No More Starving Artists
No one piece of art is worth an artist’s wellbeing.
Javelin, around the age they were when they first performed in a play. As you can see here, clearly already a nonbinary fashion icon as well.
I have wanted to be an actor since I was a very small child. I stood on stage for the first time when I was 6 or 7 and I was hooked immediately. Since then, much of my formation as a human being has happened in or around theatre and film. I learnt all my best social skills in improv classes, I explored my values in rehearsal halls, and I tend to measure my morality against the openness and curiosity I’ve found among the actors and writers and dramaturgs I call my chosen family.
This industry is a part of me. And, if it continues to function the way that it does, then I cannot continue to be a part of it.
The last couple of years I have been wrestling with some big realizations I had during the lockdowns. Like many undiagnosed neurodivergent humans, I absolutely loved the lack of social obligations, the moral imperative to stay home, and the sensory relief that it was to stay 6 feet away from people. During this time I discovered that, first, I actually like and want financial stability. Second, that no one piece of art is worth my wellbeing. I have to prioritize taking care of myself now, the alternatives cost too much.
I went back to school and became a life skills coach because I see the ways the industry I grew up in is failing to teach the humans that make it up how to care for themselves at the same time as having a career here. It failed to teach me those skills, and I floundered for a long time. This failure to develop life skills while growing artistic skills is all too common for both early career artists, and humans who are technically mid-career now like myself. And it is ending the artistic practices of wildly talented people left, right, and centre.
A Sustainable Arts Career
I remember being in acting classes and hearing from artists who had been in the industry for a while, and they would say over and over that you had to diversify what you do for work. You cannot be one thing. And yet at the same time we are lulled into the narrative that the industry pushes that we can only be one thing. People see me as X, so they will not accept me as Y.
Javelin in a production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre at the University of Calgary in 2014.
I dream of an arts industry that is thriving and sustainable, made up of artists who are themselves thriving. I suspect that is going to require some larger scale changes than one artist can make alone. I’ve never been much of a systems guy, I have always preferred to do my work on an individual level. That’s why I studied psychology, not sociology.
This is the point where other blogs might start telling you about what you need to do and how to go about doing it. But I am not like other blogs (lol). I am a coach first, and a content creator like, maybe sixth? As such I strongly believe that you are the expert in your own life, not me. Your answers are going to be better than any I could provide by placing my story onto you. So, how do you know what you need as an artist to make your career sustainable for you? I have a few ideas on how to find that information out. That said, I do have some tools you could use to help you identify your needs, and explore how to meet them. Here is one for free, just cause you are you:
Digging Down to The Need (An Acting Technique)
Konstantin Stansilavski
Okay, in acting 101 there is this thing we are taught to do when we are analyzing a scene to play. We are taught to identify what our character’s objective is in the scene. It is something the character wants, it has to be active, and something that the character could reasonably try to get from the other person in the scene. This brings a lot of life to the performance, and is often considered the basics of scene work. It is based off of the work of a Russian dude named Konstantin Stanislavski.
A lot of people will stop there but you can dig deeper. You can identify the character’s super-objective. This isn’t what the character wants, this is what the character needs. You do this by asking one question over and over until you get to the root of things. If your character gets the thing they want, what does that get them? Then ask again, if they get that thing, what does that get them? Do this until you have hit the thing at the bottom, the thing that if they get it that’s it, there are no more layers to uncover. That thing is the need.
Making It a Life Experiment
Okay so what happens if you apply this analysis to your own patterns of action? There is an opportunity here to get a deeper understanding of how the things you want connect to the things you need. This can be applicable in all sorts of life areas. You work, your relationships, your art. Ask yourself what you want in those areas, and then dig down deeper by asking yourself what getting that want will get you.
Steps to Identifying Your Needs
Spend some time thinking about what you want, and digging down from there to what the needs are underneath.
Explore how you have been trying to meet those needs. Are your tactics working for you? Are there things you could try that might be better suited to meeting your needs?
Experiment with doing things differently, see if you can meet your needs more completely, or in a way that aligns better with your values.
Need some help doing this exploration? Alchemy’s coaching was designed for you, reach out to us here.