![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The creative process
Dec. 13th, 2006 10:01 pmWe had a studio showing at work today, which I decided to attend. Studio showings are intimate gatherings where an artist who is in the process of creation invites the general public (usually artist peers) to come and see the work-in-progress in the studio. Today's showing studio was a piece called "The Invisible Life of Joseph Finch", which is being created for the Chutzpah Festival in Vancouver.
The artistic director of the piece is Serge Bennathan , the former artistic director of Dancemakers, a high calibre company based out of Toronto. Serge is one of our artists in residence, and each day, he has been rehearsing this piece with actor Jonathon Young. The piece was originally a dance piece, and is now becoming an extremely physical theatre piece. This is quite a rare occurence, as dance is often inspired by text, but it's unusual to create a written piece from a dance work.
We watched the original staging of the piece as a dance number. The story is based on the holocaust, and the idea of how memories are conveyed. It was quite remarkable.
One thing I've noticed is that the creative process and the process of creation is ALWAYS discussed in dance. People always want to know how the piece came to be, and how the movements originated and the ideas.
By contrast, the creative process is rarely discussed when it comes to literary works. I think this might be because the process of creation for writing is not as interesting. It's more like- I take a walk, I surf the net, I write a few chapters, I get frustrated, I write a paragraph, I scratch myself etc. The ideas are seen as important, but the process of creation is not.
I've learned so much this year about the arts and what it's like to be a member of another artistic community. Since I was born, I knew I was a creative. Yet although I've met and bonded with a lot of writers, writers do not have a community, or speak about community as much as dancers do. Apparently this is also a North American phenomena, as my British marketing director tells me that the word "community" is rarely used at all in the UK. All quite fascinating stuff.
***
I had to take a good look at my own creative process as my publisher contacted me with the line edits for my book this week. I was nervous to open the files, but the changes she proposed to my text were minor and quite reasonable. My style is spare and polished, and her corrections were also spare. However, I did have to re-imagine and re-interpret some of my own work and go deeper into some of the poems to improve them, combine them or catch minor inconsistencies between poems that work together in a series.
Pretty interesting stuff.
The artistic director of the piece is Serge Bennathan , the former artistic director of Dancemakers, a high calibre company based out of Toronto. Serge is one of our artists in residence, and each day, he has been rehearsing this piece with actor Jonathon Young. The piece was originally a dance piece, and is now becoming an extremely physical theatre piece. This is quite a rare occurence, as dance is often inspired by text, but it's unusual to create a written piece from a dance work.
We watched the original staging of the piece as a dance number. The story is based on the holocaust, and the idea of how memories are conveyed. It was quite remarkable.
One thing I've noticed is that the creative process and the process of creation is ALWAYS discussed in dance. People always want to know how the piece came to be, and how the movements originated and the ideas.
By contrast, the creative process is rarely discussed when it comes to literary works. I think this might be because the process of creation for writing is not as interesting. It's more like- I take a walk, I surf the net, I write a few chapters, I get frustrated, I write a paragraph, I scratch myself etc. The ideas are seen as important, but the process of creation is not.
I've learned so much this year about the arts and what it's like to be a member of another artistic community. Since I was born, I knew I was a creative. Yet although I've met and bonded with a lot of writers, writers do not have a community, or speak about community as much as dancers do. Apparently this is also a North American phenomena, as my British marketing director tells me that the word "community" is rarely used at all in the UK. All quite fascinating stuff.
***
I had to take a good look at my own creative process as my publisher contacted me with the line edits for my book this week. I was nervous to open the files, but the changes she proposed to my text were minor and quite reasonable. My style is spare and polished, and her corrections were also spare. However, I did have to re-imagine and re-interpret some of my own work and go deeper into some of the poems to improve them, combine them or catch minor inconsistencies between poems that work together in a series.
Pretty interesting stuff.
