Category Archives: Interplay
InterPlay is Coming to Oshawa
Want less stress in your life and more ease?
Want to excavate your buried creativity?
All while having fun in an affirming community?
Try InterPlay!
Starting in January, I am offering two InterPlay classes a month. These are drop-in classes. No need to preregister. Newcomers and experienced players welcome.
InterPlay is a practice and philosophy rooted in the power of play. It’s an easy to learn, creative process that uses movement, storytelling, and voice —but does it in ways that don’t require particular skill or even nerve. The forms of InterPlay help create a life of greater ease, connection, and health. InterPlay celebrates and creates connection and community. Through this simple form of play, we learn more about ourselves and each other. It is incremental, affirming, and anyone can do it!
The Details
TGIF InterPlay: 2nd Fridays 7:15pm – 9:00pm
Friday Morning InterPlay: 4th Fridays 10:15am – 12:00pm
Location: Both Playgroups will meet at Durham Improv’s Oshawa location: 1115 Wentworth Street West, Oshawa. The space is on the 2nd Floor (above “Medigas”) and is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible
Cost: $15 per class or $50 for a 4 class pass (save $10)
For more information, contact Kate Arms-Roberts at 647-408-6133.
Holding it Together When Things Get Busy, Part III
Create a Form or Game
One of InterPlay’s greatest strengths is the simplicity of the physical practices. In InterPlay, we call them “forms” because they are guidelines that shape the practice and give it structure. In practice, these forms are similar to what improvisers in the tradition of Second City, TheatreSports, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and other comedy improv groups call “games.” The forms offer a structure that allows freedom within limits. In InterPlay, the forms range from what can be accomplished with one hand or one breath to forms that require groups of people using their full bodies and voices in operatic storytelling. In comedy improv, the games often have rules like each player can only say three words at a time. From simple to complex and sometimes off into the bizarre, these rules provide a structure.
I rebel against structure all the time, but the truth is, I need it. And I never need it more than when many projects are demanding attention. But, it doesn’t have to be rigid or forced. Today, for instance is a writing day. I am only working on writing. I have several projects that require writing, so I may bounce back and forth among them or put in a few hours on each project or devote all day to one project. But, I am not working on website design, room scheduling, arranging insurance, or making phone calls. Yesterday was a day for my creativity coaching projects. Tomorrow I will focus on making Christmas gifts. It’s not a lot of structure, but it works for me. Within the day, I improvise exactly how the day will go, but within the container I have set for the day.
There is a resource that I keep meaning to investigate about form and schedule. Jeffrey Davis over at Tracking Wonder describes his new eHandbook, The Mind Rooms Guide as a method for shaping time. He asked me to review the book as part of its launch, but it arrived on my desk at a very bad time and I have done nothing more than glance at – sorry, Jeffrey. But, I know Jeffrey’s work on helping creatives from his blog and I am looking forward to digging into it eventually. If you have already read it, please let me know what you thought of it in the comments.
Holding it Together When Things Get Busy, Part II
Move Unnecessary Stuff Out of Your Body
We all get information constantly.
Unless we have a way of releasing it, we carry it around in our physical bodies. We truly carry the world on our shoulders if we aren’t careful. A physical practice for getting rid of the stuff you don’t need to carry is very useful. Teachers of young children who have embraced the song “Shake My Sillies” out as a tool for getting kids to focus in class know this. Getting the breath moving with a deep inhale followed by a sigh and shaking muscle tension out is a very simple form of Exformation. Repetitive physical activities that you can do without mental wrangling can all be exformational: washing dishes, house-cleaning, knitting, exercising, walking, running. It is a physical form of meditation – letting what you don’t need pass through you.
When we have lots of projects going on, knowing what we need can be challenging, so we tend to hold on to everything and then we burn out, suffering information overload. Using a physical practice to release, we can trust that our bodies know at some subconscious level what we can release.
