2005© Photograph by Tony Arpante
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Interview with Allen Schoer
By Lori Mammen THINK, April 1998 THINK: Let’s begin by talking about the Actors Institute (TAI Resources) and your involvement in the company’s work. How and why did TAI come to be? Schoer: Seven of us, who all came from a theater background, founded the organization in the late 1970s. We started from the simple notion that actors spend most of their lives looking for work. Who helps the artist, the actor, to continue to generate and regenerate his or her own creative vitality while continually waiting for work? Who helps artists continue to hear their own voices and find ways to re-spark themselves in the middle of rejection and waiting? We did not want to do therapy or enlightenment work. That all has its place, but we were interested in taking the principles of coaching we knew from theater – how to coach and direct a theatrical production, how to bring out the creativity in each actors in an ensemble. We wanted to take these principles out of the theater and use them to coach individuals. We started a weekend program that we ultimately called The Mastery of Creativity. The program gave participants a chance to get up and explore, try on new things, play, fail, mess up – go beyond the places where they normally stopped. The program became a huge success. Within six months of starting, we had people from every walk of life knocking on the door, so to speak. They had heard about us from their artist friends. Within a year, we were flying all over the world because people had come to New York to participate in the program and took it back to their home cities and countries. Now, all these years later, about 90 percent of my work is with corporate America and education. By now, about 100,000 people around the world have participated in our work. No one has learned more than we have in the process of doing this. We had to build an infrastructure pretty quickly, take on more teachers, and train them to do the work. When we were called into environments that were originally foreign to us, what an experiment that was! Certainly, we have all learned about creativity “on our feet” and by doing it with people. It has been a very humbling and a very moving process. THINK: So, how do you keep yourself motivated? Schoer: That’s a continual concern. We are the center of the universe for an enormous number of people, and we must continue to find ways to rejuvenate ourselves. I’m no better or worse at it than anyone else in the world. There are times when I really feel the creative imperative I teach to everyone else. For instance, it has brought me back to my music after 20 years of being away from it. There are certainly many times in my life when I feel that I don’t fully embody what I am about. There are many twists and turns in this process, and finding ways to rejuvenate is an endless exploration. It’s never the same twice. What I may need at one time to rejuvenate, is definitely antithetical to what I need at another time. THINK: How as the program changed over the years? Schoer: The Mastery of Creativity program is still given, and it hasn’t changed other than in maturity. We have all grown up with it. After almost 20 years, it is still a very popular item, and we offer it here on a monthly basis. We offer other basic programs, as well. I created The Tell, a three-part program on articulating vision and bringing it into every aspect of life. Many business leaders as well as artists are involved in another program called Leadership in Creativity. Our theatrical branch is still the foundation of what we do, and I continue to teach a master class in it. The most exciting part is that everything we do for an outside organization is original to that organization’s needs. We are really loath to go back and borrow from other work we have done. In every case we want to design and customize specific to the expressed needs. We have a body of experience and a willingness to ask questions and understand, and then we develop on that. THINK: You have said that you and your colleagues at TAI are dedicated to revealing the artist in each person. In what ways are we all artists? Schoer: When we call ourselves artists, it challenges our beliefs about ourselves, especially in areas where we would not usually apply that idea. And it is necessary to challenge our beliefs about ourselves, about our own creativity and our own artistry. If I go into a financial institution and begin to talk about the workers’ artistry, it is not usually something they have heard before, and it challenges their beliefs about themselves. I’m never terribly concerned about anyone’s creativity; creativity is infinite. I’m always concerned about people’s definition of their reality because that’s the lid on their creativity – their own limiting concepts of themselves. When we begin to address artistry, we challenge people to look outside the box or even at the box they use to describe themselves. Beginning to look at ourselves and to explore the possibilities of our own artistry is very ennobling. It lifts us out of our daily, mundane view of ourselves and, if we can get into it, invites us to explore the arc of our lives, where we are going, what it’s about, what we want to create, and where the artistry is in that. An artist is one who not only produces art, but also creates an environment in which it can be produced. Picasso created his own life, his own studio, his own way of working. He nurtured and cultivated an entire environment in which to live and work and thrive. Out of that, the product was a natural end result. This is what educators do. Their classroom is an entire creative environment. The degree to which they cultivate that environment is the degree to which they express their artistry. An artist owns the entire environment and creates his or her own world; the laborer just works within a world. THINK: How do we limit our own creativity? Schoer: All our personal, education, societal, familiar beliefs – and I’m using beliefs as limiting judgments and concepts – are where the dangers lie. I can’t do this. I wasn’t born to do that. I was told I was not good at this. These are the limiting energies on top of an