Casey Erin Clark

Welcome to 100 Stories, the narrative intelligence project. I'm your host, Paige Williams. Come along with me as I build the emerging field of narrative intelligence. I am learning from 100 researchers, thinkers, leaders, creators, healers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, philanthropists. Together, we're exploring a question at the center of how we become who we are. And that question is, how malleable are the stories that we live by?

>> [music] >> What does it take to change one? Across these conversations, we will examine the stories we inherit, the stories that become identity, the cultures that we live in, and the human capacities [music] that allow us to recognize, to question, to revise, and to live beyond our stories. This is 100 stories. Today I am speaking with Casey Aaron Clark who is the co-founder of Vital Voice Training, performer of many medium, singer, author, podcast host, all the things. And I invited Casey to 100 stories because she is a multimedia artist and at the core of all of her work, it is about storytelling and storytelling in many different ways and

using our voice to be able to tell stories. And so for me it was so important to have this conversation with Casey and to ask about narrative intelligence. Casey, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. I want to just dig right in and ask for you to tell me about the work that has most shaped how you see yourself and the world. I am a voice user and a helper of other voice users. And when I say voice, I mean both the the physical instrument that we put out into the world where we say our thoughts out loud, but also the way that the voice ties into our emotions and our thoughts and our feelings and our body and our our social world. And I've been

using my voice since I was a little girl. I sang my first solo in church when I was four. I was the daughter of a music minister and moved into musical theater. So my training, my degree, my BFA is in musical theater, which is its own very interesting art form of storytelling. And I hope we will have time to get into that today. But stories are so central to both my work, but also just how I see the world. Remembering a few defining things about me when it comes to storytelling. I read voraciously as a child, like fiction all the time. If I was in the car with my parents, I was probably reading. That's why my husband makes fun of me cuz I don't know how to get anywhere in my

hometown. I loved stories. I loved books. I loved characters like Ann of Green Gables and you know the these were the mediums through which I think I understood the world. I grew up singing in church. Singing in church is an interesting way to enter the art form of singing because unlike some other kinds of singing where the vocal pyrochnics like the the fancy riffs or how high or how loud you can sing is the point of the singing in church the message is the is the important thing. The lyrics the story that you're telling and that is actually perfect training for musical theater because it's the same way in musical theater. You're telling a story.

It's not just about what your voice can do. being a crazy bookworm as a kid, growing up singing in church, moving into musical theater, and then taking all of those experiences into the business world, which was not something that I think 20 years ago I would have pictured for where my life was going to go. It has been revoly to me to find this new whole arena of work that I love so much that the skills that I built in one area can help people in another area and that the the weird world view that I've cobbled together as an artist becomes somewhat revolutionary in the business world and that's really exciting. What's a transformational story that you tell about yourself and

how has it changed over time? I think one of the things that I always loved about stories and about being in musicals was playing a character, right? Like that's like characters at the center of the story and who they were and what they wanted and what their journey was. And I think that my my story of transformation happened over a long period of time in my life, but it really was my transition from the small town girl who moved to New York to make it on Broadway and that being the singular focus of my dreams and my life.

It took a a little bit of a I don't know mid quarter midlife crisis or whatever of making that identity transition to have I given up on my dreams or am I just widening the aperture redefinition of self was really messy for a while but it felt good too even as it was scary. Small town girl from from Bethalto Illinois. I was a sort of a big fish in the small pond. My parents were well known in the community and volunteered and did all kinds of things and so I was Don and Kathy Clark's Daughter and then I was the girl who sang and that was my identity like from the time I was little bitty I was the girl with the voice and so I if if we have any peopleleasing

type A perfectionist eldest daughter types listening to this show which I imagine might be part of your audience they might be familiar with the thing that happens when your talents or your gifts in one area of your life are praised. externally and it's a great thing. It feels wonderful but then it it it becomes almost its own kind of trap like that's what you are. That's what you do and you have to always hit that mark every time. What narrative and identity did you grow up with that allowed you to have the courage to be the girl who went to New York to make it on Broadway? I wanted that narrative as well, but I didn't have the courage. My dad said, "No daughter of mine's going