One of my favourite release techniques is one I learned in acting classes. Hold your upper arms parallel to the floor. Raise your hands and clasp your hands in front of you. Take a deep breath. As you exhale, let out a big, open vowel sound while shaking your arms. The goal is to relax your jaw enough that your lower jaw shakes with your arms. It is hard. Most of us carry huge amounts of tension in our jaws. It is impossible to do this exercise without looking and sounding ridiculous, and if you do it right, your whole body vibrates and all your muscles relax.
Do you have an active practice that helps you release tension or let go of unnecessary concerns?
Holding it Together When Things Get Busy, Part I
When Things Get Busy
Have you ever found that all the projects you have on the back burner came to a boil at the same time?
It is exciting when projects move from potential to production. But, the transition can require some adjustments. When more than one project makes the switch, your routines may need more than a little tweaking. Changing habits is hard, and especially so with the pressure of imminent deadlines. How do you do manage the transition without tearing your hair out?
Everything in my life has been in overdrive in November except this blog. I have been working behind the scenes to set up several projects.
Coming in 2013, in addition to my writing and theatrical activities, I will be:
- Training as a writing circle facilitator and setting up a new circle
- Teaching InterPlay workshops at a new facility
- Setting up a new business as a creativity coach
All of this started coming together at once. And although it has been an adrenaline-filled rush, it has had me drawing on all of my tools for managing a multivalent life.
If you have been reading this blog for long, you know that my favourite life-management tools come from InterPlay, improv, and theatre.
Coming up over the next few posts, I will share some of the tools I have been relying on heavily over the last month. But first, a quick look at getting started.
Show Up and Start Anywhere
It doesn’t really matter where you start, but you must start. When there are too many things that need doing, just pick something and do it. Activity builds activity. And it doesn’t matter if you could have made a better choice. Getting started will often reveal what needs to be done better than any list-making preparation.
If you are feeling overwhelmed, pick one small task you know will move a project in the right direction. Now go and do it.
Notice the Good Stuff
I have a new post on working with Emotional Intensity over at An Intense Life. Although I never say so in the post, it draws heavily on an InterPlay technique. Like all InterPlay techniques, it seems simple but has profound effects.
Notice the Good Stuff and Choose More of It
Notice the Good Stuff. It sound so simple, but for many of us it requires a huge shift of focus. Notice the good stuff. Not the peeling wallpaper, the nasty thing someone said in passing, the cleaning that didn’t happen, the new wrinkle around your eyes. Not those.
Pay attention to the beauty of a dew drop on a leaf, the smile from a stranger, getting up from the sofa without the twinge in your back you have come to expect. Pay attention to the part of your writing that works, the warmth of a cosy sweater, the email from your spouse asking if they can pick you up something as they stop at the store after work, the relaxation that follows a deep exhalation.
In almost any moment, you can find something to smile about and something to frown about. Choosing to focus on the smile doesn’t make the frown go away, but it does make the frown easier to take.
Creatives are creative because we notice lack, lack of beauty, lack of meaning, lack of clarity, lack of external things that expresses our lived reality. Our creativity springs from an impulse to improve – even when we create playfully, we are making something from nothing, which means some part of us noticed the nothing.
That part of us will always be there: the critic, the worrywart, the internal editor.
But, we can choose to see also the beauty, the love, the joy, the peace. Even if it is only for a moment.
We need those moments.
Noticing the good stuff gives us the ground from which we can create more good stuff – more stuff to fill the void we cannot help but see.
What is the good stuff you see around you right now?
Me, I hear children at the nearby school laughing as they play at recess and the soft purr of the warm cat curled up next to me. I hear my breath as I exhale through my nose – still somewhat stuffy, but clearer than this morning when I had to breathe through my mouth due to the congestion caused by my fall cold.
It is a rough day in a rough week for me. I have too much to do and I am sick and saddened by bad news in my family. But, even in my illness and my emotional pain, when I look, I can see the good stuff too.