infinite source of vitality and creativity. This is why I say that I’m never worried about anyone’s creativity; I’m more concerned about the lid on top of it. I don’t think anyone was born with more or less creative vitality than anyone else. How it is cultivated or how it is limited are the important factors. THINK: Some people don’t even know where to begin in taking the lid off. Schoer: Most of us don’t. Understanding the way each of us sees the world individually, as opposed to the way we interact in the outer world, is a subjective process. Self-exploration is one of the hardest, yet one of the most essential issues in all of life. There is no greater relationship for us to have than with our own creativity. It will then guide everything else in our lives. To go back to the place, after we have been so externally focused, is the main challenge. THINK: This what you mean when you talk about finding your “vision,” isn’t it? Schoer: Let’s start with the idea that vision, just like eyesight, is a present way of seeing. This is how I began working on the issue of vision for myself. There was a time in my life when I had other people’s voices arguing very loudly in my head, and I didn’t know what I thought. They weren’t even paying rent for the space, and yet they were talking very loudly to each other. And I had no idea whether I had anything I wanted to say. I began to think, How do you see life for yourself, Allen? This is vastly different than thinking, What do I want to accomplish next? Using the idea of who I saw life for myself, I began to play with the idea of vision as a present way of seeing. I’m not comfortable with vision as something for the future. From my prejudice, we confuse vision with mission and goals – something to accomplish, something to get done, something for the future. We literally invalidate ourselves in the present moment. Each of us has an original set of values, an original set of principles, an original way in which our creativity wants the world to line up. Our unique way of seeing the world looks to express itself in everything we do, in our work, in our relationships. First, there is a present way of seeing. Then, there is that which wants to be created from it. Vision is the essential raison d’etre, the essential reason for existence and for expression. It is a spine, a centering point from which all goals and activities develop. Once we articulate it for ourselves, it is the experience of being centered in our own lives. It is the experience of coming home. And from that experience of coming home, everything makes sense. All those little, disparate things we do, the entire puzzle, the entire tapestry comes into play. THINK: How do people get in touch with their vision? Schoer: We can begin by asking ourselves questions, using ourselves as a reference, a vast archive. I don’t think anyone has a better take on your vision than you. I am not great on self-help books or methodologies because they can keep us from hearing our own thoughts and our own voices. I am fully in favor of never-ending questions that invite exploration into the mystery of what we are about and where we come from creatively. We will not know the answers, but we will hear more and more things. If we are willing to recognize ourselves as our own Smithsonian Institute, our own vast archive of information and thematic ideas about ourselves, then we will begin to understand why we do the things we do. There are probably some very sound principles and values underneath all that we do. As we look at different areas of our life and continue to ask questions of exploration, certain thematic ideas begin to appear. When we recognize and hear these thematic ideas, we are on the way to understanding how we see the world according to us. These values ultimately lead us toward understanding and articulating an original vision statement. THINK: Can you give an example of one of those never-ending questions? Schoer: There is a distinction we can make between accomplishing and experiencing. Accomplishing will always have a finite answer: What do I want to do today? What is today’s lesson plan? What do we need to work on today? If we enter the world of what we want to experience, then we open up an entirely different vitality. If you ask a teacher, What are you looking to experience with your students today? Then there is an energy and quality that will run through each person’s life. Once you identify what you want to experience in that work, then you can look for other places where you can experience that. Where else would it be vital? What else is it similar to? What do you want to experience in learning? in culture? Experiencing lands us in the middle of our bodies and invites us to continue to explore. THINK: This is very different than “covering” a lesson or pages 45 through 48 in a book, isn’t it? Schoer: Absolutely. Ultimately, experience is the source of all accomplishing. Once we begin to experience something, then we can look for other places to experience it. Maybe we can experience it on pages 45 through 48. Let’s go there. I am an advocate of both quantitative and qualitative measurables. We can assess quantitative measurables. For qualitative measurables, we must ask different questions: How did it feel? What are we growing with this? The more we investigate what we want to experience, the more we approach vision and creativity. THINK: What are the consequences if people are not in touch with their vision? Schoer: How many times have we walked around in life and asked, Where is it going for me? Why am I doing this? What’s my purpose? – or any such question where we realize that we’ve lost the center of what we’re about or are out of relationship with the thrust or direction of our own lives. This is a thought consequence, but there are some very strong feeling consequences that go along with it. In all of this, it is the feeling of being lost. When we continue to put a lid on what we are about creatively, we ultimately feel disenfranchised form ourselves. Once we begin to limit or deny our impulses, limit or criticize our intuitions, then we begin to walk away from how we see the world. Eventually this will come back to haunt us. THINK: Some students are involved in things they should