We tend to avoid our challenges. They remind us of the ways in which we are weak. However, I think there might be a more useful way to look at our challenges. It’s useful to recognize which things come to us easily and which things we have to struggle for. If we only focused on…
Taking an improv class will change your life. I’m not saying that becuase it’s the best marketing slogan I could come up with. I’m saying that because it’s the truth. Even if you’re not interested at all in acting or being up on stage. Even if you have social anxiety and the thought of…
They say that the whole “right-brained” and “left-brained” talk is a myth. Our brain hemispheres aren’t a pair of quarreling twins–one who did the sensible thing by going to business school and the other, a dream-follower who dropped out of college to cover canvases in paint and notebooks in poetry. Humans seem to love to…
Sometimes, when I’m directing a show or teaching a class, the notes I write down as direction, thoughts, and feedback can sound like a poem. Here’s an amalgamation of my recent in-class/in-rehearsal musings that sound like a little poem to me. Embrace reality open up create the boat Speak up we had chances to…
The only way to get something out of your head is to art it out draw out the image paint out the dream write out the story poem out the feelings then you can go on about your day when a creative force strikes, it’s not always something pretty and fun sometimes it is the…
Then, there are those dreams when you see your sister and she’s still alive and you sit across the table from her and you want to explain to her that the reason you’re wearing her earrings is because it was a way to have her with you. But here she is— she’s across the table…
As one gets older, it is widely believed that one gets accustomed to getting older. I suppose that’s true to an extent. A small extent. For getting older is not the same as riding a bike or learning another such skill. Every time you get older, you’re in new territory. Every time you have a…
Best things about living in the south: fried okra the weather the wonderful people I’ve met (they don’t necessarily come after okra and weather, but I just had more okra today, and it’s really on my mind) fried lots of things, actually sweet tea the weather: it’s worth mentioning again, as it is the middle…
And then comes the day after all of the holiday hubbub when you’re at the gym trying to work out, and that Tony Bennett song comes on and you remember walking on State Street, that great street. And you close your eyes, but you’re not in Chicago, you’re in Cumming, Georgia. And the suburbanites at…
Well, I must have done something right, because the lovely folks at The Brink have asked me to teach an 8-week AdvancedScene Study class on Sundays starting a week from today! We’ve already got quite a few folks signed up for this class, but there are some spots still open! If you’ve been studying/performing improv…