Over the years I embraced a lot of different ways of approaching projects. I deployed a lot of different creative strategies. There is one, however, I never put in play professionally that's coming to mind more and more.
I backed into it many years ago when I was contemplating writing a play without actually having a play to write. For whatever reason, instead of jumpstarting any kind of writing process, I imagined a space. At the time, the most likely space for my unwritten, unimagined play was a black box theater. So I imagined sitting in the audience of that black box theater with the lights just dimmed to blackness.
So.
What happens then?
What I knew about this particular theater is that there was a stairwell directly behind it that let out near the main doors in the back of the black box. At the moment I thought of that, I imagined hearing two people arguing as they came down those stairs.
Make sense?
Audience in the dark.
Sound of argument coming down the back of theater.
The doors swing open.
Two figures enter the theater as the argument continues down the main aisle and a spotlight fades up, illuminating a small area at the front of the stage.
Okay.
I'm sitting in the audience while this is happening and I'm trying to figure out what these two people are arguing about. Which leads me to this:
Who are the people doing the arguing?
The answer comes immediately: a father and daughter.
So now they're center stage under the light where we all get a good look. The argument's ramping up. I know, by the way, what they're arguing about but I don't actually want the play to be about that.
So the father drops dead.
Right there. Center stage. Act I, Scene I.
Okay what just happened?
My brain had the answer to that question, believe it or not. And that answer is what my play's about. I didn't set out to write it. It didn't just come to me. I somehow backed into it by mentally placing myself in a darkened theater and asking the questions that were begged. And then accepting the answers that were there when I reached for them. Which is interesting because obviously those answers are in my head. It just took this reverse engineering process, in this case, to pull them out into the real world.
My point, though, is that one way to create something from nothing is to put myself in the audiences seat and ask one of two questions:
1) what is the experience they're having, and 2) what is the experience I want them to have.
These are not mutually exclusive questions, by the way. They can work in tandem if I want them to. They can bounce off each other. They can collaborate.
It's weird how that works (or even that it can and does work) but the only important thing to understand is that this process is real. It produces results.
It creates something from nothing.
And that something it creates can be pretty tasty. I won't lie.
That's the only time, by the way, I've used that process. The only time it ever came up was in a non-professional context.
Recently, though, the I've been thinking about that process.
I'll tell you why tomorrow...
😉