Filed by Lance at 10:22 pm under General, Shameless Plugs, The Arts

Today, the applicants for early admission at the Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship had our auditions and interviews.

In case you haven’t heard me preach about the IAE, it’s simultaneously the missing ingredient that artists of all disciplines have been searching for, a part of a larger discussion of the future of American work, and a promising path to a thriving creative economy. The thing I was always missing in school was any business or entrepreneurial sensibilities. I trained in both the hard sciences and theater arts, and no one ever told me it was possible to do anything but rely on someone else for a paycheck.

That’s changed, and the goal is to become a successful, serial, arts entrepreneur as soon as is healthy.

Today, I had both an audition and interview to become a charter student of the IAE.

The audition was to show the Institute that we’re serious about our art, and the interview was to show that we’re serious about learning entrepreneurial business skills.

For my audition, I didn’t bring a portfolio, or pictures. I brought two pages for each of my interviewers from Orange Flower Water, by Craig Wright. When they asked me to tell them about what I do and why I’m passionate about it, I simply handed them the sides, and said, “Joyce, Reid, would you guys please read this?”

After a moment of shock, they read through the scene, and afterward, I worked with them like they were young actors. I had one technical piece of advice, and one artistic. I had some specific changes they could make to their breath to make the scene flow better. We spent the rest of the time discussing the actor’s objective. It was fun, because both of my interviewers had something different to do, and got to see real insight into what I do with actors.

The actual interview part was very different from what I expected. They paired two applicants up, sat us down, and said, “You two are going to go into business together.” Where do you start? We were then walked through a basic business plan, being thrown different curve balls to see if we could roll with the punches.

The idea wasn’t so much to test us to see if we could come up with a workable business model. The idea was to show us the kind of thought process we’re going to be asked to be able to engage when we’re in school. It was really nerve-wracking, and exciting at the same time.

I hope this is where the future is headed: the excitement and nervousness of not knowing, and a path that forces me from my usual comfort zone.