to New York City." And I listened to him, which he said, "When did you ever listen to me?" So I just used it as an excuse, right? But that was my narrative at the time. Oh, I can't go. >> Yeah. I want to acknowledge a level of privilege that I had both to be born into the family that I was born into, which was endlessly supportive of my dreams. My parents My parents brought me to New York. I was 8 years old. We went and saw Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and I was done for. I was like, "This is it. This is the best thing I've ever seen." And and I I never remember ever hearing them say, "I don't know, Casey.

I don't know if you can handle it." So So having that level of support. Yeah. Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge. [gasps and sighs] And I was thinking a little bit about the books that I loved the most as a kid. And so many of them were about the outsider, the rebel, the the girl who takes the unexpected path. And I think as much as I did really live very firmly in that good girl people pleaser identity as a as a kid and a teenager and a young woman and occasionally right now as a not young woman. I always did want to be that that trailblazer like that felt that that felt like part of my story too.

>> It is. I like to think so. >> Yeah. Multihyenated. >> Yeah. >> You mentioned a midlife transition. Can you tell me more about that? Around the time that we started Vital Voice Training, I got off the national tour of Layiz, which I had been on for 18 months. Who did you play? >> I was the factory girl who beat up Fontine and then occasionally I was Fontine. Uh I was understudying for Fontine.

>> I love your voice already. Anyone who can sing Fontine like that to me is the voice. I don't know that I will ever do another show that is as beloved as Lay Miz was. It was incredible to see how that show was received all over the country. So I I I got off the national tour of Lay Miz and I was like, "Huh, making money is great." Turns out, but you know, I was back in a very familiar position that all actors understand, which is unemployment and like being back on the audition trail and figuring out what my side gig survival job's going to be. And I went on an interview for what I thought was a singing coach position. And I had taught singing

before and I was like, "Yeah, do more of this." And it turned out that they needed a speech coach. They were looking for someone to work with people on public speaking. And with all of the audacity in my heart, I was like, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to do that." And I absolutely fell in love with the art of teaching public speaking while simultaneously be being deeply frustrated by this company that had hired me to work for them. Didn't like how they did it. Didn't like how they were treating their contractors. And then I met Julie Fog. and Julie Fog and I clocked each other literally across a crowded workout class and ended up

talking and finding that we had similar views and similar frustrations and starting a business together knowing absolutely nothing about starting a business. And we hit an interesting zeitgeist. I think 2014's what we call uh the great moral panic over vocal fry where everyone was talking about how annoying and unserious women's voices were and giving them all like these solutions for how to fix their broken voices. And we were like this is Like this advice is so bad. It doesn't actually understand the the actual function of the voice and it doesn't understand how we develop vocal habits over time and why those vocal habits serve us in some environments

versus not in others. And it it is completely in denial about the sexism of that kind of claim and those kind of messages that we're giving women. I think Julie and I hit this zeitgeist where people were hearing that their voices were broken instinctively knowing that that advice was maybe not great and then we were offering something different. So that was awesome. So, all of that backstory to say, around the same time as we were starting to really ramp up with Vitaloice Training, there was a a Broadway transfer of my tour was announced. And at that point, I had just sung with the Layiz cast at the Oscars.

I was chosen from all of these thousands of people who've done this show over time to come and sing with Hugh Jackman and the movie cast in the Oscars, which was absolutely insane. So, I was like, "Okay, maybe they really like me." And then I was going in for this Broadway transfer and I was all the way up to the end with auditions and my last call back and then I was put on hold and then I didn't book it. I had really kind of thought maybe this is it. This is the Broadway debut that I've been waiting my whole life for and it didn't happen. And that moment of going, okay, this is not happening, but this business that I've built is happening. And it turns out I

kind of love it. And it turns out that the frustrations that have been building over time with the limitations of the theater business and the limitations of the pursuit of an acting career, those frustrations growing, not booking Lay Miz and then this business taking off, I was like, maybe I'm a business person now. But it really was the catalyst of not booking the Broadway show I thought was going to be my moment that I I think I needed that break to go actually I think I'm going to really go full out into this business thing that it turns out is so satisfying and interesting to me. We have this one narrative, right?

