What Happens in Brave Space
is empowering and subversive!
“We are taking tiny/timid/tepid/sometimes-bold/brave/wild and sometimes ginormous leaps forward to actually spill ink, pixels, paint, music, heart… We’re bending wire and language in ways that speak from and for our lived and imaginal experience. And that is still incredibly necessary every day. And in today’s world, perhaps each day it’s more necessary than the day before.”
(me, to avoid using the next photo below as the thumbnail, this photo by Melinda Hall)
Brave Space Schedule 12/11-15/23+
12/11 Monday 12pm ET 12/12 Tuesday 10am ET and at 7pm for All Humans (men inclusive) 12/13 Wednesday I have a training class with Richard Schwartz who created IFS 12/14 Thursday 10am ET 12/15 Friday Brave Sharing Salon 12 - 2pm ET And next week before I leave for vacation: 12/18 Monday at 12pm ET 12/19 Tuesday at 10am ET and the last 7pm for All Humans (men inclusive until March) 12/20 Wednesday 12pm ET Brave Space sessions will be on hiatus until January 3rd, Wednesday 12pm ET Want to join a session, just ask me for a link!
Ideas for Wholeness: If you were to show up in Brave Space (and I hope you will!!!) we start with a 5 minute embodiment practice to become present and grounded. Because life. And then we create for 60 minutes. Most write, but some are artists, and others are musicians, and others have come to journal or to fill out grant applications. Whatever you need to do is fine by me, but mostly Brave Space is generative space/time.
There's always chat support during those 60 minutes so you can say, help! I'm stuck! And I help you via chat. Since 2019, it always works, so I think of Brave Space as a place for miracles because there are so many so often.
Then we all talk about process.What happened? What was it like to create for an hour? What did you struggle with? What strategies did you employ? What worked and what didn't? And what did you learn?
We all learn a tremendous amount from each share. I put this learning in the exit email in writing in case we start to imagine that we dreamed it up, because sometimes it feels like a dream.
The thing I learn most consistently is that creativity can be really hard, especially diving in to what seems like cold and deep and dark water after a weekend or a trip or a holiday or a lifetime of raising kids or after retiring or once you've decided you have something to create after silence, especially for writers. Because who am I to write this?
Here’s a photo of a statue of a girl looking totally sexy while becoming a tree to escape an attacker, thank you Western Canon (!) created with the obtuse and exclusive idea that its writers/sculptors/movers/shakers uphold the values of "the world/as it is." Anything that questions the status quo has been looked down on as agitprop, “political” or in other words, less than... And this is a great gatekeeping method.
Recently there has been a bit of shift in some of the arts, a shift toward women and BIPOC and LGBTQIA+2S and maybe even the disabled, the mad and the chronically ill - oh my! And all of us creating on this other side of the Western Canon are subversive and important. Voices matter. Lived experience matters. Imaginal experience matters. Art is finally allowed to question, to be critical, to expose specific realities, to create metaphors and mythologies from authenticity. Your specific experience and how you want to present it matters.
You might say, "oh but art has always done that. Look at The Jungle by Upton Sinclair!" Sure. But when I was in grad school in the 90s, I was told to stop writing poetry by the old bearded white cis-het-male poet. I was discouraged by many of the people who claimed to be my teachers.
If you watch season 4 of "Sex Education," you'll see that same crap happening to Maeve Wiley. So it's no wonder we're still thinking, who am I to be doing this? Who am I to write a novel? A play? A series of poems? A screenplay? A video-game? A symphony or a musical? Who am I to decide to spend my time on a long-term project that has to be done badly and awkwardly in layers before it's anywhere near sort of okay? What am I thinking? Who do I think I am? And how dare I?
Social scientists have documented how the world is failing girls and women in terms of peace, security and sustainability (according to several recent reports). I know this from my own personal lived experience as an abused child and then as a survivor of domestic violence in my 20s. The world is also and in worse ways failing BIPOC and LGBTQIA+2S and the world is failing the chronically ill, disabled and mad.
Even though I don't identify as a woman or girl---I identify as a nonbinary person---I still identify with women and girls, especially since I exist as a passing female. The word nonbinary wasn’t a thing when I learned words and possibilities. I couldn’t figure it out until I got my extremely late autism diagnosis! As a child, I felt forced to live in drag as a girl to the extent that my school gym teacher once said, "you were the girliest girl we knew!" So all the training, masking/indoctrination, or whatever you want to call it, is hard to overcome. I've still got a long way to go.
