‘Ta dah!’
Jammers learn that creativity is life itself
BY LISA TREI
 I'm staring into the eyes of a
lanky guy called Laurie. We're drawing each other's faces
without taking our pens off the paper or looking down at
what we're doing. Laurie has an impish grin that
highlights his shining eyes and finely etched wrinkles. I
feel strange looking intensely at someone I've just met.
When our instructor, Rolf Faste, tells us to stop, I
glance down and see a picture of a man with wild eyes and
ragged teeth that belong to a jack-o'-lantern. Laurie, in
turn, has captured me with a jaw as square as a bulldog's
and a neck that has disappeared into my sweater.
It's Day One of Stanford's
Creativity Jam, sponsored by the Continuing Studies
Program and held last spring at Westerbeke Ranch in the
bucolic wine country. During an intensive weekend, about
30 people have gathered at this peaceful, funky retreat
near Sonoma to explore something a lot of folks might
condemn as touchy-feely Californian: a belief that
creativity can be taught.
Photo:
Heeding the call to do something before they know how to
do it, participants in the Creativity Jam, sponsored by
Continuing Studies, made masks and then moved.
Photo
courtesy of Continuing Studies
But this group isn't a
bunch of New Agers. The "jammers" include
high-tech entrepreneurs, software developers, family
therapists, financial investors, a doctor, lawyers and
folks deeply into theatrical improvisation. The teachers
are from Stanford's ranks: Patricia Ryan, senior lecturer
in drama and winner of last year's Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel
Award; Bonnie Zimmerman, clinical assistant professor of
psychiatry; Tony Kramer, lecturer in dance; and Faste,
associate professor of mechanical engineering.
Associate Dean Charles
Junkerman, administrative director of Continuing Studies,
which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month,
says that "creativity" is a hot educational
field, especially in Silicon Valley. "What these
four [teachers] have is a common conviction that we
[humans] are organic systems made up of both body and
mind," he says. As people get older they get used to
doing things a set way. Placing oneself in a situation
where, for example, memory, vision and movement are
stimulated in new directions can expand awareness.
"If we learn to do this, we open up channels of
imagination and thought that otherwise would be
untapped," Junkerman says. "But it's like
exercising. You can't just talk about it, you have to do
it."
Some of the teachers
previously have collaborated in classes taught through
Continuing Studies, but it's the first time all four have
worked together. In a series of workshops that culminate
in a spirited "creativity jam" encompassing
music, movement and art, each instructor shows students
how to "think outside the box," to move beyond
what's familiar to discover something new.
"The fundamental
issue of creativity, in black and white, is safety versus
growth," Faste says. "All living organisms need
safety and they need to grow."
Related
Information:
But the retreat is no
free-for-all. Each teacher clearly states what he or she
wants from the students.
"Through all these
disciplines we're forcing you to do something before you
know how to do it," Ryan says. "It's the
[actual] doing that will teach you how to do it or get
better at it."
"Teaching"
creativity may be a misnomer. The experience is more
about giving people tools to discover what's already
inside them.
On the Friday evening, as
the group sits in a circle to introduce themselves on a
first-name-only basis, Ryan says the retreat is the
culmination of a long-held dream.
"I think the four of
us all believe that the individual is innately
creative," she says. "Human life, almost by
definition, is creative."
What the teachers say they
want to explore is what happens when people come together
in an environment that encourages them to engage in
creative disciplines, irrespective of prior training, in
an effort to stretch mind and body. Ryan demonstrates
that improvisation is accepting what comes along and
working with it. Zimmerman uses meditation, imagination
and hands-on activities. Faste encourages students to
explore visual thinking and new ways of seeing. And
Kramer demonstrates how to move and think with the body.
By the end of the retreat,
the group is buzzing.
"You might say that
the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts," says Ryan. "There's a synergy that
occurs when you bring like parts around a problem. The
thing the four of us share is a common belief that the
creative process can be taught and shared. And it's not
just a technique; it's something about opening to life's
purpose."
This is heavy stuff. As a
reporter, I join the group a polite skeptic, game to try
but slightly wary. But soon I discover that this is not
some "find-the-child-in-yourself" gig. For
someone ensconced in the demands of a full-time job and
parenthood, the experience feels self-indulgent, but not
uncomfortable.
Throughout the weekend,
the workshops reinforce the notion that creativity
happens when judgment is suspended and social
constraints, whether imposed by external or internal
forces, are removed.
"If you just
basically help people get out of their own way, that's a
large part of it," Zimmerman says.
And with strangers rolling
on the floor, touching one another with their eyes
closed, playing instruments and making masks depicting
their "inner" and "outer" selves,
there are plenty of opportunities to feel self-conscious.
