Theater for Wellness: Creative Techniques to be Well and Whole

By Ana Valdes-Lim

“Theater for Wellness explores creative techniques for energies to overflow in varied forms and expressions, in an atmosphere that enhances learning, imagining, and dreaming. The values of self-discipline and teamwork are important for participants to grow and excel. Crafted to address different age levels, there is space for balance between ability and challenge. Ana Valdes-Lim, an educator at heart, makes theater a life experience, fun and transformative. Enjoy going toward wellness and wholeness as you prepare your own surprise-filled productions in simple yet profound ways.” 

— Sr. Anna Carmela Pesongco, R.A., Ed.D., President, Assumption College

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9789712730542

Book preview

THEATER FOR WELLNESS

Creative Techniques To Be Well and Whole

Ana Valdes-Lim

Theater for Wellness

Creative Techniques To Be Well and Whole

Copyright © 2014

Ana Valdes-Lim and Anvil Publishing, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in

any form or by any means without the written permission of

the copyright owners.

Published and exclusively distributed by

ANVIL PUBLISHING, INC.

7th Floor Quad Alpha Centrum Building

125 Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong City

1550 Philippines

Trunk Lines: ([phone], 477-4755 to 57

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Fax: [phone]

www.anvilpublishing.com

Edited by Ricky Lim

Front cover painting and interior sketches by Danny Doce

Photos and videos by Joseph Andal (Director of Photography)

ISBN 9789712730542 (e-book)

Version 1.0.1

For Ricky, Q, and Lope

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CORPORATE TRAINING

Team Innovation

BJ’s CAP

B for BODY

Walk Around to Dance

The Boat is Sinking

Dancing Line: Leaders and Followers

Body Awareness

Laughing Energy

Singing a Nursery Rhyme

Look Cool

Singing and Laughing A Silly Song

Stillness

J’s for Jump in and Save

Dancing J’s

Singing J’s

C for Create Change

Copy-Mirror Slow Motion

Zigzag Copy with Sound Only

Zigzag Copy with Movement and Sound

Zigzag Create New with Sound Only

Zigzag Create New with Movement and Sound

Zigzag Halo-Halo (Combination)

Copy / Create New

A for Agree

Blocks

P for Play

Football Letter

Create a Picture

The Rhythm Machine

Love Letter

Pattern Game

Chicken and the Fox

Predators and Preys

Dragon Race

The Turtle Crosses the River

PERFORMERS’ TRAINING

Voice

Why is Voice Training Necessary?

Start Where You Are

Proper Breathing and Placement

Moving Across the Floor Voice Exercises

Getting Ahead of Yourself: The Bright Actor

Stacking Chairs

How to Practice

Whispering

Practicing Lines with Emotion

Memorizing Lines

Observation

Masks and Status

Getting Attracted to a Mask

Disassociation from the Mask

Masks and Status

Offer and Accept with Status

Status Circle

Gibberish Play

A Gentle Approach to Gibberish

Warm-Up Gibberish

Tribe Exercises

Mask and Voice for Authentic Sound

Tribe and Village

Crisis

What the Tribe Accomplished

DEEP PRACTICE

What is Deep Practice?

Is it Nature or Nurture?

Ten Thousand Hours of Practice

Flow

Fear, Blocks, and Getting Unstuck

Blocks

Getting Unstuck

Setting You Free

AWAKENING CREATIVITY

Awakening

Flow With Mindfulness

Movement and Flow

Walk Solo

Dance Solo

Group Flow

Welcome Circle

Night Dancing

Healing Waters

Mindfulness

Sitting

Walking Mindfulness

Moving Outside

Sweeping

Watering Plants

Eating

Crazy Walking to Crazy Dancing

CONCLUSION

AFTERWORD

Acknowledgment

Endnotes

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE THEY ARE NOT CREATIVE. I BELIEVE THAT creativity is part of our spiritual DNA. All people are intrinsically creative and it shows in the areas where they are most abundant.

I also believe we have a first gift and a second gift. Of course we have many gifts, but I refer to first gift as the dominant gift, which emerges as an inclination while we are children, an interest, and develops later as a passion, from age ten to adolescence and on into adulthood. The moment of emergence varies, but usually there are sparks, glimpses, tendencies that give early rise, signals of this giftedness. Sometimes we stumble into it, it just happens. This gift needs to be expressed, so it pursues us, our awareness, our discovery, and then we recognize it. We say it is natural, because it emerges like a bud, it sprouts and manifests without any manipulation on our part.

