We kick off the season with Krista Monson, a choreographer, director, producer, and former artistic director of Cirque du Soleil's O at the Bellagio for more than 13 years. I saw Krista speak several years ago, I knew she'd be a perfect fit for the show.
We kick off the season with Krista Monson, a choreographer, director, producer, and former artistic director of Cirque du Soleil's O at the Bellagio for more than 13 years. I saw Krista speak several years ago, I knew she'd be a perfect fit for the show.
As Krista says, she has a background in "big spectacle" and is in the business of emotions. We talk about the risks that shaped her career, like leaving a successful career in Edmonton for Los Angeles with a one-year-old, and later trading huge stages for intimate storytelling. She now creates memoir documentaries through her company, Sincerely Yours Memoirs. And like me, Krista has her own manifesto! Her "creative survival kit," features eight mindset tools she relies on when things get hard. She also challenges one of my manifesto principles ("logic can work against you") and explains why small, ordinary stories matter as much as large ones.
TAKE AWAYS
- Perceived setbacks can actually be what opens doors for you
- Nurturing relationships is critical to success
- It's easier to face fear than regret
- There are benefits to being a small fish in a very big pond
- The smallest details matter
Krista's Creative Survival Kit
- Pay attention to "just." It can be an apology ("I'm just doing a freebie"), or it can help you take a first step.
- Stay curious. Be an observer of life, both physical and emotional.
- Keep perspective. Build a relationship with the sublime, whether that's awe, wonder, or looking at the stars.
- Have a high regard for people. No one creates alone.
- Listen, to others and to yourself.
- Courage. This includes the "four rooms of change": contentment, denial, confusion, and breakthrough.
- Care. Connect what you're doing to something you care about, even if it's just paying the rent.
- Embrace creative chaos. Sometimes you go two steps back to go five steps forward.
RESOURCES AND LINKS
- Download the No Time to Be Timid Manifesto
- Sincerely Yours Memoirs:
- Sponsor: Interabang Books, an independent bookstore in Dallas (interabangbooks.com)
- Watch the interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RwjGgviLdfk
Credits
Written and produced by Tricia Rose Burt. Produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch. Executive producers: Amy Grant, Nancy Perot, and Sage Wheeler. Thanks to the Fractured Atlas fiscal sponsorship contributors.
Krista Monson (00:05) I'm Krista Monson and this is No Time to Be Timid.
Tricia Rose Burt (00:22) Welcome to No Time to Be Timid, where we help artists and entrepreneurs find the courage to make their mark now. You know all the voices in your head that tell you that you can't? We're the voice that tells you that you can. Today we're going to be talking with Krista Monson, a choreographer, director, producer, and former artistic director of Cirque du Soleil. Krista has worked all over the world with enormous budgets, audiences, and creative responsibilities, and through it all Krista has been telling stories. She's recently moved from the world of big entertainment to more intimate creative work in the form of memoir documentaries, and she's going to share with us her creative survival toolkit, which has helped her navigate the transitions in her spectacular career. Slow down, spend some time with us, and ignite your creative courage.
Tricia Rose Burt (01:17) Welcome to the fifth season of No Time to Be Timid. We're so excited that you're joining us this season. And for episode one, we have a fabulous guest, Krista Monson. She has a career that has been quite spectacular. And when I met her, I didn't meet her, I got to be in the audience while she was speaking at the Story conference in 2022 in Nashville.
And Krista, you described yourself in a way I loved so much. You said you had a background in big spectacle. And I was like, I want that job. That sounds like the best job ever. And then while I was researching you for this interview, you actually used a line I thought, she has just described what I do for a living. And you said, I'm in the business of emotions. And I have been told when I was growing up, I was told I was too emotional, I was too sensitive, I was too dramatic, it was a liability. And to have you claim I'm in the business of emotions, I'm like, I love her because just staking your claim, that's what you're doing, and that's what some of us are very good at doing. So I'm so excited to have you on the show. Just delighted to have you here.
Krista Monson (02:35) Likewise, it's a privilege and an honor. Thank you, Tricia.
