Creative Actors Lab

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Max discusses how he enjoys poems, a chapter from the book 500 Greatest Poems, and some poems don't have the names of the poets or the year they were written, and some go back to the year 1250 and earlier. 

Edward, Edward is one from the 1600s about a man going to sea, and what he'll leave for his family and his beloved mother. 

The Three Ravens is about birds set in a tree, and they think about a meal while they look at a knight. 

The Cherry Tree Carol is about an old man named Joseph and Mary, who is a biblical reference, and Mary is with child and asks for cherries and how her son will predict how humanity will behave. 

The Unquiet Grave, which is about a young man's true love. 

Max has his own poetry, from 15 years ago, that he's just discovered which he's getting ready to edit and put together. 

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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Max talks about The Gutenberg Project and Robert Lewis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, and the night that the lights went out in his neighborhood, and being tucked into bed with a white candle.  It includes the poems:

• Summer in Bed
• At the Seaside
• Young Night Thought
• Rain
• Pirate Story
• Foreign Lands
• Windy Nights

This is a great episode to share with a little one. 

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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In this episode, Max reads The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which Oscar Wilde wrote while he was in jail for two years for the crime of homosexuality, and it was inspired by Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, who was imprisoned and executed for murdering his wife. 

The poem highlights the brutality of the penal system, the mental suffering of inmates, and the hypocrisy of morality, featuring the famous line, "Yet each man kills the thing he loves".  Reading Gaol was a place of extreme emotional and physical suffering for Wilde, leading him to campaign for prison reform after his release. 

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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Max discusses a poem he read many years ago, called the Saga of Li-Peng and Xua-Xua, which tells the story of the discovery of acting and theater. Li-Peng and Xua-Xua wait for a child without understanding the changes to her body and how it created distance. The child's name was Ling Ling-Lee, and the trio learns how to manage their humanity and the art of becoming human.

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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Max talks about his first blush with a voice class and how liberating it was.  He also talks about his love of Shakespeare and the old radio announcer exercise. He suggests learning some Shakespearean sonnets because they're short and easier to recite, and doing them with the pencil across your mouth, and then taking the pencil out and redoing the sonnet, and it's so much easier to do, and your diction gets better.  It's like taking weights off your legs when you want to run. 

He reads Sonnet 18 - Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? with a pencil in his mouth, along with Sonnet 52. 

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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Max talks about a friend with mental health issues and depression, who would call and spend over 45 minutes talking about his issues, and then he wanted to tell jokes, which was his way of trying to heal himself. He also had a hard time dealing with his daughter's depression and made a joke about it, which caused a falling out. Max discussed his own depression with his friend and his parody poem. 

Max reads his poem, I Got Blues, which was inspired by Mississippi Blues and artists like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. 

Max also talks about his trips to Arabia Mountain and how healing nature is, and extolls on how great a chef Marco Pierre White is, how he left professional cooking to cook for the people he loves, a similar voyage that Max took.  Arabia Mountain inspired his poem, The Mountain.

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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In this episode, Max explores Mental Health and Emily Dickinson, her gregarious youth, and she went into seminary, which made her reclusive and did not leave her family's property.  Upon her death, she asked her sister to destroy her letters, but her poetry survived.  

During her lifetime, only a few of her poems were printed, mostly anonymously, and her writings were published after her death. They have spoken to millions over the decades. 

Max reads:

• Because I Could Not Stop for Death
• I Heard a Fly Buzz when I Died
• A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
• There's a Certain Slant of Light
• A Bird Came Down the Walk
• The Soul Selects Her Own Society
• I Like to See it Lap in the Miles 
• My Life Closed Twice Before it's Close 
• Success is Counted, Sweetest
• I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed
• After Great Pain, the Former Feeling Comes
• I Felt a Funeral in My Brain
• I Never Saw a Moore
• Much Madness is Diviness Sense

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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In this episode, Max researches NeuroticPoets.com , and Lord Byron shows right up and talks about his own mental health struggles and how poetry has helped him cope.  Apparently, Lord Byron was born with a club foot, and a girl that he was interested in called him, "That lame boy," which was very hurtful. His poetry lays his soul bare. 

His life was layered and brief - he died at 36 years old but left behind a treasure trove of poetry. Max reads:

• She Walks in Beauty,
• So We'll Go No More a Roving
• When We Two Parted
• There was a Sound of Rivelry by Night

These are reflective, powerful poems, so let us know what you think.  Thanks for listening. 

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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Join Max as he looks at the magical imagination of his daughter, Amber Grimm, and her stories, The Moon Follows Boo, in which a little cat named Boo loses his way at night but gets help from the Moon, who guides Boo back home, and we find out that the moon sometimes feels lonely, lighting the night for the world to see. 

The next story is about Polly the Polite Possum and how she tries to have a nice tea party for her friends in the forest. But it's interrupted by a couple of raccoons named Bandit and Gem who need a good lesson on etiquette.

Ellie in the Closet is about a rainbow lizard who feels ugly because she's different and hides in the closet. But a friend named Storm gives her the confidence to come out of the closet. She is finally able to leave her isolation and show the world her true colors. 

Rapunzel Pup is about a disabled puppy with a prosthetic leg who has an overprotective mother who won't let her go outside.  She finds friends who help her navigate her new surroundings and take a cat to task for making fun of Rapunzel. 

It's a sweet episode that's great for the entire family. 

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!

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In this episode, Max discusses his blog, also titled A River Between Zen and Chaos, and shares his perspective on poetry.  He talks about his British grandfather, Sidney (Sid) Robinson, who was also a writer. Max reads The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage by Sir Walter Raleigh, which seems like a poem his grandfather would have liked. His grandfather, who never had a formal education, also loved the poetry of William Wordsworth. Max tells about learning about his grandfather's passion for writing at his memorial service and their last moments together. 

For more on Creative Actors Lab, check our website, www.creativeactorslab.com. You can always find us at our Instagram page, @creative_actors_lab, Facebook page, @CreativeActorsLab, Linked-In - Creative Actors Lab, and YouTube Channel -  @CreativeActorsLab . If you would like to support our work - this is our Patreon Page.  Thanks so much for listening!