Intermezzo: Why I’m Actually WILDLY Optimistic About the Future of the Performing Arts (Addressing Criticism) 

Transcript:

Hello – if you’re a regular listener, listening when this comes out, I hope you’ve had a nice two months. If you’re a person from the future, thanks for stopping by. 

So, I meant to start part two of the Classically (Un)Trained season today but I’ve had to do some soul-searching about this podcast and what it’s meant to do. My plan for the past month was to talk to some listeners about the show and get a sense of what’s working and not working so that I can improve the rest of the season – and that’s what I did. Once I got people to take a listen, they really did like it. I did however get one kind of critique more than once. And that critique was: This podcast is really sad! Your show is pessimistic! Or at best, the vailed: You’re really saying some hard truths! 

I knew from the beginning that I was setup for an uphill battle with some of the things I was talking about having to do with the performing arts scene, because while a lot of marketers will tell you that “hitting close to home” with your audience is a good thing, I think it can actually be tricky to get that right. Podcasts are for your free time, after all — and the only things one craves in one’s free time besides mindless entertainment seem to be peppy how-tos or scary things as long as they are entertainingly extreme and distant enough – like true crime or politics. Something that’s just kind of about the deep existential frustrations of your everyday life is maybe not really fun to listen to in your free time. I get that. I’d probably feel the same way if I were a listener to this podcast.

So – guilty as charged. About the “hard truths” of having a performing career, that is – but emphatically not guilty as charged about the pessimism. So, I guess my takeaway from the feedback is that I need to do a better job of conveying my optimism. And in this little intermezzo episode I want to make the case for the deep optimism of this show. And hopefully that will reframe the some of the more pessimistic-sounding episodes earlier in the season.

I’m actually wildly optimistic about the future of the performing arts and the artist’s place within them. If there was any pessimism in the show up until now it’s because I felt like I needed to lay out the situation around having a performing arts career – and that situation does deny the star-is-born expectations that some performers grew up with and, admittedly, also might go as far as to deny the expectation of making a middle-class living as a performer in any kind of straightforward way. Now, performers are all too aware of this – but I felt I needed to describe that reality, as well as the causes of that reality, because, otherwise, I felt it wouldn’t make sense to talk about what to do about the situation, what skills to learn, how it might be possible to pivot etc. 

But that’s what I planned for the end of the season to be – the optimistic part. The “how” of the end of the season has to be a bit more speculative than the “what” of the first half but it will also be, by nature, more positive. And, you know what? Now that I’ve gotten that feedback about sounding too pessimistic (and I can’t say it was totally unexpected) I’ll really focus on conveying optimism better. 

The reason for my optimism is simple: hard situations force us to think differently, force us to be stronger and to think outside the box. And, to reiterate what I have tried and tried again to articulate, this podcast isn’t about telling you that, statistically, it’s pretty unlikely you’re going to have a full-time performing career, because chances are you live that reality – no: it’s about telling you that there are more exciting possibilities out there and you can be more creative about pursuing them than you think. 

In the pilot of this season, I described Classically (Un)Trained as being for performers who have tried to take the rout to a traditional performing career and realised that they need to re-think that approach. But since then I’ve realised that another aspect of what I would call the Classically (Un)Trained artists is that they want to find their way as artists, and the phrase “as artists” is important – it’s definitely possible and totally admirable to pivot out of the arts and I do think it’s the right thing to do for many. What we’re trying to figure out, here, though, is how do stay an artist, even if that means becoming someone very different than you originally imagined yourself to be. And that’s not just about parallel careers – those are important, yes, but I’m going even beyond that, to the even more optimistic zone. I’m giving you – and myself – the permission to try to actually build a new arts scene, create new opportunities not just for yourself but for others, create works that push the boundaries of how audiences experience the performing arts, where they find them, what form they take, and what they expect from them. I’m saying if you think you’re outside of the box as a performer, you can probably go even further. 

Like – if that’s not wildly optimistic, I don’t know what is. 

The thing I do run up against again and again is the fact that this dream I have, that I just tried to describe, is going to look so different for everyone. Talking about my own path, for example, on which I have the most data, just doesn’t feel useful because it’s very specific to me and the advantages I had, as someone who was raised with two languages, who has access to both American and European culture, who grew up in a literary, academic family etc. etc. That’s why I wanted a strong component of this podcast to be crowdsourced. I set up an – if you wish anonymous – form where listeners could respond with their own performing arts stories, frustrations, and solutions. But – in the end, I didn’t get a lot of specific information from those responses. A lot of it was just kind of saying the same thing I was saying. So, I’m trying to think of better ways to crowdsource from other non-traditional performers who are trying to find their way as artists in this world.

Which has also brought me to the reality that media matters – that is, the format in which you are delivering certain ideas really determines how it’s going to work. And it might be that what Classically (Un)Trained is meant to be is not a podcast but a think tank or support community for out-of-the-box performing artists. I think that might be where I need to put my efforts, next, once I finish this season.

So, yes, the hard truth is that the traditional career classically-trained performers were prepared for is hard to come by, because the field is shrinking and the deficit of jobs is not reflected in the number of people being trained in the performing arts. But my actual argument is that this situation is an incredible opportunity to adapt your skills and become an artist that is much more useful to the world, because you provide a service that people desperately need and which you would probably not be meeting as directly as part of the traditional industry.

That is exciting, right? 

I also want to make clear – as I’ve really tried to whenever possible – that I am not discouraging anyone from taking the traditional path. In fact, I would encourage that being the first thing you try. If you’re a young performer, fresh out of training, please go for it. Do the auditions. Pay for the lessons. Pester agents. Try, try, try. That’s the athlete-like part of your career – and, like an athlete, your on-ramp is short and precarious. But what I’m saying is: There are possibilities beyond that. It’s not over just because you didn’t manage to launch a full-time performing career when you were young and the doors were open. All it means is that you’re entering the artistic part of your career. And the possibilities at that point are vast and many are unexplored – and the world needs you to explore those uncharted waters. And another point: You’re not pursuing the performing arts for yourself – you’re doing it for the world. Because the performing arts do, in fact, have value, even if it’s hard to articulate what that value actually is. 

What I just said is optimistic, right? 

I’ll end by being very honest: I just got back from a month dedicated to artistic research and working on a show we hope to get funded and now I’m back in everyday life – although nothing feels like everyday life when you’re living out of a suitcase – and I’m realising more and more what a lie it is that it is possible to grow a podcast without loads of extra time and money. Or maybe it’s just that having some kind of creative career, doing a PhD, making some kind of money, and having a podcast is not really sustainable, unless it’s bringing in money. Which this one isn’t – for reasons of…imagine me vaguely gesturing at the media landscape. 

So, like I said, I’m going to finish out the season with a few episodes that sum up what I’ve learned so far about these exciting, uncharted waters of being classically (un)trained and then – “the medium is the message”! Classically (Un)Trained won’t be over, but it might transform into a different medium, or media, at least for a while. 

So, what I want to leave you with is: Classically (Un)Trained – whatever format it ends up being in – is all about striking out into the wilderness rather than staying on the same, familiar paths. That takes courage, and courage takes optimism. And because it’s also a bit scary – the whole thing is very exciting.