Starving Artists

In defense of difficult vocations.

Oct 30, 2024

Boccaccio nicely summarizes the general economic conception of professional theatre makers in historic Western civilization:

“They say poets can hardly be called wise to have spent their whole time following a profession that, after years of labor, yields never a cent. This explains, they add, why poets are always stark poor; they never make brilliant showing with dress, money, nor servants; from this they argue that, because poets are not rich, their profession is good for nothing.”1

Heyo.

It’s still a hard life making a living on or around the stage. According to a report by the Actors Equity Association, only 9.4% of the 4,500 state and local agencies which fund performing arts projects require that funded productions must pay their actors a living wage, and that was just before the pandemic.2 Technicians, designers, and producers tend to fair a little better, but the landscape remains relatively harsh. Anyone proposing a full-time career in the professional world of dramatic arts faces a competitive future of cyclical feast and famine, working to find jobs that fulfill both their gifts and refrigerators.

And yet, artists persist in making a living on or around the stage.

To introduce the additional tension for Christian artists of choosing work that aligns with their convictions is an even higher level of stress. The vocational tension is further complicated for these dramatists, who realize that the already cutthroat pool of work will be made yet more sparse by determining whether their work aligns with their spiritual ideas of flourishing. Every discerning artist will paint that vision differently, and wherever they draw their boundary lines someone else will tell them that they are wrong. Any internal struggles they face are punctuated by the external chuckling refrains:

“But what will your real job be?”
“Oh, the theatre can be an awfully dark world, are you sure?”
“I bet your family worries about you.”3

The work of finding jobs is already fiercely competitive and then to suggest that you might not take every job offered to you? Who can blame the doubters?

And yet, Christian artists persist.

The conversation between theatre and theology becomes quite literal in Performing the Sacred: Theology and Theatre in Dialogue, as the authors Todd Johnson and Dale Savidge draw from their respective disciplines to trade chapters reflecting on the challenges and beauties presented by the intersection of Christianity and drama. In his chapter, “The Christian at Work: Being an Artist in the Theatre”, theatre practitioner Dale Savidge turns to these believers who make their primary living in the theatre industry.

He offers three overarching guidelines for helping Christian theatre practitioners discern how to engage with their craft:

Pursue the highest level of excellence in your art form.
Be intentionally sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Ensure the art you create serves your audience without stagnating them.

Throughout the chapter Savidge continues to return to the traditions of Christianity and theatre as two parent authorities for charting a course through this vocation. Does what I am making fulfill the standards of quality dramatic art? And does what I am making draw me closer to God and neighbor?

A unique strength of Savidge’s writing in this chapter is his theological argument for the pursuit of excellent theatre. He explains that artistic beauty ought not be automatically sacrificed in pursuit of explicit virtue; it is a holy end in and of itself which reveals God’s nature alongside truth and goodness. The theatre maker does not discern between vanity and morality, but between different expressions of virtue. It is of theological concern to be well-educated, creative, and thoughtful in your art. He writes:

“God’s leading is never apart from God’s attributes of beauty and excellence. If God gives an artist a work to produce, God always expects the artist to use, attain, or hire the skills necessary to create the work with excellence–that is the way God created the world and that is the pattern God has set for us.”4

Often Christian theatre practitioners are obliged to choose between resources which encourage them to work with precision and passion… and those which are Christian. In these instances, “Christian art” becomes synonymous with “worse art”, conjuring up images of racially questionable Nativity pageants and endless renditions of “safe” productions like Annie. It is explained to you, the dramatist, that while it might not be ideal, theatre is only God-honoring when it makes evangelistic overtures, so the quality is garnish.

Savidge offers no such excuse to the Christian in the theatre, arguing that not only does their faith not exempt them from creating quality art, it should spur them towards that end with the knowledge that they will discover God more richly there. He offers the example of Bezaleel, the first recorded (human) biblical artist, writing, “He was expected to honor the God of beauty by making every effort as an artist to meet the critical standards of his particular artistic discipline.”5 This is profound encouragement for those who practice theatre professionally, but also for those at any point in their theatrical education; pursuing excellence is spiritually valuable.

