Off The Lane sat down with Anna Krechevsky (playwright, director, sound designer, creator, and BOOSTer), to talk about not only her BOOST journey, but also reinvention, motivation, and believing in your own work as an artist enough to do something about it.
What is something you’ve learned in the first months of BOOST?
Honestly, the best thing about this program is the introspection it requires. This program encouraged me to take a deep look at where the arts were falling in my life and what things I had already done in my almost 2 years in NYC. I took a long hard look at what had brought the most joy, and what I had learned about myself already.
I came to the conclusion that I wanted to separate my need for financial stability from the work I was creating. Stability in the arts is extremely hard to get, and I realized how much I hated that, honestly! I don’t love endless gig work when it’s just to make ends meet. I want to at least like the projects I work on, and I want to have the energy to create my own, and I was lacking that.
In so many ways, recognizing this truth has felt like mourning. Dramatic perhaps, but I really feel like I went through the five stages of grief to get to a place I’m ready to move forward from. Destroying a previous version of your identity is difficult, but all major changes (or as a friend of mine calls them, “canon events”), have a silver lining: they free up space for reinvention.
This program has helped me to begin that process, and heal from the idolized preconception of what my “career” could be. It has given me the space to step into a version based in a reality I want. That to me is more important than any work I could produce
What made you decide to be in the BOOST Program?
I found out about the Off The Lane program while looking for jobs on playbill, and ended up looking into them further. When I saw they had a program for early career artists, I felt like it would be helpful for someone like me, at this particular stage of my career.
What are your current artistic goals?
They’ve changed several times over the course of this program, truth be told. I have a play I’ve been working on for over five years, that I planned to release as my first public play when it was “done”. I started it in college, as a work in progress piece that would be shown periodically through college, and that went amazingly. I wanted to take it a step further, so I continued to shape it outside of college. But then, I kept getting stuck. It didn’t feel like the right moment to stage it again, there was always something that felt like it needed to be fixed or adjusted. It never felt perfect, and so I’ve held onto it. This program was a chance to take a look at it again, and at first I had the idea of turning it from a play into a film… and then, in starting that process, I came to the truth: I had been working on this piece for so long, caring so deeply for its message and meaning to me, that I’d placed it on a pedestal, and effectively shelved it. I’ve been waiting for it to be “done” – for it to be perfect, so that I could share it, so that I could have my first work out and in the world, and move on to other projects – yet, by waiting I had hindered my ability to move on. This play is not my penultimate. It is the first of all of the creative works I will make.
And so, I’ve decided that my top artistic goal right now, is to stage this play as it currently exists – not because it is “done” or “perfect” but because it holds where I was so excellently. It’s a time capsule, not the timeline.
I cannot wait to share the piece with others, and I hope it reaches many people.
And, I can’t wait for what I decide to do next.
Where did your love of the arts come from?
Gosh, I don’t even know that I’d fully remember. I’ve always been a creative mind from a very young age – writing stories and songs in my head long before I ever wrote them down. Performing was something that came rather easily – it combined both things that I love, storytelling and singing.
What areas of the arts interest you the most as a professional?
As a professional, I am extremely interested in my writing – playwriting and lyricism being two areas I have professional experience in. I am also a director, and Sound Designer. Another project I am working on is my first Radio Drama.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone chasing a career in the arts?
There are so many good pieces of advice, I need to say two of them – I’m sorry, I know I wrote these questions, but there’s two big ones I want to write about here! First one is as follows: at the start of this program, Jill (Jillian Vitko) and Ayana (Ayana Bey) said something that really has stuck with me: “You can’t edit a blank page.”
One of the constant questions of creating is always, am I ready for this? Am I ready for this project? Do I have the skills I need? Have I done enough to warrant this? Imposter syndrome is a real struggle for many artists, myself included. I am often reminding myself that half the battle is just beginning. So, if I have any advice for a career in the arts, it would be to just start. Create what you want to create. Maybe it won’t be all you want it to be yet, but maybe it will. Maybe it will spark an idea for an even greater project. But don’t hold onto the idea so long that it becomes something you idolize, and never start because you fear it won’t be good enough, or “right” at the current point in your career.
Start. Create the project, learn the software, put it into actionable steps. Don’t get lost in the dream of it. Forget about where it’s gonna lead you, forget about how long it may take to get it there, just start, and work and move.
Momentum, however you can get it.
