The 360o Artist Workbook, a new work by Alejandro Navarrete, a young opera singer, actor, and author from Chile, is quite an ambitious endeavor. Even though when you pick it up, with its whopping 417 pages, it resembles a novel, it is a workbook. The concept behind it is guiding the artist who is using the book through questions, heuristically, to a set of answers which then pile up into a structural scheme that the artist uses to organize his life on multiple levels: personal, artistical and business-wise.
It is divided into five main chapters. The largest one, The Arts is centered around acting, singing, speaking, filmmaking, design, and others, as well as more practical elements surrounding them, like Theatrical Management or Producing Theater. It then contains a Me section, which revolves around Personal Development, Relationships and even Nutrition & Body Wellness. This is continued by a My business section, where all this reflects into Professional development, Finances and getting the job you want. As a somewhat natural succession to this comes a Planner chapter, which revolves around building a schedule on a short-term (daily), mid-term (weekly and monthly), and long-term (yearly), as well as Time Management. There is also a Bonus Content section, which contains things such as an Action Journal, Mantras, and an artistic Manifesto. The over-100-page Appendix contains some basic vocal warm-up exercises, as well free space to write one’s own, breathing exercises, an audition packing checklist, as well as other information-oriented pages, altogether with diagrams and schemes, surrounding topics such as breathing, sound projection, vowel formation, etc.
As the author himself says in the Introduction, this workbook does not primarily serve the purpose of an information-laden book, full of answers, but rather as a vast organizer. It contains all the right questions that an artist needs to answer in order to sort out and arrange important aspects of their lives. Even though some of the questions may seem too obvious or superfluous, the way they are formulated and succeed one another puts them into perspective, furthering the matter with other subsequent questions which deepen the subject. These lead the artist towards reaching conclusions on a very personal level, many of the times through one’s own experiences, rather than just apprehending facts and knowledge that has been laid out by others. It thus makes the artist think and put things into perspective.
Although it is not mainly information-oriented, it does contain some where it is needed, aside from the Appendix section, which I have brought into discussion earlier. Such an example is the Building a Singing Portfolio part, which contains advice compiling one’s portfolio regarding the repertoire, and how to layer everything, or the Auditions part, which contains advice for writing a CV, building an audition repertoire, and the materials one has to have ready for an audition, from the CV, to the program one will sing.
An important aspect seems to be the fact that it is directed, just like the title suggests, towards the 360 o artist. It thus looks like it will serve one who is interested in more than just one particular topic. It would be a waste to concentrate on just what one chapter would serve. If I were to summarize this book in one word, it would be an organizer of an artist’s life, a huge one for that matter. And the “level” of its target audience? It maybe will best help a young artist, who could, by using this workbook, go through the steps of the beginning of a career more easily, in a more organized way, “burning” through steps which other artists had to accomplish on their own, with bits and pieces of information taken from different sources and then put together through their own experiences. We could say it smoothens the road for this category of users. This being said, it would also greatly serve any other artist who wants to either expand their artistic horizons, or to just better organize their lives.