Like I'm Casey and Clark. Yep. The voice going to New York. Yep. raised by parents who taught me yes. >> Mhm. >> I can do anything. >> Yeah. >> And then you're there and that moment when the story is rewritten for us almost >> Yeah. >> then allows in my experience the real creative project that is for me, the real business that is for me. >> Yeah. >> That is maybe the blueprint of my soul to come forward.

And that's where the new story is rewritten. But what I'm curious about with you is what happened to your narrative? Because you were carrying this narrative and then and then the new narrative. What I heard you say was, "And now I'm experiencing more joy and fulfillment than I ever knew was possible." So, one of the things that I say fairly often when I talk about my college acting training is that one of the best acting classes I ever took in college was my directing class. And part of that was because really for the first time I was able to zoom out from the way my track fits into this story and my moments and my character and like yes of course there's other people on

stage but to but to get that you know let's use a business term 50,000 foot view or whatever of what's happening and see how all these elements come together to create a whole gave me a totally new way to analyze, to understand, and then to dive back into the moment and create again. And I think that I'm putting this together as I'm saying this, it's beautiful. the singular focus of my life being about this pursuit of Broadway, of a of a certain kind of musical theater career, then expanding to new directions, new connections, new new communities to be a part of, which was so huge. A BFA in musical theater, what it meant to you.

>> The first thing that I want to say is every human being can sing. And not only that, I happen to believe that every human being should sing because I think that singing is one of the most primal things that we do with our body. As primal as eating, as primal as sex, as primal as any of that, it is it is so deeply profoundly human to make sustained sounds with our voice that have rhythm and pitch to them. We do it together. We do it by ourselves. It is one of the most visceral ways to connect with your body, with vibration, and with the unness of you because your voice contains everything that makes you who you are on the planet, whether you're

singing or speaking. Musical theater is such an interesting medium of art. It is inherently very theatrical. It is inherently big, larger than life. So musical theater as an art form teaches you how to accept extremity, bigness, something that is not natural and find the deep core of humanity that's in that so that you can embody it. That's my job. My job is to make you as an audience member believe that of course this character needs to sing right now because what's happening to her is so huge and extreme that that's the way that she's processing it in front of us.

Because of that, I have a very different world view on the whole idea of authenticity. Musical theater as a business is very interesting. And this is something that I'm exploring right now in this show that I'm writing. I'm exploring a lot of things around what it means to be a woman. But one of the things that as I was thinking about the the this show that I'm creating that I wanted to explore was types, archetypes, the tropes of characters that we get in musical theater. And really what it comes down to is like the leading lady, the anenu, maybe the quirky best friend, and the character woman. And so much of that is about voice type, yes, but

really it's about what you look like. And when I was a young actress, I used to call it the Sarah Adelaide conundrum, and that was named after the two main female characters of Guys and Dolls. So Sarah Brown is like the prim proper soprano who's a little frosty and a little bit of an ice queen and needs to get thawed out by the man. The Adelaide is the brassy, funny, sexy, quirky belter character uh who's trying to also pursue a man. They're always pursuing a man, always. I could sing both roles. I could play both roles. I could act both roles. What a casting director saw me as when I walked in the room seemed very much to depend entirely on who I was

standing next to. Like next to some women, I was clearly Sarah Brown. Next to other women, I was clearly Adelaide. But me myself, I was confusing to them because they couldn't easily put me in a box. I wasn't obviously anenu type. I wasn't obviously a character woman type. They're just like, I don't know what to do with her. It's a mystery again until I can be defined in opposition to someone else basically. And that was frustrating in the business. There were there were definitely casting directors who knew what to do with me and therefore I got to play some really great roles and do some very cool work.

