The Importance of Feedback During the Creative Process

I'm a theater director, but I was also an actor.  One of the biggest needs I felt as an actor and observe as a director of actors is a hunger for positive and constructive feedback.  Interestingly enough, I don't think this is an actor/artist thing.  I think this is a hunger from my entire generation.


Author and entrepreneur Daniel Pink writes about the feedback cravings of Millennials and states it well:


"Consider a typical 28 year-old. From the moment she was born, her world has been rich in feedback. When she presses a button, something happens. When she plays a video game, she gets a score. When she sends a text message, she hears a sound that confirms it went out. She's lived her whole life on a landscape lush with feedback"


Because I also worry that micromanaging actors with too much feedback could paralyze their creative process, a better directing style may be to encourage more self-management and to increase their engagement with outside sources of feedback.  Let's bullet-point this out.


Self-Management for Creative People

• DIY evaluation.  Every so often, take a step back to evaluate your goals and the progress you're making to meet them.  In school, actors are encouraged to keep daily journals as they explore their characters, make new discoveries and experiment with tactics that either succeed or fail.  Journals allow them to take stock of their progress and figure out how to proceed.  Eventually, the school of thought states, they will notice a pattern and begin to hone their creative process.
• Stay on track with a visual display.  I highly recommend drawing up a road map for achieving your goals with enough flexibility to keep you from quitting if you fail to meet a self-imposed deadline.  When I'm working on something particularly challenging, I also like to keep a journal of daily accomplishments.  This helps me keep a good perspective on how I'm doing and helps me evaluate my process constructively rather than negatively.

Increase Engagement

• Allow for peer review.  Working as an ensemble, actors have to have a high amount of trust and support for one another.  This allows for the perfect environment for collaboration where actors can get together and decide what worked on stage and what didn't.  Since actors require objective observers to reflect on the whole picture, directors work well as facilitators for the collaborative circle of review. 
• Bring in the audience!  Always keep in mind the people for whom you are creating.  While I have blogged about models for bringing audience members into the rehearsal room to welcome them into the creative process, I have not highlighted how valuable their feedback may be for the actors.  Just hearing that audience members liked something they saw on stage will do wonders for an actor's confidence and allow them to continue trying new and exciting things.
• Use technology.  Since we're discussing live theater, technology (like recordings of live performances) can get a bad rap.  Still, I encourage theaters to engage their audiences online as well as in person.  Rather than trying to recreate performances for the camera, keep it casual.  Allow viewers a chance to be a part of the behind-the-scenes culture and contribute their own ideas; most importantly, let them contribute their feedback.

Gold Star Stickers photo courtesy of http://www.glitterglossgarbage.com