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MFA: THE PARENTING EDITION EPISODE 15 SHOW NOTES
Episode title: Stop, Collaborate and Listen
Episode summary: What does it mean to collaborate? How does the collaborative process work in theatre? How can that translate to family life?
The Collaborative Process
A Short Story Before We Go:
Spread a Beautiful Act of Kindness:
Sources that inspired this episode or random tidbits of knowledge:
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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. These lessons from the theatre for raising ourselves and our kids came about when I realized my MFA in acting trained me for life as a mommy better than life as a full-time actor. Today’s episode is all about the collaborative process and the many hats we wear as parents. We’ll explore some challenging questions, I’ll share some stories, and then we’ll end our episode with the Raise a Glass Series. So, without further ado, this is MFA.
Quote: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” ~ Helen Keller
Episode Fifteen – Stop, Collaborate and Listen!
Question – What does it mean to collaborate? How does the collaborative process work in theatre? How can that translate to family life?
The big thing in business these days is looking for teams who can collaborate well together. Just Google the collaborative process right now. I’ll wait…. Isn’t it all about business? What in there do you see about the arts? I mean collaborative divorce law? That’s a thing! It just goes to show that collaboration is something the theatre world has been practicing for generations. It’s the only way the art form works.
The Collaborative Process
Doesn’t that sound exhilarating? And also, daunting? And also, a little bit pretentious? “You know, it’s just part of the collaborative process.”
Humanity could not have existed for all these years without working together for the sake of survival, meaning community building, hunter/gather skills, storytelling, and yes, parenting. Collaboration is key to that survival because it meant all parties had to figure out ways of getting through together. All ideas and opinions are welcome, all experiments worth considering and trying. Everyone has a say and respected contribution to crafting the solution, even if one person may appear to be in a position of authority. In general, collaborating is a skill not held with as much value as I believe behooves society (behooves has to be one of my dad’s top 10 thesaurus words to utilize in a sentence – other words include peruse, egregious, perseverate...I’m blocking on more but I’m sure they’ll come to me later. Oh, I learned the word rectum as a child because I heard my dad scream it at the TV all the time while watching basketball. “Get your head out of your rectum! You play like that you deserve to lose! They deserve to lose!” I wonder if that’s a phrase he used before having kids. Moving on, when you can get a team that meshes well, regardless of differing points of view and work strategies, magic can be created.
This is true for an actor’s work and for a parent’s work of raising a family. What I like about using the word collaboration in thinking of the workings of a family, is all the avenues of creativity, experimentation and participation it opens up for everybody involved. It creates a world in which everyone’s voice matters so much more than just cooperating as a family.
In my MFA program we had a required class for all three artistic tracks called Colab. This was the one time a week all actors, directors and playwrights were tossed into the black box theatre on the third floor of our building and given assignments in which we were to collaborate on. Not everyone worked within their track, it was actually encouraged to do explorations in which you were outside your comfort zone – playwrights being actors, actors directing, directors being playwrights…you get the deal. Eventually, as we started working on pieces for performance, we all developed our works within the discipline we were studying. We were being taught how to create new works. The standard formula in theatre is a playwright writes a story, the director comes up with an artsy way of making that story come to life and the actors use their instrument to breathe life into the characters, God willing, uniting the image the playwright and director have of the character while infusing it with their own view. In new works the story emerges from brainstorming ideas, actor improvs, adjustments from the director, input from the playwright, more improvs from the actors and everyone keeps throwing out their ideas until something seems to feel right. From there the playwright can go home and craft a scene or more to play within the next rehearsal. The whole process repeats until each artist has helped shape the story. The playwright can then finalize a script, the director has a strong image of how to communicate this story and the actors are already viscerally connected to their characters and the world of the play. The whole process just comes together so organically. Ugh, can we find a different word instead of organic, are we done with that one yet?
Anyway, those three years of colab were filled with some beautiful creations and explorations. All these years later I have such strong images of red balloons and funerals, Komodo dragons, Dante’s Inferno, ferris wheels and mandalas. I also got to play Lady Gaga in a colab piece, so yeah, it was fun stuff. There was also a whole lot of shit. Like a lot. But that’s what happens to get to the good stuff. You have to work together to mine your way towards the beauty of the story you’re creating. It’s both an aggressively depleting and gloriously fulfilling process. As is parenting.
