Everything is Beautiful at the Ballet

Later this month I am participating in a Teachers’ retreat for Michael Chekhov Teachers, and one of the things we are asked to consider is the time “when we were very young and dreamed of the stage very secretly.” Michael Chekhov. To explore what that creative joy felt like.

At first when I read this, I was a bit apprehensive. Like many artists, I feel my creativity was bound keenly to a very difficult environment of family breakup, tragedy and illness. I wondered how much of these things I wanted to pick through in order to explore this and how much I wanted to share. On the other hand, I am not someone who fakes exploration in workshop; I want to explore.

I asked my intuition before I went to sleep as to how I might tackle this in a manageable and safe way and I came up with something . I came across a picture of myself at three singing ‘Living Doll’ (an early Cliff Richard song) in a talent show. It made me think of the ‘forward movement of energy ’ required to be a performer, to be able to go out there, the ability to share but also to say “look at me”. As a child, acting was a total release for me. It made me feel like I had something of value to share, that despite the dangers and disappointments of ‘real life’ here was a place I could be myself.  It felt generous and open and exciting, like a light had gone on inside me. To some extent though, this quality is also tied up with ego and narrowing selfishness, and whilst this forward movement is vital for me as a performing artist, it is only part of the story.

Where my creativity really sprang from as a child, where it really nurtured me,  was from an inward movement of energy, a lonely creation of expansive imaginative worlds through my puppet theatre, my games and by voracious reading. It was no accident that when, as a young actor, I saw the show A Chorus Line , I wept copiously during the song, “Everything was Beautiful at the Ballet”, so much so that members of the audience sitting behind me told me to shut up! This lovely song really captured for me what it was like to sublimate your pain into art, to forget your problems, and when I think about it now, to consider the work of creativity and performing as being the most beautiful important thing.

This inward energy or imagination, seems to be the true core of artistic creation. Afterwards of course, we share that with others, our co-artists and audiences, which augments and strengthens its value. And I feel it is my job to always, always be open to this impulse to both the inward creation and the outward expression.

Often though in our creative world of ‘the business’, so many of us are denied this expansiveness, or have it only for a short period of our lives. In the end I think that is what I loathe about the idea of being professional. In that world the very thing that gives the work its power is the very thing that is denied all but a very few fortunate souls. I think this is almost unbearably cruel, to snatch this raw creative power away as we try to reconcile our ideals with the raw realities of agents, headshots and survival. I think ultimately that is why I love teaching as much as I do, because what you are doing is working with this inner creative flame. You do not have to consider these materialist realities, because it is the creative imagination which is the reality.  

When I found the work of Michael Chekhov, I felt I had found someone who never lost this sense of the power of the imagination, of this liberation and joy, despite the various trials and tribulations of his own life. I can honestly say it changed my life because I found someone, and through him a whole network of people, who think and feel as I do myself – that theatre makers are primarily artists no matter what.

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