It's really easy to let your personal artistic projects get pushed aside by other people's priorities. I think perhaps it's especially easy to let that happen if you're an actor. Theatrical productions come with their own built-in deadlines, after all, and we're supposed to be grateful for every scrap of work that comes our way (a sort of starvation mentality I find increasingly troubling), so of course we'd be thrilled to drop everything and jump into a new role. And then one role turns into four, and then a year has passed and you have written exactly two pages of the play that was so exciting when you first thought of it.
A couple of weeks ago I looked at the stuff I wanted to do, and the stuff other people wanted me to do, and realized I was probably going to lose steam on several pet projects unless I found a way to make them as important as the ones involving the external pressures of audiences and deadlines. On Facebook I posted a tentative suggestion that I might need a deadline buddy. To my surprise, twelve friends responded almost immediately. Most of them were, like me, multidisciplinary artists, although one was a biochemist. They lived in six states, and their projects were as varied as they were. But all of us needed a way to drown out the clamor of the world and focus on the good stuff. Actor/writer/fight choreographer Chris Walsh suggested that we name the group the Darling Killers, and it stuck.
So far it seems to be working. We post our goals to the Facebook group, with as much or as little detail as we want, and then report on our progress. Occasionally people offer suggestions. Many of the group members have never met each other in person, and I'm pretty amazed at how readily everyone has been willing to reveal this most vulnerable side of themselves, the desire to do and be something more. I am absolutely certain that it is only the prospect of reporting to the group that has forced me to sift through my new headshot proofs (the shots are all really good, I just hate looking at pictures of myself) and get this website live.
I'm posting the description of how we work because, first, I need an inaugural blog post; and second, it seems to be a highly borrow-able model for artists' groups in this era of distraction; and third, I shot a commercial yesterday at a cancer treatment center. On the walkway outside were bricks inscribed with the names of lost loved ones. Some of the inscriptions included birth and death dates. And some of those date ranges were short. We all have less time than we think, and less time than we want. So it's time to stand up for the art we want to make, yes?
A couple of weeks ago I looked at the stuff I wanted to do, and the stuff other people wanted me to do, and realized I was probably going to lose steam on several pet projects unless I found a way to make them as important as the ones involving the external pressures of audiences and deadlines. On Facebook I posted a tentative suggestion that I might need a deadline buddy. To my surprise, twelve friends responded almost immediately. Most of them were, like me, multidisciplinary artists, although one was a biochemist. They lived in six states, and their projects were as varied as they were. But all of us needed a way to drown out the clamor of the world and focus on the good stuff. Actor/writer/fight choreographer Chris Walsh suggested that we name the group the Darling Killers, and it stuck.
So far it seems to be working. We post our goals to the Facebook group, with as much or as little detail as we want, and then report on our progress. Occasionally people offer suggestions. Many of the group members have never met each other in person, and I'm pretty amazed at how readily everyone has been willing to reveal this most vulnerable side of themselves, the desire to do and be something more. I am absolutely certain that it is only the prospect of reporting to the group that has forced me to sift through my new headshot proofs (the shots are all really good, I just hate looking at pictures of myself) and get this website live.
I'm posting the description of how we work because, first, I need an inaugural blog post; and second, it seems to be a highly borrow-able model for artists' groups in this era of distraction; and third, I shot a commercial yesterday at a cancer treatment center. On the walkway outside were bricks inscribed with the names of lost loved ones. Some of the inscriptions included birth and death dates. And some of those date ranges were short. We all have less time than we think, and less time than we want. So it's time to stand up for the art we want to make, yes?