How I see that translate into the idea of a family is like this. In the home, the collaborative team is all the members of the household. Even if you are a single parent and have one kid, you have a team of two. They’re your collaborating buddy. What came to mind is how, as a parent, to make the collaborative process work within our family it actually requires us to switch between wearing many hats. These hats I’ll call: the playwright parent, the director parent and the actor parent. Now there are so many other people involved in the producing of a theatrical event, you have the stage manager, technical director, every kind of designer, choreographers, and there are just, there’s just so many people involved. I’m focusing on these three specific roles because this is where the story emerges.
The Playwright Parent
As a Playwright Parent, birthing or adopting the child into your life is the beginning of our new play the Long Day’s Journey into (blank). This is the part you get to fill in: Long Day’s Journey into Joy, Long Day’s Journey into Chaos, Long Day’s Journey into Inconceivable Suffering, or perhaps Long Day’s Journey into Hell. We must imagine where we’d like the story of our life to go.
In the first episode I touched on the arc of my parenting story. What I said was “if my relationship objective is to raise an emotionally stable, resilient, empathetic human being who will make a positive contribution to the world I need to show her how to be that in how I treat her and respond to her choices.” A Playwright Parent knows maybe just the destination of the story and that’s wonderful because this is the part in our parenting to make choices about the life we want to live. Now, I’m not suggesting, as I’m sure some might be reading into this, that we should now write the script of how to get our child to be an Olympic athlete or any version that creates a reality in which we’re living vicariously through them. I know playwrights write characters, their lines, their actions, choices, an imagined world for this person but that is not a part of the process we can take on as parents. Unless of course the story you would like to write for your family is a Long Day’s Journey into Hell. We are in the moment playwrighting parents. We had an idea: let’s have a family. We gave life to the idea: the child is now part of the family unit. We have a time, place, setting, characters. But the actions and the lines and the choices the characters make, that is written day by day in improvised collaboration from our scene partners (aka our family members).
The Director Parent
As the Director Parent, we have to know how to communicate with our ensemble. Our ensemble consists of our children, spouse, partner, basically whoever the hell is on our team.
Toddlers are like actors. Prone to emotional meltdowns over anything, both are sponges that soak up information around them and both are extremely in tune to shifting energy in the people surrounding them and their environment. Directors need to find ways of extinguishing fires and calming hysterics without losing their cool. They must listen, observe and strategize how best to communicate with the ensemble.
The Director Parent has to learn confidently and respectfully how to say some version of all these phrases: “Yes, let’s hear what you have to say. Ahh, let’s explore that.” And “Great, now that we’ve explored that we must move on.” Or “I’d love to hear that later but right now we have to continue this work.” And even “No, we cannot get into that right now, we need to focus and finish this first.” All of these sound so simple to say, ooooh my knack for alliteration is back, sounds so simple to say. As a Director Parent we can either heighten the drama in our home by overreacting and losing our damn mind or steer the ship towards calmer waters by playing it “cool boy real cool.” Okay let me stop.
The Actor Parent
And our final role is the Actor Parent. This role requires so much of us because we are both, as Strasberg said in earlier episodes, “the actor is both the musician and the instrument”. We are literally supposed to play. Play with our scene partner – our children or child. Use our imagination. Sing. Dance. Read, giving full expression (and distinct voices if we’re able) to all the characters and their emotional journey. Create activities to stimulate their minds. Ask them questions so they learn the art of language and expressing themselves and the joy of knowing someone cares enough to want to know their feelings. And along with all that playing and expression we must also know when to shut the hell up and just observe our kids. When they are working and focused, stay out of their way. When they are talking to you, unless they ask something specific, just be present and listen; they will know when we’ve gone off to lala land in our head (that is such a great movie...anyway). We learn who they are by studying them. Let them guide us to the things they are interested in. Let them deal with strong emotions without rushing in to tell them, “it’s okay” and easing their suffering. As any actor knows who’s preparing for a role, experiencing the suffering of the character is part of the work. If someone is always jumping in to try to make us feel better or push away our experience of pain and discomfort to make us happy they are robbing us of the valuable life skill of resilience.
An Actor Parent, walks a balance of the song & dance of parenting we talked about in episodes 3 and 11. Really, I think all previous episodes delve into some form of being an actor parent; hence the #parentlikeanactor on Instagram.
*Angelica Interlude
Angelica: (loudly) Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch!!!
Mommy: Okay, (giggling) I need you to finish your food.
Angelica: Turn that light off.
Mommy: You just asked me to turn that light on!
