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| Taken from How to Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon |
Hello there and welcome to our first post of 2014 written by Alice! We've been a bit quiet in The Letter Room as we're making lots of plans for 2014 and 2015, and boy is there work to do!
For the past few months we have been shaping up our fundraising plans, arts council bids, writing copy, planning tours, booking space, setting dates, and most of all eating a lot of pizza, snickers and monster munch talking about our new show.
It's now a full year since we first stepped into Northern Stage as the very first NORTH company, and have left as The Letter Room....and now there is NORTH 14 and there is some hot totty in NORTH 14, and by hot totty I mean talented, driven, hard-working all round lovely people.
And this blog has very much detailed the highs of our first year together, and has not really documented the lows. I've been thinking a lot about the peaks and troughs we go through as makers of theatre, and perhaps we don't always talk about it enough. Although, that's not always true, people constantly tell us it's hard, it's graft, its painful, there is so much love and care that we all invest into it and a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I suppose we always knew that that would be the nature of the devising process (and we felt it) but what we are all starting to learn now is running a business has just as many peaks and troughs. We were given a wonderful head start during our residency and given so much support and advice from all corners of the world and walks of life. And if that's you reading right now, thank you. You are awesome.
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| Taken from How to Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon |
Developing our new identity and being set free from the building that put so much time and energy into our development has been both exciting and terrifying. We're finding pinning down seven very hard working people with dreams to be fulfilled, rents to be paid, opportunities to be found and words like taxes, pensions and savings rearing their ugly heads, can be tricky to say the least. Over the past year, a structure for our company has started to organically emerge, and we're all working really well as individuals and meeting new people and making new relationships. We're missing the time when we had every day together, and that has now become small pockets of time when we sit for four hours in Quilliam Brothers Tea House, or one of us paws our way back into Northern Stage, or we hunch over our laptops just before bed, and skype in those working hard in other cities.
I remember reading an article recently about the "mid-twenties crisis", the moment when you realise there's such a thing as growing up and you suddenly assess your life by the social goals set for you by society. I'm 26, I still live at home, I only graduated a year ago. I call myself and actor and theatre maker. I've had three acting jobs, and I've also worked in a cafe, as a cleaner, behind a bar, as a piano teacher, a dog walker, an admin assistant, a theatre usher, a drama worker and waitress. And that's all just in a year. Each one of us in The Letter Room can add a handful more to the list. And what we tell ourselves is, you should be buying a house, have cats, get engaged, buy fancy pans and food processors and save up for that new memory foam mattress (it'll be good for our backs dear). It's pretty ridiculous. I realise I'm being over the top here, I suppose I'm highlighting just how stupid it is to put so much pressure on ourselves to do it all. And we all work and live differently. But juggling it and justifying it can sometimes be really difficult.
And then you read blogs from people like Bryony Kimmings about the facts and figures of being a successful artist, the amount you are pushed about and taken advantage of, things are assumed and expected and sometimes really bloody unfair. And suddenly things seem really bleak, and it can get on top of you. I remember her saying "I'm not talking about the emerging artists...poor fuckers" (apologies that may be ever so slightly paraphrased...but the sentiment is there). And are we? Poor fuckers? A lot is against us, that is for sure. The Letter Room have their ups and downs, we are facing a lot of fears, a lot of black holes and a lot of what ifs.
HOWEVER.
We are also asking a lot of questions, we are going to people for advice and we are moving in the right direction. Albeit learning as we go, and at times it feels slow. But I suppose that has to be the way. We have to make our mistakes to carve our successes. I suppose I'm saying that it's all ok. And whoever you are reading this whether you work in the arts, or in an office, or in a bar or you are an emerging artist, or an established artist. I know that we all have the same fears, the same doubts, that one day someone is going to find out we can't actually do what we say we do. There's hiccups, theres heartbreaks, there are fractious and tense moments. But it's all worth it. And the work we make wouldn't be the work we make without it. Because then comes the audiences, the sharing of work, the meeting new people and making new friends, creating and writing, singing and dancing and all the other wonderful things happening in the rehearsal room. AND THEN WE GET TO PUT ON THE SHOW. I can't wait for that day. And then the show after that will come with new challenges, and the stuff we're finding tricky this time round will be much easier next time, and we'll learn newer and more efficient ways to do things.
But for now, lets not force it...because it's like stalking a wild animal.
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| Taken from How to Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon |
Happy creating everyone, may you all have peaks and troughs.
There are no secrets, just questions to ask.
Love from The Letter Room.
