For the last ten years, I have worked with my best friends almost every day. When we finished university, we started a theatre company, Tortoise in a Nutshell. We made shows for children and adults that used puppetry. The performances used very little language, which made them ideal for touring internationally.
We were based in Edinburgh, the home of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which is the world’s largest arts festival. For one month every year, the whole city is transformed. The population almost doubles in size as performers and audiences flock to the city. Back rooms in pubs, underground vaults, and almost any other space you can think of becomes a space for art.
This was a huge advantage to us in our early years. We created our shows and put them on at the Fringe—we didn’t always make money but what we did make was connections. People from all over the world came to see our work and many wanted to bring our shows to their countries.
So, for the last ten years of my life, I have spent most of it on the road. My best friends and I would squeeze into a van filled with props and puppets and see the world. Every show was the start of a fantastic adventure.
In Mexico, we were amazed to see our show on giant billboards! In Montenegro, our set was only released from customs a couple of hours before the show. In New York, we all got pretty excited to see our show receive a critic's pick and appear in the New York Times. In Austria, we performed in a tiny theatre that in the 1920s used to be a pornography cinema! The last project I worked on saw us perform in the Arctic Circle!! All of these shows and memories fill me with joy and pride—but I didn’t always feel that at the time.
A puppet from Ross Collins MacKay's show.
When Do You Make It?
The thing about making it is no one ever tells you when it happens. For me, there wasn’t a tangible moment. Winning an award? Sure, maybe. Getting a sell-out audience? Again, maybe. What about the moment when someone cried at your show, or your first standing ovation, or the smile on a child’s face at their first-ever show? All of these things could be markers. But for me, the truth is, I don’t know if I ever really soaked them in, not properly.
Because as an artist you are often spinning a thousand plates at once, you need to keep moving. Because when you live project to project you can’t afford to let any plate smash. So, while one plate is spinning beautifully and wowing audiences, there’s another plate wobbling about to smash into smithereens. Guess which one I was focused on?
I was constantly moving. Trying to put more and more plates onto poles. I was working with Tortoise, running the company, making and touring shows, and I was working outside of Tortoise on other projects with other artists, trying to build more and more connections—trying to ‘make it.’ Until eventually it all collapsed.
Burning Out
I had a mental health breakdown. A pretty big one. I ended up in hospital on a few occasions.
My best mates at Tortoise were my absolute rocks. They supported me, patiently waited, and helped me back to work when I was ready.
And I began spinning the plates, faster and harder. Trying to make up for the lost time. Trying to ‘make it.’ And the plates I was responsible for eventually crashed. I burnt out again and found myself back in the hospital. This happened two or three times. Each time felt a little lower. Because now the old smashed plates were being joined with more, newer smashed plates. And it’s hard to spin those plates if the floor is covered in the broken shards of projects you’ve had to abandon. Because every time I burnt myself out, I felt like I let people down.
I had to walk away from projects, leave contracts unfulfilled, and that built up in me with feelings of guilt and shame. Those tiny broken bits of emotion can trip you up when you least expect it, but I kept trying. Kept trying to spin the plates, kept trying to make it. Until it got too much. And I lost confidence. And I never thought I could spin another plate again without it crashing to the floor.
And then I Stopped
So, about a year ago, I got signed off work, the pandemic happened, and the theatre stopped. There were no plates to be spun. And I realized I liked that. I liked the freedom it gave me. I began to try my hands at different things. I discovered poetry and writing. They felt calmer to me. I could still be an artist, but I did not need to keep going at the relentless pace I was forcing myself to live at.
I’ve enjoyed some success in these fields too. Next week, I am opening a festival in my hometown with my first ever commissioned piece of poetry. I have a children’s book coming out next year with an awesome indy publisher, and I’ve even landed a few green lights on Tongal!
So now, here I am embarking on a new chapter. And I look at all those old spinning plates, those tiny broken shards and I don’t see the failure, I see a mosaic of memories—and it is this mosaic that I am most proud of. When I was spinning the plates, I was always looking forward to the next award, the next project funding stream, and the next audience. Now, I can look back and see I had already made it. The day I made it was the day I left. But it was every other day too. I made it and made it and made it again. And I will keep making it. Some plates might spin. Some plates might smash, and that’s ok. The mosaic’s got space to grow.
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Note From Tongal: "The Day I Made It Was The Day I Left" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Tongal. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
