PYGMALION MEETS PLAY OF LIFE:
A new approach to creative development,
Including a case study
by Helen Carmichael

It's just over a year since we worked together at Pygmalion in the summer of 2004 and already new life has blossomed and grows.

Back then, the hard-working Stuart was frustrated and dissatisfied in his co-writing relationship.   Despite his determination, he felt surrounded by brick walls.   Filip, a dedicated television producer, was tired and bemused - how come working with writers always turned into a battlefield - one that had even started poisoning his home life?   When all he wanted was for everyone to have fun producing great programmes!

A year later, Stuart and Filip have put into practice the insights revealed in our sessions together.   Life has changed.   Stuart is not only writing more but being produced and Filip is not only producing a huge amount of new programming, but having a good time in the process.

Stuart:   "I still think often of our session.   It has helped me a huge amount, and is one of the reasons that the whole Pygmalion thing really changed my life.   Since then I have been much more in control of my life and work, and not allowing the behaviour and actions of other people to get in the way of me achieving my goals.   Unfortunately a lot of the things that we discussed are still happening, but the effect they have on me is very different.   I no longer get angry about waiting for pages, as I have started writing much more myself.   In fact, just this very morning I received my first broadcast writing credit.   It felt good, and I fully intend to have many more.   I hope that (my co-writer) is alongside me for these, but I no longer have all of my eggs in his basket.   Breathe in, look up, and take control of your own future."

Filip:   "I had a wonderful experience with the session.   It had a great impact in how to look at things and people at work.   Oh, it's not that we know everything now; it's that we know how to think about it.   How to cope with it.   I recommend it to everyone. With some of the recent projects, we had a fun ride!   And in the end people realised how cool that trip was.   In the end we look each other in the eyes and say, whenever, however, another project comes along, we do it again.   Bringing high quality and having fun in doing so!!!   Oh and it sounds so terribly easy, but it's not; it's all about finding a balance in that creative process!   To find that balance, you have to understand every element, everyone!   You showed me how to understand every element, everyone!"

It was love that transformed the legendary artist Pygmalion's sculpture into a living beauty.   Just as I believe it was the great love of their work that gave Stuart and Filip the courage to transform themselves.   And just as Pygmalion's transformation took place after he attended the Festival of Venus in ancient Cyprus, I believe it was the crucible of the contemporary Pygmalion that made it possible for Stuart and Filip and many other creative people to make such miraculous leaps that summer of 2004.

I have been working with creative people all my life, the last few years specialising in the creative process itself.   Sometimes I work with private clients and sometimes with dedicated script laboratories such as Pygmalion.    My private clients also make spectacular changes in their life and work but often this can take a period of time and more than one session to achieve.   In the focused environment of a well-run lab, quantum leaps become possible.   In a single bound artists reach new plateaux, returning home to "ordinary" creative life significantly changed.   Over decades I have seen this happen many times.   And I saw it happen again at Pygmalion not just with Stuart and Filip, but with others as well.

One of my all-time-number-one-pin-up-boys of screenwriting, Troy Kennedy Martin (Edge of Darkness) once gave his secret of a good script as having a rich stewpot.   If this is true - and I think it is - then Pygmalion must be in the gourmet class of great environments for producing great artists.   I say artists because it is not only the script at hand that benefits from this process, but perhaps even more importantly, the creators themselves and therefore all their future works.    At Pygmalion there is something for everyone.    Not only are participants and mentors drawn from many cultures, the organisers themselves represent three different countries.   Add to this a small tribe of graphic artists and actors to workshop with interested participants and a gifted and challenging chef specially flown in from Glasgow, and you have a setting where magic happens.    It certainly did in 2004.