Angelica: Turn it off.
Mommy: Turn it off, I’ll turn it off.
Angelica: And then I want Fancy Nancy’s new album on.
Mommy: You want Fancy Nancy’s new album on?
Angelica: Yes.
Angelica: Turn this light off, in my room.
Mommy: All the lights? Yes, we should’ve turned off the light in your room. Now all the lights are off.
Angelica: And now we must get all…
Mommy: Hmm…
Angelica: You must close the doors.
Mommy: I must close all the doors?!
Angelica: Yes.
Mommy: Alright, I’ll close all the doors.
Angelica: (whispering) Shhhh, mama and papa are sleeping. Now close this door.
Mommy: (whispering) Okay, I’m gonna close that door.
Angelica: And then I want Fancy Nancy’s new album on.
Mommy: (whispering) All the doors are closed.
Angelica: May, now turn on Fancy Nancy’s new album on.
Mommy: Now you want me to put on Fancy Nancy’s new album?
Angelica: Uh-huh.
Mommy: (whispering) Let’s do it.
So lovelies, I’ll ask you again…
What does it mean to collaborate?
How does the collaborative process work in theatre?
How can that translate to family life?
Collaborating is the action of working with others to create something. It is designed to hold space for all opinions and ideas to craft a solution and reach the goal they’re all working towards. It requires respect, tolerance, acceptance, inclusion, diversity, and patience.
In theatre there are so many pieces involved in creating a production. Traditionally, the story is the bible – well, not the actually bible, the story is the play and the words in the play are sacred; the director takes this “sacred text” and captains the ship to share this story. They work with actors, designers, stage managers, technical directors, musicians, choreographers, producers and all the people that bring the production together. But they need all people involved. They need to rely on the expertise of others, their opinions, and insight to make their decisions. The collaborative process in creating new works that I laid out from my Colab experience puts the story within the hands of the playwright, director and actor. It makes them co-creators in the story as opposed to the playwright being the sole creator. The story will inevitably be shaped by the playwright and the director is still the person responsible for the overall coordination of the stage picture, and actors are the ones breathing life into the characters for each rehearsal and performance. Theatre has always been a collaborative work. In my opinion, its been more of a cooperative process for actors seeing as they are usually the last pieces added in and they are used to help with a particular piece of the creative puzzle and not in the crafting of the overall creative vision. That seems to me a lot like how kids have typically been brought into the world. As a necessary piece to keep humanity going and there to cooperate with the laws of the family as opposed to being part of the co-creation of this family. Now I’m not saying your two-year-old should be in charge of paying the bills but allowing them choices, teaching them how with work with a group and express their opinion and ideas let’s them know they are in a space where they matter and are valued and as they get older their unique perspective and opinions will be a cornerstone in how the family creates the story of their lives together.
We also talked about:
The Playwright Parent. The Playwright Parent has an idea, brings life to the idea and knows where they’d like the story to go, the kind of family life these characters should have.
The Director Parent must start by studying their family and what they trigger in themselves so they can better communicate with everyone to direct the scenes and moments of their lives towards joy and magic, if that’s the kind of life they want to have.
The Actor Parent focuses their energy on honing the skills of observation, imagination and improvisation.
If you had to pick one of those right now, which one do you think is your strength?
Where do you find you need a little extra work?
Things to think about.
A Short Story Before We Go
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life,” is what I wished I’d said. Maybe Prince’s words would’ve eased to tension in the room. Tension that I caused by calling a meeting. But it was necessary. The thing called life was also called Angelica.
I had been playing the role of the patient parent. I had been playing the role of the concerned mother who believed the people around her were doing the best they could. It was time I played the role of advocate and work to get the team on the same page.
My father is a doctor and I believe that’s made me more understanding of the medical community when a lot of people can be downright cynical or mistrusting of it. I think trust and faith mixed with doses of skepticism and questioning is healthy when you are entrusting your life or the lives of your loved ones in the care of others. In our case entrusting the life of our infant to a team of nurses, doctors, surgeons and other specialists.
The room consisted of a neurosurgeon, head of infectious disease, the pediatric nurse manager, the head parent coordinator in the NICU and about 3 other people whose position I cannot remember now. This was our team. The humans who came into work everyday to save the lives of infants and kids. Everyday they dealt with medical emergencies, abnormalities, anomalies, and the standard cases in pediatrics. I will never be able to understand the gravity of the pain they must feel in the loses they will inevitably face, but I can imagine. I also knew at the time, in order to help our daughter, and all the other kids they would encounter in a similar situation with Angelica, we needed to have a “come to Jesus” moment and find out why we were still in the hospital and what they, collectively, were doing to help us get out.
