Art in Flow & Craft in Process within the Business of Show
The ABC of Positive Performance Psychology
Our childhood experiences can shape our future in a myriad of ways. When I was in high school I remember my art teacher telling me I wasn’t any good at art. He put me in the corner with tracing paper and told me to doodle while he taught the rest of the class whom he considered were more proficient at art.
I turned my art teacher’s can’t do into a can do . Using it as kuyashi (Japanese for using the words of doubters to succeed) I left home at seventeen to forge a career in the entertainment industry.
Over the course of my four decades as an artist I’ve been asked many questions about how best to succeed in the business of show.
What’s the best way to cope with performance anxiety?
What do I need to do break into show business?
How do I encourage destiny manifestation within my career?
So many aspiring artists graduate performing arts courses with some technical training but little to no experience of how to jump start a career in the entertainment industry. A few years ago I developed a basic pedagogy that condensed some what I’ve learned as a performer/artist. I called it Alive coaching. At its core are the three tenants that form the foundation for a positive performance psychology.
The ABC of Positive Performance Psychology
A: The Art
Activating creative flow states (how to let go) so that the imagination can effortlessly take over during performance.
B: The Business
Innovating a personalized roadmap that empowers the artist to perpetually exceed limitations and elevate career trajectory exponentially.
C: The Craft
Practicing techniques that motivate the performer toward confident mastery of their creative process.
The Art in Flow
Flow is the mental state of being completely present, when nerves dissipate and a performer is immersed in a feeling of energized hyperfocus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the creative performance.
When in flow, creativity peaks. The creator and the universe become one, outside distractions recede from consciousness, and one’s mind is fully open and curiously attuned to the act of creating.
This omniscience, or ‘oneness’ of being actively ‘in the zone’ of a creative flow state is a positive performance psychology encompassing neuroplasticity with deep play, focusing on felt sense and ritual shortcuts to inspiration.
Performance Art in flow (unconscious competence) is the personification of an artist’s total confidence in their artistry and craft.
How do we attain unconscious competence aka flow states?
How do we overcome the paradox of the master/emissary tussle within our right vs left brain hemisphere?
I will be delving into these questions and more in future articles about how to overcome what I call ‘the calamity of conscience.’
The Calamity of Conscience
The cerebral paradox
the illusive obvious.
The letting go of holding on.
Finding by not looking
unearthing without disturbing the ground
going to pieces without falling apart,
accepting answers without question.
Unconscious incompetence,
conscious incompetence,
conscious competence,
unconscious competence.The Business of Show
Preparing for a career in the Business of Show is a real trip…of a lifetime. It requires an imaginative plan with vital ingredients.
The Artist Manifesto
Our principal vision statement of intent, motivation and affirmation. A self-authored declaration of artistic ideals that may contain beliefs, aspirational goals, mission statements, profound philosophical questions or personal wisdom, all purposed to rouse action oriented ambition and encourage destiny manifestation.
In Red Alan’s Manifesto Grayson Perry provides a witty riposte to some of art’s biggest questions.
Can anything be art?
Who decides whether art is good or bad?
Is anything in art new or old fashioned only good or bad?
The manifesto is written under the authorship of Red Alan, a ceramic sculpture of his childhood teddy bear, Alan Measles. Red Alan’s artist manifesto is just one example of a dialectical approach to our deontological responsibilities as artists and can be a powerful affirmation for manifesting our destiny.
The Actors Essential Tool Kit
If The Artist Manifesto is our foundational informer of our sense of where we’re headed then The Actor’s Essential Tool Kit helps us realize the destiny.
Inventoried and equipped to empower career options, containing practical instruments to utilize on a daily basis – agents, managers, casting directors, production companies, studios, resumes, headshots, biographies, websites – a vast network is available to help achieve and sustain meaningful career success within The Business of Show.
The Craft in Process
Preparation for performance (Art in Flow) is our practical approach, or process - the series of actions or steps we exercise within process which are uniquely individual to every artist and evolve exponentially over the course of a career.
Cultivating confident mastery of techniques motivates more self-reliant trust in our process. Artists become inspired to foster a deeper sense of their original, creative, imaginative spirit which increases presence, power, charisma and dynamic range as an artist.
The crafting process of skillfully breaking down a script, researching characters and bringing them to life, line learning, scene study, audition preparedness, physical and mental rehearsal exercises – everything is preparation so we can get to the point of letting go and living in the moment (Art in Flow) and is the very essence of The Craft in Process.
Mastering craft provides access to the ritual shortcuts to inspiration within the art in flow. So what is a ritual? And why are they so important?
Ritual [rich-oo-uh l] noun Any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner
Crafting, creating and habituating a set of unique rituals is a process. Rituals are not fixed--they are constructed and reconstructed over time, to fit the artist’s needs. Ritual is a more effective means than law to achieve order - a salient ‘visible order’ within the ‘random chaos’ of art in flow.
We engage in rituals with the intention of achieving a wide set of desired outcomes, from reducing anxiety to boosting confidence, alleviating grief to competitive performance. Rituals have a profound impact on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. They even benefit people who claim not to believe that rituals work.
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints how own nature into his pictures.
As the great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “The great end of art is to strike the imagination with the power of a soul that refuses to admit defeat even in the midst of a collapsing world.” Artistic expression, in any medium, can be a personal reliever when crisis hits, or when our culture writ large is in distress, as some argue it has been in our recent ‘cancel culture’ times.
Nietzsche was deeply suspicious of the way his own era handled culture. He opined that “the gap left by religion should ideally be filled with Culture (philosophy, art, music, literature): Culture should replace Scripture.
The world we perceive is a dream we learn to have from a script we have not written.
Scripting a set of individually tailored rituals - ones own ‘crafting process’ - provides somatic benefits, helps aid psychological regulation, and are the basic building blocks for obtaining artistic expression in full, glorious technicolor flow.