Going With the Flow

This is a continuation of "An Improvisation in and of Itself" — part of an ongoing series about finding my way as an artist.

Apart from giving theatre workshops, doing the coaching, and playing at events, I also initiated a few things during my Hamburg years. I got a few fellow actor colleagues together, and we trained together once a week.

Another thing I offered was a so-called "Werkschau" — a space where people could show their work in progress, or share an idea, anything and everything possible.

My initial hope was for it to become a place where people could get to know each other better, and where new collaborations might flourish.

While I initially loved organising these evenings, I realised more and more that people mainly came to do some "navel gazing" — look at the great show I'm doing, look at my great idea — rather than being open to real exchange, or exploring how collaborations might actually happen.

It frustrated me, and I couldn't quite figure out how to shift it so that real exchange would happen more.

Since I never found a solution, and didn't want to keep pouring effort into something that felt one-sided, I eventually stopped doing it. The idea of real exchange, and the lack of it, is another subject that would go on to haunt me in more ways than one. I simply couldn't understand why other people didn't seem as open-minded as I was — always willing to try new things, to merge ideas.

So maybe it shouldn't have surprised me that when I found out about the 48-hour film festival in Berlin, I thought it might be fun to take part.

The idea: you get 48 hours to make a film with a team, and you only find out what you have to incorporate right before the clock starts. I asked a few of my actress friends, they knew some more people, and soon we had a team together — a cameraman, a director, everything. Someone had a friend in Berlin whose flat we could stay in, and the adventure was about to begin.

I remember, once we got the subject, we ended up discussing for far too long what to actually do.

A few of us would have liked to just go with the flow and improvise, seeing where it took us — guess which team I was on — while the men on the team wanted to concoct a proper story instead. We gave in to them. And since we'd lost so much time by then, we never finished the film, and were disqualified from the competition.

It was still a great adventure, but I felt real regret that we'd given in so easily.

I didn't like that I'd given my power away, even though I was the one who'd formed the team in the first place. If I ever put a team together again, I can tell you exactly what I'll be looking for: real open-mindedness, a willingness to actually create together rather than dominate, and above all, the ability to explore and improvise. I have no patience left for being stuck in endless discussion when we could simply be trying things out and creating instead. Nope.