Episode summary: Today’s topic is the imagination: what is the imagination, how do you activate it, why is imaginary play so important. Kids have the best imaginations because we haven’t, as a world, killed their minds yet with all our imposed ways of thinking, being, and living in this world. So how can we learn from kids, theatre, and from the way we use our own imagination every day to live a richer more exciting and beautiful life? How best can we stop living mediocre, boring lives absolutely free today?
We’ll kick off our show with The Raise a Glass Series, get on to our questions to explore, and end with A Short Story Before We Go. MFA is the sometimes-musical, dramedy, in 3 acts, 1 intermission, the length of a sitcom designed to give mama’s (and any caregiver) a break in the day to breathe and reset along with a much-needed audio hug.
Quote: “Learn to stimulate the imagination. The imagination is what animates the instrument, keeps it in tune. It’s the ignition key. Without it, nothing else works.” ~ Stella Adler, The Art of Acting
Act I: The Raise a Glass Series
Act II: Main Questions
Intermission: Angelica Interlude
Why don’t you like using the potty?
Act III: A Short Story Before We Go
The Scene That Never Ends
Episode transcript: available at https://www.mfaparentingedition.com/045
Freebie: Imaginative Play and Theatre Games for the Family [here]
Sources that helped inspire this episode:
Connect with Me:
Best way - [email protected]
IG - @mfaparentingedition
Support the Show: buy me a drink to say “hey, keep up the good work”, just go to www.buymeacoffee.com/mfaparenting
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Mom: Angelica, can you say hello?
Angelica: Hello! Hello?
Mom: How are you today?
Angelica: I doing well…how are you?
Mom: Well, I’m doing well also. (she laughs)
Welcome to MFA the parenting edition. I'm Taisha Cameron a huge fan of the Australian cartoon, Bluey. I’m also, and more relevant to the show, a mom to a feisty, fiery, fierce, flailing, finicky little kid, and a trained actor. These lessons from the theater for raising ourselves and our kids came about after the life altering revelation I made, that my MFA in acting trained me for life as a mommy, better than life as a full-time actor. We'll explore some challenging questions, I'll share some stories, and we'll kick things off with the Raise a Glass series. From the Method to mommy meltdowns and all the moments in between, welcome to MFA.
Quote: “Learn to stimulate the imagination. The imagination is what animates the instrument, keeps it in tune. It’s the ignition key. Without it, nothing else works.” ~ from Stella Adler’s book, The Art of Acting
Episode 45 – Just My Imagination
Hello hello lovely and welcome back to MFA: The Parenting Edition. Or welcome for the first time if you’re just joining us.
Today’s episode is about our imagination – it was just my imagination, once again, running away with me. In the first episode this season I mentioned the actor’s toolbox, which were the tools I would introduce when teaching kids theatre – which I’m actually doing again. Yeah, very excited to be working with kiddies and playing theatre games. I’ve been reading Viola Spolin’s, Improvisation for the Theater book and just loving it and wondering why I never read it like decades ago. But I’m glad to have it now and be immersing myself in her genius. But yes, getting back to the actor’s toolbox. Today is the final tool in that set and it’s our imagination. But as always, before we jump into that let’s kick things off with the Raise a Glass series. You don’t need to raise an actual glass…unless you got one in your hand already and if you do I say, HOLLA, let’s do this!
The Raise a Glass Series
The Raise a Glass Series is a space for reflection and gratitude centered around the topic of the day and inspired by lyrics from Hamilton the Musical.
“I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory”
A memory is something that has happened to us before. A memory is a picture in our mind, or a smell, a taste, something that sparks our senses from the past. To imagine, or to have imagined, our death, a future event so many times, means our imagination is constantly in motion trying to process the fear of the future. And yet, there’s a part of us that needs to process future events even if the likelihood of the things happening, and that we’re picture, may be so minuscule because it’s a way of us dealing with our own mortality. We are mortal; our life can stop at any moment, and it will stop at any moment. We have no idea how much time we have left. No matter how many times Alexander Hamilton might have been in a position where death seemed like it was about to stare him in the face or was staring him in the face and he was lucky to get away, it drove him the time contemplating his own mortality. To contemplate time and how he was using the time that he had here. The memories, the images that he had created in his head that stayed with him reminded him that whether or not you believe in an afterlife, in coming back again and living in another body, or it’s a one and done deal and when you die you go to the ground you decompose and that’s it, the time you have now is the time that is precious the time that we really need to honor and make the most of to live the richest, fullest experience of this life that we can. And that takes a lot of presence.
Let’s raise a glass to our active imaginations preparing us for the future, honoring the past, and allowing us to richly experience the life in front of us at this present moment, right now, today.
Question: What is the imagination? How is it activated and why do we use it? Why is imaginary play so important? How does an actor engage their imagination? What are imaginative games to play as a family? If I knew it could be 100% achievable what would my ideal family life of my wildest imagination look like?
And we’re back with Dictionary Definitions on wMFA public radio where you tune in for your daily dose of definitions on the words you think you know…until you have to define them.
Today’s word is imagination. Our favorite dictionary, the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, defines imagination as:
“Imagination creates things that can be or can happen, whereas fantasy invents things that are not in existence, which never have been or will be. And yet, who knows, perhaps they will come to be.” ~ from Constantin Stanislavski’s, An Actor Prepares
“The imagination allows us to live in a larger, more beautiful, more exciting world.” ~ from Stella Adler’s book, The Art of Acting
One other definition I came across in researching this topic was, “the ability to see things as if they could be otherwise.” This was attributed to John Dewey, but it’s not the primary source so I’ll leave the article linked in the show notes and you can investigate further. But I love all of these definitions. Forming, creating, seeing things differently. Painting pictures in your mind; it's creative thinking. It's also the necessary skills that we need in order to survive.
