ONE-THOUGHT-ONE-ACTION - 2024 Holiday Message

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Wishing You & Yours
A Safe, Creative & Healthy
New Year

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Coming in February 2025
Live & In-Person
One-Thought-One-Action (OTOA)™
Performance Technique & Training (PTT)™
TWO-DAY WORKSHOP

OTOA PTT Workshops are open to all performing artists, directors, and theater makers
Saturday & Sunday
FEBRUARY 1 & 2
12:30 - 5:30 pm
LOCATION:
New Stage Performance Space
36 West 106th Street, NYC
PRICE:
$125
For the $25 Early Bird Discount
See Details Below
REGISTRATION DEADLINE
January 24
For the $25 Early Bird Discount
(=$100 for the two-day workshop)
DISCOUNT DEADLINE January 17
To Register CLICK HERE

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Dear Friends, Family & Colleagues,

Yes, it's true, this holiday message is coming to you a bit tardy this year.

And -alas- rather than mailing out our hard copy holiday cards, our heartfelt sentiments are coming to you digitally.

This year our holiday card budget went towards the U.S. Premiere of our original dark comedy "AFTER OTHELLO" (made possible by the generous support from so many of YOU!), which had a sold out run in NYC this October following our successful world premiere in Hungary & Serbia in 2023.

A SAMPLING OF OUR AUDIENCE REVIEWS INCLUDE...

"ASTOUNDING! It surpassed my already high expectations!"~ Rob Donaldson
"MASTERFUL!" ~ Walker West
"A great dark comic spin on a Shakespeare Classic.

I was invested in every word!" ~ Mary Osbia

For additional reviews, photos, and information CLICK HERE

But holiday card or not, allow me to share some of the thoughts on my mind as we head into the great unknowns of 2025.

Over the last 6 weeks, I have been contemplating how we will negociate the changing landscape of our nation in this coming year while remaining joyful and compassionate, healthy and generous, and loving and engaged through what promises to be an era of chaotic change.

What I keep landing upon is the essential need to remain creative, and/or to expose ourselves to art and creativity.

Creativity is the primary force of the Universe, from creating galaxies to creating life on Earth.

Human creativity is the source of inovation and inspiration, and inspiration literally means to breathe in spirit.

As I see it, spirit is the animating force of all living things, it is the spark, the life force, the light that shines from within us to guide us and to unite us in a collective consciousness.

On the flip side, darkness (the absense of light) has the propensity to separate us, motivating a retreat into oursleves and/or into smaller more intimate and like minded groups.

However, Art (music, literature, the performing and visual arts) and Nature (like light) have the potential to widen our perspective and illuminate our thoughts and actions. They remind us of our common bond to our surroundings, to one other, and to the planet.

Art and Creativity are the lights --like spirit-- that we all have the potential to ignite in ourselves and to carry for one another as a reminder of our common humanity.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estés says in her inspiring essay "We Were Made for These Times"...

"Struggling souls catch light from other souls
who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do."

(For the entire essay see below)

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AND speaking of CREATIVITY in 2025...

We look forward to seeing you for the live and in-person
OTOA Performance Technique & Training (PTT)
Two-Day WORKSHOP

OTOA PTT Workshops are open to all performing artists, directors, and theatre makers
Sat & Sun, February 1 & 2
And don't forget to take advantage of the
$25 EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT register by/before JAN 17th.

For more information and how to register
CLICK HERE.

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May The New Year Shine Brightly
Within our Hearts & though the Light of the ARTs
Gia & Darya

Gia Forakis
GF&CO Artistic Director & OTOA Founder & Master Teacher
Darya Gauthier
GF&CO Assoc. Artistic Director & OTOA Managing Director

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To make a contribution and support GF&CO

as we head into our 14th year, please CLICK HERE.

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OTOA Performance Technique & Training (PTT)™ is the study of One-Thought-One-Action a performance technique that identifies incremental components of thought as incremental moments of physical action. Introduction & Training workshops are offered as 2, 3, and 4-day Workshops. Our next workshop is TBA.

OTOA Creative Life Practice (CLP)™ is the practice of creating our lives using the creative process. Working are offered on Zoom, and designed as 90-minute interactive environments for the study and practice of OTOA CLP through group exercises, dialogue, pre-workshop creative assignments, and guided group visualizations.

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Gia Forakis is a theater artist, teacher, leader, life coach and the founder and master teacher of OTOA. She brings over four decades to her work as a professional theater maker and over 18 years to her OTOA teaching and coaching prcatice. Gia ia a member of SDC (Stage Directors & Choreogrpahers Society). She holds a BFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program and an MFA from Yale (David Geffen) School of Drama, Directing Program - where she developed the OTOA technique: Re-Envisioing the Creative Process One-Thought-One-Action as a Time. (For more information see GiaForakis.com)

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~ Other Ongoing Offerings ~

OTOA Creative Life Practice (CLP)™

LIFE COACHING (LC)

A path for creating personal & collective change through creativity

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"You do not need to be an artist to benefit from a Creative Life Practice"

~ G. Forakis

Testimonial:

"Gia is an intuitive, insightful, and generous coach and teacher,

and an authentic creative spirit."

~S. Shayne

"Transformation. does happen!" ~ K.Malnati

OTOA CLP LC untangles obstacles, achieves goals, reinvigorates a vision for purpose, possibility, confidence, and abundance with care and compassion.

OTOA CLP LC offers support, context, and encouragement for a more unified sense of self.

OTOA CLP LC is a confidential, non-judgmental, supportive environment designed to offer growth, change, and self-actualization.

OTOA CLP LC is for everyone: for both non-artists and artists alike.

Beginning January 2025

all private CLP Life Coaching Sessions will be offered at $75 per hour

SCHEDULE
a free 20-minute phone consultation

Please send an email of inquiry to OTOA.info@Gmail.com
Please type "COACHING" in the subject of your email

For More Information on OTOA CLP LC:

CLICK HERE

We Were Made For These Times

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

(2008)

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The luster and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or un-mended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us, and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce, and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

Wishing You & Yours A Safe, Creative & Healthy New Year

*** Coming in February 2025Live & In-PersonOne-Thought-One-Action (OTOA)™Performance Technique & Training (PTT)™ TWO-DAY WORKSHOP

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