Our Methods
Just about every single person on this earth can be an artist, because just about every single of us was created with the ability to think, to imagine, to create, to communicate, to express ourselves. We express ourselves each and every day, whether we realize it or not. That's all art is. It's expression. Artists harness these natural human abilities to express thoughts, emotions, ideas, concepts, and other things. Some artists express with their voices, others with music, others with their bodies, others with written words, others with a pencil or paint brush. The methods for expression, for creating art, are limited only by our imagination. But anyone who can express themselves in any capacity is capable of being an artist. Expressing yourself can be a great way to learn more about yourself, to help others learn more about you. Expressing yourself through art can be very healthy and therapeutic. It's always best to find a healthy outlet for your emotions, rather than bottling them up or refusing to feel emotion at all. Art provides that healthy outlet.
In every Chrysalis experience, we create a learning environment and a community filled with God’s absolute and unconditional love and passion and creativity, using games and interactive learning opportunities that are specifically designed to help people to naturally learn and discover. These activities require no special skills. They use only what you already have, to help you to naturally become the kind of person you were meant to be. You already possess such power, such beauty, such incredible gifts. We just help you to discover those things within yourself, to set them free, to learn to use them to their fullest potential. What we do is brilliantly simple, yet enormous almost beyond comprehension. It requires us to use emotional intelligence and creativity and spiritual awareness, looking for God to show us how best to help each person, to reveal who each person truly is at heart behind the walls and chains, behind shyness and awkwardness and every other obstacle people put up around their hearts.
There’s no precise script for what we do. We mold every experience, every day, every minute, according to God’s leading, according to the needs of each individual student and each group of students as a whole. A casual critic might label it simply as “They just play games!” On a surface level, that is true. What we do is so brilliantly simple that it appears to be as easy as playing. Take for example “The Tree Game”. This is an activity where each student finds a partner they don’t know very well, introduces theirself, and then one of the two closes their eyes while the other gently leads them outside to a tree. The “blind” student has to feel the tree, trying to feel for unique identifiers. The “blind” student is then led on a meandering walk away, intentionally trying to get them to lose their bearings. They then have to open their eyes and try to figure out which tree they were led to. Once they figure it out or give up, they switch places and the “blind” student becomes the guide, and vice versa. This is just a simple game. You might not think it has anything to do with theatre or real life. But you’d be surprised. This game teaches trust, teamwork, leading/guiding, following, awareness of body language, awareness of the people and the space around you, opening up the mind and relying more on senses like touch, smell, and sound. The list really goes on and on. It’s an extraordinary game that kids love once they get comfortable in the classroom, and it’s wonderful for breaking the ice and helping students to get to know each other and learn to work together. It also teaches empathy. All of these skills are extremely helpful both in life and in theatre.
For example, if you’re acting as a character in a play, it would be helpful to be aware internally of the environment the character is in, whether it’s windy or calm, hot or cold, wet or dry, crowded or open, stinky or fragrant, etc. If you’ve played The Tree Game, than you have gotten great practice in this, and can better understand how a character’s body language and attitude and everything else is affected by the environment around them. That’s crucial to authentic acting, since theatres are generally indoor climate-controlled environments. When you’re on stage, the temperature is consistent, there’s no wind, often very little ambient noise, no rain/snow/etc, no grass or sand, and on and on. Your character might be a lot older than you, a lot less physically adept, etc. Maybe your character is in a totally strange place they’ve been in before, like traveling from their quiet town to a big bustling city. These things would all have an enormous impact on the way your character looks and feels and speaks and moves and behaves. Yet you have to bring all of these things to life just with your acting. How is that possible? How you can you teach that? Well, we can help even young kids to learn these highly advanced acting skills just by doing something as simple as playing The Tree Game, accompanied by a good 5-10 minute Q&A debrief session with the students about it afterwards to see what they learned, what they observed, and to explain some points about how these things apply to theatre (and life!).
The Tree Game is just one of countless activities and methods we use. We’re creating new ones all the time, based on the needs of each group of students, and even the needs of each individual student. We try to keep every experience fresh and exciting, creating new challenges for students, trying to keep everybody on their toes and challenge them in different ways, while also continuing to mix in old games that the students love the most. We’ve had extraordinary success so far. Our methods have proven to be both extremely effective, engaging, and extremely fun. We’ve seen adults and kids alike transform before our eyes. We’ve seen people start out clearly struggling, clearly held back by something inside them, and we’ve seen our methods help them to break through that and suddenly be able to communicate and to live freely and fully, authentically and with vulnerability. It’s absolutely incredible. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen anywhere else. We know why it works because at face value it’s brilliantly simple, but again, it’s also mind-bogglingly complex and enormous in its impact. It’s an enormously affirming experience, helping to activate peoples’ hearts and spirits and allowing them to conquer new obstacles and challenges all the time. Students never stop growing, because there is always another activity, another challenge. Best of all, there is no hierarchy to our activities. Old and young, new and veteran, all participate equally on equal footing. It’s all about individual growth and and growth as a family. This creates a wonderful community of equals, where you’ll see people freely, confidently, happily interacting with others much older or much younger than themselves. Everybody works together, everybody helps each other, and everybody benefits.
