Leslie Ishii is an actor, director, playwright and teaches at East West Players Asian American Theater. She is also a teaching artist with Center Theater Group’s Young Audiences Program and is getting her certification in Catherine Fitzmaurice Voicework. She is the founder of leslieishiiblog.blogspot.com and theselfstarter.com websites. Most recently Leslie has been seen on Flash Forward, Desperate Housewives, in The New Generation FAME, and recurring on LOST as Lara Chang.

In these economically down times when the Arts are in crisis, this is not the time to shrink and become smaller.  You may feel inclined to hold back, to tighten up.  Do the opposite.  Do not pull your thinking back.  Do what we artists do best—DREAM BIG!  You’re the expert we need in these times.  Use your imagination, take the lead, and move our society forward!

Michael Kaiser

The symposium, “Arts In Crisis; A Kennedy Center Initiative; An Interview with Michael Kaiser, President of John F. Kennedy Center,” is where I heard this clarion call to all artists.

He asked, “What’s next?” And answered himself, “Plan.”  He said to stop worrying about what you can’t afford now and focus on what you can afford in the future.  We must plant seeds now for good art to be grown so our children and society will reap the profound benefits that we know come from the arts.

Mr. Kaiser’s initiative is a tall order.  He is asking us to dream and plan big—plant seeds.  I realize I’ve practiced dreaming and planning big and I am now reaping my rewards—work I love.  Mr. Kaiser’s strategy and the tools I offer below help us do well in any economic climate.

I appreciate BrainsofMinerva.com for the opportunity to share my five tools for planting and sowing good seeds!

Tool #1:  Personal Mission Statement

Upon graduation from American Conservatory Theater (ACT), there were few Asian American theaters in existence and I rarely saw Asian actors on stage, television, or in film.  Prospects for a successful acting career didn’t look good for me.  Interestingly, I was graduating at a time when the industry was starting to be challenged around the issues of “cross and realistic casting.”  Independent film and theaters of color were continuing to emerge and establish themselves.  It was a controversial period of time.  One where the word “diversity” wasn’t exactly a bad word because you didn’t want to be considered racist, but where diversity meant a power shift and that meant change—big change.

Because at the time being an actor of color usually meant you were part political activist to increase our visibility and access to the industry, I learned of the United Nations World Conference On Women.  I wanted to attend that conference.  I can’t explain why.  I started fundraising and applying for the conference.

At a workshop in preparation for the conference, I was in our closing circle when these phrases entered my spirit:

Every human has creativity, therefore every human is an artist.  If every human could recognize, deeply understand, and manifest their unique artistry, we would end artist oppression and all oppression.  I pledge to learn to recognize, deeply understand and manifest my unique artistry.

This became my personal mission statement, my overall vision.  This statement was my needed rich soil for planting seeds.

At the conference Asian Tent, an Indian woman said, “… the act of creativity and collaboration for the well being of others is ending oppression.  Never take your resourcefulness and creative thinking for granted.  It can keep you alive and make a better world for others…it will bring liberation for all.”  This reinforced my mission statement and following the pledge helped me plant seeds of integrity along my artistic path. This statement helps me avoid being self-indulgent and self-involved.

With the help of friends, family and local organizations, I attended the conference.  The play and short documentary based on my conference experience led to reaping nearly ten years of work and a profound creative process developing “The Self-Starting” course for U.C. Irvine, ACT and other outside workshops.

Action:  Notice your inner voice, your intuition, pay attention to the signals and create your personal mission statement, your overall vision—your rich planting soil.

Tool #2:  Goals and Intentions

While teaching my Self-Starting students, I noticed they were living proof that if you create your vision, set goals and intentions, they materialize.

Goals are seeds and in gardening, there are ways to plant seeds so they grow and become a bountiful garden.  Planting all three types of goals, immediate, intermediate, and long-range, are necessary for successful goal-setting.  All three types of goals are interdependent and help to ground you in your overall vision.  Here’s why:

• Completing immediate goals help you see and feel success immediately. They help you discover and build momentum for your creative process.
• Intermediate goals challenge you to stretch and expand yourself within a successful reach.  This fuels your process.
• Long-range goals help you see you have a vision within you.  You are meant to open your imagination to dream and plan.  Without immediate and intermediate goals, long-range goals are merely pipe dreams and it is easy to give up on them.  No need to give up, evaluate your goal-setting instead and continue to dream and plan.

Then, my students and I create positive intention phrases based on our goals.  These phrases shed bright sunshine on our garden to support its growth.  The challenge was to create a phrase that contradicted all of the fear, the dark clouds that threatened our goals as we dared to dream big.

During this exercise, I listened to students talk about money and work worries.  I started noticing what they say is what happened to them.  I looked at my life and saw I was doing the same thing.  So, I started to express and put focus on only what I could talk about positively.  At a deeper level, I began to take responsibility for creating my life as I expressed it.  Then, an intention came into my spirit: “Everything I do, I love!”

Can I create this?  Over time, I’ve noticed there is a letting go into the phrase that allows me to become open to possibility and non-judgmental to the creative way in which I might arrive at my goal or dream.  Every job I’ve gotten since creating this phrase, I have absolutely loved.

