Welcome to the WYPA artist community blog, where we aspire to gaze both internally and externally for inspiration.
Inspire: to fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.
The last five words, “especially to do something creative,”are very important to WYPA’s mission as we unpack the question, Whose Imagination are we living in? – a question I heard nearly a year ago on the ever-popular TikTok.
What would our creativity look like if harvested from our own imagination, before time was embedded in our soul’s purpose? How do we even explore our own imagination?
“Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation”—Isaac Newton.
This quote came from Newton’s time in isolation during the Great Plague of London in 1665.
I found this quote rather inspiring during the pandemic while reflecting on an article I was asked to write as an affiliate member of the Playwright Center of Minnesota. Read the full article here.
I was surprised to find that in 1665 Isaac Newton left Cambridge University Trinity College because of a plague. He returned to stay with his widowed mother in the home where he grew up sixty miles from the university. It was there, rumored to be staring out his bedroom window, that he watched an apple (fall?) from the tree while at the same time observing the moon. This marked the beginning of Newton’s law of gravity journey and his theory of optics and calculus. This was a period of deep meditation where seeking the truth was known as Newton’s Year of Wonders.
Imagine that! Do you think that, post-pandemic, we are in our Years of Wonder? As the artistic director of WYPA, I certainly believe we are in many ways!
Each month here, I will research both historical and current times when I think people were inspired to live in their own imagination and offer humanity a bit more of its beauty.
*I want to extend the opportunity to you, if you want to be a guest blogger on WYPA, to submit a writing to answer the question, “Who’s imagination are we living in?” OR write an overview of a scene using the interpretation of Newton’s Law of Gravity:
“The law states that all objects–earths, apples, moons, and all their kin throughout the whole wide universe– attract one another with a force directly proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.”
With that theory in mind, what’s an idea for a scene if we took characters to live within that imagination? What is the distance between the characters? What’s drawing them together?*
As a guest blogger, you’ll be featured on the WYPA blog and get 25% off one of our offered courses.
Submit your article to Guest WYPA Writer: sugars982@gmail.com.
Looking forward to seeing how your imagination comes out to play,
Jovelyn