TJ Dawe is a Vancouver based writer, director and performer of new theatre. He’s toured to more than one hundred theatre festivals on four continents. He leads a course on creating a one person show and has built a 20 year + successful career in the arts in a niche that’s fully and uniquely ‘him’. In this episode, TJ shares wisdom, science and experience around the key ingredients to leading a creative life, bringing forth art in many forms. He addresses the importance of personal developmental work to combat the ego’s sneaky ways of sabotaging one’s art, creativity and leadership. Think you’re not an artist? TJ challenges you to think again.
Listen in as they explore:
- The Intersection of art and leadership and the power of creative work to shape culture and deal with the issues of our time.
- The potential of the arts in driving cultural change and why those in power will degrade and undermine the arts as ways to sustain power and the status quo.
- The unfortunate consequences on what can be mainstream narratives about what it means to be an artist, dissuading or shutting down the natural creative impulse in human beings, while TJ extends the invitation to expand what we think of as creative or artistic work on behalf of honouring the artistic spark in all of us.
- The key ingredients in a creative conversation, how to engage in conversation with others as a form of creative artistry.
- What studies show us about when people are the most creative and open and what to do to sustain these qualities and possibilities later in life, particularly when navigating responsibilities and practicalities.
- The ways in which ego can be threatened by curiosity and humility and thus the ability to step into new and unknown places of creativity and how doing shadow and inner work is outright medicine for the self-leadership of artists and some fascinating brain science that supports curiosity and humility in the creative process.
- The path of personal transformation through the Enneagram, Trauma work and plant medicine and how those helped TJ to overcome some of his habitual patterning that he found was sabotaging his work, career and relationships. Additionally, how all of these, including deep work with world renowned trauma expert and author Dr. Gabor Maté, turned into TJ’s brilliant show: Medicine.
- The dangers of identity pride that emerges when success has been reached, particularly through the dimensions of self that have been developed through deep awakening and inner work. How to sense into when the new and healthy identity calcifies into ego protection.
- The questions and attitudes to bring forward when at a new frontier or a particularly risky creative challenge.
More from TJ:
Medicine: TJ performs his monologue Medicine, about a healing retreat led by Dr Gabor Mate, in which participants ingested the Amazonian psychotropic plant medicine ayahuasca.
TJ’s One Person Shows: to be notified when he hosts his next one-person show course, get on his list here!
About TJ:
TJ Dawe is a Vancouver based writer, director and performer of new theatre. He’s toured to more than one hundred theatre festivals on four continents. He leads a course on creating a one person show. He’s worked with movie stars and high school students. He and his partner Lindsay Robertson are certified Enneagram teachers, working with individuals and groups in the worlds of business, spirituality, education and the arts.
Find TJ Dawe here:
Website: https://www.tjdawe.ca/
Instagram: @tj_dawe
Facebook: TJ Dawe
Twitter: @TJ_Dawe