A Legacy of Creativity | Part 2: Present

The Spark – A Legacy of Creativity Part II: Present

By Steven W. Alloway

I’m fond of saying that I’ve been appearing onstage since before I was born. It’s technically true. My mother, while pregnant with me, acted in a Christmas-themed play about Mary on the road to Bethlehem.

I’m also fond of telling people that, from the moment I was born, I was in the spotlight. That wasn’t about performing; it was just because I had jaundice. Still, both stories are an apt illustration of who I am and how I got this way.

In my last article, I talked about my family and the legacy of creativity that I grew up with. Now, I’d like to talk about how I’ve carried on that legacy and continue to do so to this day.

A Creative Smart Aleck

When my brother and I were kids, my mother admonished us that we were not allowed to act professionally until we turned 18. Having been a professional actress herself, she’d seen what the Industry can do to a child and the problems it can cause, impacting them well into adulthood—for those who even make it that far.

Now, at this point in my life, I had no particular desire to be a professional actor. What I did want to be, though, was a smart aleck. So I immediately began looking for a loophole. “What if,” I asked her, “It’s in a movie that I write and direct myself? Then can I be a professional actor?”

I’m not sure my mother actually agreed to these terms, but as far as I was concerned, I’d found my loophole. I’d make my own films, cast myself and my friends in them, release them, make lots of money, and, as a side benefit, become the first seven-year-old to win a Best Director Oscar. 

This was the essence of my creativity growing up. I planned big, extravagant projects, just to prove that I could do them. Of course, in a number of cases, it turned out that I couldn’t. I wrote plenty of scripts for feature films, but actually shooting them proved difficult, as I didn’t have a camera. But in my mind, this was a minor inconvenience at best.

Embracing the Turmoil

Over the years, my projects became less about proving that I could and more about seeing no particular reason why I couldn’t. Sure, I didn’t have a camera. But what I did have was a stage.

In 1997, my mother founded our theater group, Spirit OnStage, which was based out of our church. In early 1998, I mounted our first full-length play: a comedy of kings and queens, swords and silliness, called Medieval Turmoil in Pentalia. I was 14 years old. My mother actually just recently unearthed a copy of the script, which I hadn’t seen in many years, and I reread it for the first time since the 8th grade.

“Is it any good?” you ask, forgetting for a moment that I can’t hear you through the computer screen.

It’s… not as bad as I thought it would be. But it’s still not what I would actually call good. I was raised on movies like Airplane and Duck Soup, where the plot is basically just a vehicle to get the audience from one terrible joke or ridiculous gag to the next. What I didn’t realize was that, unless you are a Marx or Zucker Brother, it is exceedingly difficult to make that format continue to be compelling over the course of an hour or more. Plus, most of the jokes were stolen from other sources, so it’s funny, but not particularly original. Still, we managed to bring the play to the stage, and audiences seemed to enjoy it.

A Labour of Love

Four years later, I decided that I wanted to direct Shakespeare. Not only that, I wanted to direct one of the plays that almost nobody has heard of—one that also has a somewhat difficult ending that’s a jarring departure from that of traditional Shakespeare comedies. And so, at 18 years old, I brought Love’s Labour’s Lost to the stage.

“Was it any good?” you ask, because apparently, I do just answer the questions you pose to your computer screen now.

That’s a difficult question to answer. With Medieval Turmoil, there’s a script that I can go back to and judge its problems and merits. With Love’s Labour’s Lost, the script is Shakespeare’s, not mine. As for the performance, there wasn’t any recording of it. All I have are my memories of what we did and how things turned out. So an objective evaluation is pretty much impossible.

However, I was an 18-year-old trying to direct Shakespeare, so my instinct tells me that no, it wasn’t great. I lacked the experience and maturity necessary to do justice to the material. At the same time, though, I remember some of the things we did, some of the bits I came up with, some of the blocking, the costumes, the set design… And I’m pretty proud of it. If I were to direct the show again, there are a lot of things I would do differently, but there are also a lot of things that I would keep just the same.

A World of Possibilities

These two shows, in my opinion, are a great illustration of my creative legacy. I’ve talked about my family’s creativity and the creative environment that surrounded me, literally since before I was born. As a result, I grew up just assuming I could do anything. Feature-length film at 7, feature-length play at 14, Shakespeare production at 18… How could it ever be anything but amazing?

Of course, the act of actually doing those things taught me that it’s not as simple as just deciding to do something and then making it happen. It takes a lot of time and resources for these creative endeavors to come to fruition. And it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of experience in order to turn those creative endeavors into something truly good and worthwhile. Just because you technically can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready to. Though, on the other hand, just because you’re not ready doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t do something.

