I had an interesting conversation recently whereby an individual was addressing people who rent, rather than own their own homes, as though they were failures at life; or at least of some lesser value because they hadn’t “got their act together” and been “smarter” with their finances. This idea that physical possessions, or following a specific cultural paradigm, should be considered some universal mark of success does not resonate with me.
 
If teaching, directing and writing theatre for young people has shown me anything, it is that success looks different for everyone. It is completely relative to the hopes, dreams, needs and philosophy of each individual.
 
Where a mark of success for one student might be simply stepping onto a stage,
for another it might be landing a lead,
and for another it might be making a friend,
and for another it might be memorising a monologue,
and for another it might be overcoming anxiety from a day fraught with almost insurmountable hurdles to actually arrive at my classroom door.
 
This also means that my own success in my work looks different depending on who I am working with. A student who has issues even standing up and saying their name in our first class coming to a place where they are sharing their ideas in a group setting absolutely fills my heart. A student who, usually through enthusiasm and excitement, tends to railroad group work, learning to sit back and take on the ideas of others, follow rather than lead, will equally fill me with pride.
 
For me success sits firmly in my heart space. Close and open relationships with my husband and child, being able to offer an ear to a friend who needs to talk, being remembered as a kind person.
 
Professionally, success is being able to work as a teaching artist in an industry for which I have a passion. It’s part of who I am and I get to share that with people every day. So, to that aforementioned person in the introductory paragraph I am unsuccessful. I rent and earn a pretty ordinary wage. I lack the cultural capital to have value to them, but I really couldn’t care less. Just as I tell the young people I work with, we need to recognise what success actually looks like to ourselves, not allow mainstream society to dictate that for us, and stay authentic. That way we will never let the careless words of others penetrate and diminish our self-worth.
 
How blessed I feel to have learnt this lesson.

Part of working in theatre is receiving feedback. As with all parts of theatre this is a skill set that needs to be developed by artists of all crafts. It’s not always easy to hear feedback, no matter how long you’ve been at it and requires a person to rise above the ego into Chekhov’s higher ego, thus observing the big picture. In my own experience there are 3 common ways people receive feedback.
 
1. Argue the point
This generally indicates that you are taking the feedback as a personal slight. That you have decided the feedback is being given with negative intent. It is combative and closed which will lead those giving feedback to tend towards withholding opinions and put them off working with you in the future. It also means that you miss out on considering fresh perspectives that might help you explore aspects of your work that you’d otherwise not have considered.
 
2. Justify your choices
a. Without being asked. This is similar to arguing the point. It indicates that you aren’t listening to the feedback but instead thinking of ways to prove wrong those who are offering the feedback. Again, why would people want to collaborate with you if you are not willing to consider their perspective?
b. After being asked. This relates more to taking it on board. When someone giving feedback asks you to explain a choice, it means that they are genuinely wanting to fully understand your perspective. They want to collaborate. Waiting to be asked will show you are invested in understanding what they are saying.
 
3. Take it on board
Listen. Hear what the feedback is saying and consider it in context with your vision and intentions. Taking the feedback on board shows that you understand it is being given with a positive intent and that the giver wants to see you succeed. Taking feedback on board shows an open mind. Taking feedback on board invites a multiperspectival approach that will work towards reaching the full potential of your art.  Taking feedback on board does not mean you have to make the edits suggested, just that you’re willing to listen and consider alternative approaches before making a choice.
 
As artists we are vulnerable and give of ourselves when creating. This is why it’s even more important to develop an ability to receive feedback without taking it personally. It’s imperative for good mental health practice in the arts. This is a skill that I was not taught at a young age, unfortunately, and grappled with what I took to be personal criticism for a long time. Instead of hearing, “I’d like to help you”, I was hearing, “you’re not good enough”. It stopped me, for a period, from pursuing a career in the arts that are such a part of who I am. It is my hope, in sharing this now, that it might help someone.

All art is subjective.

It is subjective to our personal tastes and reactions.
It is subjective to the culture within which it is being digested, and the historical time frame. You can't tell me a play will be received exactly the same now as it was a thousand years ago.
Our gender, age, political and philosophical leanings, our religious beliefs or lack thereof... all impact on the way we digest a piece of art and/or the value of the artist.

So how can we label an artist or artwork as best? When it comes to theatre I feel as though our work is always open for reinterpretation, and to be true to our creativity we must observe the multiplicity of perspectives that any audience brings.

