Recently, I was part of a production that had a schedule that was very…ambitious. It expected a lot (too much!) of all of us.
The very last performance, which was in a new city, required us to travel the morning after a performance, have a tech rehearsal in a new hall in the afternoon, perform a dress rehearsal in the evening, and do the performance the next day. Those 36 hours were, to be frank, a recipe for disaster.
That was our best show of the run. The stress and fatigue we all felt was palpable but we were alive in all our senses, and leaned on each other for support. We created something stronger onstage because of what we had lived together offstage.
The day of the performance, a last-minute re-staging rehearsal was called because a cast member had been injured; so instead of 20 hours off (which was already not enough), the cast ended up having about 14 hours to decompress. As we stood together backstage that evening, we admitted to each other how frazzled, tired, and anxious we felt.
Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever performed BETTER because you were at a disadvantage?
At the end of the show, I was proud of us, but I was also troubled. What did this success mean, in the grand scheme? Could we have arrived at the show we found together without the fatigue, the stress, the last-minute changes, and the confusion? Or were these traumas fundamental?
You only need to look at the lives of the performers and artistic creators we most admire to observe that unresolved trauma and creativity often come hand in hand. Abusive relationships. Drug addiction. Poverty. Loneliness. Mental Illness. The trauma gives us a reason to make art.
But does healthy resolution of these traumas stymie our artistic fire? I don’t think it has to. There are many examples of performers who find emotional balance and creative fulfillment…but I think there is something inherently magnetic about the tragedy of the ever-suffering artist, so we tend to talk more about those that make art from a place of imbalance.
I like to believe that my team would have been capable of delivering a sizzling, captivating performance without the 36 hours of trial-by-fire, but I will never know for sure: that fantastic, pressure-cooker show was also the last of the run.
Let’s talk: Do you think art is best made in safety, or under pressure?
picture credit: eluela31 @ pixabay.com
