Category Archives: Poetry

GOING OUT OF OUR MINDS

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WHY OUT OF OUR MINDS?

Out of Our Minds is a growing network of arts workshops designed to help people improve their storytelling, communications, and life skills through creative play, improv games, and writing exercises.

Our core belief is that EVERYONE is capable of amazing, creative insights and activities if only we remove the initial fear of being anything less than excellent.

Our goal is to re-instill the playful antic freedom of childhood into adults of all walks and ages, folks with passions that just need a nurturing spark to blaze once again.

(Workshop details below)

WHO IS RANDALL?

Randall C Willis is a veteran storyteller, writer, and improviser. An award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Randall teaches screenwriting at George Brown Polytechnic, and through So, What’s Your Story?, helps clients bring life to their visions and breath to their unique voices

A perpetual student of the storytelling arts, Randall has 25+ years of training in improv, stand-up comedy, puppetry, and sketch comedy. Where Randall excels, however, is in spoken-word storytelling, performing routinely across Toronto.

Randall’s motto is: “You have permission to suck.” Fits nicely with his fully improvised life.

“You have permission to suck.”

WORKSHOP 1: Out of Our Minds (& onto the page) – 6 weeks, $250

Intimidated by the blank page? Want to write and tell entertaining stories with abandon? Wish your words were more effective and affecting?

Out of Our Minds (& onto the page) is the perfect workshop to get those creative storytelling juices flowing.

Thinking is overthinking, so we’re going to remove the pressure to get it right by simply goofing around with whatever comes. Playing improv games and using prompted writing exercises, the workshop helps make writing spontaneous and freewheeling. No preparation. No homework. No inhibitions.

6 Saturdays, January 16 – February 20, 2027, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm (ET), $250 (HST inc)

Comedy Bar Danforth, 2800 Danforth Ave, Toronto, ON M4C 1M1

“Writing without thinking, because when has thinking ever helped?”

WORKSHOP 2: Further Out of Our Minds (& onto the page) – 6 weeks + showcase, $300

Ready to stun the world with your storytelling? Want to tackle a longer piece to share? Ready to elevate your stories from good to DAMN!

Further Out of Our Minds builds on the freewheeling play and practices of Out of Our Minds to help you build stories with riveting characters (maybe you) and stirring plots.

You have something to say, and using games and general silliness, we’ll get you saying it loud and proud, starting with a staged reading for our showcase audience. Some preparation. Some homework. Still no inhibitions.

“Starting was only the beginning. Now, it gets weird!”

6 Saturdays, January 16 – February 20, 2027, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm (ET), $300 (HST inc)

Plus Showcase (date to be confirmed)

Comedy Bar Danforth, 2800 Danforth Ave, Toronto, ON M4C 1M1

TO REGISTER

To reserve your place, please e-transfer a refundable $50 deposit to createdbyrcw@gmail.com. Space is limited to 12 registrants per workshop.

TESTIMONIALS

“…thoughtful, practical suggestions on how to write for impact & evoke genuine emotion.”

“…I was able to go to places I didn’t know I needed to go to tell the stories I needed to tell.”

“…I now sit & put my pen to paper & go where I am taken.”

“…I didn’t feel my usual dread of reading what I’ve written out loud.”

“…helps people get into their writing & out of their own way.”

“…Randall is a great storyteller, very inclusive & attentive to everyone.”

Creativity unfettered

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wood-lighting-creativity-paper

Thank you for showing me that there’s a place for all of my thoughts & feelings to go. I was overwhelmed by emotion for almost the entirety of our class.

— Student

The urge to create is a powerful one. It can be so all-consuming that it overwhelms our senses.

At the same time, so few of us are born equipped to know where to begin with these feelings, how to convert that urge into positive, constructive energy. And if left untapped, we are prone to quell the noise, contain the chaos, if only to move forward with our lives in ways that we do understand, in ways socially acceptable.

I truly believe that all of us are born with this urge to create, and that it is as much the environment into which we are born and grow as it is our innate interests that determines what happens next.

For the many, the need to conform, the need to be good citizens, the need to normalize—often initiated by outside forces—leads them to confine those urges in a tightly packed container, left on a dark shelf deep in the lost recesses of their psyches.

For the few, however, those whose urges refuse to be contained, where the pressure to normalize is not so severe, creation is given voice, whether from the earliest days or later in life. Timid hesitant steps of interest give way to running vaults of passion, and creation floods ourselves and our worlds.

I am one of those lucky few; someone whose passions have been supported and nurtured from my earliest days. The hesitations and uncertainties of my past were largely self-imposed and have long since been removed and forgotten.

The need to create and to seek creation consumes and replenishes me. My world is one of possibility and opportunity; and if it is limited, it is only by my time here.

If I have been given the opportunity to act as nurturer and supporter to others—through teaching, social contacts, simple engagement with my universe—then I accept and welcome that function both enthusiastically and humbly. In the exercise, I receive as much and likely more than I could ever hope to give.

The urge to create is a powerful one. But it is nothing compared to the act of creation.

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Award-winning screenwriter Randall C Willis is Story Analyst & Coach at So, What’s Your Story? (Facebook page). He also teaches screenwriting in Toronto at Raindance Canada and George Brown College.

My thanks to Pexels for the free stock photos.

Side long

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SONY DSC

It’s subtle, almost imperceptible;

The sense you’re being measured.