I once directed a piece where an audience member was peeved that I staged a scene with the actors facing a giant mirror upstage. "I don't pay to have to look at the actors in a mirror, I paid for the ticket so they should face me!" they exclaimed to one of the actors. Now, beside the fact that I think it's in poor taste to approach an actor directly after a show and criticize said show (also not helpful that the actor was related to me), and that it confuses me that someone who is in the industry would so readily jump to stomp on a directorial decision just because the actors "aren't facing" them, I was not upset in the slightest by the comment, because it's subjective. (Okay, there's also the fact that for that one person there were 30 more who took time to seek me out and mention how much they enjoyed that exact scene.)

My way was not best. It was just my interpretation. When I perform on stage and receive praise it is not because I was best, but rather that I managed to connect with and engage that audience member.

So it disheartens me when I see an arts organisation, especially those who work with young people, talking about the 'best' talent.

I teach my young actors that when they don't get a role it's not because they aren't any good and it's certainly not because someone was better than them; it is for a myriad of directorial decisions that require specific casting choices. I say that, because it is subjective. There's no measurable time, height or distance to validate a 'best' value. There's no way to create an absolute authority to defer to (other than those false gods created by elitism and good marketing which cater to the trite and stale - of course that is merely my opinion).

In short, I say we spend less time creating value classifications when it comes to any kind of art work and spend more time engaging with artists to explore from where their perspective has arisen.

Me:             What do we perform?
Class:         A Play
Me:            Right, it's called a play because that it what we do to explore, interact and understand the story
                   and the meaning and the character... , we play. You can't forget to play.

Play is the methodology for any theatre practitioner worth their salt. It also is something that can be forgotten when the stress of meeting deadlines and the bottom line looms large. When I first learnt about Michael Chekhov's essential quality of 'Ease', it seemed to me that it should be easily achieved if only we could remember to play. 

Approaching our games, activities, rehearsals etc. with this mindset is important if we want to sidestep gravity, in many a sense of the word, and perform with ease.

For example, I play a scene of a mother steeped in grief. Her child is lost and she travels everywhere searching for her. sleep is elusive. Depression is setting in. This is a grave situation, but to remain free and flexible to perform the scene authentically and in the moment I can not actually be depressed, heavy, lethargic etc.. Instead I need to play with these concepts. I need to thrill at what happens when I play with my body shape. I need to feel joy at the ways I can play with my voice to convey a moment in this woman's story. I embrace the moments of engagement with my audience and castmates, as we should any moment of human connection and collective understanding. The story and the character hold gravity... I do not. I revel in my craft and how I might use it to tell the story. As a result I remain responsive and present, and I do not carry the weight of the story away with me. 

As actors, we should never stop playing.

Some things I have been heard to say since the threat of Covid-19 ramped up in Australia:

"We don't have a magic wand. We can't change things or make things appear on the shelves. So I'm going to dance." (I mean, why else do the supermarkets play the music, but for us to sing and dance to as we shop!)

"I'm just going to hold on to this ride and hope when it's finished I'm not too banged up."

"Aren't we lucky to have a roof over our heads at this time."

"We're creative. It's what we do. We just need think creatively."

While one part of me worries about how long this will last, how many will lose their jobs, how many will die... my creative side is on sensory overload. It's a new time and we have to rethink the way we do everything. That's a bit exciting. Don't misunderstand, It doesn't allay the other worries or make things better for people losing their livelihoods or their lives. If I could wish this pandemic away and return people thier lives and their jobs, I would. But that isn't possible. So I have to work with what is available, and what is available is a new creative challenge to tackle how we can continue to work in the creative industries now, and into the future, when traditional avenues have been closed to us.

I think those of us who are creative are quite lucky. When my anxieties begin to climb, I sit and write or sing or practice guitar or draw or paint or begin learning a language. All of my creative pursuits help to settle the mind and help me work through the worries. It's insanely important to find an anchor like that. For my creative self, I am truly thankful.

There are so many different opinions out there, about what a drama class is. Often is is waved off as nothing more than playing games. Silly really, when so much research in areas such as child development, education and business, all show how important games are to developing in and understanding the world around us. For example, in a previous working life, I spent time working in the field of organizational culture and leadership. One element that was always added to any workshop we ran with groups that ranged from the highest management to the coalface, was a game.  Games, you see, were where peoples real nature was exposed. How well did they really work as a team member? How important was winning to them? Would they always stick to the rules or bend, even break them to achieve a win? No matter how savvy the participants were to a workshop situation, their true nature always emerged in a competitive game.

