We were lucky to catch up with Jim McGrath recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jim thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I began my work with Imagination Workshop as an artist leader in 1984. At that time we were serving psychiatric patients with theater workshops. I was doing it for the money (what there was of it). As an under-employed actor and an unemployed writer, those session fees made a difference in paying the bills. A few years later I landed my first television writing gig on a series called Simon & Simon because the producer on that show knew of my work with Imagination Workshop and wanted to set an episode in a psychiatric hospital and felt that I was the one to write it because of my familiarity with that world. My writing career took off, but I stayed with Imagination Workshop even though I no longer needed the money but felt that I owed it something for starting my writing career. But I did not truly understand the value of the work until some time later when I worked with a psychiatric patient who, because of a traumatic experience, was unable to speak. She began to speak when playing a character in scenes, and soon she was talking again. Not long after that she became a renowned artist in her own right. When interviewed about her success, she said “I realized that if I could do that Imagination Workshop, I could do anything.” Later, when I started to work with homeless veterans, I saw a lot of lives change, men and women who felt they had been permanently discarded started putting their lives back together, often crediting Imagination Workshop with giving them a way of envisioning a future. In 2010, I became Executive Director of Imagination Workshop. I sense that my involvement in the workshop has been the greatest thing I have done with my life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Imagination Workshop (IW) is a non-profit theater arts organization committed to using the unique power of the theater to provide life-changing artistic opportunities for the mentally ill, homeless veterans, senior citizens, and ‘at-risk’ young people. For more than 50 years, IW’s programs have given marginalized individuals, who are frequently alienated and overlooked by society, a safe way to express themselves and gain insights that often help make their lives more successful. Through this program, IW enhances the dramatic skills of professional theater artists and expands the creative and emotional horizons of its participants.

The participants are mentored by specially trained theater professionals (playwrights, actors, and directors) in weekly, structured sessions. Under the guidance of the artists, the participants create characters and then work with each other to imagine storylines, improvise scenes, and experience the pleasure of genuine creation. Then, together – pro and novice – they perform the work on stage under the direction of a theater professional. Through this program, IW enhances the dramatic skills of several dozen professional artists and expands the creative and emotional horizons of eighty to one hundred participants annually.

While I began with the workshop as an artist leader forty years ago, it wasn’t until fairly recently, even after becoming Executive Director in 2010, that I saw the true value and scope of the work we do. We work often with trauma victims, a broad category, and one thing trauma does is shut down the imagination. But the imagination is still there, lying dormant, waiting to be summoned. Our workshops are extremely effective in, in a very short time, re-enlivening the imagination, and once that is done, the client begins envisioning a future. Many of our clients (mostly combat veterans suffering PTSD) spend their days with therapists re-experiencing the trauma of the past. When they are with us, the past is not an issue. They make up fantasy characters and physicalize them, and in doing so they see possibilities for themselves.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My particular goal in this work is to use what I have developed in myself as an artist to bring out the creative artist in others. Even if they do not envision artistic futures, and most of our clients do not, there is much to be gained by sharing an artistic experience. Creativity and imagination can be applied to anything, any kind of career or endeavor, and with it comes optimism and excitement about the future. I say this because I have seen it happen over and over again for forty years.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the true rewards of creativity have to do with the way one views one’s self and one’s world. Bringing something into existence where there was nothing, whether it involves writing a play or a song or doing a painting or putting in a new deck, is the most enlivening experience I know about, and it is one that anybody can have. Many people are educated away from this experience, taught that it is impractical or impossible or of little real value, and they miss it. But creativity can come to anyone.    

Contact Info:

• Website: imaginationworkshop.org
• Instagram: Imagination Workshop
• Facebook: Imagination Workshop
• Youtube: Imagination Workshop

Image Credits
Colleen Dodson Baker