I have a terrible poker face. I don’t know how to play poker but from all the movies I’ve seen, the best players have the best poker faces. No tells. An impenetrable façade. I have a terrible poker face. As an actor I believe this is both a character flaw and a gift. People have told me in scene study classes that watching me watch a scene is so entertaining, sometimes more entertaining than the scene itself. In a group environment, whether social or work, you will always know immediately how I feel about all people involved without me saying one word. My face and body simply cannot hold in my emotional life. I’m not programmed that way. Yet, there are times in life when I do. I do hold it in, hold it together. This was one of those times.
I didn’t attack. I didn’t yell. I didn’t play the role of the hysterical woman or the overly emotional mom or the angry bitch. I rewrote the script of my feelings and directed my energy to play the role of the healing parent. I simply and calmly told the group all of the contradictory information I’d been hearing and then how it was impacting my trust in the team and how important it was for me to know I could have complete trust in my daughters team. I wanted to know where the break down in communication happened and how they were going to work together to fix it. I needed them to understand there was a problem, admit it, each of them take responsibility for it and then actively come up with solutions on how to fix it and how they were going to be accountable not just to me but to each other. It was not about shaming. It can’t be to make progress. It was about appealing to their goodness, the standard of ethics to which they entered this line of work, the reminder of how truly capable they were to do the extraordinary and the reminder they were human and fallible and only through thorough vigilance and holding yourself to a high level of integrity can they make the difference in the lives to whom they promised. We knew eventually we’d go home. They would continue working there helping other children. If there was a breakdown in communication with us that meant it was happening with other families and would continue to occur if not addressed. While I knew we were fighting for our daughter I knew we were highlighting a glitch in the system, a glitch that happens with every system out there, that needed to be corrected. They were superb in how they addressed the situation. For the rest of the time we were there the level of communication between all parties improved so much. I do have to say that they were a great team to begin with. But even the greatest of teams always have room for improvement.
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.
“For this to succeed there’s someone else we need – HAMILTON! Cause he knows what to do in the trench” – okay, we’re gonna stop there. Not because I don’t actually know the lines but because I would take, it would take me like 75 takes to get them right even though I could say them slowly now, but the rapping thing, it’s not what I do.
So what do these lyrics mean for us?
We can not go it alone. We need other people. I don’t know how prevalent this is in the rest of the world but here in America we put a lot of emphasis on doing things ourselves. We like the idea of a person building themselves up. The self-made man. It’s a bold-faced lie but, as a society, we eat it up like it’s birthday cake. And who doesn’t like birthday cake?! No one does anything alone. We only succeed at the things that are important, make us successful, and fulfil our lives by working with other people. Collaboration is an art form and skill that can be learned. Starting a family is such a hands on, personal, deep dive into the world of collaboration. It’s a choice to create a relationship with another human being. When we make that choice we are allowing ourselves the space to make mistakes and learn from them. We are allowing ourselves to take a step back and look at the long game of what it takes to raise a human. We are allowing our ego to be deflated and our expectations to go to hell. We are allowing the people in the relationship space to develop into their own person and learn to say their opinions, feel their feelings, and contribute to the direction of the family story. To create the life that’s the most beneficial for everyone to grow takes collaboration.
Let’s raise a glass to learning the art of collaboration. Working well with others is not some abstract crunchy granola mindset; it is the cornerstone of how humans thrive and survive.
That’s all for today guys and dolls. Thank you so much for joining me again for another episode. As always, I hope this brings some joy into your day so your light can shine brighter.
Next week’s episode comes right after Thanksgiving so it will be full of thanks, gratitude and a more intimate story of how this podcast got started, since I never really got into that early on. The episode will centers around a simple little ritual that theatre folks do opening night.
If you are on Instagram so am I. You can find me @mfaparentingedition and give me a follow.
If you enjoyed this episode and want to show your support please spread a beautiful act of kindness by rating it if your listening on Apple podcasts and leaving a kind review if you feel so inclined, and telling at least one person about the show and that they can find it wherever they listen to their podcasts. And always, thank you to those who have rated the show and left a beautiful review – I appreciate you.
Again, thank you 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.