As a human, every day in our life we use our imagination. This is not just something that’s specific for artists or whoever has been labeled as a creative person or creative people. Whenever we are thinking about the future we’re imagining it, because we have no idea what it's going to happen, we start forming, creating, seeing pictures in our mind. And these pictures are based on things that we are longing for, things that we are actively working towards, things that we fear, things that we are trying to manage better.
And also, because I can’t possibly be the only one who’s done this, so let’s all be honest, how many times have you imagined a conversation with a person after we've had an argument with them, about all the things that you would have said or wished you would’ve said? That is an imaginary thing happening in our head based on a past event. That is your imagination taking a situation that is not settled for us and playing out the rest of it so we can find some sort of peace with it, because to hold onto all the emotional residue that's still sitting on us will continue to eat at our core and just have that poison fester. Or maybe you’ve had the experience of a conversation you’d love to have again with this person playing through your mind, and the things you would have liked to have said that might better prepare you for the next time you see them and how differently you want to handle your interaction with them. So, our imagination is helping us to prepare, it's helping us to manage, it's helping us to navigate the world. It’s helping us emotionally connect to harsh realities and our wildest dreams.
The Magic IF, the bringer of Life
Stella Adler hated the method. Haaaated it! She despised what it did to American theatre. I was rereading the section on Developing the Imagination from her book The Art of Acting and she really lays into Strasberg. If you’ve listened to the show, like the beginning episodes, I created a method series, they’re episodes 5-11. And they look at exercises from the method training and the lessons you can take from them into your parenting life plus some ways you can transfer them into games for you and the family. Now while I’m a student of the method I believe it is not the only way into a character and felt so inspired by reading Stella Adler’s words. There are a kabillion ways to prepare for a role and prepare for and live your life fully. And so much can be gained from allowing your imagination to take the reins. Here’s what she says. Had me cracking my shit up:
“You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences now. I want you to be able to see and share what you see with an audience, not just get wrapped up in yourself. Strasberg is dead. The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings. The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors. A great disservice was done to American actors when they were persuaded that they had to experience themselves on the stage instead of experiencing the play.”
She is all about the imagination. Life is rich, full of images, sounds, experiences, and sensations that will ignite the imagination.
When I was in grad school, we practiced activating our senses. It's one of the best ways that we can really grab information from the world around us to create pictures in our mind, in our imagination, and to feel sensations those images will bring up for us in our body. I remember there was an actor I was working with, and I can't remember what class this was in or if it was in a rehearsal, it doesn't even matter. We were creating sensations of like, pain and other things, but I remember the pain. I was on the floor, and they were standing over me and they said and, "now you're jabbed in the stomach with a spear." And what that did to my body, the emotions and the feelings that came, the scream that came or tried to come out; what that image evoked in your body was all from my imagination. And that is not happening right now. That is a memory from before that I’m pulling and I can play with in my head of, ooh I responded that way but what if I responded this way, what if I did this choice instead? What would that mean for my character?
Whenever we go down the road of "what if" playing the what if game, and all those images come to mind, you’re using our imagination. Let's say we're playing this game in a joyful way: what if this happened, and then this other amazing thing happened after that, which then led to this other fantastically amazing thing. We feel a lightness, right? We feel that joy happen in our body when we get clear about what image we're seeing because we can then feel the air around us, we can see in detail the people in front of us, what they're wearing. We can sometimes even get the sense of smell of the room we're in or the person that we're standing next to. None of that is happening at the moment because we're in a space of "what if."
We can also play the "what if" game on the other side, going down the road of fear and worry and anxiety. What if this happens and then that leads to this terrible thing and then obviously this horrific thing is going to happen next, and then we’re all going to die! And we start almost building the tension in our body and closing in on ourselves and removing ourselves from the space that we're in because our mind has created a cage of fear and stress within our body. That feeling of, "I can't even handle this right now. What if all of this happens and what if it’s just too overwhelming?!" But our mind has gone down that road. Nothing in our present circumstances is experiencing any of those things that we've created and formulated in our head.
As a parent, I find that it's very easy to one go down the rabbit hole of terrible imaginary thinking, especially when I consider how precious my daughter is to me and how much I want to protect her. My imagination can really easily go to all the horrible things that could happen that could take her away from me, that could take her life away, that could severely damage our relationship, that could cause excruciating pain – I mean, the list goes on! And I have to remember to balance that out with all the times I swing to the other side of the pendulum and begin imagining all the possibilities for her life. And what I would love for her to experience and see, and what I want to be able to help her in and what I want her to be able to accomplish in her life. And remember that all of those imaginings, all those images, have to do with what I am creating for her life, and it might not have anything to do with what she wants to create for her own life.
Asking a million questions is the name of the game. Because when you ask a question it makes you imagine. It makes you create; it is searching to be actively answered. Our kids ask questions all day long. Am I right? About everything! Why is this happening and why is that happening? Why is this there and why is that there? Why can’t I do this, why am I allowed to do that? Why are they not talking to me – it’s always a why and a how and a when and a where! They are actively engaged in curiously, physically, creatively, and imaginatively experiencing their world. Their questions usually lead them to play. Kids need space for lots of imaginative play in their life, every day.
And we’ll talk more about that after this.
Angelica Interlude
The Power of Play
The other thing that comes to mind when I think of imagination is play. This podcast is lessons from the theater for raising ourselves and our kids. So, when I think about the lessons from the theater that I've gotten about imagination, I think of play, I think of ways to engage with other people through games, through different ways of playfulness.
