This is a follow-up to "Things to Pay Attention To". I was originally going to just say this in that post, but I couldn't think of a reasonable segue, so I just started a whole new post.
Last week I was at a concert, watching the bands "Man...Or Astro-man?" and "The Octopus Project". They're both very unique groups that incorporate projections in their stage shows--trippy cartoons, or old sci-fi films. They also both use theremins in their acts (and if you've never seen anyone play the theremin before, it's really cool. Especially if it's on fire).
Lately, I've been trying to soak up lots of different arts experiences (I happen to not have any major projects at the moment, so I can spend some time diversifying). I've been doing more things like going to museums and concerts. It's amazing what you can learn about drama from the composition of a painting, or about stagecraft from concert lighting (and I'm not talking big arena lights, I'm talking a string of dull yellow "Edison" bulbs and a row of fluorescent tube lights).
It's important for an artist in any field to have a wealth of inspiration and experiences to draw from, otherwise you won't have any perspective. My suggestion is to keep a file on your desktop, and every time you see an image that you react to-whether you think it's beautiful or strange or funny, save it into that file. Mine has subcategories for art, architecture, photography, graphic design, and cake.
For theatre artists, you need to pull your head out of the sand every once in a while; it's good to see a lot of shows and see what everyone else is doing. You also need to go experience other mediums so you know what they're not doing, and take advantage of the opportunity to innovate in that direction.
So I was standing at this concert, having my eardrums blown out by a flaming theremin, thinking about how glad I was that when my roommate with awesome taste in music asked me if I wanted to go see some band I knew nothing about about, I said "Sure, why not?"
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