Episode title: Stop, Collaborate and Listen
Episode summary: What does it mean to collaborate? How does the collaborative process work in theatre? How can that translate to family life?
The Collaborative Process
- The Playwright Parent
- The Director Parent
- The Actor Parent
A Short Story Before We Go:
- Come to Jesus NICU meeting
- 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.
- Today’s lyrics – “For this to succeed there’s someone else we need - HAMILTON.” ~ Lafayette
Spread a Beautiful Act of Kindness:
- Rate the podcast (and leave a kind review if you feel so inclined)
- Tell one person you know you enjoyed this podcast and they should check it out
Sources that inspired this episode or random tidbits of knowledge:
- The Art of Collaboration: Inside the New York Theatre Workshop (article)
- Collaboration vs Cooperation (article)
- “Who’s on First?” Abbott and Costello (video)
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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. These lessons from the theatre for raising ourselves and our kids came about when I realized my MFA in acting trained me for life as a mommy better than life as a full-time actor. Today’s episode is all about the collaborative process and the many hats we wear as parents. We’ll explore some challenging questions, I’ll share some stories, and then we’ll end our episode with the Raise a Glass Series. So, without further ado, this is MFA.
Quote: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” ~ Helen Keller
Episode Fifteen – Stop, Collaborate and Listen!
Question – What does it mean to collaborate? How does the collaborative process work in theatre? How can that translate to family life?
The big thing in business these days is looking for teams who can collaborate well together. Just Google the collaborative process right now. I’ll wait…. Isn’t it all about business? What in there do you see about the arts? I mean collaborative divorce law? That’s a thing! It just goes to show that collaboration is something the theatre world has been practicing for generations. It’s the only way the art form works.
The Collaborative Process
Doesn’t that sound exhilarating? And also, daunting? And also, a little bit pretentious? “You know, it’s just part of the collaborative process.”
Humanity could not have existed for all these years without working together for the sake of survival, meaning community building, hunter/gather skills, storytelling, and yes, parenting. Collaboration is key to that survival because it meant all parties had to figure out ways of getting through together. All ideas and opinions are welcome, all experiments worth considering and trying. Everyone has a say and respected contribution to crafting the solution, even if one person may appear to be in a position of authority. In general, collaborating is a skill not held with as much value as I believe behooves society (behooves has to be one of my dad’s top 10 thesaurus words to utilize in a sentence – other words include peruse, egregious, perseverate...I’m blocking on more but I’m sure they’ll come to me later. Oh, I learned the word rectum as a child because I heard my dad scream it at the TV all the time while watching basketball. “Get your head out of your rectum! You play like that you deserve to lose! They deserve to lose!” I wonder if that’s a phrase he used before having kids. Moving on, when you can get a team that meshes well, regardless of differing points of view and work strategies, magic can be created.
This is true for an actor’s work and for a parent’s work of raising a family. What I like about using the word collaboration in thinking of the workings of a family, is all the avenues of creativity, experimentation and participation it opens up for everybody involved. It creates a world in which everyone’s voice matters so much more than just cooperating as a family.
In my MFA program we had a required class for all three artistic tracks called Colab. This was the one time a week all actors, directors and playwrights were tossed into the black box theatre on the third floor of our building and given assignments in which we were to collaborate on. Not everyone worked within their track, it was actually encouraged to do explorations in which you were outside your comfort zone – playwrights being actors, actors directing, directors being playwrights…you get the deal. Eventually, as we started working on pieces for performance, we all developed our works within the discipline we were studying. We were being taught how to create new works. The standard formula in theatre is a playwright writes a story, the director comes up with an artsy way of making that story come to life and the actors use their instrument to breathe life into the characters, God willing, uniting the image the playwright and director have of the character while infusing it with their own view. In new works the story emerges from brainstorming ideas, actor improvs, adjustments from the director, input from the playwright, more improvs from the actors and everyone keeps throwing out their ideas until something seems to feel right. From there the playwright can go home and craft a scene or more to play within the next rehearsal. The whole process repeats until each artist has helped shape the story. The playwright can then finalize a script, the director has a strong image of how to communicate this story and the actors are already viscerally connected to their characters and the world of the play. The whole process just comes together so organically. Ugh, can we find a different word instead of organic, are we done with that one yet?
