improvisational theatre | The Direction of Intention

Pull The Weed [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 6, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

One of my favorite simple pleasures each day is watching Kerri go out in the early morning and tend to her tomatoes. The world is quiet. The coffee is brewing. Dogga makes sure the yard is clear of marauding squirrels so the path to tomatoes is safe. An extraordinary ordinary moment. A tender ritual. A wonderful world.

Put down your clever and pick up your ordinary. It is one of my favorite “rules” of improvisational theatre. It is also a good credo to live by. Trying to be clever will take you out of the game every time. It is as true in all aspects of life as it is in art. The beautiful little secret: power, presence, flow…these live in the province of the ordinary.

When I was learning to scuba dive,Terry tried to teach me one central concept: get neutral. After several dives, fighting for control, trying “to do it right,” burning through my oxygen with my dedicated stress, I simply relaxed. I found the neutral that he advised. It was as if I joined the current. The colors sharpened. Time seemed to slow. My breathing definitely slowed. What was a struggle only a few moments before was suddenly easy. I’d picked up my ordinary. I got out of my way.

I delight watching children draw. They are free in their ordinary, not a shred of clever to be found. They lose that. We lose that, trying to be…something other than what we are. How many of us shudder in the notion that we are inauthentic? How many of us invest in the notion of low “self-esteem?” The circle of ordinary comes back around though it is cloaked in words like “self love” or “acceptance” or “wholeness.” Get neutral. Put down your clever.

Ordinary, not clever. It is a discovery that ought to stick early in life but generally lands much later. There’s very little distance between the child that freely colors and the adult that one day remembers that nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing. It is ordinary to color with abandon. The riches are in tending the tomatoes. “Clever” is merely a weed that needs pulling. In the ordinary, a wonderful world is waiting.

PULLING WEEDS on Kerri’s album RIGHT NOW is available on ITunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blog post on TOMATOES

pulling weeds/right now ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Gratitude, KS Friday, Metaphor, Play | Tagged: artistry, creative flow, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, flow, improvisation, improvisational theatre, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, neutral, power, presence, scuba dive, self worth, self-love, story, studio melange | Leave a comment »

Trust [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on July 10, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

When Kerri spontaneously smacked out this design, it was a case of process/design alignment. She simply trusted where she was going. “Hmmm,” she said, and moved on.

In improvisational theatre, it’s called ‘yes, and.’ Say yes to what you are given. Deal with what is there, not what you’ve decided should be there. Spontaneity, the freedom of movement and expression, is born of the kind of trust that ‘yes, and’ engenders. In trust, just as in ‘yes, and,’ there is no resistance. Artistry is pure relationship and requires giving up the illusions of control.

The word trust always brings me to the caterpillar (metaphors permeate my noggin). In cocooning, going to mush to be reborn as something utterly brilliant and unrecognizable, there is inevitability. In emerging from the cocoon, discovering wings, stepping to the edge of the branch, and leaping for the first time, there is trust.