Chair at the Table
If you’ve been around the arts for a while, you know that it’s a world managed by gatekeepers. Actors know this from trying to impress and agent to a casting director to a director or producer to get a small role – just to have a foot in the door, a chair at the table.
Writers know this well trod path to the gate – the agent or the editor – who sends you back, “no, not you!” to the starting line. So too for playwrights and screenwriter, for artists and dancers and anyone who has a gift and wants to share it.
And maybe you pass the gate and your art sees publication, performance, applause. Then we have the gatekeeper, the critic, who evaluates and dissects.
And all of it is nothing but opinion. Someone’s opinion about your art at this particular time and place.
All artists feel they must participate in this – to get recognition and applause and approval or validation. Because “that’s just how it is.” This is the game we chose to play.
For too many years I’ve been under the illusion that the world of art, theatre, film–any endeavor of heart and soul–operates like that childhood game of humiliation, “musical chairs.” That’s where a group of kids circle a set of chairs hoping to get a seat before the music stops.
The catch is that there is one less seat than the number of children. And that’s the way the art word tends to be these days as theatres close and the remaining theatres rely on the tried and true plays and playwrights – or divert their resources into other offerings that seem to be more lucrative.
Meanwhile another round of musical chairs begins. Each round of the game, one chair gets eliminated, so there is always less. Some child will always be left standing alone.
Round and round vying for the limited open seating and each time there’s one less space. If you’re lucky enough to nab a chair, someone else must lose.
This is a game that teaches scarcity. When art should be bountiful. This is a game that teaches a “do anything” to get an open chair attitude (drag your feet, put your hand on a chair so you can pull the chair towards you when the music stops, push and shove to get that open seat). And maybe by design, it teaches embarrassment and mortification for the ones left out.
I’ve come around to this belief: There is room for everyone at the table when we all work together to make the table bigger. And we should always strive to make the table bigger in some way.
That open chair is yours, so never be afraid to pull it up, sit down and participate.