That rarely happens, however, partly because the
instructors' teaching methods are so disarming.
Kramer puts his students
at ease as he gets them to move their bodies and interact
with one another. "I know that doing new things can
be scary, that having somebody request things of your
body is kind of strange," he says, as he moves
easily about a large, airy room. "I'm aware of what
people are afraid of, because I am too."
Ryan stresses the
importance of maintaining a positive countenance. She
describes it as the "ta-dah!" concept, throwing
one's arms up into the air, smiling and claiming victory
whatever happens, just as any seasoned performer might
turn around an unexpected development on stage.
"One of the
revolutionary things about the study of improv is that
we're not trying to gain confidence first in order to do
something, we're accepting our shaky feelings of fear and
anxiety and we're acting anyway," she explains.
"The action itself becomes the curative."
Ryan teaches this through
a game called "word ball," in which people
stand in a circle and take turns "throwing" a
word to one another. A recipient takes the word, repeats
it and uses the last letter of the word to form a new
word, which is then "thrown" to another person,
and so on, in rapid succession. Something like this:
"Buzz, buzz zap, zap poodle, poodle extravagant,
extravagant teacher, teacher robber, robber restraint,
restraint theory."
"What I'm asking
everyone to do is to utter without thinking," Ryan
says. "And it works. We've got plenty of words in
our minds. The problem for most people is that there is a
censor there that thinks that we need to select a good
word or a creative word. But the improviser learns that
he or she is a channel through which stuff comes. If it's
lousy, I'm not responsible for it. If it's great, I don't
get the credit for it. You start to notice that each of
us is a reservoir for images, ideas and words and phrases
and all we have to do is open our mouths and start to
utter and then they'll come through.
"A lot of people
start improvising with the thought, 'I couldn't come up
with something,'" she continues. "Well, they're
right in the sense that they couldn't come up with
something quickly, have it be good and then select it.
Part of the magic of the creative process is creating
some time limits that force you to act first and really
not think. It's the actual doing, moving toward some goal
and not knowing how it's going to turn out that cracks
through that mental lock."
The exercises in Faste's
class push people in this direction. Imagine being told
to stare at a walnut without touching it. I don't know
about my classmates but, after a few minutes, I thought I
was in a tiny spaceship zooming through the nut's
crevices. Afterward, as I drew my neighbor Laurie, I was
acutely aware of his face's features.
My fellow students are
game for just about anything. Maybe it's because we're
all removed from our familiar surroundings. It's clear
that people want to be here: At $475 a head, and sharing
chilly bedrooms with strangers, this is not a place for
someone expecting a pampered weekend away from it all.
Some of the jammers say
they have come to enjoy an unusual experience, but others
have professional motives.
"I believe in
teaching all kinds of ways of expressing oneself,
loosening up the mind," says Jonathan Greenberg, a
Stanford law lecturer who teaches international conflict
negotiation and resolution. He's at the ranch with his
father, Arthur, also a lawyer, who says the workshops are
"the equivalent of meditation, a chance to become
more comfortable with your body and your mind."
Gordon Ray, a clinical
professor of radiation oncology at Stanford, encourages
patients to visualize their tumors and cancers during
treatment and to imagine a blue beam zapping them away.
"I have to walk a fine line," he says, "I
don't want people to feel guilty" if they fail.
While Ray has no proof that the mental imagery improves
patients' chances of recovering, he says the process
helps them feel less victimized by their disease.
Several family counselors
who use similar techniques with their clients say they
enjoy participating in something creative for its own
sake. "Creativity resonates," says Daniella
Draper, a therapist from Menlo Park. "I didn't
expect them to teach me about creativity, I just knew it
was a good, safe atmosphere [in which] to promote
creativity."
Asked how people can
maintain this kind of atmosphere when they return to
their everyday lives, Zimmerman answers, "I think
that one of the main things is people having experiences
of themselves that are different. Not that there's a
transformation, but they realize, 'I want to experience
myself that way.'"
Zimmerman says it is
important to find a community of like-minded people who
can help build such creative practices into everyday
life. "In my classes, something that people do is
write every day," she says. "The content isn't
important, the process is."
It is also refreshing to
meet new people just by their first names. I found out
much later that my drawing partner, Laurie Hoagland, is
also CEO of Stanford Management Company. "You become
very identified with what you do, society reinforces
that, and that's very limiting," says Zimmerman.
"OK, so you do this, but is that who you are?
To the extent that people can identify less and less with
any particular part of their life, it's really
liberating. All sorts of other possibilities come
up." SR
|
