Playfully adapted from
By Stephanie S. Tolan
Because talents matter in this world and need to be cherished.
Eye-catching characteristics
The theatre-maker is a jack of all trades. When we think of a theatre-maker, we probably first think of the hybrid nature of working with everything, everything is suitable to show on a stage to an audience. Subsequently, we see someone who is making consistency in décor, players and objects and text. That stands out. That is impressive. That is unique. And that makes recognition incredibly easy. Theatre-makers can combine as many as hundreds of elements on a stage, are the only artists who can use of all the material in a project, potentially, so if you see something interesting outside and thinks of bringing it to a stage, you must be a theatre-maker!
Theatre-makers are the only artists who work so hybrid, so if you see someone translating the world to a stage, it's a theatre-maker!
But theatre-makers don't always have a stage at their disposal. In fact, sometimes they can take things to a stage only once a year, after which they rehearse for a considerable time in a obscure rehearsal room in some neighbourhood venue.
It is not difficult to identify a theatre maker even when he is not on or near a stage, provided we know his other characteristics.
He has a keen eye, can observe well down to the smallest details. He visually sees forms and how they relate to each other. Moreover, among artists, the theatre-maker is the only one who can flexibly change everything last-minute in a split second. All artists can reshape things, paint over a canvas or erase a drawing. The theatre-maker, however, is able to completely change a scene with a single direction.
The theatre maker is built entirely on the power of the moment.
His main material is the player, himself an outstanding stage performer. The player wants to be on stage, and it doesn't take much effort from a theatre-maker to bring the player into a spotlight. Just a stage. On stage, it doesn't take that much for a player to start acting himself and be able to make theatre with minimal direction needed from the theatre-maker.
While theatre is then functional, it also produces a powerful innate urge. The theatre-maker must create!
Is it still a theatre-maker?
Despite design and drive, there are still certain conditions for the theatre-maker to shape his elements on a stage.
He must be developed. And also fit and equipped. He must have enough space to work. Apart from that, he is best motivated to work at his best when there are enough players to play with. If players don't show up, or few are available, he may get disappointed, wait a long time and start sending messages on the mobile phone - but he will never be able to bring elements on a stage.
Is he still a theatre-maker?
If a theatre-maker depends on random people without acting skills, off the street even, for his work, and not actors, it is harder to motivate them to step into the spotlight on a stage. Will he choose to do so, it may require working on a location elsewhere. While he may well learn to play these random people on a stage on his own accord, to satisfy an innate urge - if he is only provided with inexperienced people, the theatre-maker will not likely choose the stage to work on.
If a theatre-maker works only with very inexperienced actors, he is not putting elements down on a stage.
Is he still a theatre-maker?
If a theatre maker gets problems with his eyes and sees less sharply.
Is he still a theatre maker?
If a theatre-maker is tired, barely sleeping, he won't be able to direct properly at all, he won't even be able to perform.
Is he still a theatre-maker?
And finally, if a theatre-maker has only just started, he has so much to learn and has yet to be able to bring all the elements together on a stage in a focused way.
Is he then only potentially a theatre-maker?
The learning system for theatre makers
A system that defines success on behaviour, success and performance is incapable of recognising theatre-makers and giving them what they need. Society is incapable of recognising and nurturing theatre-makers if it selects only on who are setting elements on a stage.
If a theatre-maker brings elements together in his hybrid strength, somewhere off-stage or on-stage he is not a particularly ‘successful’ theatre-maker. Although he does what no other artist can do, he behaves, for a theatre-maker, normally.
Painters, illustrators, writers, photographers, filmmakers -- all other artists -- might interpret the biological characteristics of the theatre-maker as deformities. Instead of ‘the best artist’, in their eyes the theatre-maker would actually hardly be an artist. He is not patient enough to paint a picture; his keen and quick powers of observation are too much in focus to draw and paint for hours on an ever-same canvas. Given the active nature of the theatre maker, artists who spend most of their lives drawing and endlessly mixing the right nuance in the colour palette would presumably label the theatre maker as hyperactive.
Theatre-makers are sometimes easy to spot! If a child writes as well as colours pictures, creates scenes by himself combined in a doll's house, already at the age of five, at the age of six creates some worlds of his own that exist alongside each other in various storylines, and sees the whole of life as a big stage all the time, then we can safely assume that this child is a theatre-maker. While the outside world may see these activities as ‘achievements’, this is not so much a ‘successful’ child as a child who is simply functioning according to her own biological need and her own innate, mental capacity. Such a child has clearly been given space to ‘create’, as well as people and other elements to combine hybrid. One does not need to have exceptional knowledge of the characteristics of theatre-maker to recognise this child for what she is.