Tricia Rose Burt (02:39) Thank you. There's all sorts of points of entry here. And I want to start a little bit. I mean, this is a show about the intersection of courage and creativity, and you have decades of doing both of those things. But I want to talk a little bit about this, what may have been your first big move. Was your first big move when you left Canada to come to LA? Was that your first like major courageous thing? Or was there something before that? I know you majored in dance and minored in French, which may have given your parents a little bit of a heart attack that you were doing those two things. Was that a big step for you or when did the courage kick in?
Krista Monson (03:22) Oh gosh, you know, probably the move, you know, the physical move from Canada to the U.S., to Los Angeles in 2001 was indeed with a one-year-old little boy and no job prospects. We had a couple of people we knew. That was probably the biggest one that stands out from an outside-in point of view. But I would say before that, yes, I did, I have a degree in French as a second language.But you know, a lot of my friends were doing those arts degrees, political science, pre-law, you know, that kind of thing. So I was following and I was curious. I really was intellectually curious, especially about the language. So that didn't necessarily give my parents a heart attack, but I did always know that education isn't a vocation, you know, to learn French, you know, or, or, or it wasn't a vocation. It was, it was something I just I wanted to learn about. And so I guess more of a liberal education. So I really wanted to, well, at first it was be a performer, an artist on stage. Yeah. And then, but I, I'd say it was when I started designing in Canada as a choreographer. I had a very bad, I had a vocal injury, a bad one, and I had to step away from that. And it was scary and someone asked me, you know, would you like to put some movement together kind of on, on something else, on another play? And that kind of perspective, I knew then that in French we say, when you're, you, when you feel in your skin, quand je suis dans ma peau, when we're in our skin. And I never, I don't, I still don't see there's a perfect equivalent in English.
But I didn't really feel in my skin when I was performing the roles I would get, the things like this. But when I was designing from backstage from afar, really examining the music, the, the, the story itself big time, and, and then I started becoming a choreographer. That was kind of the, I would say the first big, you know, wash of courage I needed. And then, and then on to, to kind of
Tricia Rose Burt (05:20) Very interesting.
Krista Monson (05:46) In that phase of my life, I was asked to choreograph the opening and closing ceremonies for the third largest sporting event in the world, which is called the IAAF World Championships in Athletics. And that was the first, it was very scary. I mean, I was thrilled. I mean, I had a job for, I think it was 10 months. I had never had a job for 10 months. It was two weeks, a month, six weeks. It was contract work. Contract was 10 months or almost a year.
Tricia Rose Burt (06:09) Yeah. Well yes.
Krista Monson (06:14) And so for that I thought I had died and gone to heaven, but the part that was very scary was the fact that I was integrating sport into the design. And so, and that, that has a completely new language, you know, when you're working with the athletes and how they respond to, you know, work with music and things like that. So that was a, that was probably a huge step, a leap of courage. And then right after that.
Tricia Rose Burt (06:42) Fear and exhilaration feel the same in the body. Like I can either say, I'm gonna be scared or I'm gonna be excited about the, I mean, you know, you, you can make the choice of which way you're gonna go there. And so how did you find, and I also love the fact that what seemed like a setback, like you had this vocal injury, actually guided you into this career that you may not have imagined without that vocal injury. So we kinda never know. What looks like a block may actually be a door that's opening up for us. Right. But where did you get that, like what made you go, "Well, I can do this. I can do the third largest sporting event in the world"? I mean, where did that come from you?
Krista Monson (07:23) I guess it was, why not? I think really when I look back, whether it was in Canada, whether it was with Cirque du Soleil, whether it was, it's now what I'm doing, it's, it's, it's not about the credits. I think my story is about how I was, I'm, I was okay to walk through, walk into rooms for which I did not have the conventional credentials. And, and so I was excited about just taking the first step and trusting that I had a team around me. And also, you know, there's that specialist disease where you, where one is working for so long in a specific area, and then the ideas become a little, you, maybe it, they're not as fresh as they could be. So I was excited to kind of go in and just be, "What about this and what about that?" And to be honest, at that time in your life, you're just looking to work. It's all about working. I mean, yeah, it wasn't about a job. It was about continuing to work. So it was an opportunity to work in an area that I had never been in. And I was just excited to explore, like just to find out what it would be like. And it was, it was indeed, there's, you know, it's scary. Like there's lots of vulnerable moments. I mean, just to bring, I remember the first
Tricia Rose Burt (08:27) Yeah.