And often, you don’t really know if you’re ready until you try it. That goes both ways, too. You may think you’re ready for something, but then once you actually try to do it, you’re blindsided by problems you never even considered. You can also be absolutely certain you’re not ready to do something, you’re not good enough, don’t have the experience, etc.—but then, when you actually set out to do it, you find you’re a lot more ready than you thought you were.

A Folder of Improbabilities

Up to this point, we’ve still been talking about the past. I’ve done some pretty cool, creative things and learned a lot on the journey, but how does it affect the creative legacy that I’m carrying on now, in the present?

Well, I’m no longer the kid who just assumes he can do anything. But at heart, I’m still the guy who wants to. Time and experience may have given me more realistic expectations, but they have not yet quelled that innate desire to leap headfirst into every wild and grandiose scheme I can conceive of—and I hope they never do.

I have a file folder on my computer labeled, “Expensive Short Film Scripts.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: scripts I’ve written that involve elaborate effects, exotic locations, or just generally a lot more money and other resources than I currently have at my disposal. I can’t make these films, but I’m working towards them, figuring out what I need, and making plans hopefully to get every one of those scripts off the ground someday.

14-year-old me would have taken those scripts, started casting, grabbed a camera wherever I could find one, and been halfway through filming before realizing that I had no idea how to shoot a scene with a life-size dragon. Present me understands that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Present me knows that if you take the time to work on these problems and figure them out, rather than jumping in headfirst, it’s possible to create some truly amazing things.

Also, present me has access to a life-size dragon.

The Sword and the Dragon

Which brings me to the most important part of my creative legacy in the present: community. It’s true that I don’t have a lot of money or resources. What I do have are friends. Whole communities of amazingly talented friends who can help me with the things that I can’t do myself.

Six years ago, I wrote a play for Spirit OnStage called Aisling of Erin. Based on a series of Irish folktales, the play included a dragon as a character. I had a small, dragon hand puppet that I bought earlier that year and was planning on using that. But then I had the bright idea that the dragon should start out small, then grow to giant size later in the play.

Fortunately, one of our members is an engineer, designer, artist, and just generally a genius at building and making things. I asked him to build us a life-size, puppet dragon head, and boy oh boy, did he build one. It has glowing eyes and is capable of devouring smaller puppets. We’ve used it in at least half a dozen other shows since then, and it’s one of the coolest props we have. 

That same show included several sword fights. Several members of our cast, myself included, had done a little bit of stage combat, but being able to choreograph a convincing sword-fighting scene while maintaining safety requires a lot more than just a few classes. None of us had that level of experience.

Fortunately, I had friends who did: some friends from stage combat class, as well as friends from other theater troupes who knew how to stage a sword fight. I asked a few of them, and one was able to come and help us out, coaching our actors through multiple routines and creating some amazing action scenes for us—including the dramatic slaying of the aforementioned dragon puppet.

Finally, we needed somewhere to perform the show. While Spirit OnStage used to be based out of my church, after my mother and I both left that church, the group eventually became nomadic. Now, like a lot of small theaters in L.A., we rent space where and when we can, based on what we need, what we can afford, and what’s available. So where could we find an event space that accommodates artists and creatives? The answer came to us like an Epiphany…

Yes, Epiphany Space let us rent their courtyard for the show (side note: I miss when Epiphany had a courtyard) at a price we could afford, and even rearranged some of their other scheduled goings-on to accommodate the dates and times we wanted—plus, they lent us a volunteer to help out with some audience participation bits during dress rehearsal.

Epiphany ended up being the perfect space for the show. And the show ended up being one of the best, most fun, and most well-received things we’ve ever done. When it comes to creative legacy, Aisling of Erin is something I’m incredibly proud of.

Building a Legacy Together

But that legacy would be nothing without the community that surrounded it and made it possible: a community that helped us, supported us, provided us with resources, and even the community who came to see the show when it went up.

And of course, that’s true of every other show I’ve done, too. If Love’s Labour’s Lost was a good show, it wasn’t because of me and my directing ability. It was because we had an absolutely fantastic cast, all of whom went above and beyond to make it a good show.

So my creative legacy in the present is about embracing that community: reaching out to others to help me bring to life those wild and grandiose schemes that I could never do on my own. And of course, helping my friends to realize their wild and grandiose schemes as well, in whatever way I can. And together, we can build a creative legacy for the future that brings all of our wildest dreams to life.