I play imagination games with my daughter every day, all day long. From the minute she wakes up in the morning she's like, "Alright mom, I'm Isabelle your Elena and we’re going to school." Six something in the morning and she's already hit me with your this character I'm this character and they're going to school, boom, let's go.
Okay, so, that’s a lot. But I’ve got two choices: I can say yes and to that, or I can say, hey, I'm totally down to play after we have breakfast because right now mommy has zero energy so let's table this until like 20 minutes from now and let's go get some food. But from the moment she wakes up, she is in play mode. And why? What is that about? What is that? What does our imagination do for us?
It teaches us about the world. It teaches us how to connect with other people. It is our practice for life. It's our rehearsal time.
And so, from an acting point, it's helping figure out how this character is going to survive and live and thrive within their world as I play this game with other actors. This game being the theatre; we're going to tell a story to people about these characters lives because it's going to hopefully get us to a place where we can all feel and learn from this story. Feel something, learn something, be engaged in a community that is trying to inspire others to live better and have more empathy for those around us and those we don't know. If I'm playing this game of theatre with other actors or playing any game with people, it's done from a sense of play.
I really enjoy learning from psychologist Peter Gray, I've read different articles of his and I have read his book, Free to Learn, which I love. And I read a lot by other educators and people who are connected with the Alliance of self-directed education, like Akilah S. Richards - I'm going to put a link to her podcast and book in the show notes because she is a force dispensing wisdom worth noting. So…look at that. I am drawn to a lot of what they have to say about the way we learn and play, because there is a difference between the play that we do with kids when it is dictated by us as adults, than the play that kids do together when they are creating and making their own rules and learning how to navigate with the other children they're playing with. That's how they're learning about life. We impose a lot on kids that's completely unnecessary for their social interactions with other kids and how we impose play on them is something that can limit and shut down their imaginations more than ignite them.
And us creating games for them to play or activities, adult led activities and saying, "oh, it's playtime, you're going to go play soccer now, you're going to go play basketball now." You know when they're playing soccer? Do you know when they're playing basketball? When they got their friends together no adults involved and they're just out there kicking the ball around or dribbling and shooting it in the hoop. Because they're making up if they want to change whatever professional rules are to the game, they'll change them and they're okay with it because that's the rule for that game.
They'll know when it is that they need to stop and address a situation or when they need to just like keep going and plow through. They know when they want to just start messing around or when they want to take things more seriously. They're figuring that out for themselves. And each individual child is learning how to assert themselves and speak up, how to follow the rules, how to resolve conflict, how to be inclusive, how to compromise, how to negotiate, how to use their imagination. So when we the adults are saying, oh, there's this activity or this game that we want to play with you, but it's a game that we've come up with and we've thought of and we’ve introduced and we're saying what the rules are and we're telling them they have to follow the rules in this particular way, that's not play for a kid. That's just more of them being told what to do, how to do it, where to go, and when to stop by an adult. There life is full of that already. There isn't as much room there for their own imagination because we've limited when they can use their imagination in this game. Because it only falls within the small space that says, as long as you use your imagination within the context of this that's been defined by me and these rules from the game that I am giving you, that is the window that you can use your imagination and be as creative as possible, you’re welcome. And I get it, in life those are legit parameters and kids do need them. But do they need them all the time in all the play from all adult-led activities? I'm actually teaching theater again, right now, and what I'm realizing the more I'm researching different games that I want to introduce to the kids and want to play with them is how much I'm directing or conducting the kids play. And I feel like I’m in like two minds about it.
So, like I said earlier, I'm going through Viola Spolin's book, Improvisation for the Theater which is just brilliant. She was just brilliant. And I had my first-class last Friday and towards the end I remember one of the kids kind of being done with it and asking when they were going to get to go play. Internally, part of my heart sank into the 'oh my goodness I'm the worst teacher and no one had fun in my class' kind of space, ya know? Part of me got defensive and in my head started being like, we did play dude you just didn't like the game, that seems like a personal problem. Now, granted it’s been a few years since I had taught a theater class so I was probably rusty and it probably did suck a bit, if we’re being honest. But I was also struck with another thought which came from all the new and recent thinking and deschooling I've been doing about play. I hadn't provided much of a say in our activities so of course they weren't going to think of it as play, it probably just came off more like a class. And that makes sense because when I taught before it was with lesson plans and a schooling mindset. So I was probably half trying for that again and half wanting to be more flexible and it probably just came off as indecisive and not so much fun for the kids. So how do I, how do we, honor a child’s space to play and introduce them to different types of play at the same time?
In grad school I took a Chekhov class, not Anton Chekhov the playwright (though we did study his works a lot) but Michael Chekhov whose work and acting training and technique is all based in physical gesture. All I remember from class even to this day were the experiences I had in that studio. And how our teacher never really "taught" us but provided the space for us to experiment, explore, and experience. His favorite phrases were, "shall we take a walk" or "shall we try it" and before you knew it you were on your feet not knowing exactly what you'd be exploring but knew you were choosing to take part in an exciting and exhilarating trip into your imagination. As an artist, teacher, teaching artist, whatever name you want to put to it, I'm introducing, I'm presenting, suggesting, and questioning, enticing, facilitating, and stimulating imaginations with new tools of play for exploration.
Bringing in more 'what if' questions to the games we play heightens the level they need to engage their imagination to make the game larger than life. Even the suggestion of 'shall we try' brings a choice to the child. Sure, you've opened the door to be rejected but it also opens a door into what the kids would prefer and makes them a more active participant in the game, in their own play, which is the whole point in the first place. There should be a letting go in the expectations of what a child is supposed to take away from it, is what I'm learning because then that gives them the freedom to use their imagination.
