Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1998 - 31

brain forms in a way that will determine future interests and
abilities. One person will play the violin and have no talent for
spatial relationships. Another will develop a tightly focused
proclivity for abstract mathematical thinking but be unable to
balance a check book. Athird will have several seemingly unrelated talents which complement each other. (A recent article
reports four studies which claim, "active participation and
demonstrated ability in one or more of the arts are far more
predictive of success in science than standard measures such
as I.Q., scores on tests such as the SAT., or academic degrees. ")9 And as each brain forms in its unique way, it is also
storing experiences.

"Tbis indeed is man's creative gift, to
find 01' make a likeness wbere none was
seen before-a likeness between mass
and energy, a link between time and
space, an ecbo of all 01l1'!ears in tbe passion of Otbello."
Jacob Bronowski
The brain is like a bank \I'ith experiences functioning as
deposits to be drawn upon. The richness and variety of those
experiences contributes to the richness and variety of the creative connections that can be made. But that is not a complete
picture. There are people who are world travelers, have seen
and done everything, have stores of experiences and mental
picnlres, yet they do not make creative connections. tn contrast, people like Emily Dickinson or Charlotte Bronte lived in
physical worlds encompassing only a few square nllies yet becanle great artists. Along with the structure of the brain and
accumulated experience, the way a brain processes information then becomes a third part of the puzzle.

"Imagination is more powelful tban
knowledge. "
Albert Einstein
Throughout history, humans have been fascinated by the
difference between consciousness and dreaming. The ancients
thought dreams were omens. Freud told us that dreanls were
indicators of repressed desires and frustrations. Jung described them as a combination of "the personal unconscious"
and the "universal unconscious." One recent theory suggests
that dreanls are the brain's way of deleting information which
would otherwise overload our "hard drive." Another says that
the brain is constantly operating as if dreanllng, but ml'ake,
our random disconnected thoughts are organized by the external stimuli we receive. All of tllese and other hypotheses concerning consciousness bear on creativity because time after
time, anecdotal evidence places the origin of a creative act in
the unconscious. Scientists, artists and inventors all teU of getling ideas when they were nor aclively thinking about a problem. Moreover, the ideas arrive during mundane activities
such as showering, shaving, falling asleep or hiking. Creativity
seems to pop Ollt of nowhere, or rather, out of some hidden
part of the brain.

"Wben a man undertakes to create sometbing, be establisbes a new beaven, as it
were, andf1"Om it tbe work tbat be desires
to create flows into bim. "
Paracelsus
Depending on the school of psychology, the terms used
can be "uruversal unconscious," "id," "primary mentation" or
simply "tile unconscious," and while each term means something slightly ilifferent, they all refer to the site of our wild, outrageous and therefore creative impulses. To curb these
impulses which can be dangerous to us and to SOCiety, if acted
on, the "conscious mind," "the ego" or "secondary
menation," with its grasp of an external real1ty, acts as a gatekeeper. It allows only acceptable thoughts and behavior to
reach the surface. This is why, after we ponder a problem, a
solution so often pushes up from the creative unconscious
during a shower or walk, when the conscious gate-keeper is
looking the other way. 10
One way of tapping into the unconscious has a long history. Some artists, like the Surreal1sts, attempt to find inspiration in their dreanls. But dreams are iffy things. Their
meanings can be uncertain. DreanlS are not always tllere when
needed. However, the other side of the equation affects us all;
that is how the conscious mind, that arbiter of what is proper
and acceptable, is trained. Despite the truism tllat young clilldren are immensely creative, we continue to promote an educational system which stifles tI1eir * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
creati\~ty by imposing rules; only color between the lines, trees are green and sky is
blue, horses have four legs and people
have two. By dictating what is acceptable,
our system creates conscious minds wluch
volunlaIily suppress tile playful and inventive
impulses needed for creative expression.
Our self-edited responses are intended to please those who pass out
grades, or praise or jobs. All too often in
students' work, imagination is blocked by
tile desire to produce what the teacher

GEORGE TSYPIN

TD& T

J 1'1 T

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1998