Anyway, those three years of colab were filled with some beautiful creations and explorations. All these years later I have such strong images of red balloons and funerals, Komodo dragons, Dante’s Inferno, ferris wheels and mandalas. I also got to play Lady Gaga in a colab piece, so yeah, it was fun stuff. There was also a whole lot of shit. Like a lot. But that’s what happens to get to the good stuff. You have to work together to mine your way towards the beauty of the story you’re creating. It’s both an aggressively depleting and gloriously fulfilling process. As is parenting.
How I see that translate into the idea of a family is like this. In the home, the collaborative team is all the members of the household. Even if you are a single parent and have one kid, you have a team of two. They’re your collaborating buddy. What came to mind is how, as a parent, to make the collaborative process work within our family it actually requires us to switch between wearing many hats. These hats I’ll call: the playwright parent, the director parent and the actor parent. Now there are so many other people involved in the producing of a theatrical event, you have the stage manager, technical director, every kind of designer, choreographers, and there are just, there’s just so many people involved. I’m focusing on these three specific roles because this is where the story emerges.
The Playwright Parent
As a Playwright Parent, birthing or adopting the child into your life is the beginning of our new play the Long Day’s Journey into (blank). This is the part you get to fill in: Long Day’s Journey into Joy, Long Day’s Journey into Chaos, Long Day’s Journey into Inconceivable Suffering, or perhaps Long Day’s Journey into Hell. We must imagine where we’d like the story of our life to go.
In the first episode I touched on the arc of my parenting story. What I said was “if my relationship objective is to raise an emotionally stable, resilient, empathetic human being who will make a positive contribution to the world I need to show her how to be that in how I treat her and respond to her choices.” A Playwright Parent knows maybe just the destination of the story and that’s wonderful because this is the part in our parenting to make choices about the life we want to live. Now, I’m not suggesting, as I’m sure some might be reading into this, that we should now write the script of how to get our child to be an Olympic athlete or any version that creates a reality in which we’re living vicariously through them. I know playwrights write characters, their lines, their actions, choices, an imagined world for this person but that is not a part of the process we can take on as parents. Unless of course the story you would like to write for your family is a Long Day’s Journey into Hell. We are in the moment playwrighting parents. We had an idea: let’s have a family. We gave life to the idea: the child is now part of the family unit. We have a time, place, setting, characters. But the actions and the lines and the choices the characters make, that is written day by day in improvised collaboration from our scene partners (aka our family members).
The Director Parent
As the Director Parent, we have to know how to communicate with our ensemble. Our ensemble consists of our children, spouse, partner, basically whoever the hell is on our team.
Toddlers are like actors. Prone to emotional meltdowns over anything, both are sponges that soak up information around them and both are extremely in tune to shifting energy in the people surrounding them and their environment. Directors need to find ways of extinguishing fires and calming hysterics without losing their cool. They must listen, observe and strategize how best to communicate with the ensemble.
The Director Parent has to learn confidently and respectfully how to say some version of all these phrases: “Yes, let’s hear what you have to say. Ahh, let’s explore that.” And “Great, now that we’ve explored that we must move on.” Or “I’d love to hear that later but right now we have to continue this work.” And even “No, we cannot get into that right now, we need to focus and finish this first.” All of these sound so simple to say, ooooh my knack for alliteration is back, sounds so simple to say. As a Director Parent we can either heighten the drama in our home by overreacting and losing our damn mind or steer the ship towards calmer waters by playing it “cool boy real cool.” Okay let me stop.
The Actor Parent
And our final role is the Actor Parent. This role requires so much of us because we are both, as Strasberg said in earlier episodes, “the actor is both the musician and the instrument”. We are literally supposed to play. Play with our scene partner – our children or child. Use our imagination. Sing. Dance. Read, giving full expression (and distinct voices if we’re able) to all the characters and their emotional journey. Create activities to stimulate their minds. Ask them questions so they learn the art of language and expressing themselves and the joy of knowing someone cares enough to want to know their feelings. And along with all that playing and expression we must also know when to shut the hell up and just observe our kids. When they are working and focused, stay out of their way. When they are talking to you, unless they ask something specific, just be present and listen; they will know when we’ve gone off to lala land in our head (that is such a great movie...anyway). We learn who they are by studying them. Let them guide us to the things they are interested in. Let them deal with strong emotions without rushing in to tell them, “it’s okay” and easing their suffering. As any actor knows who’s preparing for a role, experiencing the suffering of the character is part of the work. If someone is always jumping in to try to make us feel better or push away our experience of pain and discomfort to make us happy they are robbing us of the valuable life skill of resilience.
