Praxis & Improvisation is the name I have given my workshop projects because I believe that this is where creativity originates, in playful doing. Praxis means 'practice' and 'process', and improvisation, of course, is the wonderful, playful response, to just about anything, that is at once spontaneous, experimental and focused on release.
Aristotle believed that free people engage in three basic activities: praxis, theoria and poiesis. Each term refers to a type of knowledge: praxis is an approach to knowledge that has action as its goal; theoria is the kind of knowledge whose goal is truth; and poiesis is an activity that is rooted in production in the highest sense, and is deeply related to James Hillman's notion of the "poetic basis of the mind," the place where imagination dwells.
My workshops support opportunities for active engagement with both writing and art making processes, along with a sense of engagement that will encourage the unfolding of truthful productions. Truth in this sense is a relative thing, so perhaps what I'm getting at here is that my aim is to support you in producing work that honors your authentic self, which is a kind of playful alignment with the wonderful ritualistic power of the creative act. The emphasis will always be on process, but it is my hope that participants will find themselves creating works that are ready to go out into the world, to be shared and enjoyed. My aim is to continually feed this wonderful process, the creative process itself.
