A boat in a storm

I heard a good analogy the other day.

The Covid pandemic is like a storm at sea. We’re all caught up in it, but some of us have better boats than others.

It made me think about something I keep find myself saying to artists I meet and support: that perhaps the best we can hope for at the end of all of this is to still be in our little rowboats, even if we haven’t travelled anywhere.

This feels especially true for a lot of early-ish career artists. I’m noticing how many people are being really hard on themselves because they haven’t progressed very much in the last few months. Like it’s somehow their fault and they should be doing more or better.

This idea of ‘progress’ is a dominant narrative in theatre - the thought that we must always be doing better/more now than we were a year ago. I get it, but I wonder if we worship it at the expense of sometimes just staying still for a bit?

When the pandemic came we - especially those of us in better boats - were all so desperate to keep going, to continue to progress, even though the storm was so hard and our boats were built for different weather.

This created, I think, an atmosphere in which to not progress felt like failure. Why aren’t you making films? Training online? Recording podcasts? Running complex Zoom rehearsals of new musicals written over WhatsApp with people in 14 different countries? That kind of thing.

This pressure is particularly acute for those theatre-makers in the uncertain, irregular early stages of their career - a time when you’re often comparing yourself to others and wondering when you’re going to break through, whatever that means.

For all the opportunities that exist this is often a time when you have to be so self-reliant, so brave. And when careers are so fragile - especially of course for working class and other marginalised artists. (Of course these things are true for artists at all stages, too)

The pressure is perpetuated by the idea that to leave theatre temporarily is to leave it forever. What a dangerous thing this is - the more we make it true, the more we end up making theatre about theatre for theatre people.

I’ve spoken to so many people who feel like they’re failing because they’re not working right now ... in the middle of this huge storm. And all the time our messaging - implicit and explicit - is often the same: make, progress, get ahead.

The thing is, I don’t know how valuable making anything is right now. It’s really hard for a start - a whole lot of labour for an often very unsatisfactory end product. And I don’t know where it gets anyone. Like rowing really hard without a compass, just for the sake of it.

Maybe sometimes it’s ok just to stop? To say that making theatre is neither viable (ha) or even useful right now. That individual progress can wait. That you won’t lose out if you don’t make anything for a while.

Or better, that progress might come better from not making, from engaging in the world differently. I mean imagine if we could pay all those artists not to make for a bit. We’d reap the benefits later, I promise.

Rather than frantically rowing our little rowboats desperately trying to find land, maybe it’s better to sit and look around for a bit, to notice the storm and the sea and the sky.

And for those of us with bigger boats to share them better, to do our best to stay afloat.