EXCESS? … CREATIVITY?

Excess or creativity?

Are artists or people who are creating new styles, new ways of thinking, and new ideas always excessive people?                                                                    

 I recently watched the movie about the designer McQueen which dealt with his creativity and his life, His life was certainly fascinating and his approach to life was a daily adventure and very excessive ….                     

YET, Excessive according to what? To the average way of living? Excessive according to the standards of the period?                                                            

Are creators, inventors, innovators, artists, great performers who really have the power to touch us, excessive in their lives and in their ways of creativity? 

Is their excessive personality a function of genetics? A function of upbringing? A result of education?

Is there a way to find a balance between the great moments of creativity which can be excessive and the reality of each single moment of life?

 A few years ago, I wrote at the beginning of this blog my first encounter with acting in the class of Tania Balachova… I went with a friend to a small theater in Paris called " theatre de l' épée de bois":

Here is what I wrote:

“Already the name of the theater made me grin, so full of lies, Theater of the wooden sword, come on! A wooden sword? Why not a wooden life, a wooden emotion, a wooden anger, a wooden anything.

I arrive and sit in the back seats of the small theater .............................................................................

Madame Balachova is walking up and down the aisle giving indication to a young girl who was trying to be Ophelia in Shakespeare Hamlet

The girl could not really follow the indications of Tania, but Tania was insisting, pushing her verbally, calling her names, asking her to be the little girl of her childhood, to think about her mother, to REALLY go back to the time where she was alone and desperate, Making her repeat the same line again and again, whispering to her what the words meant, prompting her with other words , the words which are not said in a text but are thought, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN...Going into her head and body , asking questions about her life , about her past , about her dreams .

The girl suddenly burst into tears and delivered the lines with so much truth, so much emotion, so much tenderness and passion.  

She was suddenly herself and not a caricature of herself, she looked suddenly like another person, like she had been invaded by herself.                                                       I felt tears running on my cheeks... I had not cried in months, in hundreds of years, in my entire life, I was feeling what I had never felt ... And it lasted 15 minutes, 20 minutes, an eternity.

Tania told the girl enough for today...

- Who is next?

Some students raised their hands, she turned to me:

- Who are you? I have never seen you here? What are you doing here?

- I came to watch with a friend

- To watch? Nobody watches here, everybody is part of it ... Go on the stage

- No, I have nothing to say, nothing to do, I am not an actor but a doctorate student at the university

- You look very young to be a university student, go on stage and tell me about you. I said GO ON STAGE, DO YOU HEAR ME?

I almost told her to get lost and left but her face looking at me was so full of strength and of honesty and at the same time of gentleness that I decided to go on stage.

- Talk to me about you, you want to be an actor?

- No

- What do you want to be?

- I don't know

- You don't know?

- No

- Read this

She gave me a book.

-Open the book page 15

- Why?

-OPEN THE BOOK

I did ... It was the monologue of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

-Read, READ

I started to read it

- Louder...Do you know Raskolnikov? do you know Dostoyevsky?

- Yes, I read the novel.

- DO YOU KNOW HIM?

- I read the novel

- So you believe you know him because you read the novel? READ AGAIN

………………………………………………….

-Now, I want you to think about your father while you read

- My father is dead

- Think of him

……………………………………..

- Now think about your family, your brothers and sisters

- I do not have any, I had a brother, he died

- Think of him

……………….. I read and read and read

   

- Start again from the beginning but before, tell me:

Are you from the eastern countries or are you Jewish?

- I am Jewish, why?

- Because you have a pain inside you that you need to use, to control…

Read Raskolnikov and let him be you with your own pains, your own story.

I read and read and read , I could not stop  and she did not stop me, images of my childhood were invading me, images of my brother and all the dead invading me, they were alive again, talking to me, telling me to take care of me, to take care of my mother... and Raskolnikov I was reading became my words , my life , my Pain... I could not stop. I started to walk while reading and I was alive.

After a long time, who seems to be a few minutes, she said:

- Enough for today, come back tomorrow, you are now my student.

- I cannot pay.

- Who is asking you to pay anything, be here tomorrow at 11 am precisely.

I left the theater, swearing that I will never be back…

I walked thru the streets, I felt good, I felt free for the first time in years, I looked at people and smiled at them, I did not hate anybody, my heart was full of good feelings, I even help an old lady cross the street.

I was there the following day at 10 am and waited an hour in the street for the theater to open

I had memorized Raskolnikov,  

Theater was invading me and changed my life”

Certainly, Tania Balachova method, thoughts and actions will not today be accepted by a large group of people mentioning that it is an attack against personality and freedom.                                                                                   Was it abuse of power, and EXCESS to find Creativity?

Is Stanislavski method not possible anymore?

Last week I heard about a very strange event… At an audition, among many other artists, a singer proposed to sing a specific aria and was told that since the aria had been heard many times that day that it would be preferable for the singer to sing something else… The following day the artist wrote on social medias that this audition had destroyed his confidence, and that the judges had no right to ask for that and it was also mentioned that probably it will take a long time to recuperate from this very painful experience…

Was his reaction excessive without being creative?

The following day, a young director called me to ask for my opinion.

He was directing somewhere and was reprimanded by the company director because he was described by a singer as difficult and having an uncontrollable attitude…I asked him

-What happened?

He said;

-Yesterday at the rehearsal of Traviata, traditional production, the tenor came to rehearse in a short, tee shirt and flip flops…

I (the director) told him that he should wear something more adequate/appropriate for the rehearsals to be able to work on the character.

The answer was:” I can wear whatever I want, and you have no right whatsoever to talk like this…”

I gave the young director my opinion….

It reminded me of the time when I asked an artist to dig into his personal life to find an equivalent for a dramatic moment by calling upon an emotional memory and the answer was:

-I am here to sing, not to reveal who I am to people who are just colleagues.

Yes, I know, times, styles, and methods have changed.

I often take the example of Faust calling for Satan when he cannot find answers to his questions about the world and the torments in his soul.

Can we say we have to try Satan and possible excesses to create or even to continue to be?

Of course, we will use a new way of calling Satan…Reinvent everything? Recast the basics of our world, recreate human relations, political order, artistic values? Is the period we are living just a transition to another world?

Can creativity exist without excess? All revolutions fell into excess, but how long should this excess be predominant? What about the victims of this excess? Can we accept that they are part of the sacrifice we must go through for the new creativity?

Do we need to try to live in the new world and the new laws of society? Or do we have to lie or fake or disguise ourselves in order not to be transparent?

Until when can we ask questions about everything because we are not part of the new rules of society?

Can creativity exist without excess?                                                      Certainly!                                                                                                   Generations of artists, philosophers, writers, inventors were creating and functioning without any kind of excess in their art or private life and are recognized as masters… Or were they excessive in their lack of excess?????

Yes, the dangers of any kind of excesses are very present and ACTUALLY EXCESSSIVE EXCESS WILL PREVENT CREATIVITY!!!!!!!!

So, what do we do? Were do we belong? Can we really find the kind of person we are? Can we be a wonderfully touching Ophelia without any kind of research into our soul and using it? Can we be a total artist without trying to give all of ourselves?

I let you decide.