Do you want to reconnect with your natural creativity?
Do you want to move past the doubt, comparisons, and judgement when taking creative risks?
Do you want to relearn how to simply begin?
The Five Chambers are a set of practical guides to help you discover your own creative process, developed and designed from over a decade of teaching thousands of students at the university level and multiple decades of making art and helping other Artists make theirs..
The Five Chambers can be layered within any discipline, any project, and any life.
Mike Czuba is an artist and writer with a BFA and MFA in Playwriting. Originally from Montreal, he is currently a Theatre Instructor at the University of Calgary and co-founder of the performance collective Dancing Monkey Laboratories (dancingmonkeylab.com). His play I AM I (Original Works Publishing) has been internationally produced and multiple plays have been presented in Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Texas and Amsterdam. A scene from his play REPRISE is published in Playwrights Canada Press’ anthology, Refractions: Scenes (2020).
In 2023 he received the competitive Digital Now Grant from the Canada Council of the Arts to produce the new hybrid live/streamed work Sublimity – a love supreme (2023). In 2020 he produced an exploratory digital performance of his play Like Tom Cruise Loves Running. Mike’s TYA play BOY SEES FLYING SAUCER was awarded the international Laurie Award from The Growing Stage – The Children’s Theatre of New Jersey, with a full production in March 2018, which has now been turned into a feature screenplay called GIRL WHO CRIED FLYING SAUCER and is being developed for a 2024 shoot – His most recent play AFTER MOURNING, BEFORE VAN GOGH about Johanna Bonger, the woman who saved van Gogh’s art, has had staged readings in Calgary, Red Deer, Beaumont, Texas, Ontario, and in Chicago. The next reading is scheduled for May 2024 in Edmonton – with a full production in March 2025 at Shadow Theatre.
The Five Chambers are detailed in my book NO SHORTCUTS.
NO SHORTCUTS, The Five Chambers: A Practical Guide To Finding Your Own Creative Process was written to encourage you to move beyond judgement and hesitation and embrace your innate individual creativity while simultaneously asking you to be realistic about the demands of living a creative life.
I returned to school at the age of 35, after years of writing, investigating different art forms and working every odd job you could imagine. During my time as a mature student obtaining my degrees and now, having had the privilege of teaching over a thousand students in a University setting, I am constantly amazed by the fear that grips a student venturing into the unknown and then filled with wonder when they find their spark. NO SHORTCUTS takes that fear and re-routes it into tangible ways to think about the creative process.
NO SHORTCUTS is for students, professionals, teachers, emerging artists, and the curious person of any age who is looking for a spark. This book will not tell you what to create; but it will offer practical advice on how to find your own voice and not someone else’s. I wanted to write this book for the same reason I teach; to share the knowledge that the creative process and the The Five Chambers can be layered within any discipline, any project, and any life.
Lecture/
talk
45 minute talk, detailing The 5 Chambers and how they can be used to spark creativity, creative thinking and how (even with a deadline) you need to include time into your process. These guides are also designed to encourage you to take risks with your ideas and increase awareness in discovering your own creative process. While the Chambers were created teaching and working in the arts, specifically theatre and performance, the underlying philosophies are transferable into any process, regardless of what the ‘product’ is.
Workshop
Expanding on the lecture - the workshop splits the information into five, 30 to 45 minutes modules, each one focusing on a single Chamber. Each module includes a short exercise - from simple text and brainstorming tasks, to getting on your feet and engaging the body (all exercises are designed to be compatible with any level of mobility). The workshop is always concluded with a debrief session to investigate and unpack any larger questions that have arisen within the work. The workshop allows for a deeper connection to the Chambers and brings in ideas of fear of following impulse, awareness of resistance, and the crippling idea of being a ‘perfectionist’.
Individual Coaching
From an actor preparing for an audition or scene work for a production, a dancer’s choreography, a play or screenplay, to a professional preparing a presentation in a conference room - an outside eye can offer valuable feedback and development to the work. Using the Theatre as a base: blocking, narratives, story arcs, knowing who the audience will be, the spaces and the interaction with those spaces, - and most importantly - your embodiment and presence within them. My experience working with actors, dancers and directing and producing shows - allows me to translate these skills into a professional environment. One on one coaching can elevate your work in a more focused and embodied direction.
What People Are Saying
"The structure of the five chambers offers the wisdom of your considerable experience translated into a guide for anyone tempted to delve into the creative. It demystifies the process of creating while acknowledging that the sparks of the creative can happen by chance or the stirrings of the unconscious and that where those sparks derive from can be a mystery. The interplay between the rational, intuition and impulse is interwoven in your chambers and this feels to me very inclusive.
Inclusivity is one of the strengths of the book, the idea that the reader belongs in the creative family, that yes, there are theories and experts to be consulted and perhaps be inspired by, but these should not to dampen or intimidate the individual’s voice”
“The best quick read for any artist to get unstuck and in need of a workable, flexible flow.”
"I’ve really noticed a difference in my output pre and post reading your book. You didn’t create your book for writing but once I examined what my creative process was and found ways to streamline it everything became instantly easier. The biggest challenge I overcame was not pre-creating and realizing the perfect work in my head was not what I was going to see on the page."
“Whether you're an artist or in business, an athlete or architect, there is a lot to learn from NO SHORTCUTS.”
“Kind, introspective, self-aware and a compassionate view on the creative process”
“I really enjoyed the down to earth and practical ideas and methods of the 5 chambers.”
THE FIVE CHAMBERS:
1 -Don’t Pre-Create
2 -Instinctual Negation
3 -Justified Resistance
4 -Fail More and the Short-Term Ego
5 -Acquired Knowledge and the Subconscious
*AUDIENCE, INTENTION AND RECEPTION (the ‘ish’ Chamber)