Krista Monson (08:48) big rehearsal for that because we were, we were rehearsing at an army base. So we'd work with a hundred people or fifty people in one night, and the next night a hundred people, the next night fifty people, the next night in groups. And then finally you bring them maybe a few months before, all together, all a thousand, you know, 900, a thousand artists all together on the field. And I went up on a cherry picker. And I'm saying, and you know, I th I had done the homework. I had, you know, I was ready. I knew what I was doing by that point.
And put the music in, "Okay, let's go." And no one knew what they were doing. And I realized that that particular, you know, events, like that's a, that's a genre in itself, just to take, marshal people where they need to be, despite the fact that they've, they know exactly what to do when they're working in their cohort of 50, but now they're working in a cohort of 900. What's my relationship with those other people?
I felt like an absolute fool, I'm on this cherry picker going, "Okay, bring me down," and then working with everybody to tell them where to start. So yeah, it was, yeah, it would just keep going, keep working. It really was quite pragmatic at that point.
Tricia Rose Burt (10:04) Well, you know what? I also, in one of the interviews I, I listened to you, my goodness, I forgot the name of the podcast. I think it was Stop Time. And you said, you would rather face fear than regret. And I'm, I'm like, Amen, sister. Yeah, I would much rather just be scared to death than go, "I wish I had," or "What if I," you know, I don't wanna leave this life with a, if I'd only. I don't.
Krista Monson (10:33) That really, that's it. That, that was, and, and that probably my brother-in-law told me that, who's a sociologist in Louisiana, older than me, and he said, "Look, you can face two things, fear or regret." And he said, "I have a hunch that fear is a little easier to face than the depth of regret." So. Yeah.
Tricia Rose Burt (10:55) Yeah. I understand the, I'm going to uproot myself and have a different life like you did when you left Canada to move to, did you go to LA first or Las Vegas first? LA?
Krista Monson Los Angeles, yeah, L.A.
Tricia Rose Burt LA. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's a, you know, for me when I made that move from Boston to Ireland, it was like it, it, people would say, "My gosh, you were so brave." And I'm like, that was survival. That, you know, for me it really felt like If I don't do this, I'm going to keep myself very small in a life that I do not want to lead anymore. And, and so there's also that level of like, you know, it isn't courageous. It's, it's, it's survival. I gotta, I gotta move. I gotta go. I gotta get something else. Something else has to happen here. I gotta expand in some form and I can't do it where I am right now.
And it seems like that was sort of informing your choice to move from Canada to LA. Talk a little bit about that too.
Krista Monson (11:53) Sure. Well, to be honest, I'm gonna, I, I was really inspired by what you said in, in your TEDx talk when I believe it was I think it was a, a priest who said to you, there's, everyone often talks about the cost of doing something, of, of taking a risk, but much more seldom do we talk about, seldomly do we talk about what is the cost of not taking the risk. Yeah. And so really at the time, and where I'm from is a beautiful, it's called the city's called Edmonton, Alberta. It is a phenomenally fantastic city for the arts. It was the top theatre, one of the cities that had the most, the, the best directors. I had an amazing community. I worked for years there and really honed my craft. It was, it was, the critics were vicious.
And I'm so thankful for that. Yeah. And so I'm, I'm a modest Canadian, so I'll, I will say though, kind of grew into a big fish in a small pond. And I said to my husband, we’re 30, I mean we weren't 20, but we weren't 40 yet, we're 30. And I said, "We have time to be a small fish again. I want to be a small fish." I had a dream. We had a house there, you know. I had a dream literally of putting a quarter in a laundromat again. I wanted to feel it, it was a very youthful martyrdom quest, you know. And so
Tricia Rose Burt (13:28) Yes, I, the quest. I understand the quest. Yes.
Krista Monson (13:31) I guess it was about being hungry. I was hungry to be hungry, not have my seasons planned out already three years in advance. I thought I'm, I'm still too young for that. I felt. So we, that's when it was, it was really, I mean, loads of people were telling me, "Your son who is one, he'll never have a great childhood. What are you doing to him?" and we just kind of put a smile on our face and said, you know, we're doing it anyway. And, and I mean, we moved to a suburb there. We knew we wanted our son to have a park and we wanted to be active parents. There's that part of it for sure. But we, yeah, we just sold everything and, and it was right before 9/11. So at that point, cargo could travel. So we packed a cardboard box that followed us with a TV with a VCR built in with Barney videos for our son and a pot and some knives and, and some, a fork, whatever. And we flew there and we really did eat our words. Like we were a small fish in a very, very, very big pond. And but in the airport, in the
Tricia Rose Burt (14:44) I love this, I love this, yes, yes, yes.
