BY JESSIE WANG, LEAD WRITER (COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS)
If you’re in the performing arts sector, it’s likely you’ve been on tour or know colleagues who have. Whether you are the performer or the person behind-the-scenes, touring is an exciting and unforgettable process. You can experiencing new places, perform for new audiences, and live an adventure where every day is different.
But at the same time, it’s also exhausting.
When we tour, we’re constantly on the move, so there’s no home or a comfy bed to return to every night. We’re away from our friends and family, and literally ‘stuck’ with the same people for days or months – or even years.
So, inevitably, while you’re trying to thrive on tour as much as you can, sometimes you may feel like you are barely surviving – something that can quickly lead to mental ill health and wellbeing issues.
And yet, despite this risk, there is still a lot of stigma surrounding mental ill health in the creative industry. As Arts Wellbeing Collective consultant Matt Heyward ironically sums up: “Even though we are in an industry that is all about communication, often we aren’t very good at it ourselves.”
“Often, we feel that ‘show must go on’ mentality; that we need to keep being okay – at any cost,” Matt says. Sometimes, that cost might be sleep, exercise, or even eating a solid meal.
That’s why Matt, also a professional music theatre performer with 20 years of experience, is working toward change with AWC. The Arts Wellbeing Collective – an Arts Centre Melbourne initiative that comprises numerous arts organisations, all aimed to promote positive mental health and wellbeing in the performing arts industry – decided to collate a toolkit for people going on tour.
Tour Well consists of practical, evidence-based tips addressing common mental health and wellbeing challenges that you might encounter before, during, and even after the tour.
All the content in Tour Well was created, reviewed, and informed by passionate touring professionals like Matt.
“When I started touring 20 years ago, you were handed a plane ticket, a taxi voucher, and the address of your accommodation. Other than that, you were pretty much on your own,” Matt recalls.
“All of a sudden, you are in a strange city, earning a full wage, working all the time and with no extra support.”
The content in Tour Well is driven by what these touring professionals wish they had known. Whether that is to do with diet, missing home, or post-tour downtime, the AWC team contacted top professionals in their respective fields, and asked for tips to share with the touring arts practitioners of Australia.
One of these professionals was Dr Melissa Ree – a sleep psychologist who could answer questions artists such as Matt had always wondered about when on tour. Some of these difficult questions included: “What time should I be going to bed when I finish work at 11pm? How do I unwind properly after a show? How much sleep is enough sleep if I have a matinee tomorrow?”
Matt says each section of Tour Well was created this way – “identifying specific issues around touring, and then reaching out to mental health professions to shed some light and offer tools and structures to help them deal with these issues”.
It may sound like a lot of effort has been put into this toolkit. But the best part is that it’s also filled with graphics, acronyms, and written in a colloquial voice – because nobody wants to spend hours reading essays while they’re sleep-deprived and still have a show tomorrow, right?
For ourselves, and our own colleagues and friends who are about to embark on a tour, Matt has some useful advice you can start with.
“Make sure you have balance outside of work. Find classes, parks, cafes, and libraries in each city. Things that make you feel like you, not just ‘work’ you.”
As an artist myself, I’d like to think that a work-life balance exists, even on tour. I’d also like to think that, as Matt tells us, it really helps both the performers and those behind-the-scenes “thrive while on tour, not just survive”.
You can view the Tour Well toolkit here. If you’re going on tour soon, we also wish you good luck!
CutCommon would like to acknowledge the Arts Wellbeing Collective for its work in our creative community, and for its generosity in sponsoring our writer Jessie Wang to shed light on these mental health challenges for touring artists in Australia 🙂
Featured image Jan Stretcha via Unsplash.
