Blog | Shearwater Productions

Holly Adams in her studio recording an audiobook

Maps: unpacking perspective, creating awareness

March 17, 2013

Calling all teachers, artists, and community leaders—it’s map time! Many of you are cartophiles like myself, and all of you probably use map comparison to look at socio-cultural perspectives of the map makers and how the cartographer’s viewpoint in turn affects our own. Here’s a few on-your-feet activities to go with your history awareness and empowerment project. Blindfolded Map Adventures I’m going to give two examples of this exercise, which is also a fun way to build trust. Both have the first step: Get a Partner. Choose which of you will be blindfolded to do the Cartography, and which will

Artists and Aging

March 11, 2013

This past weekend, I met a man who is a jouster (sigh!). I had been invited to join a joust-training team years ago, but the commute was too far to make it work, and I had been PINING to do it ever since. I have always loved adventurous, physical things, and I do enjoy both sword fighting for stage and horse-back riding. So of course I want to joust, right? Doesn’t matter that I am female, relatively small, or just had a mid-forties birthday….oh crap, maybe that last one does matter. For the first time in my life, I am

On Teaching Intimacy (theatre is life)

March 3, 2013

I recently taught a workshop on Dramatic Improvisation for a Comedy Festival focused on Improvisation and Stand-Up comedy for adults. Mine was the first workshop of the day (a Saturday), and I had anticipated a small turnout of people, mostly men, who might resist all but the hilarious and shallow. Why? Because Dramatic Improvisation only works with deep vulnerability and an almost intimate relationship with a scene partner, who may be a stranger. It’s hard to do, and if the commitment to the scene partner is not complete, the scene is unsatisfying. It’s also not necessarily funny (although it can be),

Holly sitting with her table for a mystery dinner

Married To My Work

February 17, 2013

So you may have noticed that for the first time in the year I have had this blog, I missed a posting!! Don’t worry, dear reader, it won’t happen again. Here’s what happened…. You see, I have been carrying on a long-standing affair that finally took over my life…..with my work. AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! I know, I know….. I never thought it would happen to me, either! You see, work started off as a small part of my life, nothing to side-track me from my roles as loving wife and mother. Just the occasional secretive business call during a dish-to-pass, nothing noticeable. I

Arts and Empowerment

February 4, 2013

Playwrighting is about creating a means for people to empower themselves, grow, explore, find joy, and reach out to a larger community through theatre. Without even meaning to, the best and best intentioned of us shape content, form, and process direction to our understanding and comfort level. This process is one more attempt to get away from “colonialism” style thinking (Marino, 1997) where the facilitator or director reproduces the imbalance of power as well as his or her own belief system in the very group that is supposed to be expressing themselves. Since we want to encourage responsible citizenry and

A small girl at a water pump in Afghanistan

Afghanistan: a traveling player’s journey

January 20, 2013

I learned just a few days ago that will be going back to Afghanistan in the fall of 2013—eleven years after my first incredible visit. I have the honor of going over with the Afghan Friends Network, and have begun making the flurry of arrangement even as my mind and heart are in wind and fire. I have realized that it is hard for many people to understand why this part of the world is so very compelling for me, so I share below an interview I did with Lillie Marshall of Teaching Traveling. Journey in peace, friends. “When people

Working with Children on the Asperger-Autism Spectrum

January 11, 2013

I am a performer, playwright and Teaching Artist with a long history and much training in working with people whose perceptual/interactive experience of the world is on the fringe of typical association. In 2012, I was hired by 3 Tier Consulting to do theater workshops with children on the Asperger-Autism spectrum in Watertown and Fort Drum. Most of these children come from families with a spouse in the active armed forces, oftentimes also facing a possible move to another base; although we ran 2 sets of 2 weekly sessions about six months apart, only one boy was in both sets. Fabulously enough,

A christmas play with mummers in costume

Mummers: Who are they?

January 7, 2013

“In comes I, Old Father Christmas. Am I welcome, or am I welcome not?” So begins many a mummers’ play as they erupt into the room in celebration of Twelfth Night! Twelfth Night, when children and fools are kings, and bosses and adults are fools and children, when the forces of Light and Dark meet in a climactic moment, is the night of the Three Kings. It’s also the event for which Shakespeare wrote a wonderful play…..and which, in many parts of North America and the British Isles, includes MUMMERS. What the heck are Mummers? Wikipedia says “Mummers Plays (also