not be involved in – gangs, for instance. They must have felt disenfranchised very early in their lives. Schoer: How often and how early do we begin to ask kids about their vision. So, tell me, how do you see life for you? What are you looking to experience in school today? What are you looking to experience in this project? What are you looking to create in this assignment? What do you want to say in this work? What are the values you bring with you? When we ask such questions, we value each student’s creativity and say that the genius is within the student. Each student brings his or her genius to the information the class will explore. This honors an original genius, an original vitality. In this instance, our students are not seeing education as an add-on, as something they must apply from the outside into themselves. Rather it is something that goes through who they are. The students bring their genius to a subject, and then they can create a synthesis and a partnership. The teacher may be brilliant, but it is ultimately the student who learns how to apply it. Unless we continue to honor the creative genius in all students, they will never feel like our partners and collaborators in learning. THINK: There are obviously many benefits for students who are in touch with their vision. Schoer: When students and the teacher are co-creators, there is a partnership in learning. In this way, we allow or cultivate the students’ innate motivation, rather than impose motivation and discipline from without. Then the students’ natural self-esteem and their desire to explore expands. Intercurricular and interdisciplinary work is a natural consequence because the students begin to understand and want to know how everything links up and relates. The magic we see in so many wonderful classrooms is where students feel like co-creators. As teachers, we invite; learning is a consequence. This is the magic in education, and there are so many teachers who do it so wonderfully. They recognize that teaching is about cultivating an entire environment in which creativity can flourish. THINK: Do teachers learn to do this by doing it for themselves? Schoer: That’s the only way. Once we allow ourselves to become students again, we have opened a new door. Once we allow ourselves to become students of what we innately know – not what we should know – then we enter an endlessly fulfilling and endlessly developing relationship. In this process, there will be an enormous amount of compassion and an enormous about of new understandings. Naturally, then, we learn how to share this with our students. Teachers are cultivators. We are not assignment-givers, we are not relayers of information, we are not pass-alongs. In education, there has been such a wonderful, exciting revolution in thinking and philosophy in the past 15 to 20 years, but it’s only beginning to be a revolution in the classroom experience. We cannot rely only on a revolution in philosophy; the classroom needs to offer a vital, alive experience. We need to take some of the ideas we philosophize about and make them rich experiences in the classroom, so the consequence is a great product. I see this beginning to happen, but it can be a frightening process. It’s much safer to hide behind the thinking and the philosophy, but we need to make it personal; that’s the vulnerable place, as well as the magical place. THINK: You have touched on how schools help or hinder students in recognizing their vision. When you go into schools, what do you see that encourages you? Schoer: I recently finished a year-long project with a group of teachers in a New Jersey school district. The number of teachers who were willing to use themselves as a resource for new learning was wonderful. One math teacher’s entire classroom became an environment for mathematics. When she and her students held a Math Olympics, for example, her classroom looked like a cultural center for mathematics. The students rearranged everything in the room and felt they were in an environment that would help them to thrive and grow. By the time they finished the project, they had synthesized music, art, science, and literature into one cohesive unit. The students felt that they had created it. In this kind of project, the teacher works in partnership with the students to answer important questions: How are we going to create this? How will we all live in the experience of it? What are we going to get out of it? For the Math Olympics, the journey was so enriching that the end product didn’t matter anymore; in fact, the end results far exceeded expectations. The teacher and students were invested in making sure that every phase of the journey was a great ride. The student experienced their impact and saw how they helped each other grow. They learned about their power and the impact they could make in the world. This built an enormous sense of partnership. THINK: Did this math teacher’s experience represent the experience of all the teachers in the project? Schoer: On the down side, there were certainly some teachers within the group who seemed to say, Here’s the syllabus. Here’s the curriculum. I have to finish it by a certain date. They were wonderful people, but the terror to do things correctly and the fear of going beyond the guidelines and restrictions was too much for them to overcome. This certainly says something about how their creativity was or was not nurtured earlier on in life. THINK: You have mentioned some constraints that teachers must work under. Yet, that math teacher was able to create an environment where students could thrive. How can teachers build such an environment within the constraints they face? Schoer: Let’s use the math teacher as an example. She set up a general subject to be addressed: metrics. From there, she opened it up for discussion with her students. She explained that she wanted the experience to be something that everyone could participate in. She presented an idea to start the process, but the Math came from the students in response to her questions: What would be fun? How should the classroom look? Every question held a challenge and invited the students to be co-explorers. The students senses that there were some guidelines, but not rules. The guidelines set up a general