Meet Kerstin Caldwell | Improvisational Actor, CNSF

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kerstin Caldwell and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kerstin, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
What I do for a living seems frivolous without social impact to some.

Improvisation as a tool for self-awareness? Why?

Over the span of almost thirty years of studying, performing, and teaching Improvisation along with taking necessary measures to move toward healing my own trauma, I have seen how this work is necessary.

A majority of my teaching Improvisation has been in schools. I started by being invited into middle and high school theater programs around the Denver area to teach performance-based programs I was developing. Along the way, I was contacted by the principal of William Smith High School in Aurora. She had a strong background and understanding of Improvisation and was inquiring about my coming and teaching a couple of classes. What started as a temporary job turned into my teaching at that school as an Artist in Residence for eight years and Improvisation became a required subject for all incoming freshmen. What developed was a program rooted in teaching teens to see themselves through their willingness or resistance to allowing themselves to play.

At that time, I also owned a training center in Denver for adults who wanted to learn to improvise. I was noticing that the work that was being created with the kids at William Smith informed what I was teaching to adults through my training center. Using games to explore how we take risks, speak up in difficult situations, and allow everything around us to be as it is has become a passion of mine. I was witnessing that through play, we have access to who we were when we were five years old and were the most confident versions of ourselves- before we started believing the lies of adulthood.

The need for this work has become more apparent since the onset of the pandemic. In taking time to prioritize the healing of my own trauma, I have experienced first-hand how Improvisation as a tool for individuals to actively take steps to rewire their brains in order to relieve stress and engage more authentically. I now pair Improvisation with a mediation modality I’ve used in my own healing called Neurosculpting® and bring this pairing to students and staff in schools around the Denver area. Most recently I’ve also been given the opportunity to bring this work into prisons through the Colorado Department of Justice and an incredible organization called DU Prison Arts Initiative.

Giving individuals a space to be themselves, express themselves safely and meet the purest parts of themselves again is an incredible piece of social reform. I am honored to be a part of reimagining how we see ourselves, how we treat ourselves and others, and how we can actively use play as a stress-free way to provide experiential education around our humanity and shared experiences.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am trained as an Improvisational Actor who has taken the principles and lessons that work to create a good on-stage performance and apply them to off-stage living.

I take great pride in my ability to use the work to remind individuals of their inner light and inner voice and love giving hope to those who feel they have lost it. Oddly enough, life circumstances have shaken my confidence in my ability as a performer and teacher, but I am now in the space of seeing what they have taught me that can directly be applied to how and what I teach.

I went from teaching Improvisation as a required subject at a high school to raising my babies, which was a struggle. While the choice to be at home for them when they were little was based on my wanting to provide a solid, loving foundation for both of them, leaving behind a job I created out of thin air was hard. One identity I was confident in was replaced by one I zero confidence in. It really messed with my ability to believe in myself and my gifts when I was no longer using them in the classroom on a daily basis. Little did I realize, I was being given a new arena to utilize my skills in Improvisation for application to parenting and daily life.

In the community of Improvisers in Denver, I also suffered a great loss when the training center I owned was undercut by improv theaters opening training centers and offering cheaper classes. As someone who is passionate about teaching, offering quality content, and personalized attention to students, I was frustrated in watching theaters make these moves. The stress of this came to a head when my health and well-being took a front seat after my car accident and I closed the training center completely to focus on my health.

In retrospect, I now see all of the hurdles I’ve gone through leading me toward a greater purpose for how to apply and teach Improvisation in the world. These obstacles have forced me to look at my circumstances from different perspectives in order to find new solutions, new ways to utilize the lessons Improvisation has to offer. I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way but used the neurology that improvising has given me to pick myself up and start a completely new scene that takes the story in a completely new direction. Throw in a worldwide pandemic and try to convince me that the application of how to improvise is something any human being wouldn’t need in times of stress and chaos. Learning and relearning to pivot is exactly what takes us from reacting to our lives out of fear and guides us toward responding from our hearts.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
To be honest, I am quite the home-body, but I would take them to my hometown, Idaho Springs. We could enjoy one of the last mountain communities to escape expansion by walking around, grabbing a bite to eat. If it’s summer, we could drive up Squaw Pass to Echo Lake and then down through Evergreen. We would have to stop off at Red Rocks to show them a view of the greatest place to see a live show.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
When I was diagnosed with a Traumatic Brain Injury and subsequent PTSD after being hit by a drunk driver in 2013, my life was completely overturned. I tried to maintain normalcy but didn’t realize I was creating more stress by pretending I was alright when I really wasn’t.

In 2016, I was introduced to Lisa Wimberger, the woman who created Neurosculpting®. I had no idea what I was walking into when we first met, but in taking her online Warrior One class, I learned I wasn’t broken, I just had a really efficient brain that was doing its best to protect me from danger.

Meeting an individual who worked hard to heal her own seizure disorder by developing a five-step meditation tool based on the concept of neuroplasticity gave me hope. Not only hope that I could make steps toward my own healing but also hope that I had something hidden beneath my own trauma to offer the world.

What Lisa offers at the Neurosculpting Institute in Denver is a gift.

Website: http://gainingperspective.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perspectiveviaplay/

Other: Note: These are the main two I keep up with.

Image Credits
Jennifer MacNiven Photography