Tuesday 11 October 2011

Learning to Fail

On Friday we had a seminar with Bim, where the question he wanted answers to was "Why are you here?"  Not in an existential sense, you understand, but as in why did we choose to come to Circomedia, as opposed to other Circus training centres  and indeed, why Circus?

Now, I think through my previous blogs I've made myself quite clear on this subject, so I'm not going to bore you with all that stuff again. However, one of the (anonymous) answers to the question was, "To make as many mistakes as I can".  Bim thinks that this is a very valid answer, and I agree with him.  Being at a school such as Circomedia is the only opportunity most of us will ever have of being able to fail time and time again and being accepted anyway; moreover being encouraged to learn from our failure.  Yet I find it difficult to persuade myself that failure will be good for me.  

Throughout life I've been an achiever.  I don't think that I'm naturally gifted, but hard work, a desire to learn and a rational mind mean that I've never really struggled academically or in the working world.  And I like to do things right!  If I had my way I'd really like to go in on the first day of rehearsals to a new job and for the director to say to me "Catherine, that was wonderful.  You are the most talented member of this company.  Now go home and have a rest and I'll see you opening night."  Or something along those lines...

So learning how and loving to fail is going to be the steepest learning curve yet.  I don't like not being the best at things (and I'm certainly not the best at anything here), but maybe, if I put my mind to it, I can become really good at making mistakes.

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