Never in my years of planning for the future could I have expected a global pandemic to come along. It’s the kind of thing you see in movies or read about in textbooks and think, “Well that could never really happen ”. And in the blink of an eye, like so many people around the world, it seemed my whole life was flipped upside down. My school informed us we would be switching to remote learning for the remainder of the semester in early March. This left us all feeling lost, confused, and grasping for any semblance of normalcy. Being a musical theatre major, I had no clue how we would continue learning our craft without being in the same artistic space that we had cultivated in the studio. Now looking back on the 7 weeks of zoom classes, I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to even continue my studies for the semester. While it was indeed stressful, It brought me so much joy to do what I loved even if it was through a screen. My teachers were both understanding of our situations and adaptive with their curriculum. One thing that my teachers emphasized was this sense of autonomy that we had to take on as artists during this time in quarantine. They made sure to remind us that even though we were working from our childhood bedrooms, we still had strength and ownership over our talents and creativity. I was very much energized by this idea for some weeks, that was, until the semester was over. Once I turned in my last project and wrapped up my last zoom call, again, I became anxious as what appeared to be the only vice of artistic learning dissipated before my very eyes. There was no schedule, no checklist, no guidance for creativity in isolation. I was filled with this fear of isolation and the unknown It felt like I was driving with no map and half a tank of gas. There’s an urgency to keep driving and simultaneously a hollowness in your stomach reminding you how lost you are.
I kept reminding myself of what my teachers had said. I wanted to completely embrace this idea that I could own my talent, but I had no idea who I gave it to in the first place. I became saddened by this artistic isolation with no end in sight and felt a lack of motivation to keep creating. I remember asking myself, “What is an artist without an audience?” And after a lot of thinking, it appeared to me that the answer is quite clear:
An artist is an artist. They will always be an artist.
Be it with or without an audience, an artist’s creativity doesn’t stop. That is because their creativity is not for the audience. It is for them. Theatrical creativity, especially, is an expression of self. We create in order to convey our thoughts, emotions, and ideas. That is the root of inspiration for every piece of text, music, or choreography. We create in order to articulate feelings deep within us that otherwise go unsaid. However, we become so preoccupied with trying to please our audiences that we forget why we perform and make art in the first place. We would bend over backward while singing an aria if it meant making our audiences smile. And while we do want to make a lasting impact on our audiences, affecting our audiences is merely a byproduct of our work. We so often forget that we must please ourselves in what we do in the process.
Now I believe is the perfect time to reclaim our art. To discover what makes us feel fulfilled in our work. Our values. Our curiosities. With quarantine in full swing, we have the opportunity to make art for ourselves without an audience or critic watching. After all, the most influential work in our history was made in times of war, disease, and famine. Art has not only survived, but thrived through such atrocities. Times of seclusion produce the best, most authentic compositions because artists are forced to do such deep self- reflection. Therefore, I am no longer looking at artistic isolation with timidity. I myself am working on my boldness without judgment. With so much downtime, I’m learning to rewire this notion that all of my creativity should be geared towards entertaining an external being. By sitting with this quiet time, I feel like I can finally listen for inspiration deep within myself that isn’t silenced by a self-critic. I have finally realized that my creativity has no bounds. That every idea is valid and deserves to be explored. With this, I finally understand what my teachers meant when they spoke of artistic independence. Owning your talent means claiming your creativity for yourself. And that is something that I hope to continue to cultivate in the near future as well as throughout my career.
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