Creativity is the Great Equalizer
By Thurman E. Scott
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All humans have the potential to create
Everyone longs to create. But we all question whether we can create. Similarly, every person who thinks about growth questions whether she or he actually can grow.
The Ten Session Intensive will introduce you – through the metaphor of acting – to the process of how to reveal your creative potential and enhance all of the different areas of your every day life – – your job, your relationships, your ability to articulate new ideas, and your intuitive, inspirational and philosophical view of life. It is an opportunity for you to address some of the longings, dreams, aspirations and wonder you have about one of your great, untapped resources – – your creative potential.
This class creates an opportunity for you to be introduced to your creative essence. With your new-found understanding of inspirational, intuitive, creative insights, you will become aware of new opportunities that you’ve never seen before but that are actually already present in your life. This is because with the new creative tools you’ll gain in this class you will no longer look at life through the filter of factual limitation. Instead, you’ll see life through the many possibilities and dimensions that the imagination reveals. You’ll feel a sense of hope, and will develop an expanded view of your life and of all the people and things that enter your surrounding. This is just some of what will take place during the course of the Ten Session Intensive class.
In the Ten Session Intensive class you will develop presence. You’ll gain the tools and comfort to be able to stand up in front of a group of people and talk in a relaxed, insightful, connected way. When you have to give a presentation at work you won’t stand in front of the group feeling uncomfortable, not knowing what to do with your hands, and shifting from foot to foot in nervousness. You’ll know the essence of what you need to say and do. You will learn to get rid of unnecessary words, verbiage and unfocused behavior. Your words will be connected to the clarity of your intention and therefore you’ll feel more of the essence of what is needed to be expressed – – and that essence will vibrate in the hearts and minds of the individuals or the audience that you are addressing.
One of the things that we often encounter, regardless of our profession, is a feeling that we have to compartmentalize our lives. In the work environment, whether it be an office, a hospital, a school, a construction site, or the many thousands of different settings in which people do their jobs, we often feel that we can only express or reveal one dimension of ourselves. This class will help to provide a new outlook on this issue. You’ll learn that you don’t have to compartmentalize your life and that you can have all of yourself all of the time. You’ll see that it is always safe and acceptable, whatever the setting, to express the reality that you are a multi-dimensional human being with many intuitive, creative insights.
Not only is it safe and acceptable to develop and express the full range of who you are – – if you really want to guarantee your success in life, you must use all parts of yourself. People often say after they sprain their ankle or break their leg that they finally realize how much they took the simple act of walking for granted. The experience dramatizes to them how much more difficult it is to operate in the world when they don’t have full use of their limbs. It is the same thing with your creative self. This is a part of who you are. If you do not use your creative insights, if you only express yourself in one-dimension, you are not operating at your full potential. You are, quite simply, hobbling along.
Who should take this class?
The Ten Session Intensive class was designed and is taught for people from a wide range of backgrounds. You may be a teacher, business executive, a plumber, a medical professional or a carpenter who would like to develop the untapped, hidden, intuitive abilities that lie dormant within you.
Or you may be a former actor – – someone who once took acting classes or performed, but feels that part of your life is behind you. Perhaps the class you took was not a positive experience for you. You may have felt that you just couldn’t do it, or that the teacher suppressed you, or that he or she did not understand who you were as an actor and how to help you develop and express what was inside. Situations like this make a student feel uncomfortable.
As the teacher of the Ten Session Intensive, I bring over thirty years of professional experience in theatre, film and television to my teaching. One of my primary intentions in the class is to help my students to feel safe and comfortable in the creative setting. I understand that when students are comfortable they begin to experience their originality and express the ideas that they sometimes suppress.
I designed the class to help people express their individuality. In the class you will discover other dimensions of yourself that you don’t always envision each day. You will stretch and grow. The class is not designed as a place for you to come to hold onto the everyday sameness of your personality. It is not a class for you to seek the acceptance of others for who you are today. It is not a class where the purpose is to bond with your fellow classmates and to support one another’s limitations. This is a class in which you will begin a process of developing and evolving in order to discover for yourself the best of what you have to give and to move beyond your every day acceptance of yourself.
The Actors Theatre Workshop is an extremely safe, clean, disciplined surrounding. It was designed and is run by a group of committed, conscious theatre artists under my direction. The environment allows students to feel that they can live in the surrounding and feel comfortable. The father of modern acting – Constantine Stanislavski – said that first a student or actor must feel comfortable; the security of individuals feeling comfortable and accepted creates the probability that they will be able to reveal their creative selves.
In life, we must make sure that our actions and intentions correspond with our dreams. The primary focus of this class is to support you to have an action that’s in alignment with the dreams that will develop, or are already dormant in your heart. Having a clear, focused intention helps you to achieve the reality of your dream. You can’t just stay in one spot and ruminate about what it could be – – you have to do something.
When you are in touch with your creative, intuitive self, you are inspired to go beyond the accepted norm of your existence. By practicing the creative techniques you will learn in this class you will develop new insights which will allow you to take action so that your dreams will become reality.
This is what we will achieve in the Ten Session Intensive.