Savidge furthers this idea in the passage on playwriting, noting that failing to create theatre from a foundation of education and dedication will fail not only on an artistic level, but on a missional one. “Many people rush into playwriting with a mission: to illustrate/communicate/preach the message of Christianity through the potent medium of drama.”6 Their instincts are good; they have understood that something transformative is communicated about our incarnated God through embodied storytelling. However, respecting the discipline and tradition of theatre is necessary for producing art that accomplishes these purposes. Again there is the hidden guideline of dramatic tradition and Christian belief–does what is being created meet the standards of these authorities? How can they do so better?

Savidge is concerned not just with the aesthetics or divine commissions, but with how each will affect the other. He warns playwrights against the temptation to view their work as straightforward evangelism or as tied to a clunky proselytizing thesis, instead trusting that the God of beauty and story will show forth in their work in fresh, confounding ways.

Savidge’s admonition does not arise from a blasé approach to sanctity and Christian conviction. It is Savidge’s commitment to knowing and loving God that propels him to weigh the aesthetics of performance heavily. As an industry artist, he acknowledges both the risks and rewards of choosing which work to undertake in order to be innovative, successful, and God-honoring. He discredits any sort of “ivory-tower elitism” in Christian performers, arguing that we should not, “discount the sincere attempts by God’s children to do the work of the kingdom through drama.”7

He is not attempting to dissuade any artist from earnestly pursuing holiness, nor suggesting that God is discovered in only the most expensive or avant-garde performances. Sometimes the answer to his two questions—does what I am making fulfill the standards of quality dramatic art? And does what I am making draw me closer to God and neighbor?—can only be answered, “Yes, as best as they can, here and now.” And that is enough.

“Is the work difficult? Yes. Is it being done? Yes.”8 To return to the beginning of our conversation, the artists persist. As one married to someone who works professionally in theatre, and who dabbles in such a world herself, the vocational pressures we began with sit close. Twisting between the rubrics of theatrical quality and theological wellness alongside the very real need to live requires the artist to possess both fortitude and delicacy, and the demands of one’s particular lens into drama will add more specific tensions. The actor must reckon with the spiritual consequences of using the body as their instrument; its potent intimacy, caught by time and space where other art forms roam those boundaries. The playwright must tread the line between writing the script that will be published and the one that feels authentic. The intimacy coordinator must hold the truth and beauty of human relationships with a careful hand.

But let’s expand this now, because many of the tensions of the artistic vocation ring true across disciplines: every faithful creative ought to strive for the highest quality of work, be sensitive to the direction and revelation of the Holy Spirit, and be well-attuned to their audiences… all the while living under the banner of “starving artist.” So why do we persist, because we certainly do. In the same treatise where he marks the economic peril of the poetic life, Boccaccio roundly defends its value:

“It offers us so many inducements to virtue, in the monitions and teaching of poets whose care it has been to set forth with lofty intelligence, and utmost candor, in exquisite style and diction, men’s thoughts on things of heaven.”9

Why do we bother to continue asking: Is my work set forth with lofty intelligence, utmost candor, and exquisite style? And does my work set my thoughts on things of heaven?

Dale Savidge says the point of tension is the crux of vocation. Calling arises from an intersection of difficulty, such as the artist’s dance between truth and health insurance. Rather than defiling some laudable vocational ease, the place where we wrestle forms an essential aspect of our continually unfolding calling, a place we will not let go of until we are blessed.

A favored quote on vocation in church circles comes from Frederick Buechner, who wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”10 What perhaps should linger underneath those words is something like: And in your cup, you will drink from both that deep gladness and deep hunger. Be encouraged in your struggle, artist; it is not an obstacle to your vocation, it is your vocation itself.

Starving Artists

In defense of difficult vocations.

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