July 10, 2018

Meet Janna Sobel of Here Chicago & Intuitive Treasure Hunter

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Janna Sobel.

Janna, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today?
Thank you for asking. I’m a writer and performer, and I have been teaching these things to other people for the past 18 years. I also facilitate… experience-type, game things. Here Chicago and Intuitive Treasure Hunter are two beloved events I run that offer people opportunities to trust themselves and trust each other, and to notice the joy that comes from that. I also offer private workshops to organizations who want to work together more positively and productively, and I story-coach individuals preparing to speak to large groups (TED Talkers, Moth Grand Slam Winners, politicians, ministers, organizers, etc.). A lot of study and experience has built to this work, and all of it centers around the wish to strengthen communities, and increase individual creative freedom.

I grew up in a family of storytellers, and I saw how powerful story can be to entertain, connect, inspire, teach, heal, and even sometimes hurt. I consider storytelling to be something of a superpower, and part of my work is to help people use those powers for good. I also recognize that the struggle to assert the dominant narrative is consuming much of people’s energy lately in social, political, and professional spheres. But we don’t have to fight so hard for that. We can only tell effective stories when we’ve been able to stop narrating life for long enough to notice it first. And real life is better than any story we can make up about it, anyway. For those reasons, I’m also invested in offering experiences that help people stop narrating life until it’s time to tell a story about it.

When it is time, I believe that putting oneself on a stage— whether it’s as a public speaker, leader, lecturer, actor, comedian—can be a transformative thing. Telling the truth to a group of people holds the potential to change both you and the audience. That potential gets realized when we treat a stage as a platform for honesty and generosity.

I was trained in theater and dance, and grew up attending free public magnet schools that brought people together from all over Tucson, Arizona, from many different backgrounds, to study visual and performing arts. My own cultural and economic background is white working class/middle class. And I discovered young that being on stage allowed me a broader range of expression than was practiced in my circles of origin. I love and am very grateful for the family and friends that I grew up with, and I also recognize the narrow acceptable range of behavior we were allowed, and the denial required by that. For me, growing up in a white middle class family meant not only sometimes turning a blind eye to the pain of others, but it meant pretending that we ourselves were pain-free and perfect. I failed badly at that kind of pretending, and a theatrical stage was a place where I found I could include a broader range of experience. In a play, I was allowed to be sad, angry, heartbroken, afraid. I also could be fierce, wild, giddy, powerful, brilliant. On stages it seemed like I could be anything that comes with being alive, without shame.

My interest in a stage as a place for honesty deepened when I discovered solo performance. Studying theater at NYU and La Mamma in New York, I saw stages used as places for the communication of deep, radical, powerful truths. During college I was fortunate to work at a theatrical Managers’ office that not only managed Broadway shows, but also the careers of solo performers like Annie Sprinkle, Tim Miller, Lypsinka, Penny Arcade and others. There, I got to learn from performers who seemed to be serving as modern shamen; in a tradition of soothsayers and sacred clowns who use their platforms to shine light in the darkest parts of the social psyche, and lift it all up and laugh at it. I was very lucky to study with Wooster Group founding member and Performance Artist Leeny Sack, and to later collaborate with and direct productions curated by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, which included collaborators Lynda Montano and Guillermo Gomez Pena among others. Working with these heroes grounded my understanding of a stage—any size, anywhere—as an opportunity for healing and revolution.

After college in New York, I moved to San Francisco and continued studying performance with amazing teachers while working as an actor, director (mostly in the tradition of Theater of Testimony– true story for the stage), and performance teacher at the oldest progressive school on the West Coast, Presidio Hill School. I also discovered Improvisation there. Recognizing its roots as a rehabilitative theatrical art form, and was thrilled to learn more about those roots (Viola Spolin, Neva Boyd, Hull House and the WPA!) when I moved to Chicago ten years ago. I continue to teach Improvisation today at The Second City, and I design and lead Applied Improvisation workshops for many companies and organizations. When used intelligently, I am continuously dazzled by Improvisation’s ability to empower, unite, and transformed people.

These tools that I’ve been fortunate to gather can make people’s lives better. There are creative techniques and approaches that were designed to liberate and empower artists, and we can all benefit from them. As an artist myself, I love working as an actor, improvisor, storyteller and public speaker. And then there’s the big joy I find in helping communities get strong and individuals get free. As a teacher, I helped co-found the Live Storytelling program at The Second City Training Center, where I taught sold-out storytelling classes for over 4 years, and more recently designed the Live Storytelling curriculum at Chicago Dramatists, where I teach Storytelling now.