Games are also a fun tool for developing skills. I mean, who likes to be talked at. How many of us really develop a skill by sitting and talking, or listening to someone else talk? Based on the lifeless faces of students when I wandered into the realm of casual teaching and was tasked with talking from a pre-written, well worn, lecture, not many I would wager.

Within every game I teach at XtrAct Drama Academy there is built a transferable skill. Indeed, I once met a university lecturer who told me, "You give me a subject, any subject, and I will show you how to use drama to teach it." And I believe her. When I look at the many different experiences I have had working across a number of industries or travelling through non-english speaking nations or even in my every day interactions. Each skill I needed is a skill that gets covered within my drama classes. Problem solving, Effective Team Work, Effective and Engaging communication, Literacy, Focus, Observation, Confidence... The list goes on. And if you go on to work in theatre and perchance even pursue tertiary training in theatre you need to include skills in Mathmatics, IT, Science, Lighting, Sound Production, Administration... the list goes on.

We may not explicitly describe to students the skills they are developing each time they play in our classes, but trust me, Drama is more than a game.

Ah production week. those seven days leading into an opening performance. Or in the case of many  drama and music schools the only performance. Those days when you suddenly start receiving an substantial increase in phone calls, texts and emails from parents asking about costumes, times, locations, and explanations as to why there are suddenly extra rehearsals.

The information by the way, including the extra rehearsals, can always be located in the many communications sent out throughout the year. In my case most information is in the welcome pack at the beginning of the year.

But that's by the by. What I'd like to talk about is that question about the extra rehearsals.

Most years my junior classes have a number of new students. Most of these have either never performed on a stage before, only performed on little school hall stages, or performed in dance groups and choirs. The act of getting up on a bigger stage and having to speak is a whole different ball game. I've watched the most competent kids crumble the first time they are standing on a large stage with strangers looking at them.

That is why I run the extra rehearsals earlier in the week. To give them a chance to feel those overwhelming new feelings when the strangers are predominantly their peers, my senior volunteers and a handful of parents. It's in these rehearsals that I can walk out onto the stage and talk them down. I give them options that will keep them on the stage but take some of the 'big scary' away. Most of the time, by doing this, those kids are settled by the actual performance and walk onto the stage with a nervous excitement instead of utter dread.

I shudder at the thought of a drama school that would push young students to be perfect and professional. For me, it is the skills built in to what we do, including getting up and talking in front of a bunch of strangers, that are more important that a seamless show. I like my students to know that each performance they give is more practice in developing these skills and that what is most important isn't getting it right, it's feeling scared or nervous, but getting up on that stage and trying it anyway. Facing our fears. Developing resilience. Growing stronger.

I can't be on the stage with the kids, or doing it for them, but I can try to give them the tools to give it a bloody good try. And one those tools is called, Rehearsals.

Student:          I’m really glad I decided to try drama this year.

Me:                  I’m glad you did too. You’ve really found your voice and you have an effortless natural                           talent for improvisation. It’s enviable.
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Student:         I almost didn’t come. It was quite out of my comfort zone and I was also expecting                                 you to be a real flakey, hippy, air-head type. But you’re not. You’re really down to                                   earth.

Me:                  Aren’t I just a little bit weird?

Student:          <laughs> Yes, Danielle, you’re weird, but you are also down to earth and what you                                  have to  say makes a lot of sense.
                                                                Conversation with a senior student at the end of the academic year.


It’s amazing how often we let expectations stop us from experiencing new people, places, and knowledge building opportunities. Imagine how limited our lives would be if we allow these expectations to be our guides.

You expect you’ll not like a food because it looks or smells so different from what you normally eat? I would never have discovered that mushrooms are my favourite food if I’d gone with that philosophy. You expect travelling overseas by yourself might be lonely or even unsafe. No-one is willing to travel with you so you just don’t go. I would never have adventured all over the northern hemisphere in my twenties if I’d thought like that. Nor would I have met some amazing friends and learnt some extremely important life lessons. You expect you won’t get along with a person because they dress so differently, or like heavy music, or smile a lot, or not enough…  imagine the friends you’ve missed out on? The lessons their acquaintance may have offered up? Like the man I watched TV with in a tiny hostel in Venice Beach. Everyone else thought he was scary. I thought he was interesting and imposed myself on him and his mini black and white TV. Once he got over the grumps and realized I wasn’t going away he started chatting to me. He’d had a really interesting life and was actually a lovely man.

