An Artist Not Creating is a Dangerous Thing

I have been in the arts since my youth.

Church choir since 5, and theatre productions since 8. Family jam sessions every Sunday night, waking up to the sound of my sister belting out Wicked in our kitchen before school.

I have always been creating. But performance, having an audience, I sort of stumbled into. The first play I was ever in was a youth production of Annie. I was eight and my aunt called my mom one day after school asking her if my sister and I wanted to audition for a show.

Now, for whatever reason, I didn’t really understand the concept that I could be a part of a full-length theatre production.

I had seen my cousin perform a few songs at the library's outdoor stage with a singing group she was a part of during our town's annual “fiesta days” (a week of fairs, parades carnivals, the whole “small town celebration”) so I assumed that this would be something like that. A ten-minute song and dance routine performed for our parents and maybe some seniors from the old folks' home.

Only after we started rehearsals did I realize we were putting on a full-length production, and only after our first dress rehearsal at our town's high school did I realize we were performing for an audience larger than my living room.

It was a shocking realization once I figured out what I had gotten myself into.

But I was in love with the process of creation before I ever knew what the product would be.

To be honest, I loved the process much more than the product. I always had a nervous stomach getting up on stage, and to be honest I still do.

One of my professors at the University of Utah called acting “playing under pressure” and that’s exactly what it is. The nerves never really go away, but the act of creation always trumps whatever anxiety I seem to be faced with.

The act of creation is a beautiful thing.

And it has from as far back as I can remember, been a constant in my life.

Theatre, film, and storytelling, have been the guideposts I have used to navigate my understanding of this world, have been the lens through which I have seen reality, and used to process the world around me.

They have been the buoy and the anchor, keeping my head above water, while also keeping my feet grounded, life preservers to help me manage turbulent waters.

But this last year I faced something I hadn’t in a very long time. A full year of not performing a full theatre production.

Of course, it included many new adventures, commercial work, short films, tons of monologues, scene work, self-tapes, reading and studying plays, and more wacky improv games than I thought one person could handle, but not a single full production.

And to be honest, as a theatre-maker, I was spoiled as a Drama Don. Very few high schools put on four full-length productions, a one-act play, a Shakespeare ensemble piece and full slates of individual events for two different competitions annually. And that’s all extracurricular. That doesn’t include the intense classwork covering the processes of every acting master, loads of theatre history, and diving into the nitty-gritty of what it means to act.

And once I hit University, this process only intensified, my days were filled with theatre classes, script analysis, and meeting whole new groups of theatre-makers with new perspectives, goals, ideas, and stories.

From August to November I was spending most, if not all of my time studying the craft I have always loved. I was content, I felt safe. I was terrified a lot of the time, not knowing what a degree in Theatre would get me, but I was present, and I was happy.

And then this last December hit.

I have always struggled with depression. As far back as I can remember. That is often the case for artists, those two things frequently go hand in hand, and just like clockwork, as the days got shorter, and the nights got longer, the pit in my stomach began to grow, and the lens in which I saw reality shifted from this bright thing I had grown accustomed to, to a gloomy grey resembling the filter used on the first Twilight movie.

This was not something unfamiliar to me. I have gotten to know this pit of “dark” on an intimate level. My depression feels like an old, toxic friend. But the context in which I was experiencing this depressive episode was radically different from before. I had no support system. I was now responsible for all of my emotional and physical needs, with little to no external help.

And I’ve always been an independent person, but what I realized is how important having people physically in my life was for my emotional state. I needed co-regulators. I needed company.

I have many memories of asking friends to come over, just to sit in my room and do nothing, to support me through my hard times. Having a physical presence helps me not feel so emotionally alone.

So this depressive episode, which was played out mostly in a dorm room, where the closest I could get to this need being met was having a friend stay on the phone with me while I fell asleep, was an experience like no other.

After a few weeks of this battle happening in my head, which consisted of many trips home to visit friends and family, the semester ended.

I thought that the Winter break would be good for me. Getting to spend my days in front of the fireplace, around familiar faces, with no stress over the completion of classwork or trying to catch the right shuttle from my dorm down to campus.

