All are welcome to join Club Blue for dancing, but to participate in the costume contest you must purchase a ticket for the May 18 performance of Xanadu.

*Valid with student ID. Available on line, by phone or at the Box Office.

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As part of its continuing commitment to developing new works, Signature presents a one-weekend-only concert of Crossing, a musical by the writers of Nevermore: Matt Conner (The Hollow) and Grace Barnes.

Crossing explores the interwoven stories of eight people from different decades of the past century who come together at a train station. Some are waiting for the train, others are waiting for visitors, a few are just…waiting. All of them are searching – for hopes and dreams, for new beginnings, for answers. As their stories are brought to musical life in the train station, the characters discover that, while every life is different, the journey is always the same. With music ranging from gospel to pop to rock, Crossing unites the musical eras through the souls who live them.

Holiday Follies tickets must be purchased separately and are not included in the 4-show cabaret subscription package.

General Seating.  Reservations recommended.  Please call the Box Office at 703 820 9771.

Two rival high schools, Southwest High and Northeast High, are neck-to-neck in the final rounds of Brain Drain, a local television game show. The questions onstage and offstage are the same: What does it mean to be Un-American? What makes a good citizen? As tension escalates between the two teams and the game nears its end, answers come in a way none of the students could have ever expected: A surprise interrogation by the House of Un-American Activities Committee. The students, unexplainably trapped in one of America’s darkest eras, are each confronted with questions of identity and integrity as they deal with accusations of being Un-American. Featuring professional actor, Jason Lott, and a cast and crew made up entirely of students from Arlington high schools, this is one performance you won’t want to miss!

“Open Call for Creativity” will include workshops led by Sophy Burnham, who has been a New York Times bestselling author and made appearances on television shows such as "Larry King Live" and "Oprah".

October 6, 2011

Of all the things that stifle creativity, none is so smothering as an abusive Inner Voice—the one that says you aren’t good enough, old enough, young enough, rich enough, poor enough, neurotic enough, happy enough, smart enough, creative enough . . .  Not enough!  the  Voice that whispers in your ear you’ll fail; you always fail; so best give up before you’re rejected publicly.
But being creative is part of being human.  We create.  We cannot help it!   We build gardens, cook meals, knit, sew, design, build, fashion and fabricate.  Creativity is engraven in our nature.  Inspiration claps its hand on our shoulder.
And Intuition is closely allied to both.  Creativity is one facet of intuition—the gut feeling that tells you to go here, not there.  It comes like a bolt from the blue, the sudden inspiration that lifts you out of yourself and into higher states.  It wakes you in the night, mind churning.   It comes also in response to struggle and work, when you are striving to listen to your inner wisdom.  It comes when you invite the Muse, your guides and angels, the secret, hidden springs of your highest Self.
What is creativity?  Where does it come from?   Who has it?  How do you get more?  Here is Mozart, writing of inspiration.

“When I am, as it were, completely in myself, entirely alone and of good cheer, say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them. . .  Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is I cannot tell!”

What people don’t tell you is that it can be learned.  Like intuition.  You invite it.  Every artist understands this.

“I slip into a state,” wrote the playwright Neil Simon, “that is apart from reality…I don’t write consciously—it is as if the muse sits on my shoulder.”

But what exactly is inspiring us?  Is it simply our unconscious mind spewing out information lodged in forgotten memories or making connections we hadn’t recognized before?  The verb inspire comes from Latin, meaning “to breathe in.”  Subtly enfolded in its essence is the sense that something is breathing into us, filling us with Life!
Creativity begins in the Right-Hemisphere of the brain, which is also the seat of emotion, of the ability to recognize faces, of psychic power, and mystical epiphanies.  The creative process is different from conscious analytic thought (although critical left-brain thinking is also essential).  Creative ideas collide in a dreamlike state, or they rise up like bubbles in that hypnagogic state you occupy just as you are drifting off to sleep.
How do you invite creative inspiration?    I have written of this in my latest book, THE ART OF INTUITION: Cultivating your Inner Wisdom.  And now I’m teaching at Signature.
Take the journey with me.   Dare to enhance your own powers of creativity!
I’d love to see you join us.

~Sophy Burnham

For more about creativity, be sure to enroll in OPEN CALL FOR CREATIVITY, a six-week course taught by three extraordinary women:  playwright Paulette Laufer, actress Nancy Robinette, and bestselling author Sophy Burnham.