How to Write Yourself Well
Compassion and the Artistic Statement Seminar
I'm offering a second Artistic Statement Seminar this March 1st for those who couldn't get into the first one and anyone else who wants to do this. Why is the class so popular? Why do some people say it's life-changing?
I know it's not really about writing an artistic statement which is typically used for applications for grants and other opportunities. While yes, it does help people do that, it does much more than that. I think the class does what many of us long for, like theatre itself, it holds up a mirror.
I have walked around with wounds I never remembered getting. Eventually other traumas released these memories, and that was hard to manage. There are gentler ways to heal trauma, but I survived.
I had covered up my wounds as I grew up. I tried to forget them. I often struggled to stay present while these videotapes ran in my brain behind a scrim. I lived exhausted as if I was running an extra operating system to keep that scrim up, so I couldn’t see that videotape full of traumas. Once I could face my history, an enormous amount of energy was freed up to allow me to heal my physical body.
Many of us who have become artists, actors or writers are aware that we have to do what we do, that we have no other way to exist, that our art is how we process our lives, that we have a non-negotiable need to make something, to be seen or heard, and this impulse usually comes from some early, pre-verbal wound.
Psychology calls it an attachment wound, and there are various kinds. The consequences can be devastating unless we work to heal, and I believe all of our creative work is a way to do that healing. Until we privilege and support people giving birth and raising children, we will continue to create a society filled with people who suffer from early attachment wounding that perpetuates misogyny and disconnection from each other and the earth, even among those born female.
If we didn’t get enough attunement early on, if we didn’t get enough mirroring, we can walk around feeling kind of lost, as if we have to justify our existence. The Artistic Statement Seminar offers us the chance to look at who we are and where we've come from and how that makes us how we are. It helps us become more intentional in our healing creative work. I know that by facilitating the Artistic Statement Seminar I am creating conditions that can shed light on participants’ whys. This helps people move forward in their art and their lives.
Yet it can be scary to do this work. In class, I talk about how we are here to lift each other up because the work is indeed soul-baring. I am holding each person in the class in a compassionate embrace. Most participants Those who take my words to heart come out of the class with a deeper understanding of themselves.
Almost everyone is surprised by something in their own writing that they had not seen before. It is a class filled with moments of recognition which is what theatre offers at its best. It is what I'm trained to make space for. I do that by offering compassion, by filling the space with compassion, and by using my compassion to help to regulate the participants to help them feel safe and seen. It is wound-healing work.
Compassion is not merely presence, although we must be present to offer it. The presence of compassion allows us to see our truths. Compassion allows us to delve into the why and what happened. Compassion allows the truth to be seen by creating a different environment where fear can step back and curiosity can enter.
We are much less afraid when we are in the presence of curiosity and compassion, either our own for ourselves or someone else's compassion for us. Compassion is non-hierarchical, non-judgmental and can recognize each person as worthy in their own right. Compassion means being able to see people beyond how they show up on the surface.
When we do this for ourselves, it’s profoundly healing. We see ourselves as more than how we’re showing up. We become greater than the sum of our parts. Transformation becomes possible.
The Prompt:
Theatre teaches us to see characters as greater than what they seem on their surface. This is done with subtext. We can think of subtext as one more tool, or we can deploy it as a super-power. It's what makes theatre so compelling.
While there is always something happening on the surface of your work, subtext is the compelling happening underneath. Unspoken, yet the audience can sense it. Like when people say one thing and do another, like how body language works. But writers don’t designate body language except in prose. In playwriting that’s left to the actor. So how do we, in the audience, get the subtext? When you are trying to come up with an underneath to create layers of meaning, consider how Shakespeare or Chekhov use it.
Shakespeare will start a scene with someone announcing what needs to happen, and then he’s free to spin all kinds of language. Since we’ve been primed with expectation, we’re stunned to watch it not happen. Chekhov does this too. Act 4 of Cherry Orchard Lopakhin says he will propose to Varya, but when they are finally alone together, all they talk about are her lost gloves and the train schedule.
