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I am wanting to use the journey of Dorothy in Wizard of Oz to inspire my teachings tonight. No, not the Wizard that we (as the Danger Ensemble) are creating for the Brisbane Festival 2013 (that would be wrong!) but the archetypal Wizard of Oz.
Jean Houston’s award winning book “The Wizard of Us” is my guide today. Jean Houston has been my mentor for many years and I find her books stimulating and very dramatic, great for training and creating character. So as I read her book this morning–its a dull day in Brisbane, lower than usual temperatures, though you from the colder regions would think it quite wonderfully warm for a winter’s day– I am drawn to her research that looks at the brain (well the scarecrow had no brain).
This is the quote that I posted on Facebook and I so like it I will type it out here:
Houston (2012, pg 61) quotes Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb, now known for his phrase “neurons that fire together wire together”:
“The mind takes the shape of whatever it rests upon–or more exactly, the brain takes the shape of whatever the mind rests upon. So, if you regularly rest your mind on regrets, resentments, quarrels with others, self-reproach–you know, the voice in the back of your head yammering away about what a nobody you really are and if others only knew you better, etcetcera–if you rest your mind there, it will change your brain in that direction, because neurons that fire together wire together, for better or worse”
(Hebb in Houston, 2012, 61).
Hence it seems to me that the more we can inspire our students, the more they are able to fire and wire healthy and creative ways of being on stage…