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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week Stacy Mayer.
As I mentioned in my previous posts, I am looking for inspiration anywhere I can find it. I signed up for a Palo Alto library card and I ride my bike over there and just see what pops out at me. Last week, I picked up a DVD about Garrison Keillor, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion.
I watched this documentary and I felt inspired. Not because he defied all odds. But because he was doing precisely what he loved to do. A Prairie Home Companion is recorded live in a historic theatre in St. Paul, MN and has been playing for 30 years.
He paved his own path, a small town boy from Minnesota who moved to New York to become a writer and found himself doing his greatest work back home. Ironically he quotes Robert Frost's The Road Less Traveled. He said he has no desire to follow the road less traveled but instead wants to be a part of the group. That’s exactly what he does with his show. He combines musicians, actors and writers and brings them all onstage in this cacophony of entertainment.
That’s what I was trying to do with Manhattan Comedy Collective. I would bring stand up, sketch, solo shows, musical acts and put them all onstage for a hilarious evening of theatre hosted by me. I loved working with groups of different people. I loved introducing people to each other and making connections. I loved performing and making people laugh every week.
Garrison suggests that every week he does something that he is hardly qualified to do but because he keeps trying to make it better, it gets there. It’s that passion that creates great theatre. It’s created with love first. If you make art with love, success will follow.
In San Francisco, I am starting with what I know from my past experiences. But I can’t know what will happen in the future until I put myself out there. I don’t know what I will discover until I do it. And if I do it from my heart, I can’t fail. That’s the idea. It doesn’t mean it will be easy.
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