An early major component of a reevaluation/transitional process has been reconnecting with my influences, and further exploring up their family tree.
The artist family tree is an Austin Kleon idea that I’ve loved. You choose 3 artistic influences, you find out everything about them that you can, you learn from them, and then you find 3 of their influences - and repeat. So you’ve got a family tree, which you’re at the bottom of.
I bought a big sketch pad and I made my own family tree. It’s a long process, so I’ve only completed two branches above myself which is more than enough work to be getting along with.
One characteristic of theatremakers is that we go to see a lot of work. It’s a great thing about theatremakers. We go to see our friends’ work at small fringe theatres and we go to see massive work on big stages and we go to see work that is made abroad. The presence of theatremakers & student theatremakers as ticket-buying audience is an important component of the theatre economy (in London, at least).
But it can mean that we’re all working from a similar, rather small sphere of artistic influence. There has been a lot of work in the past 5 years that looks & sounds (but rarely feels) like Ivo van Hove’s, for example.
And I, personally, came to realise that I wasn’t connecting with influences that I loved, and that there wasn’t a lot of care going into what I was taking in. There was a lot of work - far too much - being taken in, but the pipeline wasn’t especially well curated.