J F Vernon Blog

I tried to describe what it is like to be about to embark on 150 hours of studying (or is it more?) with three assignments (and an exam?)

There is a buzz.

Like people in the lobby of a theatre ahead of a show.

I think of the Kathryn Tickell concert the other night, outside the auditorium at The Stables;

I think of my first RSC Shakespeare at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. I still have the programme featuring Derek Jacobi, in Hamlet I think, so … 1978?

But we are no audience, we are the Players.

Perhaps it would be better to think of us as members of a newly formed orchestra about to meet Sir Simon Rattle.

Ten days ’til the doors open; some have popped in to say hello then gone off to prepare for then sit an exam.

Many now add in brackets where they are:

Hamburg,
Bratislava,  
San Jose, Costa Rica,
Kobe, Japan,
Frankfurt,
Newcastle,
Kent,
Bristol,

For a module on creativity an international mix, with the widest variety of backgrounds, should result in fireworks.

Meanwhile for the 1998 paper ‘How to kill creativity’ (Amabile) alone I feel the my working life exposed, enhanced and potentially ‘enabled’. Decades ago I hung to the belief that I would learn by doing and three times set up fledgling production companies, too often these were conduits for my ‘talent’ yet I see that all of us needed to be gaining intrinsic value, indeed the most success came with non-commercial short films where this spirit had to be fostered.