“It must be so rewarding doing something that you love” those who aren’t working in a creative field always seem to chime when we explain what we do for work. Occasionally someone even might substitute ‘rewarding’ with ‘fun’. But it definitely hasn’t felt that way all of the time, and at points not even some of the time. Running a theatre company, how we were running it, was exhausting. Any endeavour can be exhausting depending on the approach and goals. In early 2018, we recognised our creative path wasn’t feeling how we wanted it to, it wasn’t providing us with this rewarding fulfilment it’s famed to, and we decided we need to stop everything and spend some time figuring out why.
We started by asking ourselves, if creativity is so fulfilling why were we so worn out at the end of a devising week, or a run of shows, or even a single day of rehearsals?
We know that creativity has a magical power of excitement and energy and rejuvenation, but where had that gone? I don’t think it was gone, it was just being outweighed by our struggles. We realised that our main struggle and aim was to ‘establish’ ourselves; external markers of success like arts council funding, a positive show review, or partnering with prestigious venues. But we hadn’t consciously outlined how long realistically certain milestones might take to achieve. It appeared like it was happening for others so why wasn’t it happening for us? Not achieving what we felt we should be achieving left us feeling trapped and powerless in a system with gates that we didn’t have the keys for. We put so much pressure on ourselves to grow and achieve based on external standards but internally this left us suffering.
I’ve just finished reading the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which I’d definitely recommend. A passage about Capitalism really resonated with me on how we ended up in our exhausted position
Capitalism began as a theory about how the economy functions…But capitalism gradually became far more than just an economic doctrine. It now encompasses an ethic – a set of teachings about how people should behave, educate their children, and even think.
Capitalism is based on constant growth. He goes on to say that we now define happiness on growth and self-reliance. Market and industry are designed to get bigger and bigger. And to capitalism bigger always means better. More is more. But human beings have physical limits. We wanted to reach being ‘established’ as a company (as if it is some static point or clear cut goal to be achieved) as soon as possible. And because of this urgency we pushed ourselves too hard. The work stopped being fulfilling and enjoyable. So thankfully, we took a break to pause and reassess.
We decided that we didn’t want out theatre company to look like other theatre companies.
We didn’t want to work within the system that everyone else seemed to be working in; funding application after funding application, fringe show after fringe show in the hopes of being noticed. That pace wasn’t right for us. We realised we have a lot of ideas about how to do things differently, more at the pace that is right for us, and we decided to pursue that rather than following the mould of what we felt we had to.
In creating Hearth&Sea we realised that rest is important to us. Accepting this also means accepting that sometimes we won’t accomplish everything we want as quickly as we would like to. It still can be a struggle to value rest and slowing down when it seems the world around us is sprinting. But we’ve learnt its value. And we hope to help you see its value too.
Kindling
Close your eyes and imagine: how do you want to feel in your working day? Smell the coffee, feel yourself there, and get into all your senses. Once you’ve experienced this, write down any differences you’ve noticed from your current working day. What small steps can take right now to move towards your ideal working day?