So lovelies, I’ll ask you again…
I fall into the trap a lot of living a mediocre life. When that happens it’s because I have, for whatever reason, not activated my human superpower. We think we don’t have any, but we do. It may not look like any of the powers from a Marvel superhero or from the family Madrigal in Encanto, but we have one special one. And if you’ve been paying attention this episode you can probably guess what it is. It’s our…you’ve got it…imagination. When I see the mundane, mediocre, reality of life I’ve forgotten to live through my imagination. It’s choosing to view the world as larger, more exciting, and more beautiful than it appears. Is that living in a dream? Hmm, don’t we all want to make our dreams a reality? What if we could spend our day making things more spectacular than they are just for fun?
What if I imagined the dress I’m wearing was stolen from a treasure box that belonged to a princess from another century? How would I go about my day wearing it if it was this precious secret I was adorned in, hmm?
What if each day you and your family pretended to be royalty and interacted with each other for the day as if you were high nobility? What would that look like? What would your home look like? How would you dress? What types of activities would you engage in?
Each day we can choose to take a mediocre moment of our mundane life and make it exciting for no other reason than it would fill out heart with joy and make our day a bit more interesting for no one else but us. Or maybe it would make things more interesting for other people too.
These are a tiny inkling of the types of ways we could add more space for imaginative play in our days, lives, and the lives of those around us. What if we added that bit of theatrical play to our lives, wouldn’t it make it that much richer and more exciting absolutely for free?
A Short Story Before We Go
Is there such thing as too much imaginary play?
We were now on hour 3 of some sort of long form imaginary game in which I was now playing 8 characters from at least 4 different shows and movies that we have on regular rotation.
“And you have to say, “Isabel let’s go to Isabella’s house to get ice cream.””
“Okay. Who am I again?” I asked.
‘’You’re Elena.”
“Okay, yes, right. And I have to tell you we need to go to Isabella’s house to get ice cream?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. Alright. Isabel, it’s time to go to Isabella’s house for an ice cream party!”
“Oh yay Elena! Let’s go, let’s go! Come on hurry,” she shouted. “Now you be Llama Llama and Mama Llama.”
“Oh, they’re joining the party too?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, and so you’re going to be Isabella, right?”
“No. You,” she stated without skipping a beat.
“Well, I’m already being Elena, Fancy Nancy, Mirabel, Bree, and now Llama Llama and Mama Llama. And if you’re just being Elena’s sister you can also be Mirabel’s sister.”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” she said completely exasperated by my suggestion. “I’m Isabel. I can’t be anyone else.”
“Sure you can, I’m being at least 5 or 6 right now you can be one more.”
“No. You!”
This was going to stale mate our game. I was adamant after three hours of this on again off again game she could step in and pick up another role. But the more I thought about it, she was already playing multiple roles. She had created the game, was casting on the fly, doling out lines, and telling us where to stand, all the time upping the dramatic tension through conflict. She was the creator, playwright, director, costume designer, prop master, and actor. In her mind all these characters from the stories she’s seen in either tv shows, movies, or books could all play together. There was a story brewing in her head. I could either continue to challenge it or see it out to the end.
“Alright, fine. I’ll be Isabella. But before we go on, I need you to figure out how this scene is going to end. What’s going to happen for the game to finish?” This was my last attempt at negotiation with a four-year-old dictating director.
“The game ends when I go to sleep,” she counters.
“Nice try. That’s like 6 hours from now. How is this game wrapping up like soon?”
“Okay fine,” she gave in. “The game ends when Isabella and Elena and Isabel and everyone goes to Llama Llama’s for a sleepover.”
“Alright, let’s do this.” And the theatrical cacophony of cartoon characters commenced until everyone was tucked in nice and cozy for a joyous sleepover hosted by the Llama family.
Scene.
That’s all for today guys and dolls. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode about our imagination. Ah, that sounded weird.
I’ve created a cute little pdf of games the family can play together to get everyone’s imagination flowing that you can find the link for in the show notes. I’ve taken exercises that I’ve mentioned in previous episodes along with some other fun one’s I pulled from books, theatre games I’ve played, or even tv shows like one of my favorites, Bluey. It’s, in my opinion, one of the BEST cartoons out there for kids. Angelica wants to try out each game they play either while she’s watching it or immediately after the episode are done, and they’re all like 7 minutes long.
This list is just to get your own imagination going. The most important part of play is to make sure everyone is fully invested in playing and all players have a say in how the game is shaped.
Next episode we’ll look at, tun-tun-tuunnn, discipline. The question all parents ask, how best do I discipline my child? Well, let’s see what the theatre can show us about that sticky topic.
One last thing before we go – here’s my audio hug to you so you can breathe, reset, and kick some ass today (but don’t literally kick anyone’s ass, we talked about this, that’s called assault):
here’s my special hug for you, to paint your spirit a brighter hue, so catch this hug and hold it tight, go walk in grace and shine your light
Thank you so much and I’ll see you on the other side.
Mom: Angelica, can you say good-bye?
Angelica: Good-bye, good-bye.
Mom: Thank you.
Angelica: Thank you.
We’ll kick off our show with The Raise a Glass Series, get on to our questions to explore, and end with A Short Story Before We Go. MFA is the sometimes-musical, dramedy, in 3 acts, 1 intermission, the length of a sitcom designed to give mama’s (and any caregiver) a break in the day to breathe and reset along with a much-needed audio hug.
Quote: “Learn to stimulate the imagination. The imagination is what animates the instrument, keeps it in tune. It’s the ignition key. Without it, nothing else works.” ~ Stella Adler, The Art of Acting
Act I: The Raise a Glass Series
- The Raise a Glass Series is a space for reflection and gratitude centered around the topic of the day and inspired by lyrics from Hamilton the Musical.
Act II: Main Questions
- What is the imagination? How is it activated and why do we use it?
