HowlRound: In my last semester of college, I got the idea to start my own not-for-profit theatre company, Fronkensteen Experimental Theatre Company. I was young and cocky coming out of college and wanted to take charge of my career. In the small town where I was born and raised, theatre jobs were extremely rare and never dreamed of the fact that I was going to move. So I did what I thought any young artist with a Bachelor's degree in a small town should do. I took all my money and called as many friends that I could get and started a theatre company in the worst way possible way: put all your money in a pile, dig out all of your old plays from your undergraduate playwriting class, and keep producing them until the money runs out.
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"Find more places where you can possibly fail. If all you do is pick places where you’ll always succeed, you’re not growing or stretching yourself. Know your limits, but don’t back away from risks." I've always been a firm believer in the idea of taking risks and embracing the potential of failure. You learn much more from failing because once you're in that position, not only do you learn how to emotionally deal with failure, but you tend to figure out why you failed and where you went wrong. From that, you then learn not to make those mistakes. I'm sure that starting your own theater company is no easy feat by anyone's standards, especially if you're fresh out of college looking to put on your own productions. I admire the bold optimism that Ricky Young-Howze put out into the universe, and I sincerely hope he doesn't stop. He is absolutely correct on the idea that people will respect you more for learning from your failures than just succeeding based on pure blind luck. However, I do wish that he detailed what he did that went wrong that caused the company to crash and burn into the ground. I didn't feel like I understood what he really did, what shows he put on, who was going to them, how he operated etc. that caused the company to be unsuccessful and I wish that he did because that would give the audience a better idea of the course of action he took. I also feel like his title was more click-baity than anything, which is a bit disappointing.
Especially as young students, we are constantly told that failure is a part of life. However, it's often seen as nothing more than that: an embarrassing pit stop in the otherwise smooth path of your career that maybe taught you to pick yourself up and dust yourself off, but nothing much more than that. There is so much more to failure than this. It can heighten your learning experience and make you seem more qualified than someone who has had all successes but with no challenges or chances to learn from their mistakes. I wish that the author had gone into more detail about the specific mistakes he had made and what he should have done instead, but he got the point across regardless. Failure is more than just an indication that you screwed up, it's a chance to learn everything you can about an area and never repeat that mistake again. I think in an age where success of young people and entrepreneurism is constantly discussed, it can be easy to remember that mistakes do happen and, when they do, we should recognize their benefits.
It is very cliche to say, but mistakes are one of the best things you can learn from. As a college student, this is definitely something I can relate to. I have learned almost as much from all of the dumb things I have done this year as I have from my actual lessons in class. In this school, most learning experiences come from the amount of work you have to put into things, rather than the actual content you are being taught. For example, in Susan Tsu's basic design class, the Monet project is technically supposed to teach the students to recognize different colors, and the very subtle differences in tone, hue, and intensity. However, while that project certainly teaches that, it teaches time management, diligence, and determination more than anything. Things like crew teach what they are supposed to, but they also teach what not to do, like this article discusses. You never learn faster than when you are thrown into something you are not prepared for. This article definitely has very valuable points that probably everyone at this school could relate to.
Failure is something that, as much as we'd like to avoid, is so necessary for us in order to learn and grow. Employers and interviewers rarely ask you about your successful feats, but much more often about a time you've failed. Not only that, I find that the experiences that stick with me overtime and I remember are my failures. As much as I dread failures, they are so crucial not only for your professional experience & growth but also for shaping your growth as a person. I personally think that the most important thing about failure is people who have experienced it are a lot more humble and willing to listen and learn from other people, which is an attitude necessary for one to grow. Even though failure may seem yucky to deal with, it does have its benefits that you can't learn from textbooks, and are worth learning in the long run.
I think a big part of becoming a successful artist is to learn from your mistakes, which also means failing every now and then. I wouldn’t say that you have to dump your entire life saving to achieve this but it is something that everyone needs to experience. The great thing about CMU is they really push their students to make risks to see what will come of it. The good thing about experimenting in a learning environment is the repercussions aren’t as drastic as loosing friends and relatives along with emotionally draining you of all resources.
It is one thing to have your professor stand in the front of the class and have them tell life stories about their failures than to actually experience it. I think the message that the article is trying to portray is that at one point in your career you will reach a point where you will know the best way to do something. If I have learned one thing in college it is that experience is everything. You might know everything there is to know about theatre but if you never implement it you will not know how all these tools work together to make a great show.
I really do agree with the author that times of failing is when you learn the most. As much as we all hate to admit our failures and watch something we create crash and burn, when you look back on that experience pick apart each step you took and look to where you went wrong. What I find most interesting however, was the author talking about how he gained more authority when on shows after having failed at starting up a theater company. I wonder if people respected his input because of him having the experience of a company going down hill, or if he had a huge success story right out of college if people would have shown him the same respect. It is interesting to think about, what you value more in situations do you want someone telling you not to do something because they did it and saw it didn't work, or do you want someone who can show you a way to do something because they did it and know that it works? I think both are valuable, but I wonder what the theater industry likes to see more
This is something I talked about in my crit last semester. I struggled being confident in doing things outside my comfort zone because I felt like everyone around me was more knowledgeable, experienced, and talented. It culminated in my decision to not put myself out there to participate in playground, which is something I really regretted. Had I taken this author’s advice I would have been taking on several playground pieces at once and getting as involved as I possibly could. That’s what I intend to do next time. I think running towards your fear is so important. I think some people fall into a trap of thinking that they should pursue the thing they’re good at, or they’ve been told they’re good at. Not the thing they are passionate about. I almost did that, leaning away from technical projects and internships because I still think that my strengths are in art and design. But now I’m working on Rube, and doing the TD work for our Arcade project, and I’m going to be the technical and carpentry intern at a theater this summer. I couldn’t be happier with how things are going. You can teach knowledge and hard skills, you can’t teach passion.
Not being afraid of failure is great, but there is an extent to it. The idea behind this article is one that I think everybody learns in their lifetime – there is no substitute for experience. As they say (or said) on Mythbusters “failure is always an option”, but the key is not the failure, but what you take away from it. There are a lot of theater companies around and they do come and go a lot. Young-Howze doesn’t go into a lot of detail about why he failed aside from saying that he was shut down by the government. I would be interested to know, assuming the company was properly set up so the government couldn’t shut it down, why he failed. There are a lot of ways for companies to fail. It is comforting to know that people who have failed go on to succeed, but beyond that the experience is what people are looking for, not necessarily the successes.
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