How about you? Can you notice any good things about this moment?
Giftedness, Creativity, and Storytelling – and Imposter Syndrome
It is the International Week of the Gifted 2012. Around the blogosphere, advocates for gifted adults and gifted children are writing about giftedness with a particular enthusiasm and energy. The World Council for Gifted and Talented Children is encouraging the use of International Week of the Gifted to pave the way for the International Year of Giftedness and Creativity 2013 with the theme “Stories and Story Sharing”.
Giftedness, creativity, and the power of sharing our stories are three of my passions. I feel compelled to do something, organize something, create something.
If I had my druthers, I would organize a series of workshops, offered to gifted children and their parents, using the storytelling tools of InterPlay to help them tell their own stories, hear each other’s stories, and share them through a public performance. I have the training to do this, but I am not sure I have the time, and I definitely worry about whether I have the gumption.
You see, I suffer from the great gifted woman’s disorder: Imposter Syndrome. Essentially, Imposter Syndrome involves constantly feeling like a fraud, like you are not as competent as people around you, and as they think you are. There is an accompanying fear of being “found out” and a lack of willingness to put oneself forth as a resource.
In my case, it manifests as a reluctance to set up workshops because I fear no one will come and that if they do come, they will feel like they have wasted their money. But, I know from past experience that I am a good teacher and a good director. When I lead InterPlay workshops, people enjoy them and many folks want to know how they can experience more.
Lisa Rivero’s article Who Do You Think You Are? Re-Thinking the Imposter Syndrome introduced me to the idea that the feelings of being an imposter may be a sign that one is heading in the right direction and that one should lean into the fear and work through it rather than letting it stop you. That idea resonates with me.
If you had asked me when I was 14, what work I wanted to do when I grew up, I would have said I wanted to run a theatre and associated theatre school. A few years later, I saw a performance by teenagers of monologues they had written about their own lives and was struck by the immense power of people telling their own stories in performance. I spent the next 15 years working in theatre, remembering the power of the autobiographical performances, yearning to be part of such things, and yet not doing any work in that area. Until I found InterPlay.
When I discovered InterPlay, I was teaching a class called Sacred Bodies, Sacred Play at Starr King School for the Ministry. I had developed a collection of tools for triggering spiritual experiences through physical play and creativity and was sharing them in the class I was teaching. The overlap between the forms I had discovered myself and was teaching in that class and the forms of InterPlay were uncanny.
But, I had not been formulating my system into a teachable tool for very long and Cynthia Winton-Henry and Phil Porter had been working on InterPlay for decades. InterPlay was in many ways simply further along the path than I was. More than that, InterPlay had developed the tools for combining the physical body, the spirit of play, and improvised performance into truth-telling performances sharing deep stories, thereby joining my play-based work with the power of performance autobiography that I had witnessed so many years before. It is no wonder that I started the InterPlay Teacher Training Program immediately after finishing my first class.
After completing the training, I didn’t dive right into teaching. For good reason. I was moving internationally while pregnant with triplets. I was otherwise occupied.
It is now time for me to start offering classes and workshops.
And, I feel the fear of the Imposter Syndrome surrounding me, telling me I am heading in an important direction, considering a meaningful path, and must take action.
I am not an Imposter. I am well trained for this work. But, sometimes, I have to remind myself of these facts.
- I have been leading rehearsals and teaching performance as a director for 25 years.
- I have been organizing rehearsals as a stage manager for longer.
- I have organized events with substantial budgets.
- I have produced theatrical productions and special performances for half-a-dozen theatre companies.
- My InterPlay training was with the founders of InterPlay, including performance classes.
- I have performed in several InterPlay performances as a dancer/storyteller.
- When I participate in InterPlay Leaders Events, I am recognized as a peer by leaders with all levels of experience.
- My understanding of the power of InterPlay as a storytelling tool has deepened through my writing about InterPlay.