- Why is imaginary play so important?
- How does an actor engage their imagination?
- What are imaginative games to play as a family?
- If I knew it could be 100% achievable what would my ideal family life of my wildest imagination look like?
Intermission: Angelica Interlude
Why don’t you like using the potty?
Act III: A Short Story Before We Go
The Scene That Never Ends
Episode transcript: available at https://www.mfaparentingedition.com/045
Freebie: Imaginative Play and Theatre Games for the Family [here]
Sources that helped inspire this episode:
- Imagination Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
- What Imagination Is | Psychology Today
- Imagination is an Actor’s Best Friend (backstage.com)
- Talking Play and Imagination with Peter Gray - Resilience
- The Evolutionary Importance of Self-Directed Play (thegeniusofplay.org)
- Lin-Manuel Miranda - The World was Wide Enough Lyrics | Lyrics.com
- Play Games, Watch Videos Online & More! - Bluey Official Website
- Improvisation for the Theater a book by Viola Spolin (bookshop.org)
- Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life a book by Peter Gray (bookshop.org)
- Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work a book by Akilah S. Richards and Bayo Akomolafe (bookshop.org)
- Podcast - Raising Free People™ Network
- The Temptations - Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) (Lyric Video) - YouTube
- Stella Adler: The Art of Acting a book by Howard Kissel (bookshop.org)
- An Actor Prepares a book by Constantin Stanislavski and Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (bookshop.org)
- How We Don't Talk About Bruno Works & Why It's Amazing - YouTube [a video to nerd out on, had to include it, awesome]
- Play Games, Watch Videos Online & More! - Bluey Official Website
Connect with Me:
Best way - [email protected]
IG - @mfaparentingedition
Support the Show: buy me a drink to say “hey, keep up the good work”, just go to www.buymeacoffee.com/mfaparenting
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Mom: Angelica, can you say hello?
Angelica: Hello! Hello?
Mom: How are you today?
Angelica: I doing well…how are you?
Mom: Well, I’m doing well also. (she laughs)
Welcome to MFA the parenting edition. I'm Taisha Cameron a huge fan of the Australian cartoon, Bluey. I’m also, and more relevant to the show, a mom to a feisty, fiery, fierce, flailing, finicky little kid, and a trained actor. These lessons from the theater for raising ourselves and our kids came about after the life altering revelation I made, that my MFA in acting trained me for life as a mommy, better than life as a full-time actor. We'll explore some challenging questions, I'll share some stories, and we'll kick things off with the Raise a Glass series. From the Method to mommy meltdowns and all the moments in between, welcome to MFA.
Quote: “Learn to stimulate the imagination. The imagination is what animates the instrument, keeps it in tune. It’s the ignition key. Without it, nothing else works.” ~ from Stella Adler’s book, The Art of Acting
Episode 45 – Just My Imagination
Hello hello lovely and welcome back to MFA: The Parenting Edition. Or welcome for the first time if you’re just joining us.
Today’s episode is about our imagination – it was just my imagination, once again, running away with me. In the first episode this season I mentioned the actor’s toolbox, which were the tools I would introduce when teaching kids theatre – which I’m actually doing again. Yeah, very excited to be working with kiddies and playing theatre games. I’ve been reading Viola Spolin’s, Improvisation for the Theater book and just loving it and wondering why I never read it like decades ago. But I’m glad to have it now and be immersing myself in her genius. But yes, getting back to the actor’s toolbox. Today is the final tool in that set and it’s our imagination. But as always, before we jump into that let’s kick things off with the Raise a Glass series. You don’t need to raise an actual glass…unless you got one in your hand already and if you do I say, HOLLA, let’s do this!
The Raise a Glass Series
The Raise a Glass Series is a space for reflection and gratitude centered around the topic of the day and inspired by lyrics from Hamilton the Musical.
“I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory”
A memory is something that has happened to us before. A memory is a picture in our mind, or a smell, a taste, something that sparks our senses from the past. To imagine, or to have imagined, our death, a future event so many times, means our imagination is constantly in motion trying to process the fear of the future. And yet, there’s a part of us that needs to process future events even if the likelihood of the things happening, and that we’re picture, may be so minuscule because it’s a way of us dealing with our own mortality. We are mortal; our life can stop at any moment, and it will stop at any moment. We have no idea how much time we have left. No matter how many times Alexander Hamilton might have been in a position where death seemed like it was about to stare him in the face or was staring him in the face and he was lucky to get away, it drove him the time contemplating his own mortality. To contemplate time and how he was using the time that he had here. The memories, the images that he had created in his head that stayed with him reminded him that whether or not you believe in an afterlife, in coming back again and living in another body, or it’s a one and done deal and when you die you go to the ground you decompose and that’s it, the time you have now is the time that is precious the time that we really need to honor and make the most of to live the richest, fullest experience of this life that we can. And that takes a lot of presence.
Let’s raise a glass to our active imaginations preparing us for the future, honoring the past, and allowing us to richly experience the life in front of us at this present moment, right now, today.
Question: What is the imagination? How is it activated and why do we use it? Why is imaginary play so important? How does an actor engage their imagination? What are imaginative games to play as a family? If I knew it could be 100% achievable what would my ideal family life of my wildest imagination look like?
And we’re back with Dictionary Definitions on wMFA public radio where you tune in for your daily dose of definitions on the words you think you know…until you have to define them.
