I'm thinking today about how we all help each other out.

As Sam mentioned in his post yesterday, we're working right now on 'shaping' scenes where each of us is offering and leading the development of a scene that we have conceived.

This shaping role is new to all of us. It presents a double level of difficulty; firstly, we're taking on a role that we're not accustomed to. And it isn't exactly an easy role, shaping an idea (usually from scratch) with five people standing in front of you. Secondly, we're all working with material in a way that we've never worked before. So we're taking on a new role doing new things.

It's hard. As we've all said.

I've noticed that we're getting better at being the shapers, for sure, but we're also getting better at being shaped. We're willing to dive into things that we don't immediately understand, or things that are hard. We're willing to push on longer and work past a point of comfort or contentment in order to support another getting closer to realizing something. We're getting to be really good clay, flexible and willing. That's a nice feeling, as someone being shaped, to give yourself over to someone else's way of working, and it's a great thing as a shaper to know that the people you're working with trust that what you're offering will lead the whole group to something valuable.

It's kind of a feedback cycle; being more effective shapers helps the people being shaped, and being effective clay makes the shaper more confident and better able to explore wilder after wilder ideas.

You can see us helping each other out in action at our open rehearsal tomorrow from 2pm to 5pm in the Yukon Arts Centre studio. Come anytime, leave anytime. We might ask you to help us out, if you're willing.