 

It’s not malicious; it may not be conscious,

And it’s not the metric of any ruler or scale.

Rather it’s based on history.

 

Not world history; not even your history,

But a history of pain and joy;

A history of violence and caresses;

A history of anticipation, both eager and dread.

 

It’s a measurement made during a moment’s pause;

Through a renegade lock of hair;

In a side-long glance rather than challenging stare.

 

We measure the people we meet,

Seeking solace that this one’s different,

Checking for warning echoes of past sorrows.

Hoping for the best. Wary of the worst.

 

I am measured. You are measured. And yet,

The result speaks more of the measurer than the measured.

Passing

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Droids

When you walked by me tonight,

Did you see the holes in my jeans

Or see the whole of my being?

 

When you crossed the sidewalk,

Did you see the dirt on my face

Or witness the pain in my eyes?

 

When you whistled to yourself,

Did you hear the hack of my cough

Or consider the song in my heart?

 

When you looked away,

Did you see the tracks on my arms

Or the bruises of past abuse?

 

When you accelerated your step,

Did you smell the stench of urine

Or breathe the scent of possibility?

 

When you turned your back,

Did you dread unrestrained need

Or wonder at untapped potential?

 

When you blocked out my cries,

Did you fear the monster before you

Or lose the veil of your delusions?

 

When you walked by me tonight,

Did you think you could escape?

My truth is your truth.

 

Walk all you want;

The longer you walk,

The longer I remain.

Stranger

Curtained call

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Rides

Tears carve channels

Through caked whiteness,

Intersecting painted smiles,

As limbs that juggled

And balanced on beams

Seem weighted and dead.

 

The music no longer plays,

Replaced by heavy silence

As tired hands wrestle

Cold cream jars and tissues.

The show has ended.

Only reality remains.

 

The face in the mirror

Beams gleefully back,

Yet the seated corpse

Sobs uncontrollably;

Everything left behind

On saw dusted floors.

 

If I give you everything,

Leave nothing for me,

How do I pass the night

Alone with this shell?

What can I be when

The clown is not here?

 

I frolicked; you smirked.

I stumbled; you laughed.

I collapsed; you roared.

I died; you applauded,

Departing for dull lives

As I melted to decay.

 

Who am I if not an

Echo of your delight?

As I remove my makeup,

Do I not erase myself?

Who will love the man

Who cries alone?

Hope

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Choker

Silence pours forth

Where eloquence fails,

Unable to find words

When thoughts vanish.

Boiling with purpose,

I have no direction;

Faced with the inertia

Of fear and question.

 

My mind races on,.

Ready to reach out

A touch, a smile,

Connection desired.

You sit so close

That I feel your breath

On my very soul;

Yet mute is my song.

 

I can still see you,

Feel your musical heart,

Rest in your warmth,

Nestle in your voice.

You, me. One, all.

Easily experienced,

Soundlessly recalled,

Hopefully repeated.

Unknown

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Kelp crow

Raven beckons me on a journey.

Its rasping voice pierces my spirit,

Pulling me to a future unknown.

 

Questions I ask, options propose,

Yet the ebon wraith remains evasive,

Demanding faith when will is weak.

 

What lies ahead in the darkness,

Where illusions of control are lost

And footing is no longer certain?

 

Raven ignores my fears, urges me forward.

When I look back for sights remembered,

His tar-pitched plumage absorbs my view.

 

With vision gone, I now see the unseeable:

The darkness that stills my timid heart

Is the freedom my soul has sought so long.

 

Where I am, light surrounds me;

Where I’m not, nothing exists.

I am the journey, unceasing while I live.

 

There is no stasis. There is no rest.

The raven that calls me is me;

And fear dissolves with my next step.

Our songs

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SONY DSCWhere are the troubadours?

Who will sing our songs,

Tell our stories, shed our tears?

 

Our world has so much to say,

Yet our streets and courtyards

Boom with unrelenting silence.

I witness the horrors of another world,

Hear the cheers and jeers of strangers,

But my neighbour weeps in solitude,

Oblivious to the bonds we share,

Unknowing of my face, my voice, my heart.

 

Where are the troubadours?

Who will hear my story, my song,

Bring it to strangers in a familiar land?

 

Ghosts pass every day, unseen,

Faces held to the ground they trod,

Eyes focused on illusory distances,

Cacophonous words uncommunicated;

A wall of flesh and bone and cloth,

Devoid of spirit, absent of connection.

 

Where are the troubadours?

Who will touch our hearts, our souls,

With music, with stories, with love?

 

A strum of string. A strike of key.

Tremulous glottal vibration.

And an audience thirsting:

To see, to be seen;

To understand, to be understood;

To connect, to love.

 

Where are the troubadours?

Connection

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Chickadee-1

From his water-laden branch,

Hidden among protective leaves,

The chickadee stares down

At the strange cyclops below;

His grasp on the limb

Is tenuous at best,

Close enough for details

Distanced for quick escape.

 

The one-eyed beast is calm,

Open to new connections,

Seeking only an audience

With his avian companion.

Words are unspoken, unnecessary,

As a bond is formed

In the hush of gentle rain,

Whispers of waving branches

Broken only by buzz-clicks

Of monocular blinks.

 

For this instant, this

Sodden, frozen moment,

Relationships are formed,

Connections are made,

Eventually to dissolve

Into photographic memory,

But vitally important

Both to he and to me,

Shared in wonder and awe.

Chickadee-2