Article
The Core Four—And More! Adventures of a Creative Ecosystem
The Core Four—And More! Adventures of a Creative Ecosystem
by Steven W. Alloway
A Note from the Editor
This month's theme is The Creative Ecosystem, and Steven Alloway's reflection captures how the people we create with — collaborators, mentors, and creative community — shape what's actually possible for our work. Whether you're a writer, filmmaker, musician, or performer, the right people can push you toward bigger risks and help you finally bring long-carried projects into the world.
For well over a decade now, my theater group has consisted mainly of what I like to call the Core Four: my mother and myself, plus two others who have been with us pretty much since the beginning. Other members of our group come and go. Some stick around awhile, some help out when they can amid busy or unpredictable schedules, and some will do one or two shows with us before dropping off the face of the planet. But the Core Four are there through it all.
Nearly every show we’ve done since about 2002 has had all four of us in it. And since about 2012 or so, a fair number of them have featured only us four. Not that we wouldn’t love to have bigger shows, with bigger casts. Sometimes we do! But we’ve also had increasing difficulty over the years finding enough people to fill all the roles we needed to cast, finding people who could commit to a rehearsal schedule and performance dates, even just finding people who wouldn’t drop out halfway through the process. In terms of casting problems alone, our group has enough horror stories to fill a book—which I may write someday. At some point, it just became easier to build shows around the four people we knew we could rely on than to try to expand and risk having the entire show collapse when it didn’t work out.
So that’s been our modus operandi for quite a while. Mount shows for the four of us, bring in one or two others when we can, but in general, keep things small and insular. Working this way has its advantages. We know what our group is capable of and can play to each person’s strengths, making sure there’s a good part for each of us. Rehearsals are easy to schedule, since we know what days each of us typically has free and which days one of us has a standing conflict. And we don’t have to worry about whether or not a particular person can be relied on. The fewer people we keep around, the less chance there is that someone will drop out, be difficult to work with, etc.
The Downside of Small and Insular
Unfortunately, there are drawbacks as well. When you keep your group mostly the same, show after show, year after year, you can find yourself stagnating, without even realizing it. A
creative ecosystem is supposed to grow and evolve over time. You’re supposed to nurture and feed it, and it, in turn, will nurture and feed you. If you’re not feeding and nurturing your ecosystem, how can you ever expect it to grow—and how, in turn, can YOU expect to grow as an artist?
This becomes especially apparent when we actually do try to take on a more ambitious project. We’ve gotten so used to doing things with just the four of us, with the basic resources we always use, that bigger projects have become increasingly difficult over the years. In the last few years, the notion of more elaborate shows has begun to seem next to impossible.
We’ve done shows in the past with casts of 20 or more. But in our current creative ecosystem, assembling six or seven together at the same time is sometimes out of our reach. And meanwhile, the really big shows, the
passion projects, become pipe dreams, doomed to sit in a drawer as we gaze at them wistfully and think, “Maybe someday.”
A Passion Project
Well, this fall was supposed to be “Maybe someday.” We were finally supposed to do one of those big, ambitious, passion projects. My mother has written a full-book musical, based on the book of
Ruth in the Bible. She’s been talking about it forever, planning it, refining it. But it’s a huge undertaking for our tiny group. It will take a whole host of resources to pull off: not just more actors than we usually have at our disposal, but also musicians—plus some elaborate sets and costumes, a decent venue, and more. How is our tiny creative ecosystem going to accommodate such a massive undertaking?
Well, we held a fundraiser. We took all the people and talent in our tiny little ecosystem and tried to channel it into enough resources to produce a full book musical. While ostensibly designed to be simple, merely a prelude to bigger things to come, the fundraiser ended up being a huge undertaking, in and of itself, which drained us all, physically, mentally, and emotionally. But it was a success. When the dust cleared, somehow we ended up with enough money to produce
Ruth. Not, like, on Broadway or anything. But enough for a small group to find a small theater and undertake one of the biggest projects of our lives.
Soon, plans for
Ruth were underway. We decided to mount it in the fall. But money is only one small part of the equation. We had the budget, but people still eluded us. The show still needed a cast—a significantly larger one than we normally have. Plus musicians. Plus any number of other people. And all the while, fall has been creeping closer and closer…
To make matters worse, it turns out the dates we chose were a conflict for one of the Core Four—as was most of the rest of the month. Our only options were to do the show a full two weeks earlier than originally planned, shaving even more time off of our already tight rehearsal schedule, or…
Creativity rarely develops in isolation.
At Epiphany Space, we believe artists grow through community, reflection, and meaningful creative practice.
