A Conversation with Presenter Shonali Devereaux
8th October 2020
This is the eleventh in a series of interviews with creative and inspiring people, chatting all things human and what it takes to ‘be’. The aim being not only to promote their work but to uncover their journey, learn about technique and pass on tips and advice. I’m hoping these conversations will inspire others to be unique, take risks and understand the beauty in failure …… We have but one life, lets make it creative !
Transfixed …. is the only world I can use to describe how I felt when talking to Shonali. She has the ability to hold you in the moment with a soft, kind hand and walk you through an idea .. coming out the other side inspired and with a greater understanding.
I first met Shonali a couple of years ago during an event I’d organised with a friend called Art & Soul. She stood out in the Town Hall , incredibly stylish with a masculine cut and feminine twist … we started chatting and I learnt that Shonali never buys anything new, she’s a vintage, second hand shopper all the way. Let’s just say I was impressed.
We’ve become great friends and it’s been an honour to recently spend more time with her on early morning walks putting the world to rights.
Shonali talks about Improvisation, the theme to her Ted Talk and the biggest lesson of improvisation that anyone can take on … a journey through Chemotherapy and aftermath of breast cancer.
It’s my pleasure to share a snippet of our conversation but seriously advise you to listen to the full conversation here … there’s so much wisdom and inspiration, you won’t regret it !
TOP TAKE AWAY
A caterpillar turns into a ‘liquid state mush’ before emerging as a butterfly .. WTAF !
The principles of improv
1 - Is to trust that what ever moment you’re in, that you bring the knowledge and skills at that moment are enough, what ever you bring to the table is enough. Like I’ve come to this interview thinking that what I know, and what I bring is enough for us to have a wonderful interview or decent conversation.
2- Is to treat the other people you’re with like geniuses, so trust that they bring enough the the table. Total trust that they have the skills of what it takes to bring to what ever situation you’re in, it could be an interview at work , trust that they bring enough to the table.
3 - And the third is to “ Yes, and?” to everything they’ve said. To actively listen, to say Yes to what the other person has said and build on it.
So many times , especially in conversations we’re worried what we’re gong to say next, we’ve thought of something amusing, we’ve thought of an anecdote that relates to something that someone said and by the time they’re a minute on its not relevant anymore but you’re still itching to say it !! And it cuts stuff dead.
Typed Verbatim *
When you’re going through Chemotherapy and you’re told about the cancer, you must loose your identity feel like your being stripped of it in some way because you can’t be the person you’re used to just because you’re feeling so ill. So how’ve you kind of coped with that ?
“So, firstly I’d like to elaborate on that, I had this really strong sense before the entire journey started that that wasn’t going to happen to me, it didn’t occur to me that it would happen to me. I just thought, you think you’re going through a process and then be the person that you were after the process. As if it’s a cut that heals or something temporary that you go through but actually it’s completely transformative in a way that’s quite indescribable. Because not only is it an endurance test of having the chemotherapy in your system and seeing how you deal with the side effects, and see how you deal with life and being amino suppressed and having to stay in, which I’m not alone in that club at the moment with Covid about so I don’t feel so isolated. You know everyone’s feeling isolated so we’re all doing zoom calls and actually I feel like I’m part of a community in that sense but you do go through a transformation that they don’t really talk about which is really weird”.
The other day, my first chemo ( I’ve had three rounds of chemo ) and the first round I didn’t have massive side effects so I thought, right, I’m going to Boss this and its gonna be great. I had some of course but they weren’t debilitating and then the second round really hit massively, and the second and third rounds, I had this, I’m going to call it a metamorphosis moment and it’s almost wrong to call it that because metamorphosis infers you have turned into something else, you’ve gone through a change and become another thing but I literally felt… I found out some time ago that caterpillars on their way to becoming butterflies actually completely turn to mush in that cocoon before they reconstruct. So they don’t like grow legs gradually out of their existing body, they just turn to liquid and then they reconstruct a butterfly.
Oh , I didn’t know that
I know, it’s a horrible and amazing fact at the same time isn’t it.
It’s an incredible fact
It’s an incredible fact, and I had this moment where I actually felt like mush. Everyone’s chemo therapy is different and you have different experience and relationship with it but I spent some time in my fatigue like I was a brain in a jar because I could think, chemo brain aside, but I couldn’t really move and I felt like my digestive system was somebody else’s digestive system. It was almost like having a child, saying ‘Are you hungry ?’ “ what do you want to eat ?… Well I don’t know , Everything tastes funny” .. well you know, like you’re completely disconnected from the rest of yourself. And I just had this mush moment in both rounds where everything is changing and reconstruction and I don’t know what it’s going to reconstruct into until the whole lot of chemotherapy is over.
Now lets talk about your Ted talk. I know that most people would think about improvisation in terms of acting, like certain actors get into their roles and and this kind of thing .. I’ve never thought about it outside of that box but it’s only when I watched your Ted Talk that I kind of started to think about it more .. so just explain, One, how you got into the Ted Talk, how you chose improvisation and what does it mean to you.
Ok so I, I’m going to take one step back and explain how I came into improvisation.
So I was in this ‘Yes’ mindset space, I’d broken up from a previous relationship, I’d just embarked on a new one and just moved to a new flat, like everything was just new, new, and I was just saying Yes , Yes … yes yes yes , so I was a huge advocate for saying yes to loads of things all the time and I was in a pub and there was this leaflet on the table and it said improv classes on Monday nights for the next 12 weeks and I thought that looks really, really really really scary. So I’m going to do that because I want to do something that scares me and so it turned out that it would be completely life changing for me because I was ready to learn something. And when you have the mindset of being ready to learn something you just absorb thing like a sponge and we were all in that space.
And I went along to the first class and what they do in improvisation classes is they set some rules, and these rules guide how you go, and how the class moves forward and guides and you react in the space. And one of the rules is the space that you are in is a safe space with no judgment what so ever, you know what ever comes out of your mouth comes out of your mouth and nobody is allowed to say that’s good, that’s bad or hang anything onto your personality or whatever. And with that freedom of being able to express yourself in any way you wish, it kind of unlocks something for you that allows to do something magical in that space.
So we played a couple of improvisational games which are really intended to get out of your own head and into this space where you’re connecting with your imagination. So we played this one game where you have to stand, we talked about physicality before where you have to stand either as a queen or a king or you have to stand as a solider or you have to stand as something else. And then he ( the teacher) said “right”, you’re walking around the room, “I’m going to click my fingers and you’re going to stand as one of these things we’ve stood as before and you’re going to talk to the person opposite you”. And what had happened was me and the person opposite me who’s now a really great friend of mine, we turned to each other and we were both soldiers in that space and we didn’t realise we’d both chosen soldiers and we started talking about war time stories and how we missed our family, all sorts of stuff that was really deep inside us that we didn’t know was there and in that moment I just felt like I’d unlocked the gateway to my imagination.”
We continued to talk about when it’s good to prepare or when improvisation can be used in everyday life … not to mention the incredible journey Shonali is on, her resilience and overall feeling of gratitude.
You can find Shonali on instagram at @shonalinali
Or watch the full conversation here