An Actor Parent, walks a balance of the song & dance of parenting we talked about in episodes 3 and 11. Really, I think all previous episodes delve into some form of being an actor parent; hence the #parentlikeanactor on Instagram.
*Angelica Interlude
Angelica: (loudly) Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch!!!
Mommy: Okay, (giggling) I need you to finish your food.
Angelica: Turn that light off.
Mommy: You just asked me to turn that light on!
Angelica: Turn it off.
Mommy: Turn it off, I’ll turn it off.
Angelica: And then I want Fancy Nancy’s new album on.
Mommy: You want Fancy Nancy’s new album on?
Angelica: Yes.
Angelica: Turn this light off, in my room.
Mommy: All the lights? Yes, we should’ve turned off the light in your room. Now all the lights are off.
Angelica: And now we must get all…
Mommy: Hmm…
Angelica: You must close the doors.
Mommy: I must close all the doors?!
Angelica: Yes.
Mommy: Alright, I’ll close all the doors.
Angelica: (whispering) Shhhh, mama and papa are sleeping. Now close this door.
Mommy: (whispering) Okay, I’m gonna close that door.
Angelica: And then I want Fancy Nancy’s new album on.
Mommy: (whispering) All the doors are closed.
Angelica: May, now turn on Fancy Nancy’s new album on.
Mommy: Now you want me to put on Fancy Nancy’s new album?
Angelica: Uh-huh.
Mommy: (whispering) Let’s do it.
So lovelies, I’ll ask you again…
What does it mean to collaborate?
How does the collaborative process work in theatre?
How can that translate to family life?
Collaborating is the action of working with others to create something. It is designed to hold space for all opinions and ideas to craft a solution and reach the goal they’re all working towards. It requires respect, tolerance, acceptance, inclusion, diversity, and patience.
In theatre there are so many pieces involved in creating a production. Traditionally, the story is the bible – well, not the actually bible, the story is the play and the words in the play are sacred; the director takes this “sacred text” and captains the ship to share this story. They work with actors, designers, stage managers, technical directors, musicians, choreographers, producers and all the people that bring the production together. But they need all people involved. They need to rely on the expertise of others, their opinions, and insight to make their decisions. The collaborative process in creating new works that I laid out from my Colab experience puts the story within the hands of the playwright, director and actor. It makes them co-creators in the story as opposed to the playwright being the sole creator. The story will inevitably be shaped by the playwright and the director is still the person responsible for the overall coordination of the stage picture, and actors are the ones breathing life into the characters for each rehearsal and performance. Theatre has always been a collaborative work. In my opinion, its been more of a cooperative process for actors seeing as they are usually the last pieces added in and they are used to help with a particular piece of the creative puzzle and not in the crafting of the overall creative vision. That seems to me a lot like how kids have typically been brought into the world. As a necessary piece to keep humanity going and there to cooperate with the laws of the family as opposed to being part of the co-creation of this family. Now I’m not saying your two-year-old should be in charge of paying the bills but allowing them choices, teaching them how with work with a group and express their opinion and ideas let’s them know they are in a space where they matter and are valued and as they get older their unique perspective and opinions will be a cornerstone in how the family creates the story of their lives together.
We also talked about:
The Playwright Parent. The Playwright Parent has an idea, brings life to the idea and knows where they’d like the story to go, the kind of family life these characters should have.
The Director Parent must start by studying their family and what they trigger in themselves so they can better communicate with everyone to direct the scenes and moments of their lives towards joy and magic, if that’s the kind of life they want to have.
The Actor Parent focuses their energy on honing the skills of observation, imagination and improvisation.
If you had to pick one of those right now, which one do you think is your strength?
Where do you find you need a little extra work?
Things to think about.
A Short Story Before We Go
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life,” is what I wished I’d said. Maybe Prince’s words would’ve eased to tension in the room. Tension that I caused by calling a meeting. But it was necessary. The thing called life was also called Angelica.
I had been playing the role of the patient parent. I had been playing the role of the concerned mother who believed the people around her were doing the best they could. It was time I played the role of advocate and work to get the team on the same page.
My father is a doctor and I believe that’s made me more understanding of the medical community when a lot of people can be downright cynical or mistrusting of it. I think trust and faith mixed with doses of skepticism and questioning is healthy when you are entrusting your life or the lives of your loved ones in the care of others. In our case entrusting the life of our infant to a team of nurses, doctors, surgeons and other specialists.
