The Creative Process

In my theatre design classes, we frequently cover a structured “creative process” with many specific steps that flow in a non-linear and cyclical way. The steps are commitment, analysis, research, selection, incubation, implementation, and evaluation. At first glance this creative process seems too structured, too much like the scientific method, to fit with the popular image of creativity as this ephemeral, mysterious thing that comes like a strike of lightning or in a burst of frenzied chaos. But, that sort of inspiration-driven creativity is rare and never occurs on demand. The consistent creativity required for any professional artist is a process with identifiable steps that can be depended on to produce results. I have grown as an artist throughout my time at Carolina as I came to this realization step by step.

I first learned about the creative process in a theatre lighting design class my freshman year. I memorized the steps for the test and promptly forgot about them. As I worked on creative projects both in and out of classes for theatre, media arts, and visual art, and revisited the process in subsequent classes, I came to realize that there was truth to it and that the steps were not just fancy words chosen to legitimize a creative class in the academic context. The concept of the creative process started to become clearer to me in my Costume Design class fall of my sophomore year. In that class, we did three projects, two of which we took as far as finished renderings, which in a real production situation would have then been used to create the actual costumes. One of the projects was to design costumes for the play The Importance of Being Earnest, which the department was also producing on the Main Stage that semester. We began by thoroughly analyzing the play to dig deep into each character and what they would wear. Then we were required to do image research, which was particularly important because Earnest was set in 1895, requiring period costumes (see my play analysis and selected research images here). This project and the others in that class demonstrated how the first two steps of the creative process, analysis and research, contributed greatly to the effectiveness of the final design and made the entire rest of the process much easier.

Other classes and projects brought out other aspects of the creative process. In particular, in my screenwriting classes for Media Arts I discovered the truth behind the incubation stage. The concept of the incubation stage in a creative project is that after you have completed your research and analysis and began the selection process, you take some time to step away from the project and work on something else. I discovered the effectiveness of this in my screenwriting class when several times I would get stuck on a hole in my plot or a problem with a scene I was writing, and then several days later the answer would come to me when I was doing something completely unrelated like taking a shower or walking to class.

When I designed lights for The 39 Steps, I utilized all of the steps to bring together my final design. The 39 Steps is a comedy stage play based on Alfred Hitchcock's 1939 movie by the same name, which we produced at USC in March 2014. I presented my work on the lighting design for the show at Discovery Day 2014, my abstract and poster (below) go into detail about how I followed the creative process while working through my design. I structured my Discovery Day poster around the creative process because I wanted to highlight the similarities between it and the scientific method. In a context where I knew I would be surrounded primarily by scientists and people from other STEM fields I thought emphasizing those similarities would make my project more accessible to my audience and perhaps even alter the way they thought about creativity.

Utilizing the creative process has helped me grow as an artist because it takes the angst out of being “creative” by removing the constant pressure to make something completely new. No idea is ever truly new, nothing is pulled from the ether. Every idea is influenced by objects and experiences in the real world. Ideas that seem new to others are simply a combination of existing things filtered through one individual's perception, experiences, and biases. As an artist, once this is realized and accepted, it allows you to make those combinations in more conscious and focused ways through in depth research and analysis.