My role in this fabulous mix was to complement what was already being done via more traditional methods.   What I was offering is something that I believe is new and at present unique in the world of script development - a combination of over twenty year's experience as a professional scriptwriter, consultant, co-producer and educator, combined with qualifications as a counsellor and coach.   And the particular method I used is one that comes from a dramatic action tradition and is called Play of Life.   Through 90-minute sessions with individuals or creative teams, I was to work with anyone wanting clarity and/or inspiration on any particular issue.   It could be:

-  the script itself, be that from the point of view of character, plot, theme, dialogue etc.
-  the best way to interpret that script - the overall vision
-  how to collaborate better with others
-  how to balance career with personal life
-  finding the right direction in any situation
-  igniting one's passion
-  defining one's vision
-  regaining or maintaining one's faith and with it, the confidence to continue

At Pygmalion issues included:

-  How to manage and improve creativity.
-  How to maintain creative balance - what am I doing right and how do I keep it that way?
-  Defining what it means to be professional and how to accomplish that best.
-  How to maintain inner calm, especially in confronting situations.
-  How to collaborate well.
-  How to function with joy in groups.
-  Finding the heart of the project - what is it I'm trying to tell?
-  Exploring the relationship between two main characters.

The Method:  

Play of Life was developed by my first action methods trainer Dr Carlos Raimundo, a psychiatrist who left Argentina during the Dirty War of the 1970s and who came to settle in Australia.   It is an adaptation of his trainer's work, Dr J.L. Moreno, a Romanian Jew who left Nazi Germany for America, where he continued his work begun as a student in the Vienna of Dr Sigmund Freud and Dr Carl Jung.   Both Moreno and Raimundo personally experienced the horrors of genocide and political oppression.   Both became concerned with the healing of society through developing the creativity inherent in us all.   

I chose this method because it enables me to implement my core passion:   How do we find our true creative selves at any moment in any situation, and having found it, become it?   In other words, what is our essential life-giving potential and how do we manifest that?    How do we take things from the imaginary to the real?     I chose this particular method out of all the methods I have looked at, because it not only studies the present - and how that is informed by the past - but before any decisions are made - actively creates the ideal future, so that we act in an informed and safe way.   We do not go out into the world naked and vulnerable, unconscious and naïve, but with a wider angle on whatever our truth is for the moment, combined with a conscious choice and appropriate decision on how we wish to act.

Moreno developed his method by combining his medical training, his love of drama and his fascination with how children learn through play.   Moreno's method relied mostly on group process.   Play of Life is a method using little dolls and props to replace a live group.   Both methods rely on drama and play-acting, as if on stage - where the "protagonist" is the person with an issue to be explored through various situations and characters or roles - and the "director" is the person who guides the protagonist as they construct a series of scenes and tableaux until a satisfactory resolution is reached.

How it works:

The results of this kind of exploration can be profound and lasting.   Without going into too much technical detail here, research indicates that through exploring an issue the way a child does - involving the whole being simultaneously - i.e. mind, emotions and body - our three "brains" - or perhaps it is clearer to say "neurological configurations" - are simultaneously linked.   Normally it appears we approach situations using only one "brain" at a time and hence the "angle of truth" we perceive is correspondingly limited, as is the resulting "imprint" or pattern governing future behaviour or habit.    By linking all three "brains", the angle of perception is far greater, as is the effect on our behaviour.

What are these three "brains"?   One brain is common to all living creatures possessing a spine and is called the hypothalamus or "reptilian" brain.   It governs instinctive behaviour such as breathing, heart rate etc.   It is the brain that causes us to make decisions like removing our hand from a hot stove.   It is the most archaic brain structure.   The next brain is the limbic system, a neurological structure between the hypothalamus and the neo-cortex.   This the seat, among other things, of memory and emotion.    Movement, sound, smell and contact are the language of the limbic system.   The third brain is the neo-cortex, the most distinctive part of the human brain.   The neo-cortex   governs language-based and "logical" thinking.   It is the brain that is given greatest importance in Western culture.   It is the brain that has the potential to over-ride the two other brains, enabling the human species to do things like die for ideals.   However, the reality is that most of the time decisions are made by the reptilian or limbic systems - split seconds before the neo-cortex becomes conscious of what it thinks is its "decision".  