In every Chrysalis experience, we create a learning environment and a community filled with God’s absolute and unconditional love and passion and creativity, using games and interactive learning opportunities that are specifically designed to help people to naturally learn and discover. These activities require no special skills. They use only what you already have, to help you to naturally become the kind of person you were meant to be. You already possess such power, such beauty, such incredible gifts. We just help you to discover those things within yourself, to set them free, to learn to use them to their fullest potential. What we do is brilliantly simple, yet enormous almost beyond comprehension. It requires us to use emotional intelligence and creativity and spiritual awareness, looking for God to show us how best to help each person, to reveal who each person truly is at heart behind the walls and chains, behind shyness and awkwardness and every other obstacle people put up around their hearts.
There’s no precise script for what we do. We mold every experience, every day, every minute, according to God’s leading, according to the needs of each individual student and each group of students as a whole. A casual critic might label it simply as “They just play games!” On a surface level, that is true. What we do is so brilliantly simple that it appears to be as easy as playing. Take for example “The Tree Game”. This is an activity where each student finds a partner they don’t know very well, introduces theirself, and then one of the two closes their eyes while the other gently leads them outside to a tree. The “blind” student has to feel the tree, trying to feel for unique identifiers. The “blind” student is then led on a meandering walk away, intentionally trying to get them to lose their bearings. They then have to open their eyes and try to figure out which tree they were led to. Once they figure it out or give up, they switch places and the “blind” student becomes the guide, and vice versa. This is just a simple game. You might not think it has anything to do with theatre or real life. But you’d be surprised. This game teaches trust, teamwork, leading/guiding, following, awareness of body language, awareness of the people and the space around you, opening up the mind and relying more on senses like touch, smell, and sound. The list really goes on and on. It’s an extraordinary game that kids love once they get comfortable in the classroom, and it’s wonderful for breaking the ice and helping students to get to know each other and learn to work together. It also teaches empathy. All of these skills are extremely helpful both in life and in theatre.
For example, if you’re acting as a character in a play, it would be helpful to be aware internally of the environment the character is in, whether it’s windy or calm, hot or cold, wet or dry, crowded or open, stinky or fragrant, etc. If you’ve played The Tree Game, than you have gotten great practice in this, and can better understand how a character’s body language and attitude and everything else is affected by the environment around them. That’s crucial to authentic acting, since theatres are generally indoor climate-controlled environments. When you’re on stage, the temperature is consistent, there’s no wind, often very little ambient noise, no rain/snow/etc, no grass or sand, and on and on. Your character might be a lot older than you, a lot less physically adept, etc. Maybe your character is in a totally strange place they’ve been in before, like traveling from their quiet town to a big bustling city. These things would all have an enormous impact on the way your character looks and feels and speaks and moves and behaves. Yet you have to bring all of these things to life just with your acting. How is that possible? How you can you teach that? Well, we can help even young kids to learn these highly advanced acting skills just by doing something as simple as playing The Tree Game, accompanied by a good 5-10 minute Q&A debrief session with the students about it afterwards to see what they learned, what they observed, and to explain some points about how these things apply to theatre (and life!).
The Tree Game is just one of countless activities and methods we use. We’re creating new ones all the time, based on the needs of each group of students, and even the needs of each individual student. We try to keep every experience fresh and exciting, creating new challenges for students, trying to keep everybody on their toes and challenge them in different ways, while also continuing to mix in old games that the students love the most. We’ve had extraordinary success so far. Our methods have proven to be both extremely effective, engaging, and extremely fun. We’ve seen adults and kids alike transform before our eyes. We’ve seen people start out clearly struggling, clearly held back by something inside them, and we’ve seen our methods help them to break through that and suddenly be able to communicate and to live freely and fully, authentically and with vulnerability. It’s absolutely incredible. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen anywhere else. We know why it works because at face value it’s brilliantly simple, but again, it’s also mind-bogglingly complex and enormous in its impact. It’s an enormously affirming experience, helping to activate peoples’ hearts and spirits and allowing them to conquer new obstacles and challenges all the time. Students never stop growing, because there is always another activity, another challenge. Best of all, there is no hierarchy to our activities. Old and young, new and veteran, all participate equally on equal footing. It’s all about individual growth and and growth as a family. This creates a wonderful community of equals, where you’ll see people freely, confidently, happily interacting with others much older or much younger than themselves. Everybody works together, everybody helps each other, and everybody benefits.