I seemed to be a bit of a mystery to the business cuz they just didn't know how to define me and and therefore I either sort of had to like put myself in a box for them so that they could understand me or just decide that I was going to walk in the room and I was going to do my thing and I was going to let them take it and run with it and hope maybe that they would get who I was and what I could do. It's a weird business and it's especially as a woman there is a rampant mismatch between this vast over supply of talent and this teeny tiny demand for like jobs. So it's not a scarcity mindset. It's a scarcity reality.

There's a lot of people that want to do this and there's not a lot of opportunity for them to do it. So I was always grateful for any opportunity that I got to do what I loved. But the business itself is enormously frustrating in a lot of ways. this mismatch of a casting director not knowing how to cast you. What narrative did that tell you about yourself as Casey Aaron Clark? I have talked a lot about the advantages that being an artist, being a an aspiring musical theater actor gave me as an entrepreneur. And mainly that's just like continually putting yourself out there, hearing no and keeping going, right? and and and the ability to refine

the messaging to make it clearer what it is that you have to offer so that people can get it because like how we tell the story of who we are and what we do is very important to being able to make the impact that we want to make in the world. It's easy to blame the casting directors for not having enough imagination and I don't think that that is strictly true. I think that they're also in a world where they see a bajillion people. You've got to figure out how to stand out. you've got to figure out how to how to make their job easy for them. And so that is something that has been helpful to me as a business person from an emotional standpoint, from a self-esteem

standpoint. That's hard. And particularly the body stuff is a real mind for most of the women in the musical theater industry. And you know, one of the oldest jokes in the book is like, what's the difference between a leading lady and a best friend character? Oh, about 15 pounds. You know, it's there is a there is an unfortunate narrowness to how we see characters that are capable of falling in love, characters that ought to be standing in the front, characters that the story is centered around and and it so much of it has to do with sort of really just narrow, rigid beauty standards and beauty ideals and western beauty ideals and American beauty ideals

and and frankly that's boring. Like it's really boring. Why do leading ladies need to be shorter than their leading men? Why do need to be skinny? Why do leading men have to have hair? I don't know. Like, because in the real world, bald people, fat people, short people, old people fall in love and experience being the leading role in their own lives. So I am always very excited when I see productions, musicals, plays, movies, TV shows that take a risk on people who look like people as opposed to people who look like archetypes or ideals. Why do you think archetypes are attached to a standard of appearance? I think some of it is that we plain don't

trust the audience to get it otherwise. I think the stories that we tell about beauty are something that really deeply fascinates me and how connected that is to what it means to be a good woman or a bad woman or a virtuous woman or an unverirtuous woman. I've always been fascinated by fairy tales. I love I love a twisted fairy tale and the way that we define morality by whether someone's beautiful or not. I mean, think about the way that we like most witches are ugly and most, you know, anenu, most of our our fairy tale heroins are beautiful. They're also very passive typically in classic fairy tales, whereas like the witch is doing like she's getting done. She's really

smart. >> Yes. >> Absolutely. Oh my god. So, so those those archetypes go so far into the way we understand culture and the way we understand the world from the time we're like children first knowing like what does it mean to say once upon a time and happily ever after. What I love about your story is that you are now doing a onew woman show. And so I'd love to hear how you came to it, the decision, how you had the courage to say, "Yes, I'm going to do this." And then to write it and to decide what goes in it and how it is transforming you by telling your own story. I have probably as long as I could remember wanted to do something like this. When I was in college, I did

a freshman recital, which is not something that freshmen are supposed to do. So, so that like not having to ask permission to do a thing, that that's that's been part of the deconstructed Southern Baptist [laughter] girl. But as an adult, as a New Yorker, as a as a woman in her 40s, I always had really high standards of what I wanted this to be, and I never could figure out exactly what I wanted it to be about. Like I just if it was about having 10 songs memorized, I could do one next week. But like that wasn't good enough for me. I needed a theme.