Ruthless
I was reluctant to bring up the “or” to my mother. If we wanted to do the show with the full Core Four and not lose two weeks of rehearsal time, the only option was to postpone. And the earliest date we’d be able to postpone to wouldn’t be until spring.
My mother had worked so hard on this play, and we were so excited, finally to put it up in the fall. To postpone it felt like giving up. Like one more “maybe someday.” She’d be devastated.
Only she wasn’t. She was actually relieved. Scramble to throw together a show while still missing several key cast members, in order to meet an arbitrarily chosen deadline, OR take an extra six months to figure out logistics, refine the music, and hopefully get some clearer schedules? The choice was an easy one. Plus, now we can do at least two weekends instead of one, AND she gets to schedule the show on her birthday.
A New Opportunity
So we had more time to work on
Ruth. But that still left us with nothing to do in the fall. We needed a show. Something simple. Something we can put together without a lot of fuss, without a lot of resources, without a lot of people. Something we can put on that two-weeks-earlier-than-planned weekend without it being a huge hassle.
I’ve been wanting for ages to do recreations of old time radio dramas from the 40s and 50s… Seems like a perfect time for it! Talk about something simple… It’s radio, after all. No elaborate costumes or sets, no memorization required. Something we could do, in a pinch, with just the Core Four. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to see if anyone else is interested…
Umm… It turns out, my creative ecosystem is bigger than I thought. I just wasn’t using it. One Facebook post: “Hey, any of my L.A. actor friends want to help out with some radio plays?” And just like that, my cast of four became a cast of eight. A couple of people I’ve worked with a handful of times over the years in connection with other theater groups. One person I’ve worked with once or twice, but haven’t seen or heard from in over a decade. And one person whom I met exactly once, in 2013, and barely know at all. All different people, whom I know from all different places, and now here they are, ready and eager to help out.
What’s more, it turns out they’re all really good. From the very first readthrough, going through the scripts cold, everybody was already starting to create a host of amazing characters—and they all seemed to be having a blast, to boot. Not only that, they all seemed to get along well with one another and to click with my somewhat eccentric group, with our bad jokes, obscure references, and tendency to burst into song. They were even on board when I suggested adding puppets.
And all of a sudden, instead of, “How am I going to find enough people to fill all of these roles?” the question I’m faced with now is, “How am I going to make sure I have enough good roles for all of these awesome people?” I ended up adding an extra script into the mix, with fun character parts for everybody, new people and Core Four alike.
All of this came from resources I already had right at my fingertips: people I’ve known for years who, it turns out, were not just willing but eager to do a show with me. Suddenly, my creative ecosystem doesn’t seem so tiny anymore. I can’t wait to do
Ruth in the spring…
Continue Your Creative Journey
Your creative ecosystem grows through collaboration, connection, and the people who help you bring your biggest ideas to life.
If you're looking for an online artist community where writers, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, and creative entrepreneurs encourage one another and stay accountable to their goals, we'd love to welcome you to Epiphany Space.
Inside our creative community membership, you'll find:
- Weekly coworking sessions
- Peer mentorship groups
- Creative workshops & retreats
- A supportive community that helps you keep creating
STEVE ALLOWAY: Writer & Interviewer Extraordinaire
Steve is a writer, performer, and occasional time traveler, born and raised in L.A. When he's not hanging out with awesome Epiphany Space people, he can usually be found doing shows with his theatre group, Spirit Onstage, or baking delicious desserts.
RELATED ARTICLES: Keep Exploring Your Creative Ecosystem
- The Friends We Made Along the Way
- Caren Kelly on Filmmaking, Producing, and the Power of Community
- Epiphany’s Legacy of Creativity, or, Why You Should Give Us Your Money
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
WHAT IS A CREATIVE ECOSYSTEM?
A creative ecosystem is the network of people, relationships, resources, collaborators, and opportunities that surround an artist and support their creative work. A healthy creative ecosystem can help artists grow, collaborate, solve problems, and bring ambitious projects to life.
Why is a creative community important for artists?
A creative community gives artists opportunities for connection, collaboration, encouragement, feedback, and accountability. Working alongside other creatives can also introduce artists to people and resources they might not encounter on their own.
How can artists expand their creative network?
Artists can expand their creative network by participating in creative communities, attending events, collaborating on projects, joining groups, and reconnecting with people they've worked with in the past. Sometimes the people already in your extended network are more willing to collaborate than you realize.
How can artists find collaborators for a creative project?
Artists can find collaborators through creative communities, professional networks, local arts organizations, social groups, workshops, events, and past creative relationships. Reaching out to people you've worked with before can also uncover unexpected opportunities.
share this
Related Articles
Related Articles