But what we're doing in Brave Space (not just me, the whole community) in terms of Creativity and Wholeness is subversive and important. I'm sure some brilliant PhD candidate should study us, but til then (and maybe even after) I will have to try to make sense of it all with my AuDHD brain.
Brave Space is a community of women (and afab enbees like me) of all ages, races, ethnicities and nationalities, coming together from the West Coast to the East Coast to Canada, UK and Europe and occasionally India. We meet to create in community up to 6 times a week in spite of our challenges and difficulties, in spite of our inner critics and fears.
We are taking timid/tepid/sometimes-bold/sometimes-wild/sometimes-ginormous leaps forward to actually spill ink, pixels, paint, music, heart… We’re bending wire and language in ways that speak from and for our lived and imaginal experience. And that is still incredibly necessary every day, and in today’s world, perhaps each day it’s more necessary than the day before.
Right now in Florida (where they have banned 1406 books since 2022) a filed legal brief asserts that "libraries are a forum for government speech" instead of free speech. We raise our pens and paint against these dark forces to speak truth to power in Brave Space where creativity builds wholeness. We ground into our wholeness, and, in community, we open our hearts to the creative spirit within us. We dare!
This Substack is read in 10 countries! Keep spreading the word!
Writing Prompt:
FEAR - what's a character afraid of? Are you using this fear? Fear makes us do strange things. Fear can be electrifying or random or hilarious. A person behaving out of fear is not necessarily scary. We invest in characters who make bad choices. Use your own fears or the fears of your parents (or friends) to fuel your character journeys. Fear can be used to raise the stakes! Not just to make the worst happen - the best can happen too. And be disastrous! Nothing’s set in stone. Examine where you think it’ll go but then play with all your options. (Let it go here, there and everywhere! Open the floodgates of ideas! More is more! More to choose from and way more fun!) What’s the most dramatic, the funniest?
My first choices are not always my best, and it takes me time to go back and reinvest and discover what would be even better. Where are the places you want to improve, moments that are good but could be great. Consider how specific changes could help - like moving the setting, adding/subtracting a character, punching up the language!
Back to that character: HOW FAR CAN THEY GO to avoid their fear? Allow yourself to play, to imagine. Simply insisting your brain come up with a better option is frustrating. Instead invent a game like 28 ways to kill a spider! (Ask social!) LIST 10 words funnier than whatever you keep using. Add forks or ducks or something strange (slithy toves?) What happens if a private scene is made public? What if it's hot instead of cold? Change it up! Throw in an Event. What makes you gasp?
How are the prompts working for you?
Announcements:
2024 Winter Playwrights Workshop openings! There's been some shifting around, so I have 1 spot available on Wednesdays from 6-9pm ET and 2 spots available for the Thursday section from 6-9pm ET, both on Zoom. Begins January 3rd and 4th respectively. If you have a full-length play or you're writing one and want to hear it with feedback in a supportive group that focuses on craft, my workshops are limited to 6 participants. 10 weeks, $500. MORE INFO HERE
Affordable Brave Group Coaching! If you're wondering about your nervous system and how to better regulate, or if you want to get to know and work with your parts, (inner critics, perfectionists...) there are still spots left! Tuesday evenings starting January 9th from 7-830pm for 6 weeks on Zoom. $120 discounted rate paid in full in advance (partially refundable). Or you can reserve your spot for $50 (nonrefundable) and then pay either $100 to start or $25/weekly. MORE INFO HERE
Rho Musak does this amazing thing at the start of every year called LEAP WITH PASSION. I’ve done it for the past few years, and I highly recommend it. A day-long retreat on zoom that gives me the time and space to focus on the past year and move into my vision for the year to come, it has truly launched my life in new directions in wonderful ways. MORE INFO HERE for Rho’s workshop!
Clutch Productions (NYC) presents The Inheritance of a Long Term Fault by Mêlisa Annis starring Christianne Greiert (among others). An explosive look at the generational impact of societal structures created by colonialism, and how these original sins continue to shape our world today; physically, linguistically, spatially, and spiritually. TICKETS HERE I’ll be there 12/7 (Tonight! Come and say hello!)
Elizabeth Coplan's world premiere of her play, Til Death, opened last week on Theater Row (NYC) and you can get tickets/more info HERE (I’m there the 14th - say hello! If you don’t already know me, I’m the one with the purple hair…)
Playwright Opportunities:
(NYC peeps) Terrence McNally Incubator
(to be self-produced in NYC) OOB Festival
Broccoli in the snow back when we got snow in NYC… SEND ME a pic of your pet, and I’ll post it! Broccoli can’t be in every Substack!