Today’s word is imagination. Our favorite dictionary, the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, defines imagination as:
- the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality
- creative ability, ability to confront and deal with a problem
- the thinking or active mind, a creation of the mind, fanciful or empty assumption
“Imagination creates things that can be or can happen, whereas fantasy invents things that are not in existence, which never have been or will be. And yet, who knows, perhaps they will come to be.” ~ from Constantin Stanislavski’s, An Actor Prepares
“The imagination allows us to live in a larger, more beautiful, more exciting world.” ~ from Stella Adler’s book, The Art of Acting
One other definition I came across in researching this topic was, “the ability to see things as if they could be otherwise.” This was attributed to John Dewey, but it’s not the primary source so I’ll leave the article linked in the show notes and you can investigate further. But I love all of these definitions. Forming, creating, seeing things differently. Painting pictures in your mind; it's creative thinking. It's also the necessary skills that we need in order to survive.
As a human, every day in our life we use our imagination. This is not just something that’s specific for artists or whoever has been labeled as a creative person or creative people. Whenever we are thinking about the future we’re imagining it, because we have no idea what it's going to happen, we start forming, creating, seeing pictures in our mind. And these pictures are based on things that we are longing for, things that we are actively working towards, things that we fear, things that we are trying to manage better.
And also, because I can’t possibly be the only one who’s done this, so let’s all be honest, how many times have you imagined a conversation with a person after we've had an argument with them, about all the things that you would have said or wished you would’ve said? That is an imaginary thing happening in our head based on a past event. That is your imagination taking a situation that is not settled for us and playing out the rest of it so we can find some sort of peace with it, because to hold onto all the emotional residue that's still sitting on us will continue to eat at our core and just have that poison fester. Or maybe you’ve had the experience of a conversation you’d love to have again with this person playing through your mind, and the things you would have liked to have said that might better prepare you for the next time you see them and how differently you want to handle your interaction with them. So, our imagination is helping us to prepare, it's helping us to manage, it's helping us to navigate the world. It’s helping us emotionally connect to harsh realities and our wildest dreams.
The Magic IF, the bringer of Life
Stella Adler hated the method. Haaaated it! She despised what it did to American theatre. I was rereading the section on Developing the Imagination from her book The Art of Acting and she really lays into Strasberg. If you’ve listened to the show, like the beginning episodes, I created a method series, they’re episodes 5-11. And they look at exercises from the method training and the lessons you can take from them into your parenting life plus some ways you can transfer them into games for you and the family. Now while I’m a student of the method I believe it is not the only way into a character and felt so inspired by reading Stella Adler’s words. There are a kabillion ways to prepare for a role and prepare for and live your life fully. And so much can be gained from allowing your imagination to take the reins. Here’s what she says. Had me cracking my shit up:
“You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences now. I want you to be able to see and share what you see with an audience, not just get wrapped up in yourself. Strasberg is dead. The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings. The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors. A great disservice was done to American actors when they were persuaded that they had to experience themselves on the stage instead of experiencing the play.”
She is all about the imagination. Life is rich, full of images, sounds, experiences, and sensations that will ignite the imagination.
When I was in grad school, we practiced activating our senses. It's one of the best ways that we can really grab information from the world around us to create pictures in our mind, in our imagination, and to feel sensations those images will bring up for us in our body. I remember there was an actor I was working with, and I can't remember what class this was in or if it was in a rehearsal, it doesn't even matter. We were creating sensations of like, pain and other things, but I remember the pain. I was on the floor, and they were standing over me and they said and, "now you're jabbed in the stomach with a spear." And what that did to my body, the emotions and the feelings that came, the scream that came or tried to come out; what that image evoked in your body was all from my imagination. And that is not happening right now. That is a memory from before that I’m pulling and I can play with in my head of, ooh I responded that way but what if I responded this way, what if I did this choice instead? What would that mean for my character?
Whenever we go down the road of "what if" playing the what if game, and all those images come to mind, you’re using our imagination. Let's say we're playing this game in a joyful way: what if this happened, and then this other amazing thing happened after that, which then led to this other fantastically amazing thing. We feel a lightness, right? We feel that joy happen in our body when we get clear about what image we're seeing because we can then feel the air around us, we can see in detail the people in front of us, what they're wearing. We can sometimes even get the sense of smell of the room we're in or the person that we're standing next to. None of that is happening at the moment because we're in a space of "what if."
We can also play the "what if" game on the other side, going down the road of fear and worry and anxiety. What if this happens and then that leads to this terrible thing and then obviously this horrific thing is going to happen next, and then we’re all going to die! And we start almost building the tension in our body and closing in on ourselves and removing ourselves from the space that we're in because our mind has created a cage of fear and stress within our body. That feeling of, "I can't even handle this right now. What if all of this happens and what if it’s just too overwhelming?!" But our mind has gone down that road. Nothing in our present circumstances is experiencing any of those things that we've created and formulated in our head.
As a parent, I find that it's very easy to one go down the rabbit hole of terrible imaginary thinking, especially when I consider how precious my daughter is to me and how much I want to protect her. My imagination can really easily go to all the horrible things that could happen that could take her away from me, that could take her life away, that could severely damage our relationship, that could cause excruciating pain – I mean, the list goes on! And I have to remember to balance that out with all the times I swing to the other side of the pendulum and begin imagining all the possibilities for her life. And what I would love for her to experience and see, and what I want to be able to help her in and what I want her to be able to accomplish in her life. And remember that all of those imaginings, all those images, have to do with what I am creating for her life, and it might not have anything to do with what she wants to create for her own life.
Asking a million questions is the name of the game. Because when you ask a question it makes you imagine. It makes you create; it is searching to be actively answered. Our kids ask questions all day long. Am I right? About everything! Why is this happening and why is that happening? Why is this there and why is that there? Why can’t I do this, why am I allowed to do that? Why are they not talking to me – it’s always a why and a how and a when and a where! They are actively engaged in curiously, physically, creatively, and imaginatively experiencing their world. Their questions usually lead them to play. Kids need space for lots of imaginative play in their life, every day.
