Collaborations and Collaborators

I have come to realize I like to collaborate.  It is a simple statement however, I am revisiting it because I have questioned if collaboration is for me.  I became increasingly observant of how I behave and react when I share creative space.  Not all experiences have been good. I have come to terms with mistakes I made in my judgments and put aside the egoistic view that just because I like exchanging ideas with other creatives that we should see eye to eye in our processes.  Creative collaborations can be challenging even if there are processes in place.  If it was simply a matter of "follow this roadmap" and successful collaboration is guaranteed then all would be golden. But this is not always the case.  We often hear about projects being put on hold due to disagreements that were unseen at the start or things falling apart due to a change in vision.  And I am talking about cases where vast sums of money and visibility are involved.  So beyond the obvious questions that should be answered right away, those having to do with compensation, contracts, logistics, what are other factors that lead to a successful collaboration?  

Communication, people will say is key. But beyond that. If the right questions are not asked, communication will never be steered correctly.  I think it has to do with the fundamental reasons for why one is a creative professional or why they do the kind of work they do.  For long-term collaborations, the fundamental need to be in the creative space must be addressed.  When I look back at the experiences that weren't great collaborations I can see that I spent the least amount of time finding this out about my collaborator(s). Because once we know this about them, we know how we fit into the big picture. Being aware of this helps us navigate and spend our energy appropriately.  Now that I know that I failed to take this approach previously, I will not resort to statements such as "Collaboration is not for me" or "Group projects don't work me." Instead, I am specific that certain collaborations didn't work because we could not connect on why we started down this path and our long-term goals did not complement each other.  So now, I know that I want to collaborate when this match occurs.  My other skill set of a web developer is now fired up to find out how to even find this match.  For this reason, now I am talking to artists and finding out what is their rubric when taking up a collaboration. I am interested in the specific rubrics. I will take an example of one such artist who I spoke with recently and started to feel that I would like to collaborate with them. What was it about this interaction that made me feel this way? I am still deciphering that. 

The fellow artist comes from a different part of the world and speaks a different language.  They are interested in using metaphors from other disciplines that they can play with as a playwright. For example, they will learn about astronomy or psychoanalysis and let it embellish characters.  They work on pulling down walls they may have put up in the past as they learn about other cultures and philosophies. They themselves are very open to collaborations. They practice intense discipline having written a number of plays during the pandemic.  They are in touch with the current reality of pandemic and its limitations for the art world yet they push on knowing fully that when we emerge out of it, it will be like a rebirth or as he put it "like a Pheonix". 

This is just me very happy to see the morning sun. It needed full attention and so I had to look away for never-ending zoom calls and address the presence of the most important part of our survival, the only and only, The Sun. 

How can I help create a tool that lets artists connect with such rubrics? Beyond the "yes we both have to be paid, yes we should have a contract", I want to connect on why we do this work at all and want to keep doing this work, where our interests beyond just the immediate work happen to align or fit like question and answer and so it makes sense to work together.  I am in search of coming up with that process.  Wish me luck!