Everybody makes mistakes (everybody has those days). This is a fact of life.
Making mistakes is an art form. They make us laugh, cry, they have the potential to teach. We think about them when we go to sleep, we tell stories about them over a pint. Some mistakes cost lives, some are just funny. Some become features in the way we narrate our lives, some are pushed down to the bottom of an emotional pit from which they only ever rise in those early hours of the morning where sleep won’t come.
We find ourselves in a powerful moment, as folk across the arts are calling out and taking action against those in positions of influence and power who have levelled abuse on others. I just want to take a second to make clear that this is not what I am talking about here. When I say everybody makes mistakes, I mean it - but putting your foot in it, having a wobble, or creating an accidental mess, is not the same as delivering sustained patterns of coercion, manipulation, prejudice, and discrimination. It is important that those of us who make human mistakes (all of us) don’t think we have to banish ourselves to the place that cancelled people go, but if you are using your power to disempower others, please make your way there.
I want to talk here about making human mistakes, not those behaviours that dehumanise.
So, you ask someone how their new puppy is doing, they start to cry and run away. A friend says, “well done pal, their dog was hit by a car a week ago”. You didn’t know. You feel like Rebecca in this video:
In the sorts of fields I work in, mainly applied theatre and community arts, mistakes happen all the time. We never talk about them. First of all, we don’t want people to think worse of us. It can be a bit of a mission to get freelance work sometimes, so you want to avoid stories floating around about the time you turned up to the wrong school, put on a show that no one turned up to see, or ran a project that no one actually enjoyed taking part in. We also don’t want people to think badly of the work more widely, the sector is already subject to the legacy of the Cameron-Clegg austerity years and sees more cuts coming on the horizon. We constantly look to prove our worth and value, and anything that interrupts our narrative of social utility and aesthetic brilliance threatens this.
But mistakes are valuable, we learn in those moments, both about our work, but also about ourselves. I’m going to share some of mine now, in the hope that others do too. There are a thousand other things I could write about, but I want to include things that are solely my mistakes, and not implicate others in my wobbles, or the wobbles of others. In no specific order then...
Mistake 1.
A community performance some years ago: a member of the community cast is surrounded by others who are giving them unsolicited (and generally not good) advice on how to speak louder in the performance. They mean well. I head over to try disperse them, they do disperse. I tell the cast member, “don’t listen to them, it’s not about being loud, it’s about being strong, which you are”. I see the cast member upset later, someone tells me it’s because of what I said, and that I should apologise. I do so rather hurriedly, if a little confused. I text the people at the company to apologise for the incident, maybe expecting to be asked to step back from the project - instead they are all very kind, kinder than I am to myself. The next day the cast member asks why I apologised, I explained, they tell me it wasn’t me, it was the others, they were happy to I spoke to them, but spent the night confused about what people now thought. I am confused too, we have a cuppa and work it out.
What I learned: a swift apology can also be a rushed apology. Take time to clear up mistakes. If I had waited to apologise the next day, it would have all been a little clearer, less messy, I wouldn’t have had a sleepless night, nor would the cast member who found the circumstances of their wobble spiral out of their own control because of what was essentially gossip. My decision to swallow my pride and accept consequences wasn’t noble, it was ill informed. I now always let the dust settle.
Mistake 2.
I turn up at a school ready to run a day of workshops: The school are not expecting me. Not only is it the wrong school, it is the wrong day. I have already made frantic phone calls to the team to figure out what is going on. They are frantic, thinking there is a mistake on their end. There is not. I look like an unorganised mess.
What I learned: Keep a better diary I suppose?
Mistake 3.
Working in a school with a group of boys who didn’t want to be there: I was tired, in the middle of a bit of a mental health wobble (dealing with anxiety and panic), and I felt frustrated that the workshop I’d planned wasn’t actually going to plan because the group weren’t bothered for it. The teacher sat in the corner ignoring me and the rowdy class. One of the kids asked, “why should we even listen to you, it’s not like you’ve done any real theatre or acting stuff”, to which I replied, “actually, I was in Downton Abbey loads, so if that’s the issue you should listen up”. Reader, I have not been in Downton Abbey.
What I learned: Don’t tell kids you were in a TV show you were not in, no matter how close you are to the end of your tether. You will not be able to answer their follow up questions. Also, if you are really that run down, take the day off sick, or you will deliver a bad workshop that ends with scandalous lies and deceit.
Let's keep sharing our wobbles, it's what makes us human
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