Blog | Shearwater Productions

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

Holly Adams in her studio recording an audiobook

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,

Raven Brings the Light to the People

December 25, 2012

So many celebrations that begin in late fall and run into dead of winter are about finding (or bringing) light in the darkness, both literally and metaphorically. One of my favorite stories is Raven Brings the Light, of which there are many versions. A beautiful version was performed for Northern Exposure, in an episode is called “Seoul Mates”. (It weaves together a variety of winter solstice themes, and ends with a Raven pageant). Below I have reprinted from Native Online a wonderful version. May your heart be filled with light. There was a time many years ago when the earth was

How Popular Fiction Can Make a Difference

December 16, 2012

This blog is about how popular novels can and do move the general public’s assumption of What Is Okay forward in wonderful ways—in other words, you can stop hatin’ on chick books as an auto-response and look a little deeper to find the forces making slow but big changes in how women perceive themselves and are perceived by others. Yup, I am about say that romance novels are important. The idea for this blog came to me as I had just finished narrating the wonderful romance by Joan Reeves, “The Trouble with Love” (shameless plug—it’s available at Audible Inc) and

Holly in a classroom teaching 4-grade students

Rigor and Joy: Teaching 4-graders how to make art

December 6, 2012

From mid-September through mid-December, I am a teaching artist in six fourth-grade classrooms, twenty contact hours per classroom (theoretically). The project involves using performance modalities (usually as alternative learning strategies) to co-teach academic and social content, then facilitating the creation of an original piece about that content. I have been happily doing this project for 15 years. Normally, I love this project and look forward to it every year. I love rediscovering the material through students’ experiences, I love mid-wifing their process of becoming artists, writers, performers; it is such an honor. I look for ways to grow and tailor

The Importance of Downtime

November 30, 2012

I am normally pretty driven. Even when I feel sick or depressed, I get up, put one foot in front of the other, or boogie half awake in the shower, muttering the ‘song’ Dory sings in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming…just keep swimming.” There is a part of me that feels ultra responsible for my family, my art, my community, my work, my granddogs, everything around me. Not that I am important to it all, but just that it is important for me to keep doing as much as I can. Sometimes, however, it’s like the time I was speeding

Holly Adams in her Longhorn tee-shirt in front of her desk

Biz and Art: Tips for bouncing back from failure

November 23, 2012

So, there you are, gearing up for another busy month. As usual, “work on website” and “go to networking event” and “get business cards” move to the bottom of the “to-do” list. They can, right? Face it–your schedule is full! But then business trauma hits—your project is cancelled. The sponsor has withdrawn, a school loses its funding, a theatre has to cut back its budget, or a community organization is cutting the department that contracted you. How do you turn these moments into business success? There’s a few things you can do to get ahead of the game. How to

Veterans’ Day and Armistice Day

November 12, 2012

Whether we have family members of the past or the present in war zones, or live in countries affected by war, Veteran’s Day and Armistice Day focus our reflections, thoughts, research, hopes, actions, wishes, and prayers. Myself, I am drawn to war memorials, war histories, parades, and the stories Veterans and others who have experienced war have to tell. My own brief war-zone experience brought home what I have heard many say: there is no way people who have not been in the midst can understand. Artists, though, can bring us closer, can make us smell the aroma, see the