Ideas are fairies anyway

Ever find yourself to standing on the backline watching your team, pants slowly getting heavier with poo as you recede further and further into your own head? Wringing your brain cells for an idea! If only there was an IDEA!!!!! 

WHAT THE F**K AM I GOING TO DO?

Is that a premise? Yeah. That’s a premise. A good premise…. ?

No. Chaff. It’s chaff. Defs chaff.

But if Elle comes out with me, she’ll see the premise potential and we’ll have a great scene. 

She saved me last week. I can’t do that to her again. 

F**k. Were they a doctor or a vet? Sh*t. 

They said a name. What was that name? Say that name again. SAY THAT NAME AGAIN!! 

OMG they’re doing a tag run. Already! I gotta get in on that. 

“Hello stranger, I’ll have one jigger of Tarzan Tea from your elephant store here on Mars.”

CRAP!!! I took us to crazy town, via a transaction. F**k! Now we are all stuck in crazy town and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Not even Elle. 

My team is going to hate me. They already hate me. 

I can’t afford to buy them drinks tonight. 

I’m gonna leave. I’ll get the bus and leave… And!! Oh god, I gotta do that second beat. 

Just me??

The thing is, you can’t force an idea. 

Ideas are like fairies flitting about and sometimes you are blessed and they come and land on your shoulder and sweetly whisper in your ear: Step out and say ‘Insert perfect line of dialogue here.’ 

And sometimes they’re busy flirting with your friends. 

The best way to coax ideas is to relax, calm your mind and when they are sitting on your shoulder, listen. Follow your body. Just be present, listen (Deeply. To your scene partner, the way they are behaving, the flutter in your belly, the beckoning of the theatre magic, the Ideas Fairies) and respond. 

I know this is full blown hippy-dippy-la-la stuff. I like hippy-dippy-la-la. It’s fun for me. I like magic. But if it’s just too out there for you, consider this: (I think this is what Elizabeth Gilbert said), if we think of of ideas as being fairies (or something less woo-woo), we are protected and liberated. The Greeks (I’m pretty sure it was the Greeks) referred to someone as having a genius, as distinct from being a genius- as we say today. This meant that when an artist was creating amazing art, it was thanks to their genie (which I imagine to be like a fairy) and they were protected from becoming an ego maniacal jerk, believing all their artistry was their own. And when the artist lost their touch and their art became a pile of junk, their genie had abandoned them- saving them from the devastating belief that they were fundamentally useless. 

This isn’t something I came up with. Well, I don’t think I did. It is a terrible representation, quite possibly a mis-representation, of an idea Elizabeth Gilbert explains brilliantly in her book Big Magic. I read the book so long ago, she probably says nothing like what I’m about to go on about. Read the book it’s awesome! And even if it is what she says, it’s an idea. And ideas don’t belong to us, they are fairies. 

So when you’re suffering from ideas constipation, rather than stressing and struggling. Chillax!!! Let the Ideas Fairies whisper in your ear! 

Written by Lelda Kapsis, Blanche Improv AD