I am hopeful that I will have time in 2013 to lead workshops for gifted children and their parents to share their stories. My family is going through some changes that will take some months to settle out, and until they do, I will not know what 2013 is going to look like.
But, I am committed to being a part of the world-wide community of people telling the stories of gifted people, sharing what our experience is. If the performance project looks too big, I will focus on telling more of my story through my writing.
Gifted people are identifiable because we are outside the norm. Sharing our stories helps us connect in a world where we too often feel isolated. I can be part of enriching that connection by sharing my own stories. One way or another, I will be creating work supporting the International Year of Giftedness and Creativity 2013 on the theme of Stories and Story-Sharing.
I hope you will join me in 2013 by either telling your own stories or finding other people’s stories to witness.
For a list of other posts related to International Week of the Gifted, click here.
Rest: Giving A Body A Break
For those of you who missed my regular post on Monday, I apologize. I have been doing something important since Saturday.
I have been resting.
After months of not only burning the candle at both ends, but also looking for extra wicks to burn that same candle more brightly, my body has been saying “enough, slow down,” for the last two weeks.
I haven’t been listening.
And, so, on Saturday, my body took control. Without plan or forethought on my part, I napped. In that “I lay down to read a book and woke up several hours later” way, I napped. And, I napped on and off for the next four days.
My ‘to do’ list is too long, my commitments are more than my time available. Something has to give.
These naps have been my wake-up call.
If I won’t take care of my body, my body will take care of me.
The Things We Are Afraid to Write About
The last of a series on truth-telling in life and art. See the first post, Dare to Be Yourself, here.
Did you notice how my writing got analytical and vague last week?
For the past year, I have been easing my way toward dealing with the most defining moment of my life – the nadir from which the rest of my life has been an ascension. I thought I was ready, but I was wrong. I pushed and my chief defense mechanism, my intellect, jumped into the fray.
I believe that as I learn to retell my story with myself as the protagonist, as I turn my knowledge of storytelling on myself and claim the moment I chose to walk out of darkness towards my own power, I am changing my life. But, I also believe that this is a deep-body process, not one I can think my way through. As soon as I jump to analyzing emotional events intellectually, I know that I am reacting from fear and it is time for me to turn back to play.
I came up against my hard edges last week and hit a wall. I’m closer to my deepest material than I have ever been, but I need to be gentler with myself. Time for me to go back to some sneaky deep play.
Which is why I decided that I will leave my improvised poems about play up at A More Playful Life. Leaving them up is scary, but it is a fear I am willing to face. And, by approaching the poetry InterPlayfully, I connect to a deeply supportive community.
I hope you’ll drop by and check them out.
Sneaky-Deep: Easing Into Truth
Part of a series on truth-telling in life and art. See the first post, Dare to Be Yourself, here.
My experience of InterPlay went a little like this:
- InterPlay is fun, a little weird, maybe, but definitely fun.
- InterPlay is fun.
- InterPlay is fun.
- Oh, shit. I didn’t mean to talk about that. InterPlay is scary.
- Oh, boy, I really needed to talk about that. InterPlay changed my life.
- InterPlay is fun.
See how the deep work slipped in there surrounded by a lot of fun. Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry, the founders of InterPlay, talk of the practice of InterPlay as sneaky-deep. What they have developed is a body-wisdom system that eases people into connecting with their whole selves, including the parts of themselves that they shove back into the recesses of their psyches. It is a very gentle practice, and because it is so gentle, it can seduce people into touching deep material. It is not therapy, but it can be very therapeutic. And, because of the way it is taught and led, workshop participants can choose how deeply they want to play.
But, if you want to play deeply, the opportunity is always there.
My entire life has been a journey to understand myself. When I found InterPlay, I immediately started using it to consciously explore myself and the nature of my experience as a physical being. I have conditioned myself to play deeply.
Here’s a little story.
