Managing Energy Levels: Leadership Skills of Artists

Let's Create: Do We Know How To?

In this episode, Naomi has a conversation with her colleague at Brighton People's Theatre; Jack Parris. Jack talks about how people can suffer if the energy levels in a room are too high or low. He believes managing energy levels is absolutely integral to the process, nurturing an energetic journey that ebbs and flows over a workshop or creative process.

Jack talks about the importance of managing the energy levels in the run up to a co-created performance. They reflect on the potential to unleash a kind of crazy energy and how to then ground this and focus it. In order to manage his own energy levels he plans meticulously and tries to ensure that there is a wide range of activities that might need a different kind of energy level throughout a session. He also notes the importance of observing and taking a breath during the workshop. But even when you are watching and observing you are aware of your energy and the focus that this creates in the room. People want to be seen.

Another thing that Jack does is to model the kind of energy level that might be required for a part of the workshop. He talks about introducing scale in the room, so that a framework can help people to push their energetic boundaries beyond what they might have expected. He also outlines Laban efforts to work energetically in a room and Stanislavsky inspired choices of where to place focus in the space.

If energy levels are not managed properly then it can damage relationships in the room and the quality of the work. There can be less respect and attention given to each other. Jack talks about moments when he hasn't managed his own energy levels so well and the impact of that. He notes the importance of the parasympathetic nervous system to regulate and ground your own energy levels in the room. Jack talks about the need to have mastery over your own energy levels, so that you can be perform the role of leader that is modelling the energy that is needed in the room.

Naomi Alexander is the CEO and Artistic Director of Brighton People's Theatre. Her AHRC funded research Let's Create: Do we know how to? identified 20 qualities, skills and responsibilities that are important for artists leading co-creative practice. The report and illustrations are available here.
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Jack Parris is the Associate Director of Brighton People's Theatre.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/jackparrisd/