But the system and many schools do not provide a stage, but a classroom and a notebook with lines to colour in between. Many theatre makers sit in the classroom with dull eyes. Some, unable to resist the innate urge, wander off into thoughts and dream a world of their own, or instead become rebellious.
Even open-minded and forward-thinking schools often create an environment that allows, what only moderate creation, but no space for the growing theatre-maker to develop and allow elements of the world to be put down on a stage in time. Children who can do that, however, will rarely impress as theatre-makers. Restrained from overly prolonged exertion of their brains, these children may never be able to reach the level of mental functioning to which they are destined.
A school, no matter how much space it offers its theatre-makers, does not give them a stage. Visual education may offer an hour-long drawing lesson with directions devised by the teacher (qualifying some artists, presumed to be good, as ‘underachievers’ because they do not make theatre).
Without a special programme, schools offer the academic equivalent of zoo food; food obtained without effort. Some children refuse such uninteresting, tasteless food at all.
To develop skills, as well as a strategy and plan for making theatre in the big world, a theatre-maker needs to go to a theatre, needs to be given a stage and also make contact to other theatre-makers who are role models. Without practice, theatre-makers are unlikely to be able to learn essential techniques.
Producers
Producers kill theatre-makers. They don't collaborate, they just kill them. They even seem to go to considerable lengths to find them in order to then deprive them of all freedom, make inspiration give way to marketing and details of logistic organisation in order to kill them (although theatre-makers cannot threaten the survival of producers by any means.) Is this malice? Play? No one knows. We only know that producers do this.
Theatre-makers have to hide their concept and take great pains to protect their souls. They come and go only under cover, from a designer or work on their artistic interpretation when the producers are far away. Theatre-makers and players feel trapped as prey in the producers' framework.
At some theatre organisations, theatre-makers are forced to do what they are not meant to do (such as theatre-makers being constantly asked to come up with a schedule and pass on rehearsal times to players via apps - after all, the producers should do that!) while characteristics that are a natural consequence of unusual mental capacities - intensity, passion, high energy, independence, sense of justice, curiosity, humour unusual interests and thirst for truth and precision - are seen as problems that require attention.
Theatre-makers can soon find themselves surrounded by people who laugh at them and ignore them because of their being different, where producers may even break their legs or keep them under medication to make them slower, more in tune with the producers. Is it crazy if they try to escape? Or cloak themselves in a temporary producer role to avoid being noticed? Or fight back?
Theatre makers mostly have internal features, so you wouldn't easily recognise them on the outside. No painter's apron or work overalls. Theatre-makers can wear any kind of clothing and you cannot recognise them if they are not actively creating with players on a stage.
Theatre-makers differ greatly among themselves, so there is no single skill on which we can select, even if they do perform. Apart from that, the world's greatest talent may lie outside the performance definition and remain unrecognised. While this fact may save some theatre-maker from a pointless death by producers, it also prevents them from being recognised for what they are - theatre-makers who are profoundly different from other artists, as fundamentally as a cheetah is from other felines.
Conclusion
Just because theatre makers are not immediately noticed does not mean there are no ways to spot them. It will just take more time and effort. People can learn to recognise the characteristics, learn that not only can theatre makers do things that other artists cannot, but also that there are tasks that other theatre makers can do and other theatre makers cannot.
Every human being has an innate urge to satisfy his biological need. The same is true for unusually intelligent, creative children. From time to time, the bars have to be removed, the fence has to be widened. Zoo food, easy and cheap as it is, must give way - at least part of the time - to lively mental prey.
More than that, in this system, we need to realise that it is important to at least try, that these theatre-makers not only need to be protected and cared for like everyone else, but that, like everyone else, they are entitled to have their specific needs met.
Biological diversity is a fundamental characteristic of life on our planet. It enables life to adapt and change. In our culture, artists, like theatre-makers, are heavily threatened. Like artists, they are here for a reason; they have their own place in society.
Theatres and associations, whatever their limitations, can be decisive for the survival of theatre-makers; many do their best to provide their captives with what they need to eventually survive in the wild.
If we are not committed to preserving theatre makers, we will continue to lose them, along with the unique benefits they can bring to the human species of which they are an essential part.