Has it been a smooth road?
Not always smooth. I recovered from major pancreas surgery a couple of years ago, which was made possible by a community of wildly supportive, generous-hearted friends and family members. When I was in New York just beginning studies, I had regular seizures that led me to be diagnosed with a brain tumor. That was a long time ago, and it is gone, and I am fully healed. It’s something I don’t talk about a lot, but not because it is a secret. Mostly because of the stories other people would project on me when they heard about the illness and recovery. Like I’ve mentioned, I recognize the power of story, and whether this is true or not, I feel like one of the ways I escaped with my life from that time, was by dodging possible stories– statistics, expectations, fears– about was probably going to happen to me.

Certainly story-dodging wasn’t the only thing involved in that recovery. It was a long, slow, scary, difficult, and sometimes wonderful process that was very formative. But I do think it helped to have given myself room for the possibility of healing and recovering from something like that, outside of the narrative that was expected. This is another reason I teach others now to use story mindfully. Because life is filled with more possibility (and tragedy, and injustice, and generosity and wonder) than any story we can tell ourselves about it.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Here Chicago and Intuitive Treasure Hunter, along with your private coaching. Tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.

Thanks. I feel like I do just one thing in a few different ways: I like to remind people of what they already know but might have forgotten. I like to help them reclaim access to the part of themselves that is wild and knowing and joyful, and help them trust it. I also like to help people find out that they are not alone, and that they can unite to create great things together.

One way I do this is through the live storytelling show I run, Here Chicago, which is a big night of live storytelling with a giant potluck dinner. This show has been running for over 7 years in 150 seat theaters, and regularly sells out. The situation gives everyone the dignified frame of a stage to tell an important true story. It also fosters community across the lines that typically split Chicago up. It brings people together from different professions, creative practices, and cultural, religious and economic backgrounds to build alliances and hear new voices. It’s always a joyful, moving night, and lots of people call it magic.

Intuitive Treasure Hunter is a unique thing—part urban adventure, part team game, part whimsical remedy that’s been played by over 600 people now from many different countries. In addition to being offered monthly in Chicago, it is being used now to cap off the Summer Intensives at iO Chicago each year, and has been a special part of The Improv Retreat for the past 5. I created the game over 10 years ago to help young people keep open access to their creative intuition during the years when it normally gets shut down. But the results of the game were more wonderful than expected, and word spread fast until it was being played and enjoyed by people of all ages.

In private coaching and group facilitation, I meet individuals and organizations where they are, and use the tools I have to help them find greater creative freedom and satisfaction, personally and collectively. I know from my years in progressive education, and teaching Spolin-based work, that real learning happens through discovery, and so I provide people with carefully designed opportunities to make discoveries that are most valuable to them. I do this through playful activity followed by post-game reflection, rather than through static lecture. I am interested in how we become better together, while having fun.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Most, I like the people. Least, I like the systematic segregation of the people. When they upgraded the Redline stations on the north side a few years ago, they closed one stop at a time so that it was easy for northsiders to walk just 4 or 5 bocks to use the next station. When they upgraded the Redline stations on the south side in 2013, they closed down THE ENTIRE southern branch of the Redline at one time, and kept those stations closed for five months. And with the stations south of downtown already situated miles instead of blocks apart, people who live south for miles and miles could not take public transportation to work that year. That is a recent example of this city’s systemic racism, and it is insane that we allowed it to happen that way.

Our city government also recently closed 50 public schools, mostly on Chicago’s South and West sides, forcing young people to travel through neighborhoods that were unfriendly to them. Many of the public school classrooms where I taught performance and creative writing at that time, already had upwards of 50 students to 1 teacher. This, too, is exemplifies the systemic oppression that operates here.

Chicago isn’t unique in the fact of its city government not valuing and protecting all of its people equally. But it is unique for its people. There are renowned slam poets, chefs, journalists, playwrights, musicians, comedians, architects, mural artists, tech designers, urban farmers, social justice luminaries, labor organizers, medical specialists, athletes, filmmakers, actors, and many others who live and work and raise families here and make our communities vital and joyful and generous, and who basically show the world how it is done. Chicago knows how to organize, create culture, heal through unifying, and build movements that change the world. I feel lucky to live here because of the people. I love this city, and everything it has taught me about love, community, unity, justice, and about hard work. It is an amazing place to live.

Contact Info:

Website: jannasobel.com, herechicago.org, intuitivetreasurehunter.com
Email: janna@herechicago.org

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