The Coronavirus outbreak of 2020 is leaving many artists unemployed, in quarantine, or otherwise stuck with no creative outlet on the horizon. What should we be doing?
Risk is difficult. Being uncomfortable is difficult. But the artist who chooses to embrace discomfort brings with him a universe of empathy that engages an audience in a way nothing else can.
Be honest.
If you saw a businessman on a corner, dressed in suit and tie, desperately begging for work, you'd ask yourself:
"Why doesn't he do something more effective?"
The standard actor dream seems to be: do good work, get discovered, become famous.
Believe it or not, the toughest part of the equation is actually the "do good work" part - simply because most actors don't have the faintest clue how to really land the work that will get them discovered.
As actors (at least in the traditional sense), we often feel at a loss... we can't do our art until a script exists, a director is attached, and a production is in the casting process... that's a lot of steps before the actor is ever involved (and an oversimplification at best). And once a project is at the casting stage, we're stuck competing with the ba-jillion other actors (and wannabe's) who want the same part we do.
So what's an actor to do?
Stop Acting Like an Actor & Act Like an Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is a person in business for him/herself - that's the simple definition. I would go even further to suggest that a TRUE entrepreneur is a business person who recognizes opportunity, and uses the opportunity for business...
While reading one of my favorite blogs I came across a post about tapping into creativity through mundane routines. The author, Mark McGuinness (who has practiced hypnotherapy) suggests using regularly scheduled routines to trick the brain into "creative mode"--similar to the