Krista Monson (14:46) To Los Angeles, I saw a friend of mine. Well, a friend of mine's mother, actually, who had lived in the same street where I had grown up in a suburb. I still called her Mrs. Johnson. And our, her husband and my father played softball together and everything. And I said, "Hello!" You know, I hadn't seen her in years. And so we shared some, we exchanged some words, and I asked her about her kids who were my friends growing up. And she said, Heather, one of her, her children, I'm, I'm sorry to call you out, Heather. She is, was on the Canadian Synchronized Swimming Team, and now she's in Las Vegas. She's performing with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. And I said, "That fascinating, wonderful." I didn't even think at all that I was going to follow that up or, you know. But she said, "Call her." And I said, "Absolutely, I will." I was looking forward to talking to her, and I did.
And it's interesting, you know, in a land, Los Angeles is a land, was a land, is a land, where, you know, name dropping counts, you know, it's who you've been in the room with, what you've done, basically everything I had done in Canada, a substantial body of work, didn't have those names, you know, and, and LA is different from New York, where we were more New York theater people, but there was the space in LA to, to live a little bit more comfortably. So anyway, she, my friend, said, "I remember those reviews and all of everything you had done in Canada. I remember reviews in our small little small town rag. And I feel and I remember that you did this thing, this huge event for sport with that involved sport. I think you'd be great with Cirque du Soleil." And I thought she had nine heads. And I said, "Okay," and, and I wrote to
Tricia Rose Burt (16:22) Oh my god.
Krista Monson (16:39) You know, I could write in French, so that was helpful. I, I had already, you know, I lived there when I did my degrees, so I, there, there's a culture there. And so I, I'd like to think that I could understand that. And so I wrote to them and they invited me to, they wanted to meet me in Las Vegas. So I drove my used car to Las Vegas. And I had, at that time it was all about half-inch, you know, videotapes. And I packed my bag with all of my videotapes and my reels and my, had my resumes printed five times in beautiful glossy lamination and everything. And I sat with the, she was the president of the, at the time. This was in 2002. And she didn't ask for a tape, she didn't ask for my resume, she didn't ask for what I had done. She asked me questions such as, I remember this, and she said, "So, what color is your blood when you're angry?"
Tricia Rose Burt (17:39) Goodness.
Krista Monson (17:40) "What color's your blood when you're jealous? What color is your blood when you're surprised? Tell me about that." And I was completely off my foundation, which is part of what makes Cirque du Soleil so, so successful, is that audacity. But yeah, she totally got me off my balance and everything I'd prepared just went out the window. I never showed her a single tape. And it was about how I thought, and it was about how,
Tricia Rose Burt (18:07) Isn't that interesting?
Krista Monson (18:08) Do I have an alignment of thinking? And the resume could, can accomplish something else for someone else to review. And so that's what started that. I didn't, and then even a couple, I just kept up the relationship, you know, and that's the other thing it taught me. It wasn't a transactional thing. It wasn't, "There's a job available, apply for the job, do I get the job, have the job." It was, it was relational. It wasn't transactional.
And I had, in my impatience to get work and, and all of that. I mean, I was working in Los Angeles, thankfully, on a few good things. But yeah, it was a really, really big lesson for me just to, it wasn't about rejection. It was about a relationship, a conversation, that nurturing, that's it.
Tricia Rose Burt (18:56) Nurturing, nurturing. How long did you nurture that relationship before you started working with Cirque?
Krista Monson (19:03) I think it was two and a half years.
