What is creativity? Who has it, and how can I acquire it? Importantly, can it make me money?
The problem with writing this essay on creativity was evident the moment I mentioned it to anyone. The idea didn’t sound creative, or necessary. It sounded blobby and arbitrary, like the early strains of a lot of ideas. It could not be written efficiently. Plus, there was no promise that you, the reader, would even vibe.
So what was the point?
Whenever I would tell anyone about it, I would doubt, stammer, fish around for meaning, apologize for wasting their time. If I’m honest, those feelings linger, as I write this. But there was that one day recently at the Lyric Opera. For a week, the Joffrey Ballet staged an adaptation here of Steinbeck’s ”Of Mice and Men.” The idea came from Cathy Marston, a British choreographer who made her name translating classics such as “Jane Eyre” and “Lolita” into the fluid assemblage of movements that make a recognizable ballet.
Not an obvious sort of literary adaptation.
In business-speak, it would require buy-in.
We sat at the back of the dark auditorium during a rehearsal, the seats empty except for a smatter of crew. Marston kept looking away, toward her production, as if it might fold up and head home if she didn’t keep an eye on it. That is how creative ideas can sometimes appear — fleeting and vaporous, in need of a creative vision to pin them to a wall just long enough to gather meaning and purpose. But she wasn’t really looking at much. The stage held a large, barren dance milieu, offering plenty of open space.
