Welcome back, you monetarily mindful makers! Did last week’s nudge help you tip your imagination 15% or more? Perhaps time spent considering these awkward social transactions helped you represent your feelings through a bit of artistic thinking. However you performed, take a bow.
Better yet, step behind the curtain and make another entrance. This week’s creative nudge is a literal curtain call.
The curtain gets my vote for least secure boundary in a room. It has no lock, no latch, and no instruction manual. Simply drawing a curtain signals that a space has changed. That understanding requires cooperation. Anyone can push a curtain aside. We usually don’t because curtains depend on our respect for the performance.
A closed curtain says, “Whatever is happening back here is not currently part of your business,” and most of us agree. Curtains offer visual privacy while remaining remarkably unconcerned about sound, smell, temperature and conversation. We can’t see what is happening behind a curtain, but engaging all your senses, and a little imagination, can tell you everything you need to know.
I regularly attend performances at the Landis Performing Arts Center on the Riverside City College campus, and I love the moment when the curtain retracts and unveils the vividly designed set for the first time. The props and performers were there all along (perhaps forever!?!); the curtain gives us a before and an after. When it opens, something must happen.
This week’s nudge can happen indoors, outdoors or in the useful third territory a curtain creates between the two. If your own curtains fail to inspire, visit a department store. They always have the air conditioning going strong, and I believe some of them still sell household goods.
Places everyone, the house lights are dimming! Try out one or more of these cold opens on a set of your own design:
- Make an Entrance: Pass through a curtain three times. The first time, enter as someone who has wonderful news. Second, as someone hoping not to be noticed. Third, the world’s leading authority on something ridiculous. Change your pace, posture, expression and age. No dialogue required.
- Behind the Scenes: Get behind a curtain and write down only what you can hear: partial sentences, footsteps, traffic. Does silence sound suspicious? If someone spots you, make ghost sounds.
- Draft Work: Open a window or door enough to let moving air reach a curtain. Watch how it responds. Follow its motion with as much of your body as public dignity permits. Turn its response into a short dance or one continuous line drawn across paper.
- Typecasting: View a curtain display in person or online and cast the fabrics in an imaginary theatrical production. Which curtain plays the villain? Which is the romantic lead? Which pattern never rehearses and just loves to wing it?
- The Big Reveal: Place three ordinary objects behind a curtain, sheet or towel. Arrange them so only their silhouettes, outlines or an edge can be seen. Invite someone to guess what is waiting backstage—or write your own deliberately inaccurate guesses.
Even a familiar room can feel different when something is hidden, framed or dramatically revealed. Creativity also needs that context. An idea may need to remain behind the curtain until it’s stage ready.
Even when my creativity has been left dormant for a while I am always happily surprised to see it only needs a bit of fanfare before another performance. This week, linger for a moment between concealed and revealed. Rehearse if you need to. When you are ready, pull the curtain aside.
This column was written with help from ChatGPT, serving as an unpaid dramaturg: questioning my motivation, rearranging my marks, and whispering that the second act needs work.