Tricia Rose Burt (19:05) Now see, that is also so valuable to know, the persistence of that, you know, to just, that's a, just that's really an important lesson to share. Because I mean, it's just so interesting. I mean, I ended up being on a podcast last week because of a woman I worked with 20 years ago. And she, you, it's just these relations, like the woman you met in the airport and this connection, that can, you know, just so much of what we do is relational. So much is the person that we met, the person we were nice to, the person that helped us, that we helped up, that it just all overlaps. And, and just showing, you know, our commitment to our craft and sort of honoring those people who can teach us things and mentor us. I mean, it just matters. I just love the fact that you stayed in touch with her and then you went from big spectacle to what you're doing now, which is much more small and intimate. But I would love to hear just like what were some of the challenges that you, like, what was the moment you were most scared while you were working at Cirque that it really required you to step into your courage in a way you hadn't before?
Krista Monson (20:15) It's a great question, when I was the most scared. There were a few big ones. I think I was used to creating shows, you know, creating it from the beginning. And, and I was always, had to be concerned about what it is, what the product is. Is it good? Do people want to see it? Are they, is it gonna sell tickets? Where I was hired to be artistic director of O at the Bellagio, it was already good. It was already considered a masterpiece. I still do use my judgment, is this at the level of excellence or virtuosity that the show needs to be at consistently? But at the same time, I wasn't worried about the what. I was worried about the how. How am I going to do this? I want to become, how do I continue to let this show breathe and get better every day or at least remain extremely consistent. And that's where the word "maintain" is a bit boring. But I always believed, you know, attention spans have changed. So what would surprise and elate someone earlier in O's, like it's been around for 30 years. When I was there it was six years old. But even then in that six years, what gets people out of their seat might be slightly different.
Tricia Rose Burt (21:38) Yeah.
Krista Monson (21:42) They might have seen a double somersault somewhere else in that time. So now we have to, how do we maintain that level of excellence? Might be actually to push it. And to, so it still creates that same wow for people. And so the how was very scary. I didn't know literally when I opened the door. I remember opening the, like first day of the, of the job, and I was used to doing things, action. What do I do?
And I had no idea what to do. There is no job manual. I knew that. They had told me that. "You have to figure it out." And I remember someone, a fellow, a colleague of mine, a fellow artistic director of mine, saying, "You know what the best thing for you to do is?" And I said, "What?" Like I thought I have to prove myself. I'm a girl from the prairies of Canada. She said, "Sit in the green room. Every day. Just sit in the green room. You might have a couple of meetings. You know you want to see the show at 7:30. You know that there's a training meeting at, at five or s, but other than that, sit in the green room and talk to people." And, and that was scary because I thought it wasn't about proving myself or, or teaching them how to do something. It was really just an honest conversation.
Tricia Rose Burt (22:57) Going back to relations, going back to relationship and nurturing.
Krista Monson (23:00) It's true. It's going back to relationship. Yeah. Another really scary moment, and I'm not kidding you, I believe when you've been doing something like that for 2,000 times, 3,000 times, 3,500 times, there's choices. There's what you do. I do this at this point, I do this, I do that act, I have to do this choreography. But there are, everyone is asked to still make choices on what they, how they do that.
That dance, that moment, that element, that trick, they can still choose how they approach it from an emotional point of view, from a theatrical point of view. And so I like to recognize and equip artists with how to make the best choices for themselves. So they feel good about it. It'll, it'll elevate the nuance, the breath will be better probably. Anyway, so I would talk to different artists from different nationalities and especially certain nationalities, and not to generalize too much, I would say thank you. I'd say, "Thank you. You made a good choice. Thank you." Like in my mind, I'm thinking for investing that little bit more. And they were furious. "How dare you say thank you? This is my job." I, and again, they're not used to it. They're not used, and I'm not putting anybody down. I'm just saying we're used to, they're just, this is what you do, you deliver that. This is what you do, you deliver it. This is what you do, you try it, you train, you train, you train, you train, you get it down to the minute perfection that it needs, and then you do it. Never will you, will I expect a thank you or appreciate. So I would say thank you and they'd say, "Don't say thank you. This is my job." I said to myself, "I'm still going to say thank you." As long as it's honest and it wasn't frivolous or it wasn't just fluffy or thanks, you know, that was specific.