But as the break continued, the pit grew deeper, and a great fear overcame me. I didn’t want to leave. I remember thinking clearly, that if I spent the rest of my life, at my parent's house, doing puzzles, drinking hot chocolate, and watching hallmark movies, I would be content. I didn’t want things to change, even though I wasn’t well. I was sick from the comfort of it all. Although I was deeply unhappy, lethargic, and depressed, it felt a lot safer than going back to the unknown of school life, the potential of things getting worse with no safety net to catch me. So I made the decision. I stayed. I said I would give myself a semester to do online classes from the comfort of my living room, get some Gen Eds out of the way. Study some chemistry, and linguistics, before heading back to the program in the fall.

And so I did.

For about three weeks.

Now I don’t know who told me that putting the responsibility of completing online courses into the hands of someone who not only was experiencing Esther Greenwood levels of sadness, but also has a competitive streak in tendencies of procrastination was a good idea, but I blame them for my academic performance this last semester.

Needless to say, I ended up withdrawing from my classes at the end of February.

So there I was, at the bottom of this rabbit hole, living at home, not in school, no job, no car, not doing much of anything.

I genuinely felt as though my life was over. And I lived in that, for weeks.

Now, you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the outside looking in. But that was only a result of my great ability to run on empty. I was fundamentally unwell, completely out of gas, but driving full force to convince myself, and those around me, of my wellness.

If you haven’t heard by now, Instagram is fake. All of it. During this time I was booking small projects, working with local photographers, and auditioning for commercial work, and all of it was being thrown onto my Instagram feed. To many, this may have looked like I was entering a new era, establishing myself more and more as an artist.

And that may have been true, but none of this was fulfilling my need to storytell, to act.

Eventually, I got a part-time job, got a car, moved out, and as the days grew longer, and the nights grew shorter, I pulled myself out of the rabbit hole and laid on the surface of my life, finally finding my feeting again. I got back into therapy. I began working through some experiences from my past that I knew needed to be faced.

The pit grew smaller, or maybe I just grew stronger. But it was lighter to hold within me. I could manage more than before.

But as I sat back and examined my life, although fundamentally much better than it had been before, although I was the most financially stable I had ever been, with my portfolio and resume growing, with friends surrounding me, my social life thriving, a home that felt like home, I still felt this absence.

And I couldn’t for the life of me place what it was. It was the sense that something was missing. And I couldn’t tell what.

After a tough cross-examination of the areas of my life, I realized what it was.

I wasn’t creating the art that I wanted to create.

I was creating the art that was building me externally, but not feeding me internally.

This realization came to me after auditioning for a production of Romeo and Juliet.

I was asked to submit two monologues. So I pulled two of my favorite pieces from my book and after a few run-throughs, recorded and submitted my audition.

And instantly, I felt a joy wash over me I hadn’t felt in a long while.

I was creating just to create.

This production wouldn’t be my big break, but I knew I wanted to do it because I missed creation for the sake of creation. Not for the sake of profit or success.

After submitting the audition, I received news that I got a callback.

I may not even be cast at all.

But the act of creation, of putting your energy into telling the stories that you want to tell, will always trump any form of fame or fortune.

It will pull you out of dark places, remind you why you love what you do.

Only a few lucky bastards will ever reach great commercial success as an artist, with the greatest never living to see the impact that their art has on the world, but if you are an artist, please keep creating.

Make the stuff you want to make, not just what will pay the bills or make you go viral.

Create anonymously, in your bedroom, on your own time.

Write the music that must be written, tell the stories that need to be told, for we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

Make art that’s bad. Make art that will never see the light of day. Write poorly written poetry in your notes app. Doodle in the bylines of your notebooks. But don’t stop creating.

Often we feel as though we can’t create because we feel uninspired, unskilled, or uncreative, but that is when we need it most! The act of creation will always be more important than the result, the process is always more profound than the product.

And yes, the sharing of our work is important as well, so don’t be afraid of that. Don’t be afraid to put things out half-finished, or when they “aren’t good enough”, but if not for anyone else, create for yourself.

Let your art be a healing thing, even if the only person it saves is you.