Seven Steps in My Creative Process
#1. Time
I believe every creative process needs time to unfold.
A strawberry needs time to ripen, bread needs time to rise, and a creative idea needs time to reveal itself.
#2. Patience
Not every first idea is a good idea; most often, it is not. It is a cliché bubbling up from the top layer of the mind’s daily yellow press. You have to trust yourself enough to keep searching in the dark, resisting the urge to jump on the first bus that pulls up to the curb.
#3. Hoarding
I accumulate research: archives, eBay photographs, documentary footage. My preliminary PowerPoints are never fewer than 150 pages, even if I eventually toss most of the material away. Real freedom in creating anything comes from knowing exactly what it is you are tossing aside.
#4. The Mystery of the Ending
This I learned from poetry: a poem can take you someplace you did not know existed, and the road to that place is the process of creation. I trust the material I accumulate to reveal where it is going. For this, you need #1, #2 and #3.
#5. Collaboration, or Family Therapy
In collaborative art, especially theatre, true greatness is born of true humility. g
It means not waiting for your turn to unload your most brilliant inventions, but switching off your own channel long enough to absorb and understand other people’s ideas. Then you give them time, patience, and space to mingle with your own.
#6. Irreverence
Irreverence is my altar, my religion—the one I adopted growing up in the USSR. One should not be afraid to look stupid or to be met with incomprehension. It is occasionally lonely and very difficult, but it is the only way. My gospel was written by my compatriot Joseph Brodsky:
“The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even, if you will, eccentricity”—something that cannot be feigned, faked, or imitated. “Something, in other words, that can’t be shared, like your own skin—not even by a minority.”
#7. Discipline
In theatre, the most cumbersome and unpredictable form of art, one has to be reliable first and foremost, because so much is entangled and hinges on it. Being on time, honoring deadlines, answering emails, and organizing daily life so that you are mentally and physically ready to be present—these are the rules of the game. Consistency, respect, dignity, and dedication are all part of inner discipline.
And that is about it.