We need to change the paradigm of being successful as an artist
by Ashley Griffin
In addition to being a contributing writer for OnStage Blog, Ashley Griffin has appeared on and off-Broadway, as well as in T.V. and film in New York, L.A., London, Stratford, and Chicago. As a writer, Ashley's work has been developed at New World Stages, Broadway's Manhattan Theater Club, Playwrights Horizons, and more. Ashley has taught at NYU and is a member of AEA & the Dramatists Guild.
There’s a myth in the world at large that cutthroat competition is the required structure upon which any success must be achieved. It’s pervasive in every aspect of our existence
Whoever gets the best grade will get acceptance to the best school – contrary to what may seem obvious, namely that theoretically EVERYONE can get an “A,” therefore everyone can get a good grade and go to a good school, getting the “best grade” is actually a limited resource in our society. In classes where students are graded on a curve, it doesn’t matter if everyone scores over 90% (“A” range) half of those students will still fail. If everyone in your school qualifies to be valedictorian it doesn’t mean all of you will be getting into the “best school,” it just means competition will be fiercer.
Whoever performs the best at work will get a raise – and there’s only so many to go around.
Whoever gave the best performance will get a Tony – there’s only one per year and second place is the first loser.
This type of thinking is even more hard-hitting in the theater world as a whole. Be “the best” singer, and you’ll get the role. There are only so many theaters to go around, so write “the best” script and you’ll get to have your play open on Broadway.
There is a degree to which there’s no getting around this reality. If WICKED is casting for a new Elphaba and they only have one contract, only one person is going to get it. This isn’t a world where everyone gets participation trophies – nor should it be.
But the more my career develops and the more I experience things from both sides of the table the more I’ve come to learn what I think is one of the best-kept secrets in the arts:
There’s room for everyone at the top.
If we backtrack from the “success” markers that are, by necessity, limited resources – the award that only one person can get, the role only one person can book we can see a world where such markers are only one, tiny part of the story. Because, well, let’s take those things to an extreme conclusion.
Let’s say that whoever wins the Tony award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical is the only actress who will appear onstage in any capacity for the rest of the year. This week at the 75th Tony Awards the great Patti LuPone took home that award. LuPone is incredible. Undeniably one of the greatest performers of all time. I would go see her any day of the week. But imagine if the world said, “Well, the Tonys declared LuPone The Best, so she is the only performer worthy of being on a stage all year.” And so, for the rest of the year, LuPone was the only option in town.
Or, as another example, recently Amazon declared “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover the best-selling novel of 2022 (so far.) Imagine if, because it was “The Best” “It Ends With Us” was, for the next year, the only novel you could purchase.
It’s utterly ridiculous.
But this crazy scenario points out something that I think we need to talk about more. The fact that we NEED lots, and lots of voices. We NEED lots and lots of stories. To think that your voice or your story doesn’t count because for whatever reason you didn’t get that “best” top spot is horrible and utterly untrue. It also becomes ridiculous to actually compare certain artistic ventures. Yes, it’s great to award and celebrate someone at the end of the year, but to translate that as that person, or show, etc. was better than every other is kind of ridiculous.
This year two of the shows up for Best Musical at the Tonys were “A Strange Loop” and “Six.” “A Strange Loop” broke new ground giving us the first “Big, black and queer-ass American Broadway show” – giving voice to an experience of the world that has never been depicted (certainly as overtly) in a contemporary, “hit” Broadway musical. The show is groundbreaking and has provided much-needed representation for a community, and a window into that community for those outside of it. “Six” is a pop-rock feminist reexamination of the historical wives of Henry the VIII written by a woman and a non-binary artist. The show has been a bastion for women and girls of all ages, shouting to the rooftops that women’s stories are important, and offering a hope that our voices, in the long run, won’t be forgotten.
How can we possibly say that the message of either of those shows is “less than?” But that’s what we do to ourselves – our inner voices are very good at saying that because I didn’t achieve X, Y or Z I am “bad” or not as worthy.
And what happens when we live in that mindset of constant competition is that we become in danger of not developing our own, unique voice. Not taking risks as artists. Not trusting ourselves.
I had a truly remarkable 4th and 5th-grade teacher named Ann Whitley. Among the many wonderful things she did as a teacher, was the way she structured her class (uniquely, I have found,) to make us all feel like teammates who had different skills and important moments to shine. Mrs. Whitley didn’t do this in the false “everyone’s special” way I’m sure we’ve all encountered – where the desperate need to make everyone “feel good” ends up making no one feel good at all. No, Mrs. Whitley designed her class in such a way that natural talents would shine forth, and they would be utilized in service of the whole class. We all had something we were terrible at, but we all had something we were great at, and we worked as a team to help everyone succeed. I remember being truly horrible at spelling and drawing. My best friend was a star visual artist as was one of the shyer boys in the class. We celebrated what they were able to do, knowing that it didn’t lessen us in any degree. For example, when we put on a performance at the end of the year we had a competition to design the cover art for our programs. Guess who won? It was no surprise, and we were all happy about it! We were excited that it was the winners’ time to shine. We sincerely offered congratulations, talked with them about their work, and asked if they could help us with our artistic skills…
Because guess what? We had our own thing we were great at too. They would help us when it came to drawing, assist us when we struggled, and share their knowledge with us, we would help them when they were struggling with something we were the experts at. The message we got was that we were all truly needed and important – without one student in that class, we would be worse off as a group. The idea that we could ever pick a “best student” in the class would have been absurd.
I was thinking about that wonderful scene in “A Beautiful Mind” when John Nash discovers his Game Theory, basically saying that if all competitors go after the same market they cancel each other out and all lose. But if everyone goes after something slightly different, everyone wins. When we all go after a definition of success that includes the Tony, or that one particular part, etc. we pretty much all lose. When we go after sharing our unique voice, everyone wins.
The emphasis shouldn’t be “who’s the best?” You’d better be able to do more turns, you’d better be able to hit the highest note…we should be thinking about “What makes me unique? What do I have to share that’s needed in the world?”
This is the paradigm shift we need in our education and in the industry at large. It’s this shift in thinking that allows for creative new works to be created, unique interpretations of roles, etc. There is room for everyone at the top. There is room for every book that needs to be written, every interpretation that needs to be performed, and when we don’t believe or acknowledge that – we all lose. Being seen is not, in reality, a scarce resource. There are infinite performance spaces (including theaters, found spaces, unusual spaces, etc.) and that holds true for necessities for many other ventures as well.
We live in a challenging world where one of the surprising changing benefits is that more and more we have access to our own gatekeeping. We can publish our own book, we can rent our own theater…yes, this is a more complicated issue where economics are definitely at play, but, especially in recent years, how many important, moving stories have we had access to not because the “powers that be” gave their permission, but because the voices at the heart of those stories decided they were important and found a way to make themselves heard?
Because as nice as it is, at the end of the day it’s not about winning that award, or getting validation from that “important person” – it’s about moving an audience, inspiring someone, making someone who felt invisible feel seen…
When we all use our gifts to the best of our ability, we all win. That’s the kind of world I want to live in – one where we’re all building each other up and learning from each other, not running over each other in our quest for validation. I need your stories. I need your voices. We all do.