Krista Monson (24:56) And but I kept on doing it. And it was scary to keep on. "I appreciate how you do that. What choice did you make there? How did you tell me about that?" And, you know, that's all what led me in, in, you know, 20 years later to talk about that word just, thatI talked about in my creative survival kit, because often the word I would compliment or not compliment, thank them or ask questions about a diver, okay, their dive might have been perfect but they also have to act like a donkey or a zebra in the back corner somewhere. And I would comment on that. And they would say, "Why are you even commenting on that? That's, that's just this little character at the side. I'm a diver. I'm an Olympic medalist. Comment on that. I mean, this is just this and this is just that." And that's also was, I wouldn't say it was scary, but it was definitely, I didn't give up. Like I was not going to change my ways of, of
Tricia Rose Burt (25:38) Yeah.
Krista Monson (25:56) Because that was, my job was to look at the whole, like a big camera, you know, the wide shot, the close-up shot, and that contributes, I believe wholeheartedly that the whole contributes to the level of excellence.
Tricia Rose Burt (26:09) Absolutely, you know that somebody would have gone, "What is that weird zebra doing in the back?" If they weren't, you know what I mean, those details, they come through and they would distract from this larger picture and this larger story that you were trying to tell.
Tricia Rose Burt (26:27) [Sponsor break] We'll get back to the second half of our conversation in a moment. But right now, I want to tell you about our sponsor, Interabang Books, a Dallas-based independent bookstore, which was named one of the country's top five bookstores by Publishers Weekly. They have a fabulous curated online collection, and it's just as easy to shop with them as it is with Amazon. Who doesn't want to support an independent bookstore? Please show them some love and check them out at interabangbooks.com.
That's Interabang, I-N-T-E-R-A-B-A-N-G books dot com.
Tricia Rose Burt (27:11) What my fear right now is I could have a two-hour podcast with you. You know, just, I mean, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna move on just because I'm like, I need to talk to her about that for 10 more minutes, but I wanna, I wanna make sure I don't keep you here all day long. And you've given me a lovely segue into when I met you and you were giving me the eight parts of your creativity survival kit, and you begin with "just," which really resonated with me because we can be dismissive of things that, you know, it's just, I'm just this or I'm just that. So would you be, and I do want to spend time talking about what you're doing now because I'm really fascinated with that as well. But would you take us through your eight elements of your creativity survival kit? 'Cause I think they're really important. And just, so you know, these are my notes that I took from you talking in 2022. I was like, there they are. Kinda went through them, but I would love for you to share it. I think they're fantastic. Well
Krista Monson (28:17) Well, it's interesting because when I was doing a lot of guest speaking, before these eight, eight aspects came up flying into my head, I would talk, I would do master classes entitled "From Concept to Stage." So I'd go through the often nonlinear process, but how do, how does one do that, or my own intake? And as I, I would talk about that quite a bit
And get questions from people. And from that, that's when I discovered, you know, even more important than that, I feel, are these other qualities for me that rise, that can really help when it gets so tough, or when we're stuck, or when we feel, "Okay, what more class can we take? Or who else can I listen to? Or what kind of money do I need to spend?" Or, you know, we're, we're alone, we don't know what to do.
Tricia Rose Burt (29:06) Mm-hmm.
Krista Monson (29:16) So I developed these eight items in my own creative survival kit that will actually help one survive. It helps me survive.
Tricia Rose Burt (29:24) Like our manifesto, yeah, they're dealing with mindset. It's so much about mindset. That's it. It's, it's, you know, it's how are you approaching this? That's right. And what's the, you know, how do you equip yourself with this kind of thinking so that when, you know, all four wheels fall off the car and you're not expecting that, or you're in the trenches, you know, still putting your quarter in the laundromat and you don't want to be doing that anymore. Like how do you move forward. You know, how do you navigate it? And so that's why I really resonated with these steps because it is so much of a mindset.
Krista Monson (30:00) It's a mindset. They're free. They're available 24/7. And at the end of it, I'll go, I'll go through them briefly because it's, for me, it's really interesting. It kind of leads us to, if, if you'll allow me to talk about that later, one item in your manifesto which I kind of want to challenge a little bit.
Tricia Rose Burt (30:20) Okay, okay, great.
Krista Monson (30:29) So, so the first one is paying attention to when we use the word "just," because "just," as you said, as you know,can serve as an apology. "I'm just doing a freebie before I do my real thing," or "I'm just going to a state college, not a, not Harvard." It can also be helpful. "I'm just gonna sit in the green room for three weeks." And then I'm, you know, so it can help you hairpin up the mountain. But that was the first one. The second one is being curious, remain curious. And that's an easy, it's a big, it's a big
Tricia Rose Burt (30:43) Yeah.