And literally last fall I was taking a nap on the couch in my studio curled up in my little shrimp ball. And suddenly I like blinked open my eyes and I was like difficult women, difficult women, difficult women. That's my theme. And that it just it was like a gong inside my chest. I was like, that's the thing I have to talk about in so many different iterations of what that phrase could mean. Being a difficult woman, having a being difficult to cast or difficult to understand or stepping outside of the societal boxes that people expect you to be in as a woman, tropes in musical theater, tropes in literature, tropes in fairy tales. was like I I suddenly was

like galaxyrained with ideas of all the things that I could talk about. What has been interesting and what continues to evolve is how much this is about women and how much this is about my journey as a woman. Because what I knew I didn't want to do with a cabaret is just tell like just talk about myself. Like I didn't want to do a cabaret about me. I I want it to be about something bigger than that. And what I have come to understand through some conversations with people who have explored this art form, a director friend who's helping me out with this is that um while it is not just about me, it is about me cuz I'm the [laughter] one on stage and because

I am the medium through which this story is being told and and so what how am I weaving in my deep feelings and thoughts and opinions into this meta story that I hope is pointing out things that every woman and every nonwoman, every human who comes to see this show will go like, "Oh, yeah, I get that or I see that or I've been there or I've had those thoughts or somebody said that to me once and it never hit right and thank you for validating that feeling." Like I by being brave enough to go, I am part of this story and that's okay. It's not that it's not enough or that it's boring or too self-indulgent or any of those things. Like that's the way people are

going to be able to to come into it. >> Yeah. The identification of the audience is so important in the work, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Why do you think that is? I want to tell a story where a woman says, "Yeah, that's me. Thank you for validating me." >> Yeah. I think that's woven through a lot of the work that we do is vital voice training. I think Julie and I both come to the work with our own voice stories that are so deeply embedded in how we see the world. And we also attract clients that very often share elements of our stories and and that that ability to to tell our story and to draw out their story so that we can connect with those points of commonality and that we

can see our stories as part of a larger story of how women are treated in the workplace or what women's voices or have been defined as or what leadership is supposed to sound like. all of those big things we our story fits in that much larger narrative and the more commonality we can find I think the more interesting the conversation gets. I believe that we do creative work to be of love and service and by doing that >> we awaken. Yes. And if you had gotten that the other thing I was thinking about if you had gotten that one thing you wanted so badly >> Mhm.

>> you might not be doing this. >> Yeah. those those sliding doors moments the shadow of the unlived life is something that is so interesting right like like if I'd made this other choice or if this other thing had happened to me and I my life had split off in in that moment where would I be depending on what's going on in your world around you start to be wistful for that unlived life but but then you miss maybe the richness of what's around you at the moment I do feel like not booking that particular production of lay miz may have been the best thing that ever happened to me.

>> Even that is sense making in real time >> very much so to tell story. >> Yeah. >> And we do it over and over and over which leads me into let's talk about narrative intelligence and voice. >> When I say the words what is narrative intelligence? What does that mean to you? And how is it connected to voice in your mind? There are so many things that I feel like go into my understanding of narrative intelligence. I think that director's eye, that ability to zoom out and make the connections across time and space and experiences and other people is part of it. I think that back to the the little girl who was such a good little girl but loved the stories of

rebels. I think the way that I was trained from a young age to understand a kind of institutional level storytelling, a larger level of storytelling like the the the story of the church, the story of what it means to be a Christian, the story of what it means to be a real artist in the theater industry. And that these either examined or of much more often very unexamined but incredibly powerful huge narratives, institutional level narratives have so much power over our lives whether we understand that or not. And then like what is my story within that institutional narrative or outside? Do I need to take my story outside of that institutional narrative? Do I need to

reject that institutional narrative in favor of a different kind of storytelling? Something that's less linear or less clean or more messy or more vibrant or more unexpected. That that that has been really important, I think, to my understanding of narrative intelligence in my own life, but also what we teach. So, you and I have a similar upbringing. >> I was raised Southern Baptist. How did that narrative shape your childhood, your adolescence, and your adulthood today? O, I know it's loaded. I was thinking about this today in a in in two specific ways. So, specific way number one, I think the the largest meta narrative that is threaded through most