The audience experiences expectations clashing with what is actually happening. What happens is often very different than the subtext underneath. What happens is the play - not the story in the play about the past, the monologue full of some confession, but the action of confessing in order to…
Working with the disconnect between what a character wants and what they say and do creates subtext. Finding ways to show us these disparities can come from understanding character (their personal viewpoints, their biases, what they want and what inspires them or upsets them, what they are fighting against, where they’ve been and where they are trying to go…)
Charles Baxter says that "any story may draw its power from unthinkable thoughts." How do they plague your characters? How can you plant them in your audience? How much energy does it take to ignore something? What does that cause in a character? How does mania manifest and why? What are the coping mechanisms for drowning out the unthinkable?
How does a character’s want (or fear or agenda or attitude) keep them from having a real conversation? What makes a character skate all over the surface of a scene or refuse to hear or listen to the one trying to connect? How do they interrupt or distract from the truth? A character with a lot to hide can display an enormous amount of care for surfaces. Look at behavior and activity. Who is mishearing, feigning indifference, or offering functionally empty dialogue?
If you want to practice, try an exercise where Character A threatens to destroy the neatly constructed house of denial for B (with or without C). How can B (and C) avoid reality and get A to exit? What strategies can they use to regain their composure once A leaves? How do they reconstruct a surface free from truth? This works well if A is a parent and B/C are siblings, but any variation of family works, or lovers, long-term co-workers, friends from childhood. Give them an activity (a surface) to try to accomplish. Let A want them to do something else instead. See what happens.
artwork by Scott Sherman at ScottShermanStudio on Instagram
3 Winter Classes via Zoom:
Magical Dialogue Sunday February 23rd 2 PM - 5 PM ET The Artistic Statement Seminar Saturday March 1st 2 PM - 5 PM ET (this fills fast & only has a few spots left, whether or not you need one for applications, to help you get to know yourself better) Events & Reversals Sunday March 9th 2 PM - 5 PM ET More Info Here & "STRUCTURE'S NOT A DIRTY WORD" TUESDAYS 3-6PM ET VIA ZOOM MARCH 18 - MAY 20 VIA THE DRAMATISTS GUILD INSTITUTE (MORE INFO WHEN THEY POST)
Brave Group Coaching!
The next Group Coaching Cohort is forming for a 6 week exploration of how you can create more ease in your soma (body) by better understanding your nervous system and supporting your parts. Join me on zoom starting Thursday evenings, 7-830pm ET, February 13th - March 20th, 2025. For more information click here.
Brave Space:
With prompts, grounding practices, & discussions, Brave Space invites playwrights, poets, painters, potters, novelists, memoirists, musicians & artists working in any medium to make meaning in a safe community. Begin and/or bring your projects to completion. Or use Brave Space as a body-doubling space to get other things done in community. $5-25 suggested per session. 4+x/week! On or off camera. No commitment, drop-ins welcome. Try it!
Brave Space Schedule: (it’s warm in Brave Space!)
1/31 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space
Friday 3pm ET Brave Sharing Salon
2/2 Sunday 6pm ET All Human Brave Space w/Sharing! (a week early)
2/3 Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/4 Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/workshop
2/5 Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/7 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/9 Sunday NO Brave Space
2/10 Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/11 Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/workshop
2/12 Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/14 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/16 Sunday 6pm ET All Human Brave Space
2/17 Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/18 Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/workshop
2/19 Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/21 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/23 Sunday 2pm ET Magical Dialogue
Sunday 6pm ET All Human Brave Space
2/24 Monday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/25 Tuesday 12pm ET Brave Space w/workshop
2/26 Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space
2/28 Friday 12pm ET Brave Space
Friday 3pm ET Brave Sharing Salon
Each week Tuesdays includes fast feedback for up to 1 page (@300 words) of writing or to discuss a craft issue/get help on your project.