A Play of Life from Pygmalion:     Stuart has kindly given us permission to look at his session.   First, we reduce the issue under scrutiny to a single question:   To look at my working life, in particular my present co-writing relationship.   We start with examining the present so we can understand as fully as possible, where we are coming from.   And we find this is how Stuart sees himself - or his role at this particular moment - and the picture, or the world he finds himself in:

THE PRESENT

The frustrated unsatisfied yet determined worker in the static world of brick walls

Stuart stands waiting yet again for pages from his co-writer, the BLOCK OF STUART'S FRUSTRATION between them.    He alternates between pulling his hair out for the lack of control and looking down at his colleague who is asleep after a long night out.   Stuart's phone and computer lie idle behind him.   In the background his wife works hard at her job, helping to support them both.   Stuart feels bad about this.   THE STAR OF PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS lies out of reach.   We explore this situation in detail, Stuart switching between all roles and even speaking from the inanimate things in the environment.

Having dialogued with his co-writer - having said the unsayable and named the un-nameable difficulties they both face - Stuart is now free to create his ideal situation.   What does it look like, feel like?   At first this feels a bit too daunting, so we side-track a moment.   What is it about Stuart and his co-writer Jo's experience at Pygmalion so far that has made such a positive difference to their work?   Stuart lays out the elements:

THE SITUATION DURING THE SCRIPT WORKSHOP

It is as if a line has been drawn, leaving Jo's and Stuart's temptations not to work behind at home.

Stuart and Jo find themselves sitting together, contained by:

-  The beautiful location itself - a physical and geographical limit and support
-  The pressure exerted on them to produce
-  The newfound sense of creativity they have discovered during the lab and the realisation that they really can be successful as professional writers if they work seriously at it in a 9-5 kind of way
-  The combination of self-belief and validation from new peers who they respect - two of whom have already approached them to work together

Stuart realises that he needs to remember this, along with other important points that have emerged during the lab.

STUART:       "One of the first things I will do is to make a series of notes to self and hang them on my office wall - things I got from this week and things to remember and adhere to as much as I can.   e.g.:

-  On a base level, we have learned that there are certain techniques about being a writer that we can follow.
-   Not be ashamed that neither of us are really untrained.  
-  Be more confident about our characters.  
-  Be prepared to struggle to make stories; to develop our stories rather than develop new characters to solve the problems.   Work harder to solve the problem and don't take easy solutions.

I know also that I can apply these to other things that I am doing.   I have become a more intuitive and understanding director.   I'm looking forward to putting these things in place and practice as soon as possible."

Now Stuart feels ready to construct his ideal working life.   He feels it needs two stages, the first including appointing someone to work in the role of script consultant in order to keep the pressure and focus going once they are away from Pygmalion.

THE IDEAL - STAGE 1

Stuart and Jo are at work in their individual boxes.   They swap work and each works on the other's draft.

THE IDEAL - STAGE 2

Stuart is the content partner in the world of contentment and peace

Stuart and Jo stand together, backed by THE YELLOW LINE = the moment of realization for Stuart and Jo to "get their bloody finger in" and that they know they can.   THE YELLOW LINE is the turning point.

Stuart and Jo travel flanked by the RESPECTIVE ROADS THEY ARE ON.   In front of them is the GEM OF SUCCESS.

Stuart's shoulders are back.   He is walking tall.   There is no tension.   He is able to breathe in and look up instead of down, as he was in the beginning of the session.

And since then, as we have seen, he has continued to walk tall and powerful, his gaze focused where it should be, and with his first credits rolling in.   In other words, he has approached life and work from his new role, THE CONTENT PARTNER in his new world - THE WORLD OF CONTENTMENT AND PEACE.   Very different to where he found himself at the beginning of the session where he was THE FRUSTRATED UNSATISFIED YET DETERMINED WORKER IN THE STATIC WORLD OF BRICK WALLS.

Through reducing things to a simple picture - and after exploring that picture as the protagonist of that story - changing roles with everyone and everything within it - Stuart is able to reduce what was a complex situation to a simple picture with a one-line title.    Through seeing the unseen, voicing the unsaid and naming the unnamable, his confusion, frustration and feelings of powerlessness diminish and he is able to create a more appropriate role and a more positive world.    Through choosing to come from this world in every situation he finds himself in, Stuart is able to manifest it as reality.   Had he stayed in the old picture in his old role, it's highly likely that's how things would have continued.

Others have had similar successes since Pygmalion of 2004.