The room consisted of a neurosurgeon, head of infectious disease, the pediatric nurse manager, the head parent coordinator in the NICU and about 3 other people whose position I cannot remember now. This was our team. The humans who came into work everyday to save the lives of infants and kids. Everyday they dealt with medical emergencies, abnormalities, anomalies, and the standard cases in pediatrics. I will never be able to understand the gravity of the pain they must feel in the loses they will inevitably face, but I can imagine. I also knew at the time, in order to help our daughter, and all the other kids they would encounter in a similar situation with Angelica, we needed to have a “come to Jesus” moment and find out why we were still in the hospital and what they, collectively, were doing to help us get out.
I have a terrible poker face. I don’t know how to play poker but from all the movies I’ve seen, the best players have the best poker faces. No tells. An impenetrable façade. I have a terrible poker face. As an actor I believe this is both a character flaw and a gift. People have told me in scene study classes that watching me watch a scene is so entertaining, sometimes more entertaining than the scene itself. In a group environment, whether social or work, you will always know immediately how I feel about all people involved without me saying one word. My face and body simply cannot hold in my emotional life. I’m not programmed that way. Yet, there are times in life when I do. I do hold it in, hold it together. This was one of those times.
I didn’t attack. I didn’t yell. I didn’t play the role of the hysterical woman or the overly emotional mom or the angry bitch. I rewrote the script of my feelings and directed my energy to play the role of the healing parent. I simply and calmly told the group all of the contradictory information I’d been hearing and then how it was impacting my trust in the team and how important it was for me to know I could have complete trust in my daughters team. I wanted to know where the break down in communication happened and how they were going to work together to fix it. I needed them to understand there was a problem, admit it, each of them take responsibility for it and then actively come up with solutions on how to fix it and how they were going to be accountable not just to me but to each other. It was not about shaming. It can’t be to make progress. It was about appealing to their goodness, the standard of ethics to which they entered this line of work, the reminder of how truly capable they were to do the extraordinary and the reminder they were human and fallible and only through thorough vigilance and holding yourself to a high level of integrity can they make the difference in the lives to whom they promised. We knew eventually we’d go home. They would continue working there helping other children. If there was a breakdown in communication with us that meant it was happening with other families and would continue to occur if not addressed. While I knew we were fighting for our daughter I knew we were highlighting a glitch in the system, a glitch that happens with every system out there, that needed to be corrected. They were superb in how they addressed the situation. For the rest of the time we were there the level of communication between all parties improved so much. I do have to say that they were a great team to begin with. But even the greatest of teams always have room for improvement.
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.
“For this to succeed there’s someone else we need – HAMILTON! Cause he knows what to do in the trench” – okay, we’re gonna stop there. Not because I don’t actually know the lines but because I would take, it would take me like 75 takes to get them right even though I could say them slowly now, but the rapping thing, it’s not what I do.
So what do these lyrics mean for us?
We can not go it alone. We need other people. I don’t know how prevalent this is in the rest of the world but here in America we put a lot of emphasis on doing things ourselves. We like the idea of a person building themselves up. The self-made man. It’s a bold-faced lie but, as a society, we eat it up like it’s birthday cake. And who doesn’t like birthday cake?! No one does anything alone. We only succeed at the things that are important, make us successful, and fulfil our lives by working with other people. Collaboration is an art form and skill that can be learned. Starting a family is such a hands on, personal, deep dive into the world of collaboration. It’s a choice to create a relationship with another human being. When we make that choice we are allowing ourselves the space to make mistakes and learn from them. We are allowing ourselves to take a step back and look at the long game of what it takes to raise a human. We are allowing our ego to be deflated and our expectations to go to hell. We are allowing the people in the relationship space to develop into their own person and learn to say their opinions, feel their feelings, and contribute to the direction of the family story. To create the life that’s the most beneficial for everyone to grow takes collaboration.
Let’s raise a glass to learning the art of collaboration. Working well with others is not some abstract crunchy granola mindset; it is the cornerstone of how humans thrive and survive.
That’s all for today guys and dolls. Thank you so much for joining me again for another episode. As always, I hope this brings some joy into your day so your light can shine brighter.
Next week’s episode comes right after Thanksgiving so it will be full of thanks, gratitude and a more intimate story of how this podcast got started, since I never really got into that early on. The episode will centers around a simple little ritual that theatre folks do opening night.
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Again, thank you 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.