Theatre<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cThe deal was that I wouldn\u2019t know which of our artists had spoken to them, and the support they gave would be available up to a fortnight after the show had finished,\u201d said Miskimmon.<\/p>\n
Miskimmon said it was the first time she or ENO had employed the organisation. \u201cWith Dead Man Walking, it would not only have been irresponsible not to provide support for everyone involved but it would have risked the final production not being as emotionally powerful as it was,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSociety\u2019s obsession with the tortured artists is misguided. We don\u2019t think twice about athletes having psychological support, so why should artists have to feel mentally tortured to give their best performances?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
Therapeutic support is fast becoming widespread: the Actors\u2019 Trust, in partnership with the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine, now offers mental health support for artists suffering stress and burnout linked to emotionally challenging material.<\/p>\n
Wellbeing in the Arts, which works to improve the mental health of the arts and creative sector, has welcomed the change. But research underlines how urgent such support has become: the Film and TV Charity\u2019s most recent wellbeing survey found that 84% of UK actors suffer work-related stress or anxiety, with one in four considering leaving the industry as a result. In theatre, similar studies point to persistently high levels of depression, financial instability and emotional overload.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo many artists still labour under the belief that suffering is essential for creative excellence and artistic authenticity,\u201d said Lou Platt, the founder of Artist Wellbeing. \u201cSuffering is often part of the creative process, but you don\u2019t have to be tortured to make great art.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the #MeToo movement, directors have increasingly stepped back from the once celebrated practice of pushing artists to breaking point \u2013 a method openly embraced in the eras of Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppola.<\/p>\n
Liz Counsell, the executive director of Dan Daw Creative Projects, which recently produced Outlier at the Bristol Old Vic and the Battersea Arts Centre, celebrated that shift.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs well as being wrong, the \u2018tortured artist\u2019 isn\u2019t a safe or reliably productive way to create art,\u201d said Counsell.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf an artist is still processing trauma, then it\u2019s quite likely they\u2019ll get to a certain point with a work and then shut down,\u201d she said. \u201cBut if they\u2019ve had time with a specialist therapist, they\u2019re far more likely to be able to push further and explore more deeply than they otherwise would.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet many artists are still made to endure suffering as if it were simply part of the job, said Platt.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen actors are asked to act out sexual violence, domestic abuse, war and systemic injustice night after night for weeks on end, the trauma can bury itself deeply,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe frequently talk to artists who are so disturbed by either the subject they\u2019re tackling or the conditions they\u2019re working in that they have to take medication just to cope,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
But if you remove the suffering, do you destroy the art? For playwright Sophia Griffin<\/a>, the opposite is true. Far from being the kernel of genius from which creativity springs, she argued, trauma can throttle it.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve used wellbeing practitioners for the past four years, and had I not, I can honestly say that my work would not have been as strong or as emotionally true as it has been,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Griffin recently suffered writer\u2019s block when writing a play for the Bush Theatre in London. \u201cIt was only by working with an expert that I realised I was subconsciously resisting tapping into painful things I\u2019d buried or not confronted in myself,\u201d she said. \u201cRealising that freed me up to write the work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stories such as that, said Platt, are evidence that artists don\u2019t need to be tortured to be brilliant. \u201cWith therapeutic help, artists can still access those emotional pathways they draw their creativity from,\u201d she said. \u201cThey simply find they\u2019re able to use their lived experience in service of the art, rather than letting the art use them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Vincent van Gogh to Virginia Woolf, from Nina Simone to Amy Winehouse, the tortured-artist archetype looms large:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-228324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}