of evangelicalism is you human being are bad. You are dirty. You are broken. You are worthless. Now, thank goodness I did not get that from my parents, but I know a lot of evangelical kids did. And it and it's and it's given from a place of like you're bad, but you can be good again, but only because this external deity comes and saves you, etc. So, I think that the the meta narrative of human beings are bad is so toxic. And I will, you know, #notall Christians, #notall religion. But that telling a child that having that be the central way that a human understands themselves is that everything about me that makes me human also makes me terrible. Not a recipe for good mental

health, not a recipe for good relationships, not a recipe for a healthy functioning society, frankly. So, I'm really glad that I first of all had parents who who never insinuated that about me or taught me that. They taught me that I was worthy and that I was loved and that Jesus loved me and that all of that stuff. But like, but I heard it enough at the church that I I knew it. I understood it, but I had to fully reject that. And now I'm like, burn that narrative to the ground. Burn burn salt the earth behind it. Burn it to the ground. The other thing that I think is really fascinating about growing up as a Christian is the way that you understand the idea of your

testimony. I was thinking about this as like one of the ways that we understand storytelling, right? Is our testimony. Everybody's got a testimony. But the testimony, your story is for a very specific purpose and that purpose is conversion. Your story must be framed around this very specific goal of make another Christian. And the way that therefore we approach storytelling is often with this this endg game in mind that is kind of I'm just going to use the word nefarious because it it really does um there there is a level of manipulation. Your testimony is a story you tell in order to make another person desire what you have. To make another person say, "I

want to be like them or or to make them feel bad or make them feel emotional enough to make this huge decision about their life." You've put yourself inherently in a position of salesmen in every relationship you're ever in. Like I don't know that it is actually possible to create a real I'll just use the word authentic relationship with another human being when the end goal is make them like me.

>> Save them. >> You're reminding me in the 80s was your church a part of the SBC, the Southern Baptist Convention? >> Oh yeah. >> Okay. Do you remember evangelism explosion? Did your church do this? >> Evangelism was something we talked about for sure. >> Of course. So, e E evangelism explosion. They trained you how to tell your story to save lives. >> Uh-huh. >> As a 10year-old to a 15year-old, I was knocking on doors.

>> Yeah. >> Saying there were two questions you would ask. >> If you were to die tonight, do you know for certain that you would go to heaven? The second question was you're standing in front of God and he says, "Why should I let you into heaven? What would you say?" And that's how you opened the conversion experience. Do you remember this? And then we would go to the malls and do it. And we would go on mission trips and we would do it and we would just evangelize.

>> Yeah. >> You're so right. That is where you just connected dots for me. I first learned to tell my story. Then came theater. I mean, I was doing theater in the church. >> Yes. Then came outside church theater. >> Yeah. And then came sinful outside church theater. Right. >> Yes. >> So, one of the one of the tools that Julie and I talk about with our clients because we we use the tools of theater in order to help people understand how to communicate, right? We we we're taking the frameworks, the principles of theater, which are basically about recreating human behavior in a set of extreme given circumstances. And we're saying like, hey, you can use this to

help understand your own life, to help understand your meetings, to help understand the way that you speak one-on-one with people because again, it's all describing human behavior. So things like given circumstances, things like my scene, what you know, who am I talking to? But the but the thing that this reminds me of is the idea of objective. What is my objective in this scene? What do I want? And the fact of human communication is that we never communicate without something that we want. We want to be seen a certain way.

We want to be heard. We want to be understood. We want to do something with, through, or to this audience. There's always an objective. Having an objective is not the problem. And that is actually something that comes up a lot, especially when we talk to women, where they're like, "Wait, you're saying that like I I'm saying these words because I want something? Isn't that manipulative? Maybe it's manipulative, but it's also just a precondition of human communication. Like that you want something is human.

