Cover Design by Kathy Hiscox (@ordinarypressco)
We live in a quick-fix, AI, cut-and-paste, sound bite, Tik-Tok, Instagram celebrity, everyone-gets-a-medal world, with countless memes and posts on social media telling us that we just have to believe, we just have to want it bad enough, and the world and everything in it will be ours.
NO SHORTCUTS, The Five Chambers: A Practical Guide To Finding Your Own Creative Process was written to encourage you to move beyond that overly simple messaging 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, 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 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).
Most recently 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. His 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 and is currently being developed – His most recent play AFTER MOURNING, about Johanna Bonger, the woman who saved van Gogh’s art, has had staged readings at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, in Red Deer, Alberta, the Art Studio Inc. in Beaumont, Texas, the South Simcoe Theatre in Ontario and Her Story Theatre in Chicago.
Available now at:
DANCING MONKEY LABORATORIES 