structure to stimulate everyone’s creativity. Once students had the guidelines, they could decide on the rules they needed to invite their creativity further. After students became involved, they used each other as sounding boards and co-collaborators. There was a permission to explore things, whether right or wrong, with the teacher. In every case, if it was a good idea, the student was asked to explain why it was a good idea and how something worked for him or her. At the end of the project, the teacher explained to the students that they were finished and that the experience was extraordinary. But then she turned it back over to the students: Do you feel complete? This was a way of honoring the artistry of every person and giving each student the opportunity to express everything he or she wanted to express. When the students felt that they were complete, then the class moved on to the next project. THINK: Doesn’t it take a great deal of creativity to accomplish all of this within the constraints that teachers face? Schoer: There is no question about that. In all honesty, if we can invite one new question or one new reframing, then we are making progress. Simply inviting one new element and seeing its benefits is genius. We are not out to reinvent our lives totally; we are out to return to an original way of seeing. We return to it step by step, one idea t a time. Creativity grows on what we embrace and accept. If we accept our fears and restrictions, we create more restrictions. If we embrace and invite questions that explore, we open up new vistas for ourselves. From this, our creativity guides us; we don’t guide it. Creativity is not a little tool we pull out of our pocket to get a job done; it is the vitality of our lives looking to guide us. It can be very scary to walk away from a formula, but the genius of reach individual’s methodology is what I love. Our real life’s work should be uncovering the genius of our own methodology. THINK: What other benefits can teachers and students reap from an environment that invites creativity? Schoer: The process opens up a new vitality, and teachers will be rejuvenated in what they do. In education, I so believe in being liberated into our work as opposed to being liberated from our work. Teachers will begin to feel a new resonance, a new impact in their work. They will definitely go from coping to creating, and those are two entirely different energies. Teachers will find partners where they thought they had adversaries. Imagine all the new syntheses that teachers will have when they become more empathetic and begin to build greater trust. We’re talking about creative health that leads to career health, and this will lead to student health. THINK: You are not a fan of self-help books, but are there any books that might be helpful for teachers? Schoer: I’m not totally against self-help books, but I am against formulas. If you read something that ultimately opens up your own personal exploration and invites you to hear from yourself more fully, then you’re on to something. But if a writer is imposing another set of ideas, then it’s an add-on, and it is never going to work for you. Ultimately, the job of any teacher is to disappear, so the student is the one who shines. There are some books I would choose from different areas of life. For instance, from the world of theater, there is a wonderful book called The Year of the King by Anthony Sher. This book is about Sher’s experience in the role of Richard III at The Royal Shakespeare Theater ten years ago. It is his journal of the process, his journal of creativity. I have given it to many people in business and in education, and they have thrived on it. David Whyte’s book The Heart Aroused was written for corporate America, but it is, indeed, about creativity in all walks of life and the passages we go through. Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy is a wonderful story that uses golf as a metaphor for all of life. I’m not a golfer, but what he says about creativity and magic is super. Peter Drucker’s book Innovation and Entrepreneurship has brilliant thoughts about creativity. The magic is always in being nonlinear. I tell people in education to read books in the arts or business, to break out of their discipline and go into other areas. I say the same thing to people in business. I ask people in the arts what business books they have read lately. It is important to change your reference so you can hear from yourself in new ways. THINK: What closing comments or suggestions do you have for the teachers who are reading this interview? Schoer: I rarely use the title teacher or educator; I feel much more fulfilled in calling myself a partner or collaborator with the person I am working with. We work together and share the journey. In all of this, what moves me about educators is their role as agents of growth. They are the growth specialists whose job is to make students the honored ones, the ones of great value, the ones from which we will learn. The teacher is ultimately the one who disappears. Consider the issue of reading. For all the analysis and study on reading, we still don’t know how a child learns to read. We know how to lay all the tools in front of the child, and we are gaining greater and greater expertise in laying all the tools down. But we don’t know how the child personalizes it and embodies it. So, ultimately, children teach themselves. How can we continue to honor and cultivate the teacher within each student? To me, the magic of education is revealing the unknown. Oh, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know you knew how to do that. How did you know that? Where did that come from? We continue to reveal the unknown, not just relearn the known. I always crave the experience of being moved by my students. From that, I am endlessly rejuvenated. Without it, why bother? My passion is to help teachers revitalize themselves. I invite them to become students again, students of their own creative process. I help them find ways to be not only invigorated by what they’re doing, but also reminded that it is the center of what they’re about. This interview was conducted by Lori Mammen, editor of THINK. 
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