trust that your work is good enough and it will be.
Practice every day.
Who knows?
You might become an artist yet.