Each month there are 2 Sharing Salons: Second Sundays (730pm ET) and Final Fridays (3pm ET) for sharing up to 10 minutes of work (up to 1500 words).Opportunities:
For Brave Poets: If you are a social justice minded poet who is already publishing poems in lit mags and looking for a free group to give you feedback and publishing support while you work toward your first chapbook, I’m leading a group that will meet Tuesday evenings weekly, even though not everyone has to come weekly. I’m hoping enough of us will gather each week to make it worthwhile, around 3-6 people/week. The group is for female-identified or nonbinary poets, inclusive of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+, all ages, abilities (spoonies welcome) and neuroaffirming (that means inclusive of all neurotypes). If you know of a poet who might be interested, please share this! If you are interested, send me an email at emmagoldmansherman at gmail dot com. Thank you!
For Writers & Artists!
JOIN 100 Days of Creative Resistance! free email of encouragement, opposition, and commiseration — a reminder of why we write and create — from 100 iconoclastic contemporary voices on each of the first 100 days of the 47th president’s regime.
January 31: *NEW* The WAM Coalition 2025 Collaboration Awards
January 31: Staten Island Arts Grants
January 31: Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship
January 31: The Charles S. Longcope Jr. Writers and Artists Grant
February 1: *NEW* Wave Farm Residencies
February 5: South Arts Cultural Sustainability Grant
February 10: MacDowell Artist Residency
February 13: NEA Grants for Arts Projects (GAP) Submission
February 14: *NEW* Manifest Gallery: Watching, a Call for Works about Observation…
February 16: *NEW* Manifest Gallery: Magnitude Seven Submissions
February 19: *NEW* Bethany Arts 3rd Annual Emerging Artist Fellowship
For Queer Playwrights in the MidAtlantic Region, The Strides Collective Commission application is open til February 23, apply here!
Clubbed Thumb's New Play Commission due March 20th!
Pittsburgh New Works seeks one-act plays for their 2025 season of world premieres. 15 to 20 plays will be selected as full productions or readings. Read our guidelines (they have changed somewhat) and if your play qualifies, submit it no later than Sunday, April 6!
For 10-30 min plays for The ReOrient Festival (about the Middle East Or by Middle Eastern writers) til April 30th more info / submit
February 28: *NEW* Columbia Center for Science and Society Environmental Humanities Grants Applications
April 1: *NEW* The Democracy Cycle 2025 Open Call
FOR Film Opps:
February 4: Chicken & Egg Films - Research & Development Grant
February 12: *NEW* Sundance Institute 2025-2026 Feature Film Producers Fellowship
February 13: Melbourne International Film Festival 2025 FINAL Deadline
Amazing People Doing Amazing Things:
My story, “Appetites” was named a Best MicroFiction 2025 and will appear in an anthology published by Pelekinesis Press this spring. “Appetites” was originally published by Nunum. I’m grateful for the nomination by Editor Geoffrey Miller.
MRS LOMAN, a new play by Barbara Cassidy asking how can we deal with a sexist and racist canon, (a must-see sequel to Death of a Salesman), is opening this week on Theatre Row directed by Meghan Finn. Go see it! I love this play!
Creative Capital offers free tax help for artists and creative entrepreneurs!
Take a Poetry Workshop with Only Poems.
See A Knock on the Roof at New York Theatre Workshop.
The Femme Collective presents January, The She-Wolves and Broken Thread at the 14th Street Y! Get Your Tickets! The Femme Collective is a groundbreaking partnership between MultiStages, The Neo-Political Cowgirls, and Eden Theater Company. Together they represent a united front in reimagining the theater industry’s future. Born out of the financial and cultural challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, this innovative collaboration between three women-led companies seeks to redefine theater through shared resources, amplified diversity, and community resilience.
Robin Rice’s play PECKING ORDER runs at 59 E 59 - 1/29 - 2/15, get your tickets here!
Highly recommend this class! It completely changed how I experience writing applications. Now I see it as a process of artistic discovery, instead of a jaw grinding agonizing hurdle.