>> I think it is fascinating that your parents gave you the yes that you have carried through life. >> Like I want to celebrate them. Like it's so important that you had parents who said yeah even though there were these constraints of evangelical Southern Baptist ideology. Like that is amazing. Like how did they >> almost overcome this traditional teaching to tell teach their kids that they are worthy and that they can say yes to everything when the religion is actually saying no, you need to get in a smaller box.

>> You need to be saved. Like that's really interesting. I haven't I haven't heard that story much. Yeah, I I do feel incredibly fortunate and I I am I am close to my parents. I'm very fortunate with that too as an adult to be to have a good relationship with my mom and dad. I do think some of what helped this is that while my church was Southern Baptist and so we did have some of the typical Southern Baptist trappings, my pastor, who was also my godfather, was very much a Jesus's love pastor as opposed to a hellfire and brimstone pastor. So, we we got a little more of that messaging and a little less of the uh you're going to hell messaging, which

is great. I think the biggest surprise in my family is that turns out we're all just human. Having a human experience. >> Yeah. >> And uh that has changed us. Like understanding that narrative has changed the hearts and minds of my family more than anything. Broadway Inspirational Voices is an incredible organization um a nonprofit uh that is also a choir. It was started in 1994 by a black gay man from Ohio who grew up singing gospel music in church with his family and had a music minister mother actually. He wanted to take the music that he had loved as a child, as a teenager, as a young man, and bring it to Broadway in the during the height of

the AIDS crisis, and take the hate out of it and go, "This music is about joy and love and and and freedom, liberation, especially from the black church." And he started out with 12 singers in 1994. and I think thinking he was going to do a concert and 30 plus years later it's this incredible organization with I think I think we have like 80 or more people on the roster singer-wise but we do outreach work in the community and we we work with the prison system and with seniors and with teenagers and with Covenant House we sing all different kinds of music but it really comes down to this message of hope and inspiration as part of an organization with people

of every gender identity of every sexual identity uh of every creed everyone from pagans and atheists to like you know Jesus believing Christians and Jewish people and Muslims. It's so diverse and the fact that all of us can come together in a room and sing about love and about freedom and about joy coming in the morning after the sorrow of the night and and these messages stripped of exclusionary messaging of any kind and given back to people has been quite healing for me I think as I've deconstructed from my own religious beliefs in a pretty profound way like it's nice to come back to the music that I grew up singing with my mom and dad and and that I still love to sing with

them whenever we get the opportunity to do so. And there are some songs that are very much imprinted upon my DNA at this point that I will never forget singing with them. But but to sing it in that new context is really wonderful. In teaching training people about voice, what have you experienced when a pe person is speaking from a story that is no longer true for them? One of the things that Julie and I have identified about our favorite clients, our favorite type of clients, is that they all have what we lovingly refer to as the flaming inner middle finger. Sometimes said flaming inner middle finger is barely flickering. And what has been shellacked

over that for years and years and years is professionalism or being a very good girl who can keep her head down and eventually people will notice what a good job I do. The stories that I hear and I'm immediately like are you sure are are often in that vein? And we started way back at the beginning of this conversation talking about a little bit about characters and the idea of like how we see ourselves in characters and archetypes and stuff. I think we live in a world that loves to both define us from the outside and then we love to define ourselves from the inside in order to better understand who we are. Like that is such a human instinct.

like I I put myself into a type box whether it's MyersBriggs, you have a beautiful tool that you've created to help people understand like what their narrative story type and these are useful tools but I think that we can get very stuck in a this is who I am, this is what I do, this is what I c what I'm capable of, this is what my voice is and this is what my story is. And if I've learned anything from a long career of playing so many different kinds of characters is that you have so much more inside of you than you have any clue because most people don't get to go to that extremity. They don't get to explore their inner Lady McBTH or mother of dragons. They don't get to explore

the silliest extremes that they can possibly imagine. they they're they're living a real life in the real world. And and I think via play and imagination via exploration, we can break out of those old boxes and old ways of defining ourselves and find something that is bigger and juicier and messier and edgier and so much more interesting than those old definitions. But it takes that rebellion back to the inner middle finger. takes a little bit of inner rebellion to be like, "No, I'm not going to do it that way anymore. I'm going to do it a new way. I'm going to try something different."

