Starting Something New (Patreon)

I’ve been feeling a bit lost, artistically.

I made some good burlesque acts last year but I also made a lot of acts that I didn’t really feel great about. They fell flat or I was really only making them because there was a theme show and I had an idea and committed to the show without thinking about whether or not that idea was really worth all the time I would spend making it. My relationship to Nerdlesque had become propelled more by inertia than actual passion and I spent a lot of time ignoring ideas I actually cared about because no one was going to pay me to do them. So I was doing burlesque for the money, which is a really dumb reason to do burlesque.

One of the main reasons I stopped doing theatre was all the working actors I knew spent a lot of time doing crappy corporate works because it paid and I thought that, if you were just doing something for the money, there were things that paid better.

And then I fell into the same damn hole, but for even less money (sometimes.)

I liked working on Curiosities but it also reminded me whatI don’t like about theatre. Mostly it was the fact that, by and large, the only people who can do it are people who already have money. People with rich parents or spouses that can finance rehearsals, shows, the time it takes to audition and perform for free. One of my theatre mentors told me that in theatre, the best idea wins, but that’s only true *once that idea is funded.* Burlesque, by comparison, is much cheaper but you still can’t get hired to do whatever you want to do. You can hire yourself but that doesn’t mean you can get people to come to your show.

So I started to think that maybe I was just done with performance for now. Maybe writing was the best way to express myself. Apart from time, it costs nothing to make, and the only possible constraint is your imagination. Again, you won’t always get someone to hire you to do it, but self publishing also costs nothing and if someone wants to read your writing, they don’t have to do it on one specific night.

But then I went to The Met with my parents. I saw all these amazing dresses and I wanted to wear them and make them. I wanted to create characters based around them and the world that they belonged in. I wanted to tell stories in those worlds, with those characters. And, of course, that’s theatre. That’s burlesque.

So I’m not getting out of it that easy.

The last time I remember feeling really giddy about creating something was the outfit I put together on Halloween. I gave myself plenty of time to put something together, and do my makeup, and created something that was my own. Not inspired by anything, just what I felt like putting together. The process was intuitive and done only for me. I think I need to start doing more of that, maybe do some photo shoots and create those worlds, write about those characters. Maybe I can develop that into a show and use those images and stories to create a Kickstarter and fund a show. It would take a lot of patience, and I might have to *gasp* work with other people, and there’s no guarantee that the show would be funded but it could at least me an art book.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to do the photos myself since it would remove the need for planning and scheduling, two of my biggest weaknesses. But I'm also not good at ligthing or photography so...we'll see.

At any rate, I have a pintrest board for it. So the first step is underway.

https://www.pinterest.com/marycyn7/photography-project/