Always wanted to tell stories but are terrified you’ll suck at it? Already writing, but want to explore deeper characters, more evocative description, and more intense action? Interested in translating your performance arts to the page?
OUT OF OUR MINDS (& onto the page) is the perfect workshop to get those creative storytelling juices flowing. Over 6 Saturdays at Toronto’s Sweet Action Theatre, we’ll play with improv games and prompted writing exercises to help you make writing spontaneous and freewheeling. Thinking is overthinking, so we’re going to remove the pressure to get it right by simply playing with whatever comes. No preparation. No homework. No inhibitions.
Just be ready to be silly and open and bring something to write with (e.g., pen & paper, phone, iPad, stone tablet & chisel, semaphore flags).
TO REGISTER: Early-bird pricing of $200 (+ HST) ends June 14 when prices rise to $250 (+HST). Please send an e-transfer to createdbyrcw@gmail.com to reserve your place. Spaces are limited.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Randall C Willis is an award-winning screen and comedy writer and filmmaker, as well as a seasoned science and medicine writer. He regularly teaches screenwriting at George Brown College and formerly taught at Raindance in Toronto. Through his company So, What’s Your Story?, story specialist and storytelling evangelist Randall helps clients bring life to their visions and breath to their unique voices. He also routinely judges screenplays and films for film festivals across North America.
A perpetual student of the storytelling arts, Randall has 25+ years of training in improv, stand up, puppetry, sketch comedy, and monologues. If Randall has a motto, it’s “You have permission to suck”, which fits nicely with a fully improvised life.
You can also follow Randall’s storytelling thoughts on Instagram and YouTube.
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.
The life of anyone practicing an art form—whatever you do with passion is your art—is a continual balancing act between impassioned self-expression and self-questioning despair. For me, this duality revolves around my efforts in fiction writing (i.e., screen, novel, poetry, short stories, etc.).
Earlier today, I learned that the television series 2 Broke Girls ended its six-season run on CBS, and the news briefly shifted my balance toward despair.
On a couple of occasions, I tried to watch the sitcom about two broke girls plying their trade as diner waitresses while targeting a dream of opening a cupcake shop. But each time, I had to turn the show off after a few minutes because I found the comedy so excruciating.
Every 15 seconds, there was yet another wink-wink nudge-nudge one-liner that I felt lacked any art whatsoever, dialogue that but for an incessant laugh-track would likely have been met with complete silence in front of a live audience.
And yet, the series aired for six seasons. It had enough of an audience for CBS to keep it on the air.
I like broad comedy; truthfully, I do. I even write it on occasion.
I live for Mel Brooks’ comedies, for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, for Blackadder, for The Muppet Show, for SCTV, In Living Color and Kids in the Hall.
Anyone who has followed me for any period of time—especially on Twitter—knows I am up for any joke-opalyse.
But the appeal of 2 Broke Girls and its ilk—looking at you, Two-and-a-Half Men—simply eludes me. It feels like one-liners in search of a higher purpose.
But here’s the thing I constantly need to remind myself:
This difficulty rests entirely within me, and has nothing to do with the creators or writers of any of these shows.
Celebrate, don’t negate
Getting ANY television show to air, getting any screenplay turned into a movie is difficult, even in this era of seemingly limitless venues and diminishing equipment costs.
That any show manages more than a pilot episode is amazing. So, six seasons of broadcast should be celebrated from every mountain top.
As an artist, I applaud 2 Broke Girls creators Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cummings for getting their show on the air. I congratulate the people behind the Sharknado series for continuing to produce films.
To denigrate these efforts simply because they do not suit my tastes is not only unfair, it is also blatant hubris.
Who the hell am I—a writer who has one television special to his credit (thank you, SomeTV!)—to say that these efforts are unworthy of attention?
For that matter, even if I were more routinely lauded and vastly more accomplished, it would not be my place to dictate what should be valued as Art.
And as an artist, as someone exploring my passions:
Dwelling on this topic is useless. More importantly, it is detrimental to me and the craft as I exercise it.
Remembering why
It would be naïve to suggest that trends in comedy and writing have no influence on my career as a writer, but honestly, my career is secondary to my writing; a beneficial side effect, if you will.
Comparing my efforts to those of others is therefore unimportant.
My only true comparator is what I wrote yesterday and any internal sense of whether I am getting better at making the points I wish to make, telling the stories I want to tell.
I write because I have something to say.
I write because I don’t know how not to.
I write because it brings me joy.
Certainly, part of understanding my craft is seeing how others approach the same challenges and opportunities I face.
Just as I must choose my path forward, so too must they theirs. Although I may not see the merits in their choices, they are doing what is right for them and I must honour that.
There is room enough for all of us.
Disclosure:
I own complete series collections of Get Smart and Hogan’s Heroes, which I appreciate others might consider as insipid as I do 2 Broke Girls.
Mother, Nehiyaw, Metis, & Itisahwâkan - career communicator. This is my collection of opinions, stories, and the occasional rise to, or fall from, challenge. In other words, it's my party, I can fun if I want to. Artwork by aaronpaquette.net
Where are the troubadours?
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