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How We Create: Collaboration

Kaja Irwin and Nate Chiang, Fluid Fest HAWTSPAWT Cabaret 2023. Photo: Darin Gregson

I can vividly recall the moment I realized I’d been lying to myself for my whole career.

I was sitting in Calgary’s West Village Theatre working on a sound and theatrical production with artists I knew and respected. And I was ablaze with discomfort.

The director, Eric Rose, was thoughtfully and meticulously leading us through the beginnings of a collaborative process when it hit me.

The prickly fire of revelation crept up through my belly and throat, into my face as I realized it — though I had prided myself on being a “good collaborator,” I had instead only allowed others to contribute to my work alongside me. Indeed, I was not a good collaborator. I hadn’t actually been collaborating at all.

 

Collaboration: An Elusive Definition

Collaboration can happen when two or more people create something together or work towards a common goal … together. But it turns out that just being “together,” while creating, doesn’t mean collaboration has happened.

We like to slap the term collaboration (or “collab” as the kids say) onto all sorts of situations, but as I sat there in that theatre, it dawned on me that true collaboration is a variety of intentional relationships co-existing simultaneously. It is an organic, nebulous thing that holds space for everyone involved, respecting and acknowledging how we create in different ways at different times.

I realized that until that point, what I had called my collaborations had been one-sided and transactional. I was acquiescing (giving in) or overriding (directing) but never truly working with others.

Instead of recusing myself to cry in the theatre bathroom, I sat there and allowed the wild sea of emotions to crest and dissipate. Personal judgement gave way to understanding real collaboration. I knew this would change not only how I engaged in collaboration with others, but in collaboration with my own creative process.

 

 

Nothing Without Trust

It was not coincidental that I had this experience with Rose, an accomplished writer and director of theatre and film, and artistic director of Calgary’s Ghost River Theatre and terrific collaborator. “Collaboration is about the space between people — a shared, dynamic field where creativity and ideas come alive,” he told me recently.

Embedded within creative collaboration is the powerful element of trust.

Not so easy sometimes. We clutch our identities tightly around our creations. But if we allow our art to change through collaboration, we allow ourselves to be changed, too. And let’s be honest, that’s a scary endeavour for artists sometimes. It can feel like compromise, or worse, surrender.

 

 

Surrendering to Collaboration

Artists constantly confront how much of ourselves we put into our art and the processes we use to create it.

No one likes to surrender, but it is a powerful mechanism that facilitates creation in surprising and new ways. At some point, in every creative process, we have to let go of the wheel, and that’s where collaboration can take place.

Calgary-based dancer Kaja Irwin speaks of this idea of surrender.

Known for her captivating presence on Decidedly Jazz Danceworks stages, Irwin’s collaborations with musicians highlight how integral the relationship between the dancer and musician is by listening and responding to each other in the moment to create a shared energy.

“When creating a piece collaboratively, I think about relinquishing control of a situation,” says Irwin, “diving into a ‘let’s try it’ mentality. Offering and trying, offering and trying between each other and experimenting with what feels like it’s taking us to where we want to go.”

 

 

Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

Something I found shared between all the artists I spoke with was this concept that collaboration was both a part of and the sum of their creative process.

No surprise that Wakefield Brewster, professional poet and Calgary’s sixth Poet Laureate, keenly navigates this creative collaborative space. When he collaborates, it exists as a piece of and the whole itself.

“I call it my C5,” says Brewster. “I cure the thoughts. Curation is first. Then connection. You reach out and connect to whoever you are with. After that, it’s a collection. You have to realize you can’t take everyone with you. You collect those you can. After that it’s collaboration which directly leads to creation. Collaboration doesn’t exist alone, and if I’m doing my job, those five c’s play out naturally.”

In that final stage – creation — as Brewster states, there is an inherent release. Artists must let their ownership of the work go, and let the art exist externally to themselves. And if we have created in collaboration, that release facilitates something most precious — freedom.

 

Kenna Burima is a Calgary-based songwriter, musician, mother and teacher.

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