Ancestors-ImageThis is a question Yael Farber (a director and creator from South Africa) posed to applicants for the directing program at the National Theatre School of Canada: A question that is penetrating as it is challenging. You can say this question addresses your heritage, your community, your family. It draws upon generation upon generation of explicit and implicit expectations. You can take it literally, metaphorically or metaphyisically. You simply cannot stay indifferent.

John Bradshaw in his book, Family Secrets, talks about your “genogram”, an invisible family pattern that has influenced you – layers of unconscious secrets that develop and finally results in a “collective amnesia” – a multi-generational trance.  All long standing groups, he maintains, have some degree of this trance. Families have their own distinct brand of it.

These “secrets” influence our behaviour in ways we are not even conscious of. We particularly play this out in ways that curtails our self-expression or unleashes it in unhealthy ways.

For artists, and anyone involved in a creative venture, we know how judgment by those close to us, society around us and the critical voices inside our heads hold us back. They are powerful forces.

Questions can help break that deadlock. As I reflect on the question other questions come up:

What truths am I not facing?

What truths have I not spoken?

Not easy to answer. At the very least this activates my Muse so I can take more risk, confront my darker side and dare to step in the unknown.

I get glimpses of the answer. I know many of my father’s stories and how he came to Canada. I know the stories of the old country. I can see how my experiences growing up in a suburb of Toronto and being sent away to live with my uncle in a different culture has shaped me.

Yet, there’s more to those stories and dreams that have a hold on me. The best that I can do is remind myself of Rainer Maria Rilke quote:

…Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

What reaction do you get with the question: What do your ancestors demand you break the silence on?

What other questions does it invoke in you?

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