Wanna think outside the box? Stay inside it.

Obviously this metaphor holds a value, in the sense that you shouldn't allow yourself to be boxed in by conventional thinking. Viewed from my principled design-based approach to the creative process, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. Recently I was reminded about this by my old teacher, Ingolf Gabold, who is both a wise and gifted dramaturge.

One of the fundamental aspects of the principle of unity is that a piece of drama is one system, and a system is defined by a set of borders. So if you go outside those borders, you will undermine your system.

This happens quite often, when people write, direct and perform drama. We will always get ideas and notions, that are outside the box, the system of the drama, and perhaps include them. One or two might actually be working for you and for the system, because of the old adage – the exception that proves the rule. Or you might, if your are disciplined and experienced, come to realise, your system has a different set of borders. But often its not working, and just weakens the material, because it doesn't add to the complexity of meaning.

Working as a consultant for others, or working in groups with devising, I have often seen a pattern in behaviour, when people begin to get the un-useful outside-the-box-ideas. Very often it happens as a reaction to difficulty with the existing material, the system as it is, and there might be real problems, that needs fixing – but instead of confronting those problems inside the box, people tend to jump outside the box to find a quick fix, or even being drawn by the allure of the grass is always greener..

And this is not a very productive behaviour, you'll waste time, energy and only find new material, which at first looks great, all new and shining, but will also present difficult problems later on, as it needs to be developed and incorporated into the system – something which might not even be possible if it is foreign to the system – and again, there's also a time factor in our design process – we need to go over our material and refine it. If you bring in new material late in the process, it may end up never being properly developed.

Instead we need to stay inside the box and confront the problems we have, because often the answer is there, hiding in plain view. We need to dig deeper and ask the difficult questions and the very simple questions to our material – what is the conflict, who is this character, what are the needs, the intention? And we need to be truthful with ourselves in answering – why am I bored with this? what do I really want as a creator? And we need to be patient and wait for the right answer to arise from the questioning.

And this can difficult because it can challenge our faith in ourselves as creators, our faith in the material we have chosen to work with – and even in the worst cases our faith in ourselves as human beings.

And when you find yourself in such a crisis of creation, you can either run or stay inside the box, in the zone.