DIY Performance Series, Part 1-- 'In Defense of DIY'

I’ve been talking to a lot of artists lately about DIY art.

With the formal audition circuit coming to a close, many artists are finding themselves without contracted work for an upcoming production or project. I recently was sitting in a circle with some of my closest friends, talking about the upcoming season. Some of them were loudly lamenting their seeming lack of performance opportunities, complaining that their summer was going to be ‘wasted’. I took a sip of my wine, reached for some cheese and casually said, “Well, what about producing your own performances? Like, if you didn’t get cast by someone else, you can always cast yourself.”

I looked up to find everyone staring at me as though I had suddenly sprouted horns.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. DIY art in general seems to be sort of a touchy subject--the idea of crafting your own productions seems to bring out the strangest, strongest reactions in people. Some performers seem to thrive on creating their own performance opportunities, while others practically recoil at the thought.

2017 was a huge DIY art year for me. I successfully launched a fundraiser that raised $1000 for two local non-profits, I wrote and performed two one-woman shows, and I acted as production manager for a brand-new summer concert series….all without having any formal prior experience with DIY art. Don’t get me wrong--none of this was particularly easy. The learning curve for DIY productions is steep and intense, but the overall experience is so richly rewarding that I’ve been actively dreaming up a plethora of projects for 2018. And as a firm DIY enthusiast, I'm here to help you get your DIY performance off the ground!

DIY art can be strange and unknown territory for performers in particular. While some art forms, such as painting or sculpting, require the artist to constantly create art on their own, performers are collaborators by nature. Think about it: as a performer, you are hired to learn and perform a small part from already-existing work. You have colleagues to collaborate with, a director to guide you, large production teams to physically create the world the production demands, and a location already contracted to physically perform in. With so many intricate working parts, the idea of pulling together a performance from scratch seems downright impossible to many--yet performers are finding themselves encouraged to ‘branch out’ and ‘try something new’ more and more. In both my undergraduate and graduate experiences, my teachers and mentors encouraged their students to ‘create our own performance opportunities’...but nowhere did I receive any concrete information or guidance as to how to go about doing this. How exactly does one go about creating a DIY event or performance? I mean, where would one even start?? And why would anyone WANT to create/produce their own show??

For starters, producing your own work is a GREAT way to diversify yourself. I know the idea of diversifying yourself as a performer sounds slightly insane, especially for an opera singer. We spend most of our lives figuring out what specific fach our voices fit into, and what specific roles within that fach we should play/sing/perform. Our industry makes it very easy to get stuck in a Russian-nesting-doll mindset. We see ourselves as ‘performers’, others label us as such, and we market ourselves as such. Every year, the pool in which we market ourselves gets bigger and more difficult to distinguish yourself within. Colleges and universities are cranking out new batches of performance majors every year, and there are fewer and fewer companies that seem to be able to offer anything more than a stipend. In the Chicagoland region, the depth of the amazing talent pool is pitted against the amount of theaters producing shows. Divide this by the number of upcoming shows in any given season that contain appropriate roles for you as a performer, and mathematically don’t add up to a livable wage. The result is that performers often buckle down and ‘focus’ themselves into one particular niche or role in hopes of creating a distinct ‘brand’ for themselves. But what if I told you that you, as an individual and an artist, are not JUST a performer---that you actually have MANY diverse talents that could be utilized by companies??

I’ll go so far as to say that, in order to make a livable wage as an artists, we must encourage, develop and market skill sets outside of performing. Performers can no longer spend our lives continually sticking ourselves into a Russian-nesting-doll-esque mindframe. The demands of modern audiences put a lot of pressure on producers and companies to continually create new, exciting and more demanding works.The artistic world has a history of being underappreciated (read: underfunded) in the US, but recent budget proposals from the Trump administration are threatening to choke off what little national arts funding there is. Now so more than ever, money is an essential consideration for production teams. Diversifying your skills as an artist by producing your own work can only make you more appealing in the hiring/audition process. In this fast-paced day and age, performers cannot expect to exclusively perform and make a living wage. We as professionals need to be able to bring more than performing to the production’s table; we need to be able to offer various skills sets that make us uniquely appealing to companies.