Krista Monson (30:56) word, it's a, it's a lot to unpack in that word, curiosity. What I mean by it is being an observer of life. And that means both the physical and the emotional. So when we go out, I mean, Cirque du Soleil, the one of the co-founders who is a friend of mine, Gilles Ste-Croix, said they used to, they used to, they used to start by going into a park and creating a show around a park bench. Whoever would be around the park bench that would be the character, and, you know, so that starts with observation. So when we go, when we leave our apartments or our houses or if watching things on YouTube, I encourage one to really pay attention to what they see and what they feel, those sensory, those sensory elements that relate to the entire human condition. What does elation look like, surprise look like?
Triumph look like, happiness look like? What does, conversely, melancholy or sadness or rejection or defeat? And usually, again, this is the human condition we're talking about. I mean, cultures are massively different, but usually when it's something like elation or surprise or happiness, our big appendages, our hands, our arms, our head, go up. And if we're disappointed, we're rejected, we feel defeated, usually
Tricia Rose Burt (32:15) Yeah.
Krista Monson (32:21) our head, our big appendages, our arms, go down to our hearts and our lungs. And that's okay. That's, that's kind of cute or that's interesting. But then when you accompany that, just keep observing that and how different people, that'll give you ideas. And so that's important. Keep curious.
The third is keep perspective. And how I encourage one to keep perspective is having a relationship with the sublime. Some call it with the divine. I refer to it as the sublime because it, because it is that relationship with those things that do not have any answers, that cause us to ask more questions than answers, like awe and wonder. Going outside to look at stars, you know, sometimes I got jealous of not being a smoker because my smoking friends would actually have an excuse to go look at the stars for 15 minutes and do nothing, you know.
Tricia Rose Burt (33:06) The mystery. The mystery.
Krista Monson (33:18) But when we look at the stars, it causes us to feel wonder, maybe, but it also brings us a sense of calm. And when we're calm, we tend to be more open. We're less defensive. We're more, we're more flowing. And when we're calm, we're, when we're open, we might be, we are likely more receptive to ideas. And what we do as a creative professional is ideas. That's our golden egg, is ideas.
The fourth item in my kit is having a high regard for people. Really, it's an easy one, but really that no one does anything alone. Whether it's because we observed someone on a park bench yesterday and we're inspired by that person, but it's the idea of collective expertise and problem solving.
The fifth is listening, not just to each other, but to ourselves.
Tricia Rose Burt (33:58) Yes.
Krista Monson (34:14) And this is where we start honing our own creative instincts. And when we start honing our creative instincts, we start trusting our instincts. And that leads us to having the courage to trust our own ideas.
The sixth is courage. And more specifically, as a creative person, whether one is an accountant or a painter, it doesn't matter. We're all, we can think creatively.
Tricia Rose Burt (34:27) Yeah, yeah.
Krista Monson (34:44) We are required to disrupt and to be, and to dare to think differently, to do things differently, to suggest things differently, to appear looking like an utter fool, maybe with our own parents who think, who wanted us to go another way or whatever it is. And so I like to adhere to this psychologist and researcher named Claes Janssen and he referred to the four rooms of change.
Tricia Rose Burt (35:00) Yes.
Krista Monson (35:12) And just very, very quickly, the four rooms of change I've adapted to help this creative courage flourish for us is just understanding what is in those rooms. What are, what do we go through when we're making a risky decision? The first room is contentment. When things are great, we're making, I don't know, whether it's a job, we're making money, we are happy, we have a nice house, we, we're content. And then some, and then the second room is the room of denial.
So when we start getting, maybe I could, I, you know, shoulda, coulda, woulda. I feel like doing, there's an itch, there's an itch. And but in some ways it doesn't make sense, that itch, or it's not logical based on what the decisions we've made before that. So we deny ourselves that permission to embrace that idea. And so we either go back to the room of contentment, no pain and denial. We relieve that pain.
