This Lines Pockets at the Expense of the Art

The Myth of The Talented 

It’s not news that the entertainment industry benefits if the world believes talent is in short supply. The bottom line of the industry would be happiest if we believed that talent was such a scarce commodity that there were only fifty or so people in the United States with real talent, several hundred with patchy talent sufficient to be paid for their work, thousands of wannabes with little or no talent fossicking about for opportunity, and hundreds of millions of completely untalented people yearning to hear and see the talented, wishing to be one, ready to pay to be in the same room with one. That works out best for the industry. Of course, it’s not news that this scarcity of talent is a lie, either.

Yet popular wisdom seems ready to go only so far in contradicting the scarce-talent myth. Yes, certainly talent is in greater supply than the industry wants us to think. But just as certainly it is not a common commodity. We’re not all Picasso. And so as to keep the number of the talented in a decent balance with the untalented, we have established authorized places where talent may be seen and recognized.

But what if talent is not limited at all? What if we are all 99.9% very much Picasso, and he us. Creativity is a human birthright. We are all natural artists. How do I know?

The craft of acting consists of standing up in public and saying things we know never have been and never could be true. Everybody knows it, so it’s okay. But acting is the art form of lying.

Here’s little Huffleburp in his ever expanding diaper sitting red-faced  and straining under the kitchen table with audible grunts rhythmically issuing from his 18-month-old throat, barely squeezing out a gasping, “No!” in response to your question of whether now would be a good time to head to the toilet. This is the birth of the actor. This is a sure sign of talent.

Theatre is based on the ability to tell a convincing lie, a thing almost all of us can do easily under some circumstances by the time we’re nine. There’s no shortage of talent. There is a shortage of encouragement and recognition.

Two illustrations: one day I was walking downtown in Philadelphia. Walking just ahead of me was a couple with a stroller in which a16 or 17 month old baby was riding contentedly, but, oddly, he was giving out a high-pitched tone like a blowing whistle. His parents were mildly annoyed, looking around  to see if anyone were looking. But I listened to his voice, and, in a revealing second, heard the emergency vehicle siren in the distance which nearly matched his pitch and rhythm. He was singing with the siren, and the only one to notice passed out of his life before there was a chance to praise it. His singing returned embarrassment from the ones he loves and respects most. Talent is not allowed to show itself in a stroller on the street.

The second happened to me at a time when I was making a good  living singing and directing a choir. I was in line at a supermarket one day, thinking about modifying a tenor part to make it more available to the voices I had. I began humming it to myself. The man behind me in line coughed and said, “Keep your day job, buddy.” I chuckled politely. I did not mention that singing was my day job and that, had he seen me in costume on stage he’d have clapped and complimented the same singing he’d dismissed at the supermarket. Talent is not allowed to show itself in line at the supermarket.

There’s no shortage of talent and no lack of discouragement. Unfortunately, we may never know how common a commodity talent is until we can stop unawarely stamping it out whenever we catch a whiff of it in unauthorized places. Yes, the industry may suffer. But the art will spring into full health and take off in directions currently undreamed of. I hope to live to see that. Heck, I plan to live to make it happen.


You may also be interested in Reclaiming Our Creative Birthright, another post on this topic. Click here to see it.