And we’ll talk more about that after this.
Angelica Interlude
The Power of Play
The other thing that comes to mind when I think of imagination is play. This podcast is lessons from the theater for raising ourselves and our kids. So, when I think about the lessons from the theater that I've gotten about imagination, I think of play, I think of ways to engage with other people through games, through different ways of playfulness.
I play imagination games with my daughter every day, all day long. From the minute she wakes up in the morning she's like, "Alright mom, I'm Isabelle your Elena and we’re going to school." Six something in the morning and she's already hit me with your this character I'm this character and they're going to school, boom, let's go.
Okay, so, that’s a lot. But I’ve got two choices: I can say yes and to that, or I can say, hey, I'm totally down to play after we have breakfast because right now mommy has zero energy so let's table this until like 20 minutes from now and let's go get some food. But from the moment she wakes up, she is in play mode. And why? What is that about? What is that? What does our imagination do for us?
It teaches us about the world. It teaches us how to connect with other people. It is our practice for life. It's our rehearsal time.
And so, from an acting point, it's helping figure out how this character is going to survive and live and thrive within their world as I play this game with other actors. This game being the theatre; we're going to tell a story to people about these characters lives because it's going to hopefully get us to a place where we can all feel and learn from this story. Feel something, learn something, be engaged in a community that is trying to inspire others to live better and have more empathy for those around us and those we don't know. If I'm playing this game of theatre with other actors or playing any game with people, it's done from a sense of play.
I really enjoy learning from psychologist Peter Gray, I've read different articles of his and I have read his book, Free to Learn, which I love. And I read a lot by other educators and people who are connected with the Alliance of self-directed education, like Akilah S. Richards - I'm going to put a link to her podcast and book in the show notes because she is a force dispensing wisdom worth noting. So…look at that. I am drawn to a lot of what they have to say about the way we learn and play, because there is a difference between the play that we do with kids when it is dictated by us as adults, than the play that kids do together when they are creating and making their own rules and learning how to navigate with the other children they're playing with. That's how they're learning about life. We impose a lot on kids that's completely unnecessary for their social interactions with other kids and how we impose play on them is something that can limit and shut down their imaginations more than ignite them.
And us creating games for them to play or activities, adult led activities and saying, "oh, it's playtime, you're going to go play soccer now, you're going to go play basketball now." You know when they're playing soccer? Do you know when they're playing basketball? When they got their friends together no adults involved and they're just out there kicking the ball around or dribbling and shooting it in the hoop. Because they're making up if they want to change whatever professional rules are to the game, they'll change them and they're okay with it because that's the rule for that game.
They'll know when it is that they need to stop and address a situation or when they need to just like keep going and plow through. They know when they want to just start messing around or when they want to take things more seriously. They're figuring that out for themselves. And each individual child is learning how to assert themselves and speak up, how to follow the rules, how to resolve conflict, how to be inclusive, how to compromise, how to negotiate, how to use their imagination. So when we the adults are saying, oh, there's this activity or this game that we want to play with you, but it's a game that we've come up with and we've thought of and we’ve introduced and we're saying what the rules are and we're telling them they have to follow the rules in this particular way, that's not play for a kid. That's just more of them being told what to do, how to do it, where to go, and when to stop by an adult. There life is full of that already. There isn't as much room there for their own imagination because we've limited when they can use their imagination in this game. Because it only falls within the small space that says, as long as you use your imagination within the context of this that's been defined by me and these rules from the game that I am giving you, that is the window that you can use your imagination and be as creative as possible, you’re welcome. And I get it, in life those are legit parameters and kids do need them. But do they need them all the time in all the play from all adult-led activities? I'm actually teaching theater again, right now, and what I'm realizing the more I'm researching different games that I want to introduce to the kids and want to play with them is how much I'm directing or conducting the kids play. And I feel like I’m in like two minds about it.
So, like I said earlier, I'm going through Viola Spolin's book, Improvisation for the Theater which is just brilliant. She was just brilliant. And I had my first-class last Friday and towards the end I remember one of the kids kind of being done with it and asking when they were going to get to go play. Internally, part of my heart sank into the 'oh my goodness I'm the worst teacher and no one had fun in my class' kind of space, ya know? Part of me got defensive and in my head started being like, we did play dude you just didn't like the game, that seems like a personal problem. Now, granted it’s been a few years since I had taught a theater class so I was probably rusty and it probably did suck a bit, if we’re being honest. But I was also struck with another thought which came from all the new and recent thinking and deschooling I've been doing about play. I hadn't provided much of a say in our activities so of course they weren't going to think of it as play, it probably just came off more like a class. And that makes sense because when I taught before it was with lesson plans and a schooling mindset. So I was probably half trying for that again and half wanting to be more flexible and it probably just came off as indecisive and not so much fun for the kids. So how do I, how do we, honor a child’s space to play and introduce them to different types of play at the same time?
In grad school I took a Chekhov class, not Anton Chekhov the playwright (though we did study his works a lot) but Michael Chekhov whose work and acting training and technique is all based in physical gesture. All I remember from class even to this day were the experiences I had in that studio. And how our teacher never really "taught" us but provided the space for us to experiment, explore, and experience. His favorite phrases were, "shall we take a walk" or "shall we try it" and before you knew it you were on your feet not knowing exactly what you'd be exploring but knew you were choosing to take part in an exciting and exhilarating trip into your imagination. As an artist, teacher, teaching artist, whatever name you want to put to it, I'm introducing, I'm presenting, suggesting, and questioning, enticing, facilitating, and stimulating imaginations with new tools of play for exploration.