Once upon a time, my husband and I decided we would move our family to a foreign country, away from all our friends and family. We would give up on giving our only son a sibling and start a new life for the three of us without regrets. My husband got a job in the new land. We sold our house and made arrangements to rent a temporary place in the new country while we looked for a new house. We had not only a dream, but a plan and a budget. My husband started the new job from afar and we sold our house.
And then, before we moved, but after we were committed, plans changed. I was pregnant. Ok, that had been part of the old plan. We could adjust. With twins. Okay, this is tough, but we’ll get through. Oops, sorry we missed a baby, that would be triplets.
If you imagine that I flipped out at this point, you would be wrong. I went into shock.
6 months later, I was living in a foreign country and had three babies in the hospital and a traumatized older child at home. Still in shock.
6 months later, I was still in shock.
But, somewhere in there I had enough sense to know that I needed to pull myself into my new reality. So, I took advantage of the fact that I had completely failed to get any of the babies to breastfeed and left them with my husband, my mother, and the nanny for a weekend of InterPlay.
I swore going into the weekend that I was sick of my whole life being about the babies and I wasn’t going to bring them up while I was gone. Which shows how deeply detached from myself I was.
The first thing we did was completely non-verbal. I danced, letting my body move without words or thought according to my impulses. I felt great.
The second thing was a little exercise called babbling. People pair off and take turns talking for 30 seconds or so about or in response to a word provided by the leader. In one of the rounds of babbling with my first partner, we were asked to talk about our kitchens. Now, having done the leadership training, I know that this is a sneaky-deep topic. It sounds innocuous, but it gets to the heart of a lot of people’s lives.
In my case, my kitchen was a literal representation of everything that was wrong with my life. I hated that kitchen until we moved out of that house last month. We had left a gourmet kitchen and moved into a house that although otherwise well suited to infant triplets had a crappy kitchen. Until the trio gave up bottles, the counter-space was entirely covered with bottles drying and slow cookers with warm water ready to heat bottles. The table was displaced from any sensible place because there needed to be room for three high chairs, and the entire space was heavily gated in preparation for triplets on the move.
When I was asked to describe my kitchen, I could have described the kitchen underneath all the baby stuff, but the truth was I had never really talked about the baby stuff with any depth and my body knew it needed to let some of those stories out. So, I spoke about the bottles. Not about the rest of it, I only had 30 seconds after all. And, having that limited framework made it okay to talk about. I wasn’t going to be overwhelmed by everything that had happened over the previous year because there wasn’t time to bring it up. But, 30 seconds of cracking open the door of my experience and seeing what was in there was safe.
Eventually, the focus of my weekend became about me embracing my new life. I had already been doing everything I needed to do to make sure the children were cared for, but InterPlay helped me start caring for myself as well.
Sneaky-deep stuff.
I just went to have fun. I came back more whole.
InterPlay is like that.
Improv v. First Draft
For the A to Z Blogging challenge over at A More Playful Life, I have a plan and a decision to make.
Within two days of signing up for the challenge, I had titles for all 26 posts: all related to InterPlay practices and principles or concepts that I connected to through InterPlay. But, I ended up moving instead of writing the actual posts, so now I have a long list of titles and a head full of ideas.
I don’t have time to write thoughtful posts for all 26 days. My novel is too important.
On the other hand, I have been wanting to articulate InterPlay in my own words for years. I have started doing that on this blog and in other places, but I still feel there is a lot to do.
So, I have decided to write poetry about the topics: short pieces of the “A is for Affirm, B is for Body Wisdom…” variety in the style of an ABC primer.
In order to get them up rapidly, and in the spirit of InterPlay, my thought is to write them improvisationally and not revise.
But, the idea of having written words in a public forum that I have not revised freaks me out a bit. One of the beauties of improvised spoken words is that they disappear on speaking.
So, I am debating whether I should let the improvised texts sit out on the website unrevised or plan on revising them.
What do you think?
Kate Arms-Roberts 