When you first start up a program, and I have started many from the ground and some from nothing at all, there is much you do on your own for many reasons. You spend lots of hours building, painting, planning, purchasing, raising funds and the list continues exhaustingly. The first show is exhausting because there is usually very few that can do what you do, and logically there are few since you haven't taught anyone to do what you do. Then there is the lack of funds along with a lack of supplies and tools. There is also the inability of others to share in your vision because they've never seen what you can do, what it can be when you know what you are doing. However, by the second production, there is buy in. The funds start coming in, students are more knowledgable, you usually have some supplies, and some tools. By the time of the third show, you have the need to upstage your last production. It is easy to wow your first time audience when what came before was more performance than technical. You could probably get the same reaction from the second time audience. It's when you've been doing this for more than two years, that it becomes more and more a competition with yourself. You want to go beyond what you did the last time - something more something different. If the funds and student knowledge doesn't grow right along with your need to continuously out do the last show, then it becomes an issue of feeling stagnant like you are recreating and not really creating. It's at this point that you begin to work 20 hour days, dedicating your holidays to the production, and neglecting relationships. This happens because you have outgrown the program - you don't have the manpower with the expertise that is required, nor the funds so that you don't have to build everything from scratch. That is to say, you can't just buy what you need, and building it from scratch takes so much more time.
As a creative being, you are only as happy as you are creating and not RE-creating. I'm aware of this syndrome as it has happened to me before, so I will be careful not move faster than the program. I want to continue enjoying what I do. So unless I find work at a performing arts school that has a proper budget, I risk being affected by the syndrome. I love where I work, and I will make sure not to start competing with myself, well maybe not as much.
I wish I would have started this blog with my first show, but I barely had enough time to use the restroom.
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