Expectations about narrative and character can also limit the actor.

If you expect a character should act a specific way in response to a situation, you will never give yourself the opportunity to explore possibilities. You will miss an opportunity to add colour and depth to a scene.
You will bore your audience because you have not challenged your knowledge, skills and performance, in turn, you have not challenged them.

I don’t know about you lot, but as an audience member I am sick of having every little detail over explained. Exposition in dialogue should be cut. It’s “show, don’t tell”, not “show and tell”. I like to be challenged when I see theatre or watch a film. I like to take part in the story-telling journey and bring my deductions together with the storytellers at the end of the play. It adds to the pleasure of the experience, makes me use my brain, my senses, my creative and critical thinking processes. It’s fun and, in theatre, makes me feel alive.

So, too, when I work with a character do I want to go on that journey. I take mental note of my first impressions of the story and the character. However I lend these impressions no more weight than any other conclusions born of my character development and analysis. An actor should never stay and live within the first analysis of their character. This analysis is often tainted by our uninformed expectations and should not be wholly trusted. They are merely the first step of many in an exciting journey to breathe life from a page.

When I am casting a play I will develop expectations of what I might be looking for in my actors. I will make note of what these are and then I will discard them. If I stuck to these expectations I am sure I would have missed out on the most interesting options each and every time. When I audition and actor I want to see what they might be able to bring to the story, what they might be able to teach me about their character and how it can add to the rich medium of storytelling in live theatre.

When I am writing for my students and their audience, more often than not their family, I begin with the most obvious ideas and the natural expectations attached to them. And then I “what if” the hell out of them. I think, as a teacher, firstly about my students and how these narratives and their characters might offer them ways to practice and develop the skills we’ve been working on. How I might challenge them vocally and physically, and take them slightly out of their comfort zone. I also think of our audience. How can I give these people something interesting to watch. How will it engage them and allow them to engage with their children in character.

It’s about acknowledging the expectations and then journeying well beyond them to experience the unknown. How exciting is that?
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So, if there is one thing I can urge people to do this year, it’s to challenge your expectations and choose to grow. You never know what you might find.

Below is the "welcome" I placed in our recent Secondary Drama Major Performance programme. I felt it was worth a share here as well.

                                                                          time and permission

Welcome family and friends to the major performance for XtrAct’s secondary students. We have two secondary classes comprising of students between the ages of 12 and 18 years of age. For some, this will be their first time onstage and for others, well, they have probably lost count.

Some of our students have had the opportunity to perform with local, Newcastle or Sydney theatre companies, which provides them with invaluable experience of the inner workings of the industry. However, the drama class provides these kids with something the theatre companies can ill afford: Time and permission.

Time to learn and practise the individual skills of acting, communication, team work, and focus. Time to find their voice and listen to the voices of others. The drama class takes time to foster interpersonal relations between kids from very different backgrounds and ages, and encourages positive, supportive and constructive relationships. There is time to explore our creativity and build confidence in sharing our creative thoughts and ideas with others.

None of this time would be any good to the children without permission. In a drama class we offer students permission to GET IT WRONG. It is a safe space for kids to try ideas and make mistakes without fear of judgement and ridicule. And in an age where anxiety and resilience are a core concern for educators, training kids to be okay about making a mistake is extremely important. It’s one of the reasons I love teaching drama.

I would like to welcome XtrAct founders Robyn Weidlich, Pollyanna Forshaw and Pam Campbell to our audience tonight. Your support for young people in theatre on the Coast is invaluable, and XtrAct stands as a great legacy to you all.

Thank you also to our XtrAct parents and guardians for supporting your child’s passion for performing. Getting them to class, organising costumes, helping the kids learn their lines, understanding how much the entire class relies on each member to play their part for the success of the performance, coming along to our performances… every little bit adds to the success of their time with XtrAct.
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So please, sit back and enjoy your children as they take their next step in learning about the craft of theatre.
Chookas, Danielle Brame Whiting