Now I’ve extended the phrase to:  “Everything I do, I love!  I trust the money is following and I am taken care of.  All my needs are well met.”

Action:  Watch what you say and how you say it.  Create phrases that reflect what you really want so your heart will sing.  Keeping your positive phrases in present tense is key. Do you have immediate, intermediate and long range goals? Plant seeds and give your garden plenty of sunshine.

Tool #3:  Great Self Care = Great Artistry And Abundance

After moving to Los Angeles I noticed how I looked was getting me cast as much as my ability to act.  Like plants, we need to be tended and fed.

I became my own guinea pig.  I began to examine my lifestyle.  If I ate salmon, vegetables, the next morning I looked rested and healthy.  If I ate fast food, chocolates, donuts, cookies, I looked really tired and felt hung over.

One day I evaluated whether to have a “treat” and decided I better not because of an audition the next day.  Hmmm, I had been putting off a “treat” for weeks.  I had crossed over.  Eating healthy and exercising had become the norm and I felt good and my work reflected this.

I went further.  I got honest with myself regarding what I really wanted and in what shape I wanted to be in to accomplish my goals.  I was learning to pull the weeds from my garden so they wouldn’t choke off my plants before they had a chance to grow.  I began to live a lifestyle that supported my vision.  I said, “no,” to anything that sabotaged my health, my abilities, and my vision.

For example, when auditions or work in the industry come, I work backward.  First I decide when I want to arrive at the appointment to feel relaxed and in charge of my process.  This means leaving the house by a certain time.  I back up further and address the time needed for rehearsal, memorizing lines, research, eating healthy, sleeping, choosing wardrobe, and fixing hair and make-up too.  All of this so I can have good energy, love my performance in the audition, and feel grateful for the opportunity.

I use this phrase as a helpful reminder:  Great self-care = Great artistry and abundance!

Never let anyone tell you good clean living is boring or un-cool.  It’s fantastically interesting when you’re booking work you love and cast to contribute to an inspired creative process.

Action:  Are you taking great care of yourself and your gifts?  What do you need to do or change to tend and feed your garden well?

Tool #4:  An Artistic Home; A Place To Practice Stick-to-it-ive-ness

At some point, you may want to collaborate and tend a larger garden with others.  Finding an artistic home, a larger garden, or creating one of your own is essential for any artist to keep their creative process growing.  As I write this my imagination is opening to what the term “artistic home” might mean to someone.

An artistic home can mean a charity organization where you have the opportunity to brainstorm and implement ideas for events or operations.  It can mean volunteering or showing up at your church where they need your creativity and helping hands to complete a project.

When I first came to Los Angeles I went to visit East West Players Asian American Theater (EWP).  I thought, “Go, connect with your people.”  I met the late Artistic Director, Nobu McCarthy and she said, “You will teach.”  I was in the minority group of Asian American actors who had been accepted to a major conservatory program, so to her it was a no-brainer I should share what those trainers taught me at ACT.  I could help give more Asian actors access to the mainstream.

I started teaching and have been with this theater for eighteen years.  I didn’t expect this would become an artistic home.  I just wanted to connect and get a job.  But I gained a world more; the experience of running the conservatory for two years, developing curriculum, expanding the conservatory programs, developing as a director, playwright and continuing my growth as an actor.

When I was exiting from ACT, one of my trainers said to me, “You possess something that will help your career.  You have stick-to-ive-ness.”  Because I stuck by and stayed with EWP, I was able to build a long term relationship and I didn’t miss out on reaping the benefits of this work.  I am grateful for my initial impulse to go and connect.

Action:  Consider creating or joining an artistic home, literally, virtually.  Contribute to great collaborations and healthy discourse to support your impulses, passions, curiosities. This is a great way to find support for your expansion into planting a larger garden.

Tool #5: Trusting Yourself Is Empowering

After eighteen years in the industry I know it takes a tremendous amount of faith in yourself to trust you are where you should be.  But I wanted to get past just “surviving.”  Once out of frustration I had the impulse to ask what Mr. Kaiser asked, “What’s next?!”  I kept asking and getting new impulses.  I learned that this saved me from getting resentful and victim-y.

Every garden needs replanting.  Journaling and meditating have been practices where I can ask, “What’s next?”  This rejuvenates my soil, where my impulses, my next seeds can be revealed and planted.  Over time, I have become trusting of my impulses and ideas and I have grown a sense of empowerment from within; a benefit I didn’t expect to experience.  I began to release insecure pursuits of fitting into this industry.  Now, I show up my full self with my heart and imagination open.

Action:  Ask “What’s next?”  When you get the impulse, go!  It may be to go somewhere, call or email someone, read a particular book or research an off-the-wall idea on the web.  Do it!  It’s worth taking the risk!  I’m returning to voice and dance classes!?#*?!*

In conclusion, thank you, Mr. Kaiser!  And I hope this article inspires all of you e-readers to create a wonderful artistic home of Los Angeles by asking “What’s next?”

Plant good seeds.  What you sow now, you will reap later—a bountiful garden!

Please feel free to comment here or write to me at leslieishiiblog.blogspot.com to let me know how these tools are working for you!