Support the arts- support the artist

I challenge you to become a proud supporter of the arts.

Support comes in many forms. You are probably like me, in that you are inundated by requests for cash support. Certainly financial support is important. I give what I can, when I can, and I'm sure you do, too. However, money is only one of the ways to support the arts.

We can support the arts by attending. We can attend plays, showcases of artists’ works, concerts. We can visit museums and galleries. We can go to festivals and conventions.

We can support the arts by participating. Take a class in pottery. Take a class in art history. Write a poem or a song. Take some photographs. Audition for a show. Draw. Paint. Dance.

We can support the arts by helping our society value the arts. Let your legislature know that the arts are important to you. You pay taxes- ask that some of those monies go to enrich everyone by promoting the arts as a valuable part of our society. Ask for local artists to be featured in our libraries, bookstores, and cafes.  Write a review of a work of art that you have recently enjoyed- whether it’s a book, a movie, a sculpture, a play. Tell a friend to check it out.

We can support the arts by supporting artists. Artists pour out their energies in the act of creation. They are investing themselves, heart, mind, and soul, in their creations. It takes a lot out of a person! So support your local artist! Offer to listen. Ask what the person is working currently. Take an artist out for coffee or a beer.

I'm an artist*. I am an artist primarily in a collaborative art- theatre. Theatre is an art that only exists in collaboration- among the artists of the theatre, and with the audience. While it is obviously true that the performing arts, to truly exist, must exist by sharing with their audiences, I believe it is also important for all artists to share with their society. Whether the artist is celebrating or mourning, calling us to action or calling us to account, each artist is a part of the larger society and in relationship with it.

With us.

Supporting the arts is more than writing a check. Supporting the arts is supporting the artists.

Including the artist in you.

 

*You can definitely take me out for coffee. Or beer ;-)

artistry

     "And knowing, too, that this sort of artistry could not endure past the shaping moment, could only be spoken of after by those who recalled, or misrecalled, who had seen and half seen and not seen at all, distorted by memory and desire and ignorance, the achievement of it written as if on water or sand.
     "It mattered, terribly, and just now it didn't matter at all. Or could the fragility, the defining impermanence actually intensify the glory?" - Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay

I like this commentary on the ephemeral artistry of performance.

My life in Theater Art

My Life in Theater Art

I fell in love with the theater when my sixth grade teacher read Taming of the Shrew aloud to the class. I went to the Stratford Festival and saw great theater- and not so great. I started acting in high school and from that day to this I have performed in, produced, written and directed hundreds of shows.

I love the transformational power of theater. Theater saved my life, giving an awkward, introverted girl a community and a shared experience of power and energy and connection. I have seen this magic work again and again on actors, crew, designers, directors, -everyone, as Stanislavsky would say, including the hat check girl. I love the power of ensemble: the very real experience that together, our whole is far greater than the sum of our individual parts.

I hate theater that despises its audience. Without the audience, there is no theater. We, as theater artists, must develop our audience, tease, tempt, teach our audience. I don't advocate a "comfortable" theater or a safe theater; I do advocate a theater that seeks and engages the audience.

I have many goals for theater. One personal goal: I would like to see theater artists who are teens- or who work with teens and youth - recognized as (potentially) valid theater artists. Also, expanding on my comment #2 above, I would like to see the work of amateurs- those who do this work for the love of it- to be recognized for the important work that it often has been.