What’s the Story Only You Can Write?
“But what matters to us, what wounds us, what makes us feel we are the characters of an immense adventure, is what happens behind the curtain. And behind the curtain there is the naked stage.” (Helene Cixous, 1986)
We live in some amazing times. Collectively we feel that a paradigm shift is occurring right now in our lifetime.
Don’t you feel it?
In every area of our lives we are experiencing a tectonic change. A profound shift is coming, which is breaking our sense of personal continuity and maybe rocking our security to its core.
These feelings, on both the collective and individual level, are the 21st century artists’ canvas.
Artists Create to Share Their Message
Artists, especially theatre artists, have always held a mirror up to society to say, “Look at yourself. This is you. Do you like what you see? Do you really want it to be this way?”
What do you want to say to the world? What needs to be said right now?
My dear artistic soul – are you responding with your creative gifts for the betterment of our world?
Every era has had its cultural change-makers, those people who stood up and forced us to look at who we are in the hope of creating change.
Many of these change-makers were artists.
- Henrik Ibsen saw the powerlessness of women in their own homes. His play A Doll’s House sparked the women’s movement.
- George Bernard Shaw saw the degradation of poverty and the exploitation of the poor in his midst, and wrote social plays that led to changing social conditions everywhere.
- Bertolt Brecht withheld the catharsis and resolution in his plays in the hopes that each audience member would seek to “become the change” after they left the theater.
- Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank saw the unjust conviction of prisoners on Death Row and interviewed many who were jailed for crimes they didn’t even commit. The Off-Broadway play The Exonerated led to the overturning of the death penalty in Illinois in 2003.
There are many, many more examples. When the voices of artists raise some aspect of social consciousness, political and cultural change start to happen.
What do you see around you?
What do you experience in your life that you want to change?
In 1986 playwright and poet Helene Cixous urged theatre makers,
“We need this nakedness. We need to see the faces hidden behind the faces, these faces that the Theatre unveils…And we rejoice that it is not forbidden, in this marvelous land, to cry out, to strike blows, to translate into breath, into sweat, into song, the suffering of being a human inhabitant of our time.”
Are You Contributing to the Cultural Conversation?
You were given a gift as an artist. How are you using that gift?
What’s the story only YOU can write? Based on where you are in the world and what you are feeling right now, what truths do you know that need to be said?
British writer Richard Koch wrote:
“The most successful people change the world not through sweat and tears but through ideas and passion. It is not a matter of hard work or time on the job; it is having a different view, an original idea, something that expresses their individuality and creativity. Success comes from thinking, then acting on those thoughts.” – Living the 80/20 Way by Richard Koch
Write Your Human Experience
You were given this gift for a purpose, for this unique time. We need great art now more than ever before.
I’m starting to form small six week writing groups In February to help you start to write the play that you need to write now for $149.
Create theater that makes a difference. Don’t wait another day.
Email me at cate@createtheater.com for more information. Groups start mid-February.
Like the song says, always ‘push it along.”