Think about it from a production team’s point of view: they can either hire two separate people to fulfill the demands of a production (let’s say, a singer to fill a specific role and a marketing specialist to sell the show to the general public), OR they could hire one person who is a bomb-ass performer AND happens to know a thing or two about audience demographics. If you as an artist have the ability to fulfill a role AND an essential production role, why wouldn’t you want to highlight this fact?? It’s an easy way to get a leg up on the competition within and without the audition room. Start encouraging yourself as a performer to highlight your possible production skill sets the same way you highlight your ‘special skills’ on your resume!

“Okay, JEEZ, I GET IT. I'm gonna highlight my special production-related skills...once you tell me how to actually figure out what they are, Emma!” ---A Very Annoyed and Impatient Reader

Forgive me, V.A.&I. Reader. You’re absolutely correct: how exactly DO you start identifying specialized skill sets? It’s actually much easier than you think! Take a moment to consider the many, many different tasks you do as a performer. Sit down and make a list of everything that you do on a daily or weekly basis. Maybe jot down any special projects you’ve helped with in the past, or any jobs that you’ve held that required special responsibilities. Next to them, jot down two or three keywords that describe the skills required to fulfill these jobs. Did you serve as a GA in your graduate school, perhaps alongside other GA’s? That’s upper management skill sets you’ve exercised, from organizational skills to delegating duties. Do you seek out and apply for auditions weekly, and then organize your own audition schedule for the month? That’s management, talent scouting and basic office skill sets that you’re using. Did you create a website for yourself that reflects who you are as a performer, and do you regularly update it with your upcoming performances? That’s branding, marketing and PR skills at work. Do you perhaps teach voice lessons or direct a choir? That’s pedagogy and educational outreach that you’re implementing. Once you start to think outside of your own creative box, you’d be amazed at the various skill sets that you already have to offer.

So, now you know your specialized skill sets. What EXACTLY does this have to do with creating a DIY performance?

The answer is: everything.

Highlighting your unique skill sets to both the world and yourself does several things at once. It reinforces the idea that you’re a diverse artist who is capable of more than just singing and dancing (often at the same time!). It also shows you exactly what you’re great at--and maybe what you’re not so great at. It’s the Ground Zero of DIY art, laying out the terrain and giving you a scope of exactly how much help you might or might not need along the way. After all, you can’t get to some new and exciting destination if you don’t currently know exactly where you are.

Keep this list, and update it as often as possible--it’s going to come in handy later on.

Maybe you’re not really interested in diversifying yourself. Maybe you truly believe that you already have highlighted every special factor that you possibly could, and you’re still not getting cast. Maybe you’re having a serious bout of ‘The Downs’, that horrid spiral of self-doubt and imposter syndrome that every performer finds themself in at some point or other. That’s all the more reason to start a DIY project! Nothing beats away ‘The Downs’ like a sense of purpose and forward motio--- and DIY art is great for both of these.

The greatest reason I could possibly offer for wanting to create your own performance opportunities is to simply support and challenge yourself to grow as an artist. You are an individual. You are unique, your voice is unique, and your talents are unique. No one has ever come before you who encompasses everything you have, and no one will ever come after you. Your job as an artist is to challenge yourself to constantly grow and develop your craft, sometime in weird and wonderful ways. Your calling as an artist on this earth is to express, emote and create beauty. Your thoughts, your feelings and your experiences are your own---but if you truly want to express or share them with the world, you need to know that you have the complete capacity to do such, just as you currently are right now. DIY art is the best possible form of self-encouragement and support an artist can give themselves. It’s like a tiny little inner cheerleader, showing you that you actually ARE capable of great things, pushing you on and encouraging you not to give up in the face of adversity.

So consider launching that concert series you’ve always dreamed of singing. Go ahead and start writing that original song that’s been bouncing around in your head, or start production on that documentary you’ve already been filming in your head. If you can dream it, with enough time and effort, you absolutely can do it.

There might be some of you out there who still aren’t totally convinced, because what you’re wanting to achieve seems even bigger than anything listed here so far. What if what you’re dreaming is bigger and more elaborate than a single concert? What if you really want to say or express doesn’t actually exist in a vehicle yet?? How do you scratch that artistic itch??

Stay tuned for DIY Part 2--’Hey Kids, Let’s Put On A Show!’!!