The second piece of advice comes from this current juncture of my career path – it comes when you’re a little lost about where you WANT to start. When you don’t know what to work on, work on yourself. So much of what I’ve learned came to me from working on other areas of my life, this past year especially. I decided to focus on my health for a while, started journaling and asking myself more deep questions about what I want. Getting in tune with yourself is one of the best things you can do for your journey, artistic or otherwise.
Work and producing art aren’t everything. What hobbies do you have?
Oh I’ve got a few! And some of them are newer.
I love playing video games, my personal favorite is Red Dead Redemption 2 – the story is one of a kind, and the world visually compelling and detailed. And the game is somewhat independent so you don’t need to play the first one beforehand, you can go in either order or not (though I do recommend the first game, albeit an older one).
I play Dungeons and Dragons – I’ve been playing mostly online with a group I met a couple years ago, and more recently I started my journey as a Game Master myself. I created a wonderful home-brew (self-created) world that I hope to continue to expand, and maybe one day release as something others can enjoy!
I also love to listen to podcasts (as may be clear from some of my responses) – I listen to a DnD Podcast the most, called Venture Forth (highly recommend checking it out if you like DnD, or are curious about the game), but I also listen to more scientific podcasts, or podcasts about improving your life. In my health journey, I focused for a long while on mental and emotional health, and those podcasts changed my life for the better. Helped me to work on myself, when I wasn’t sure what to work on, as above.
I love to read, and am currently about to finish reading Project Hail Mary before I watch the movie. I just recently finished reading a book called Good Energy by Casey Means, and if there is one health book everyone should read, it is that one. Changed my life again. I think we should always be seeking betterment, be seeking change. Having a growth mindset, so to speak, is important.
How would you define a professional career in the arts?
This is a fun question, because everyone responding is gonna have a different answer I feel. To be honest, my definition here has changed.
I used to dream of getting to Broadway – for me, live theatre has always been the goal. Back in early high school, I thought my future was as an actor. Circumstances arose that closed that door and opened one behind the scenes, and then I was kind of hooked.
When we hear professional theatre, we think of Broadway theatre’s – the big ones mostly, like the Gershwin theatre, Richard Rodgers theatre, St. James theatre. We think of success as being there.
I think we have this notion in the arts right now, that the “grass must be so green at the top of the hill, because you’re close to the sun.” That “making it” is what everyone should want, it is success if you make it.
But now I think that’s a very outside-in approach to seeing it. And no, that’s not just because I haven’t “made it”. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make it to Broadway level. Heck, if I had the opportunity, I would relish being there. It’d be a dream come true. But I don’t believe in making it some penultimate. I don’t believe in the sentiment that if you’re not on Broadway, you are somehow of a lower achievement level than the people who do. I think a satisfying artistic career, at least for me, is gonna come from the inside-out, and be born of how I define professional work, exciting work, work I wanna be part of. It’s the difference between excellence and perfectionism, which I am about to explain. I am a quotes person, and I’m going to share a quote from a podcast I listened to recently: “Perfectionism, is when you’re focused on the outside…when you are measuring what other people are going to think about what you just did. Excellence, is on the inside. Because excellence is about the effort in, and whether or not the effort that you put in, is good enough for you.”
I’ve decided, that for my personal journey, I care more about excellence. And I have faith, that if I follow that, all other dreams will be realized.
If it wasn’t the arts, what do you think you’d do?
The answer to this question has actually changed quite a bit since beginning the program. I’ve discovered a deep love for creating experiences for others, helping them connect to something, providing a space to do so. I think I’d continue that, in any job, artistic or not. I don’t know that a specific job comes to mind just yet for me, and one may not come until I’m much older. Calling back to the quote I shared in the previous question – which came from a podcast by Mel Robbins when she spoke with a guest named Emma Greed (if you like podcasts, this is a great one) – there’s something else in the same podcast that struck me. One of the things Emma said, was she said that she’s only been doing something she loves for 5 years. She’s in her 40’s.
She said that most of the jobs she’s done, she liked to some extent, yet we as people are fed this idea that we should love all of our work, all of the time. I think I’m just now understanding that’s not gonna be the case. Maybe, for a lucky few, it’ll work out that way – maybe your story is different. But if it isn’t, then that’s perfectly normal. And I want to normalize that, not just for me but every artist with a dream, and maybe even more so, those who are just trying to figure it out.
Thank you for the wisdom, vulnerability, and encouragement, Anna! For all of us!
And since you love quotes:
In the words of the late Dolly Parton: “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
Can’t wait to keep figuring it out together!