Our first gift is usually in the area most obvious and visible to others. Many of us do not follow the career path of our first gift, and pursue our second gift instead. Many of us realize our first gift only in the second act of our lives, at midlife, and sometimes the realization comes with a crisis.

I seek to help those who want to find their creativity; which could have been derailed, side-stepped, or suppressed. By finding our creativity and practicing it, we take a healthy leap forward and upward toward wellness and wholeness. Denying our creativity is like denying who we truly are, like a tree denying its tree-ness. When we shut the flow of creativity, it is like we cut off one of our limbs, or a tree cuts off one of its branches. We become overcontrolled like a great giant oak pruned to a bonsai, or misplaced, like a sunflower planted in the shade. We won’t really ever bloom. In fact, denied creativity digs an unhealthy stagnant well within which can fester like a wound, and lead to personal toxicity, scarcity, and draught. The person may feel as if she is drying up, drowning, or lacking in energy. Physical manifestations may occur, such as increased illness, chronic fatigue, and depression. This starvation of the self can lead to overcompensation of external substitutes, such as overcompulsiveness, overdieting, compulsive talking, workaholism, addiction to activities, feel-goods, make-me-happy choices, hoarding, excessive thinking, and other obsessions. Groups of unhealthy people together create toxic environments.

On the other hand, healthy individuals who can balance a life of play and work, flow and practice, generate lightness, positive energy, and creative abundance. They feel oneness, connection, openness, flexibility, empathy, and generosity. They manifest positive wholeness back to their communities, and live with wholeheartedness. This kind of living would make our planet better.

The chapters on flow and mindfulness are about the practice of connecting to the present moment, without the baggage of the past, nor the burden of the future. In order to develop wellness we need to practice being mindful. The practice of art, theater improv games, movement, dance meditation, walking meditation, and yoga can lead to mindful living. So can art, dance, theater games, and improvisation. When we are mindful, we are not on automatic pilot. We become completely engaged in the present moment. It is a challenge to stay present in the now, when today’s rat race bombards us with information overload. Oftentimes we feel jettisoned and buttressed to and fro as if drowning in a storm of tasks and obligations. The practice of mindfulness is a challenge worth taking. Being mindful is very simple, and it opens us to a path of renewed living with awareness. It takes practice, perhaps two months of daily commitment. But what is two months’ effort compared to the benefit of a lifetime of wellness?

The chapters are titled like my workshops: Corporate Training, Performers’ Training, and Awakening Creativity. While my other books have touched on some of these lessons, I take the reader further this time, going deeper into the complex unknown. I hope these chapters bring a new and brighter light to old techniques.

I write to help others. How do I share something practical, doable, and meaningful without a lot of ornament? In the corporate culture where I have been teaching team innovation for over ten years, top management seems to be in a hurry to outdo their competition and their own past records. Trainers want a quick method for innovation, and creativity comes with a deadline. The speed is not unlike what improvisers practice in short- and long-form comedy improv. The practice is the opposite. Improvisers practice the steps slowly, to go fast. It only seems like they are going at breakneck speed. Improv breaks down the creativity into small simple steps, and while it may seem that improvisers are creating fast, they are actually taking creativity through small steps, going slow, to go fast. Improvisers learn to work with a lot of unknowns, and the unknowns are complex, much like the myriad of variables that pounce on a crisis at business. Improv teaches the corporate culture to break the puzzle down into small pieces. Improv also teaches the warning signs of a block, a creative STOP sign. Improv training demonstrates how a culture can resist, delay, and succumb to the block or successfully overcome it. In my Corporate Training chapters, I condense and distill team innovation into five simple steps that are enjoyable and easy to practice.

In Performers’ Training—and it could mean training for all types of performers (singers, actors, dancers)—I augment what has been described in my first two books, Workshop: A Manual for Acting and Evolutionary Theater. My background has been primarily to train theater actors, but the exercises can work for any performing artist, director, or educator. This book goes deeper and gives more examples. After thirty years of teaching actors, I have learned what lessons work best. For performing artists, there are gateways that release us to liberation, or traps that get us stuck. They are usually due to overdoing or overpracticing in a certain area. Sometimes the remedy is a simple stepping back from the exercise and letting go. I describe common voice and diction mistakes caused by tension. I explain how to practice better and remain spontaneous. I provide alternative techniques for development using mask work, status work, and gibberish experimentation. These are unique strands of practice usually not considered when we are working in a hurry. But for exploration, I feel they are essential to create a whole performing experience. The stress and time limitations of any rehearsal process are always there. The techniques, practice, and application have gotten better through the years. As the artistic bar is raised by higher-quality performances, so the training level rises, becoming more precise and specific. "Deep