Bringing in more 'what if' questions to the games we play heightens the level they need to engage their imagination to make the game larger than life. Even the suggestion of 'shall we try' brings a choice to the child. Sure, you've opened the door to be rejected but it also opens a door into what the kids would prefer and makes them a more active participant in the game, in their own play, which is the whole point in the first place. There should be a letting go in the expectations of what a child is supposed to take away from it, is what I'm learning because then that gives them the freedom to use their imagination.
So lovelies, I’ll ask you again…
- What is the imagination? How do we activate it and why do we use it? How does an actor engage their imagination? Why is imaginary play so important? What are imaginative games to play as a family? If I knew it could be 100% achievable what would my ideal family life of my wildest imagination look like?
I fall into the trap a lot of living a mediocre life. When that happens it’s because I have, for whatever reason, not activated my human superpower. We think we don’t have any, but we do. It may not look like any of the powers from a Marvel superhero or from the family Madrigal in Encanto, but we have one special one. And if you’ve been paying attention this episode you can probably guess what it is. It’s our…you’ve got it…imagination. When I see the mundane, mediocre, reality of life I’ve forgotten to live through my imagination. It’s choosing to view the world as larger, more exciting, and more beautiful than it appears. Is that living in a dream? Hmm, don’t we all want to make our dreams a reality? What if we could spend our day making things more spectacular than they are just for fun?
What if I imagined the dress I’m wearing was stolen from a treasure box that belonged to a princess from another century? How would I go about my day wearing it if it was this precious secret I was adorned in, hmm?
What if each day you and your family pretended to be royalty and interacted with each other for the day as if you were high nobility? What would that look like? What would your home look like? How would you dress? What types of activities would you engage in?
Each day we can choose to take a mediocre moment of our mundane life and make it exciting for no other reason than it would fill out heart with joy and make our day a bit more interesting for no one else but us. Or maybe it would make things more interesting for other people too.
These are a tiny inkling of the types of ways we could add more space for imaginative play in our days, lives, and the lives of those around us. What if we added that bit of theatrical play to our lives, wouldn’t it make it that much richer and more exciting absolutely for free?
A Short Story Before We Go
Is there such thing as too much imaginary play?
We were now on hour 3 of some sort of long form imaginary game in which I was now playing 8 characters from at least 4 different shows and movies that we have on regular rotation.
“And you have to say, “Isabel let’s go to Isabella’s house to get ice cream.””
“Okay. Who am I again?” I asked.
‘’You’re Elena.”
“Okay, yes, right. And I have to tell you we need to go to Isabella’s house to get ice cream?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. Alright. Isabel, it’s time to go to Isabella’s house for an ice cream party!”
“Oh yay Elena! Let’s go, let’s go! Come on hurry,” she shouted. “Now you be Llama Llama and Mama Llama.”
“Oh, they’re joining the party too?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, and so you’re going to be Isabella, right?”
“No. You,” she stated without skipping a beat.
“Well, I’m already being Elena, Fancy Nancy, Mirabel, Bree, and now Llama Llama and Mama Llama. And if you’re just being Elena’s sister you can also be Mirabel’s sister.”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” she said completely exasperated by my suggestion. “I’m Isabel. I can’t be anyone else.”
“Sure you can, I’m being at least 5 or 6 right now you can be one more.”
“No. You!”
This was going to stale mate our game. I was adamant after three hours of this on again off again game she could step in and pick up another role. But the more I thought about it, she was already playing multiple roles. She had created the game, was casting on the fly, doling out lines, and telling us where to stand, all the time upping the dramatic tension through conflict. She was the creator, playwright, director, costume designer, prop master, and actor. In her mind all these characters from the stories she’s seen in either tv shows, movies, or books could all play together. There was a story brewing in her head. I could either continue to challenge it or see it out to the end.
“Alright, fine. I’ll be Isabella. But before we go on, I need you to figure out how this scene is going to end. What’s going to happen for the game to finish?” This was my last attempt at negotiation with a four-year-old dictating director.
“The game ends when I go to sleep,” she counters.
“Nice try. That’s like 6 hours from now. How is this game wrapping up like soon?”
“Okay fine,” she gave in. “The game ends when Isabella and Elena and Isabel and everyone goes to Llama Llama’s for a sleepover.”
“Alright, let’s do this.” And the theatrical cacophony of cartoon characters commenced until everyone was tucked in nice and cozy for a joyous sleepover hosted by the Llama family.
Scene.
That’s all for today guys and dolls. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode about our imagination. Ah, that sounded weird.
I’ve created a cute little pdf of games the family can play together to get everyone’s imagination flowing that you can find the link for in the show notes. I’ve taken exercises that I’ve mentioned in previous episodes along with some other fun one’s I pulled from books, theatre games I’ve played, or even tv shows like one of my favorites, Bluey. It’s, in my opinion, one of the BEST cartoons out there for kids. Angelica wants to try out each game they play either while she’s watching it or immediately after the episode are done, and they’re all like 7 minutes long.
This list is just to get your own imagination going. The most important part of play is to make sure everyone is fully invested in playing and all players have a say in how the game is shaped.
Next episode we’ll look at, tun-tun-tuunnn, discipline. The question all parents ask, how best do I discipline my child? Well, let’s see what the theatre can show us about that sticky topic.
One last thing before we go – here’s my audio hug to you so you can breathe, reset, and kick some ass today (but don’t literally kick anyone’s ass, we talked about this, that’s called assault):
here’s my special hug for you, to paint your spirit a brighter hue, so catch this hug and hold it tight, go walk in grace and shine your light
Thank you so much and I’ll see you on the other side.
Mom: Angelica, can you say good-bye?
Angelica: Good-bye, good-bye.
Mom: Thank you.
Angelica: Thank you.