The results of other participants' sessions:

-  One writer found that by writing in an "unconscious" way, the writer's own personal fears and ways of addressing those fears were being forced onto the characters, rather than allowing the characters to have their own lives and to develop in their own unique ways.   Through the safe net of play, once the writer was able to recognise their own blockages (not to mention strengths) they were able to guide their characters to move through their stories in ways authentic to their character, not through the straightjacket of the writer's way.   This writer is now applying this insight to subsequent scripts, with liberating results for both themself and their characters.

-  Another writer discovered hidden issues generic to most artists - the genuine fears of becoming a selfish, irresponsible human being - becoming unbalanced, perhaps even to the point of madness.   Once these hidden and very tricky censors came to light in the conscious mind, the result was a sense of exhilaration and release.   The mind was now free to concentrate its energies on the creative act instead of finding all sorts of apparently rational "reasons" for limiting "dangerous" creativity.

-  Another writer, who like Stuart and Jo was just taking their first step as a professional, had become locked in self-doubt.   Confronted for the first time by a wave of challenging feedback, their creative confidence was faltering.   This writer, like many of us at various times in our creative lives, needed to find how to go on.   They discovered that for them the best way was to centre their actions deeply in their own intuition and intrinsic self.   And to learn to nurture themselves from within and without before opening to the world at large.   From this proven and secure standpoint, they were then able to remain relaxed and open rather than defensive or closed to what the world might have to offer - including positive and negative feedback on their work.

-  Another writer found the heart of their story.  

-  Another grew to know their main characters so well that on returning to the script after many months working on other things, on seeing the pictures of their work they had created, immediately remembered the details and essential essence of their characters.

-  Another writer, who had become exhausted and leaden through tragedies in real life, found the session transformed their situation.   Grief was making it difficult to go on, let alone be creative.   So we focused on how to deal with the grief.   Through honouring the reality of past and present and reducing the situations presented in pictures to a single sentence, the writer was then able to turn their eyes towards the future.   Again, creating their ideal in both image and title resulted in an image that "...because this is so simple and so great, it makes big sense to walk in this direction."   In their own words, this writer went from being transfixed to transformed.   Like many who have used this method (myself included), they were amazed and delighted at how easy and serious at the same time is the Play of Life.  

At Pygmalion unfortunately there was not enough time to work with the mentors as well as the participants.   I say unfortunately because over the years I have noticed that Play of Life not only benefits individuals and their work, but also creates a kind of safety net for the lab as a whole.   Not only can people feel united through a common process - being Carmichael'd as our chef Gilpin christened it - his kitchen was just across from the room where we worked and at the end of sessions, participants naturally gravitated towards Gilpin's generous hearth.   Play of Life can also work in other ways.  

For example, it's not only participants who sometimes feel nervous about being under the spotlight - often the mentors do as well and Play of Life sessions are a great way to make everyone feel more relaxed and secure.   At one lab where I worked, one of the mentors was currently facing a very challenging and frightening crisis outside the lab.   Through a session focusing on this issue, they also realised that they were unintentionally venting some of their irritation and angst on others in the lab - even while mentoring.   Once they became aware of this, it never happened again.  

At another lab, the whole place was awash with grief - a huge number of both mentors and participants were reeling from blows currently being dealt by life.   Underneath the bubbling excitement that is always present at a lab, ran a dark and turgid undercurrent that matched the food we were being fed (we didn't have a chef like Gilpin at that particular lab).   As anyone knows who has suffered major grief or loss, there is nothing quite like it to sap energy and destroy focus.   Through devoting some of the individual Play of Life sessions on how to cope, the safety, cohesion and focus of the whole group improved dramatically.

I am sure there are other, less quantifiable effects for the good that spring from Play of Life, just as I am sure the same is true for the results of script laboratories like Pygmalion.   The tendency is always to look for the obvious - the quotable, impressive statistics that directors of boards, entrepreneurs and publicists so love.   It is gratifying to be able to point to a fabulous film and say, Look, that was a product of our lab!    But what of all the other scripts that will benefit in the future because the writer, producer and director of that script were fortunate to have had that unique and special nurturing?   What of all the professional lives that are unaccountably enriched that will produce the ground from which other marvelous blooms will blossom?   Though it may be difficult to quantify, let's not forget the effect on future creations as well as celebrating the product in hand.

Helen Carmichael, November 2005