Risk & Change: Journey and Process

Screentalk magazine interview March-April 2003 – Elizabeth English/Women Rock!

Catherine Ann Jones – Risk & Change: Journey and Process

Elizabeth English: Welcome to ScreenTalk, Catherine. In your workshop, Way of Story, which is an approach to writing for the soul, you state, “the healing transformation of good writing depends on making it one’s own from within.” What is your workshop all about?

Catherine Jones: Exercises & techniques are explored which are applicable to writers of all levels & for all genres, including plays, screenplays, and true life stories. The focus is on developing story structure to integrate memorable characters, dialogue, and theme into a coherent, emotionally consistent, and marketable story. The Way of Story workshops are a safe place & a supportive group experience and will serve as a catalyst, allowing the deepest self expression through writing.

EE: Please tell us more about the concept and how you came to this interesting conclusion.

CJ: Once upon a time and long, long ago, as a then New York playwright, I was receiving my“fifteen minutes of fame,” when my first play, “Virginia” (later re-titled “On The Edge”), received several awards, including the National Endowment of the Arts Award and was directed by the legendary Harold Clurman. When subsequently asked to lecture at Skidmore on any topic, I chose as my topic, “Art as Process, Not Product” and warned how the commercialism of focusing on product had harmed American culture.

I spoke of how the artist must see his or her life and work as a journey and a process rather than merely as a consumer product. Now, twenty years later, I still believe this, for risk and change matter tremendously–to art as well as for the individuation of the personal life.

EE: Can you give us a brief overview of your life of change, and a few of the lessons you learned along the journey?

CJ: I have chosen the way of risk. It seemed better to opt for the way of being true to one’s self at every turn, even though what seems right one day may change. Life is a package deal; one cannot order life and ask that the hard portions be left out, please.

After seeing eight of my plays produced and garnishing further awards, I was surprised at the emptiness I was experiencing. I had become a professional writer and had, somewhere along the line, lost the joy of it, presumably the reason one begins writing in the first place. One must be one’s self, heedless of the world’s response.

EE: I see. That’s a vital realization for any creative person. So what happened next?

CJ: This inner change nudged me to seek an outer change. I applied for and to my surprise won a Fulbright Research Award to study the actor-storytellers in the south of India. I wanted to go where drama was more than Broadway entertainment, where it carried some deeper meaning for the culture. A single mom by then, I took my son, Christopher, out of school so that he might accompany me to India. My only condition, other than the school lesson plans we were obliged to do, was that he keep a journal of his experience of the year in India. Thus began his own interest in writing.

EE: Sounds like a wonderful opportunity. How did it go for the two of you?

CJ: The year in India was full of inner and profound changes for both of us. In fact, I believe now that this time away from “life as usual” became a foundation of all that was to follow. India is a mirror and intensifies all that was happening within.

EE: That’s really a good thing. What did you do when you finally returned to the US?

CJ: I was invited to teach at the University of Texas, Austin, for a year. There I wrote my first screenplay, as an exercise–just to see if I could master the form. A few days after I completed the script, I was invited to fly to Los Angeles to accept an award for one of my plays, “The Women of Cedar Creek.” The actress Julie Harris presented the award, which was in her name. I asked Ms. Harris, whom I had just met at the award ceremony in Beverly Hills, if she might read a screenplay I had just written. I added that I felt she would be perfect for the title role. She read it that night and called the next morning to say she’d love to do it. Later, Jason Robards came aboard and “The Christmas Wife” was produced on HBO within the year. It was nominated for several awards, including Best Picture and Best Writing. This led to other assignments, beginning with writing a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie for television.

EE: What a tremendous opportunity!

CJ: And before I knew it, my new career had been launched. I became the “flavor of the month,” as more and more writing assignments began to pour in for both television movies and feature films. My son had by now left to attend a university, so I decided to go with the flow. I sold or gave away almost everything I owned and left New York City for Hollywood.

EE: That was brave of you. How did it work out?

CJ: I was fortunate and worked a lot, though not everything was produced, as is usual in Hollywood.

EE: Were you happy?

CJ: Well, after ten years, the feeling of emptiness overtook me in spite of–or perhaps because of–the outer success. Little by little, I was lost in a labyrinth without the mythical Ariadne’s thread to find my way back to Self.

EE: So what did you do?

CJ: I returned to India and while there suffered a severe heat stroke, which, curiously, seemed a predictable extension of the “burn-out” often experienced in Hollywood. This began a series of changes in my life wherein the outer calamity (i.e., the heat stroke) became, ultimately, a blessing in disguise.

For four years I did not write. I could not write. Feeling pressure from agents and producers, I would make sincere attempts, but weird occurrences would stall me. Twice I tried to “push the river” and force myself to write. The first time, I fell and broke my right wrist. The second time I tried to exert my will, snap out of it, and just do it, my computer (only a year old) blew. By then the message was clear: it was not yet time to write. I was forced, from the outside, to attend to the inner changes going on–rather like an obstinate mule who has to be given a whack in order to get her attention.

Something deep within was trying to get my attention. This marked the beginning of what I perceive now as a soul-retrieving inner journey. In older cultures, shamans often heal by re-connecting the person to his soul, which has become disconnected. I suspect this is as true today as when the practice began.

EE: How long did this process take you?

CJ: It took three years to recover and to reconnect to my soul’s journey. I let go of all self-images; rigid beliefs that no longer served, and, oh yes, my pride. I discovered that there was a person apart from her resume. In short, I got a life.

EE: A good idea for anyone! And then what did you move toward?

CJ: I knew my prolonged period of introspection and healing was done, yet I wasn’t quite sure of what to do next. Two film projects were in the works, but I no longer wanted Hollywood to be my main focus. It would be a part of my life and livelihood, yet not claim my soul, as in the Faustian sense.

A friend introduced me to a woman who was attending Pacifica Graduate Institute (the school where Joseph Campbell left his papers). Intuitively, I knew that this was my next step. Within a day, I applied, Then I discovered that the tuition was quite high. I meditated, and told myself that if this intuitive leap was right, the universe would support this journey of mythology. It was a commitment of five years. The very next day, U.C.S.B. (the University of California at Santa Barbara) called to invite me to teach advanced screenwriting in their film department.

EE: Your life certainly has been full of soul-searching and major changes.

CJ: Yes. My life, like many, has been full of incredible changes. Daughter, wife, mother, ex-wife, actress, teacher, playwright, screenwriter, producer, community activist, friend, seeker — we are many things to many people. I sometimes think of the various hats we wear, as if they were images on a movie screen. Costumes and stories–even the players are forever changing, yet the Background remains the same. The screen is not the stories projected upon it any more than we are solely what we do. It is the screen, or rather the Self, that interests me more and more.

EE: Tell us about your perspective on changes.

CJ: I believe in changes. However, I no longer see them as acts of will. For, in the process of my life, I have changed, and maybe that’s the whole point. Evolution is inner as well as outer. My “daemon” demanded surrender and a deeper commitment that lies beyond the ego. And this, as the “road not taken,” has made all the difference, to quote the poet, Robert Frost.

EE: So where is your life headed now? More changes?

CJ: I have absolutely no idea where my life will lead, personally, professionally, or spiritually. One major change is that life is no longer fragmented as before. I finally understand the Zen saying that ‘a cup of tea is a very deep thing.’ I begin to experience the wonder of daily life as a series of interconnected moments. I am no longer separate from what I perceive. One of the meanings of “change” in the dictionary is to transform. What if the intention in life became less utilitarian and more transformation? More open to growth and change. Then whatever it is we do, we do consciously, and with purpose. Rather a nice way to look at it, isn’t it?