Creative Cycles
On seeding, planting and the growth of creative projects...and, welcoming THE PLAY SOCIETY!
In 2018, I was invited to create a talk & workshop for one of my favorite cultural organizations in Brooklyn, Think Olio. Led by these two rad(ical), kind-hearted humans, Chris and David (pictured below) — Think Olio is an ongoing experiment in lifelong learning to encourage curiosity, creative living, and face-to-face conversation.
Think Olio invites professors, practitioners, artists, and therapists to lead unique gatherings meant to spark curiosity, deep listening, play, and meaningful interaction amongst the participants. Their topics are often idiosyncratic and unusual, and their warm gatherings are a place to meet some of the most idiosyncratic and unusual New Yorkers.
For my Olio, I collaborated with artist and death doula Kate Muehlemann to develop a walk, talk and workshop on the topic of Death and Creativity. We wanted to explore how her practices from the death-care field could be in conversation with my work in play & creative coaching — to offer a set of playful, creative tools for contemplating death and mortality, to use death practice to deepen one’s creative practices, and generally speaking, to inspire a more fulfilling, creative life.
How can we bring our innate creativity (& even some playfulness) to the challenging, often painful terrain of loss, grief and the dreaded “end” of things (be it the life of a person, a creative project, a relationship, a dream we once held, or a phase of life)?
We led 18 participants on a “Death Walk” through Prospect Park in Brooklyn, prompting them to observe the cycles of living and dying in nature. As you walk, we probed, is what you observe living, dying, or dead? How do you know? And, how is the death of one thing integral to the emergent life of something else? Is nature creative? How so? We then convened at the historic Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture for a talk and creative workshop to deepen our investigation, and to share our work & thoughts as artist-practitioners.
I always learn so much through Kate’s perspectives as a death doula, hospice nurse and visual artist. It turns out that talking about and creating around the topic of death, while vulnerable and challenging, is ultimately a life-giving experience. I left our session feeling more connected and energized.
Fittingly, our workshop on death gave life to a new project!! Since then, Kate and I have been working on a book, CREATIVE PORTALS, that brings our death-care, creative coaching and artistic work together to explore relationships between death and creativity, and offers a series of exercises, practices & frameworks to guide folks in contemplating and crafting more meaningful, fulfilling creative lives.
Since that workshop, Think Olio has grown too! They have a super-awesome physical space for their events and community, called The Lighthouse, located in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. It’s a lovely and warm space, especially as the cold descends on NYC. If you’re nearby, you should visit!
I’ll be leading two talks and workshops at The Lighthouse this Winter/Spring (these are the current working titles, more details forthcoming):
The Play Society: A User’s Guide to Taking Your Play More Seriously (and your seriousness more playfully)
&
Everybody’s a Critic: A Creative Workshop On Collaborating with Inner Demons & Critics
These gatherings are an opportunity to meet (and play) in person and to encounter many of the core practices that are central to The Spring! Folks have been inquiring about the return of SpringSessions (the weekly guided sessions to support creative life) — the Sessions will return in future, but for the moment, I’m leaning into opportunities to gather in person —
Speaking of gathering in physical space…I have an important update on a new creative project!
Introducing THE PLAY SOCIETY - a roving school and creative lab for acting training and performance-making rooted in an ethos of play and collaboration!!!!
The Play Society’s first two-week session launches this Summer in Paris — convening celebrated teachers from around the world who will bring their distinct perspectives and approaches together, united by a focus on playful investigation and collaboration. The training is open to actors, writers, directors, performers, creators, and all who hold a curiosity for the potential of play and collaboration in creative life. I’ll send a separate post about The Play Society in the new year as I can’t wait to introduce you to the creative & generative artists assembled for this new enterprise.
Please join us in Paris! And, share this new project with a handful of people who might be interested? The Play Society can only grow through word of mouth, and through genuine connections made by open, curious people like yourself.
With the growth of so many new projects and collaborations - I seem to be entering a creative spring in the middle of winter! And, I’m seeing seeds that I planted (in the form of creative projects and relationships) so long ago, now cycling forward and beginning to bloom. I don’t know about you, but I find that it can be so hard to trust the timing of things - growing anything of creative value is an act of faith, diligence and patience, and often calls for letting go as much as taking decisive action.
What creative cycle are you in? What is seeding? What may be hibernating? Where do you see signs of creative life, death or both?
Inspiring! I’m in an earlier, sprouting stage of creativity, but similarly exploring how we might take our play and creativity more seriously in end of life. Excited to hear more about The Play Society!