>> What do you think it takes for a person to shift to say, "No, I'm not going to do it that way anymore." I think sometimes it takes experiencing that you actually do have that other thing in you. And that's why I love pulling out Shakespeare monologues. You know who writes a great monologue that I wish every woman would get out is Shondaanda Rimes. man, that woman can write a mic drop monologue. And every everyone needs to have the experience of the mic drop monologue because sometimes it takes someone else's text to be like, I identify that thing.

>> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I I can I can see it because I can feel it. Oh my gosh. Sometimes it takes a quiet person making a loud sound. Have you ever heard Tia Levings call it the funy baby voice where like that that sweet sort of semi-childlike voice that women in high control religions often manage to adopt because it makes us non-threatening. Suddenly you find the depths of your like you voice and you're like who is that? Well that was in you the whole time girl. You have to experience it though. And that just takes sometimes somebody just giving you like the gentlest little bit of a like boot click push. What does it do for a person to find their voice in that way? How does

it change them? The moment that happens when you're like, I didn't know that could come out of me and the like incandescent light that sort of like shines out through their freaking pores. That moment like I could just gobble it up like ice cream. like it's the best thing in the world. It's so delicious to see and it and it's like yes it's maybe satisfying to be witnessed doing that but when they have that moment of like that was me that was my voice that did that and like you don't I don't think you forget a moment like that I think it gets imprinted self what does becoming all of who you are in your work have to do with voice if everything that makes

you you makes your voice what it is and that's what we believe that's what we teach then every corner and edge and new. I'm going to mix metaphors now. Branch on the tree, rivullet down the side of the stream. Everything you discover adds texture to your instrument. Fullness. I The best compliment I think Julie ever gave me about my voice was that my voice didn't sound like a single note. It sounded like a chord happening all at once. And I feel like that's that's what you have when you are able to consciously practice accessing all those different parts of yourself and then just enjoy that that can flow through you in the moment. It's there is the conscious

practice that takes a little time and then there's the getting into that that flow state with it. That is a feeling of power that I think nobody can take away from you. And that's the kind of power we want people to experience with their instrument. Power that doesn't require anybody else's approval. Power that doesn't require permission. Power that like is you are your own power source that you then get to share and model for other people what taking space, what saying what you really think, what changing a culture from the inside or from the outside looks and sounds like when we bring that fullness to the table. Casey Aaron Clark, this has been

so fun. I have to tell you, you feel like home to me and I >> Oh my gosh, we paired so much to talk about. Thanks [music] for this juicy, amazing conversation and your wonderful questions. Thank you for being here. I so appreciate you, y'all. [music] Every conversation I'm having about narrative intelligence is changing me. And this conversation with Casey Aaron Clark helped me connect dots in my own story that I've never even connected before. I was reminded that the first place I was actually taught [music] to tell my story was in the church. And I was taught to give my testimony. So it wasn't theater. It wasn't film making. I learned to tell my

story first in [music] the church. And I was living inside a much larger narrative that I didn't even know I was living inside. Casey also helped me think about all the roles and identities that we inherit. The good girl, [music] the leading lady, the difficult woman, the person we think we're supposed to become. [music] And what happens when we begin to step outside of maybe part of narrative intelligence is not only asking [music] what story am I telling but also where did I learn to tell it this way what larger narrative does it belong to [music] and do I still want to live inside it and now I want to invite you into the inquiry what's your inque you

can take the narrative quotient assessment [music] at storys.comco and please subscribe to 100 stories the nar Narrative Intelligence Project. Wherever you listen or watch, give it a comment, share with a friend. It really goes a long way. Casey, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.