Krista Monson (36:09) For the current moment, or we go into the third room of change, which is even a more uncomfortable feeling, which is the room of discomfort and, or confusion, excuse me, the room of confusion. Because now maybe we've developed that creative path a little bit more, but we still have this other one, and now our identity's at risk, and it, we don't know, and it's even more confusing. People take substances to relieve the feeling of confusion. So why would we want to stay there? And it's because when we stay there, we have that tenacity to stay there. You have, there's two doors out. It's either back to denial and maybe contentment, we live our life, happy little life, or we continue to push through that discomfort and confusion. And that brings us to the fourth room, which is the breakthrough, the, or one might say enlightenment or ideas, aha moments. Oh my gosh. And that makes us feel content.
Tricia Rose Burt (37:06) Yeah. So we're then, it starts all over again.
Krista Monson (37:09) It starts all over again. And that, I would, well, I'll just, I'll save my, my point to that, I want to save for you at the, till the end. The seventh one is, well, just to go with that, that confusion, courage. Danny Elfman, the famous, renowned film composer, said to me one night at two in the morning when things were going all wrong, with a, we had a, we were working on water, we had an artist with a million-dollar Stradivarius violin and the frequencies were, were the sound frequencies were not working with water, and she was really nervous about her, her violin and things were not going well. And Danny leaned over to me and he said, "It's okay. The best jewels in the world take the most friction to polish." And that takes those four rooms.
Tricia Rose Burt (38:03) Yeah.
Krista Monson (38:04) "Okay, everything's going well. Oh my gosh, there's a problem over here. Oh my word, we might have to fight for this moment in a more courageous way to keep it, or we just give it up and then we'll arrive there."
The seventh item in my kit is care. So find something in what we're doing that connects with an element we care about. It could be a cause, it could be a reason for being, a purpose that can connect us to, to what we're doing, smaller, even if it is,"This is money to pay my rent." Okay, we care enough about that that we'll, but really it's important.
And the last one is embrace creative chaos and understanding that the creative process is rarely, if ever, linear. And we may have an idea like you did. "I want to have a podcast" before even buying a microphone, knowing what you're going to do. And so just the creative, we have to have trust that sometimes we have to go two steps back in order to go five steps forward. Yeah. And so all of that we can call upon every day, you know, here and there. But this is where I…
Tricia Rose Burt (39:17) Yes, I want to know the challenge. I want the challenge.
Krista Monson (39:21) Fifth item in your manifesto is "logic can work against you." And I would, I understand. I understand, I get it. I remember working as a choreographer for a renowned director years and years, 30 years ago, and he said to the all the artists, he said to me too, he said, "Remember, guys, we're doing a musical," and he said, "It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be logical."
Tricia Rose Burt (39:27) Yes.
Krista Monson (39:52) And, and I, I thought, "I don't understand that." And so my challenge to this is, is not necessarily, I feel we must embrace logic, but we embrace our own logic, not the logic of someone else. It might not be the logic of two plus two equals four.
Tricia Rose Burt (40:11) Yes, I will, yes, I will give you that. Absolutely.
Krista Monson (40:14) So for example, say I was writing a children's book, and I wanted to write a children's book about eating well, teaching kids how to eat well. And all the green foods were the good guys, and all the greasy foods were the bad guys. And our protagonist is a piece of broccoli named Betty. Betty the Broccoli. And she's the good guy. She's the, she's, and she has lots of energy and she's healthy and she is helping others.
Her brain is healthy and she wakes up early and she does her stuff. And then the antagonist to this children's story is, I don't know, a bowl, a bowl of lard. Larry, Larry the Lard. And Larry the Lard lives in a bowl and he's still and he doesn't do anything. And he maybe is a bit of a bully. He doesn't feel good about himself and he's, he's stuck and he, you know. So we establish that. Those are characters, whether it's a children's novel or a Cirque du Soleil show, we have to, or Star Wars, we have to establish clarity from the beginning of what, what we're, of the story we're trying to tell. So what if in the middle of that story, you know, Betty the Broccoli is a bully or is, or is, is lazy or something like that. Children anyway will call that out. They'll, there, there is a logic to Betty's, Betty the Broccoli story, there's a logic to Larry the Lard story, but it doesn't make sense.
Tricia Rose Burt (41:41) No, I know exactly what you're saying. I do. And, and I totally agree with this. For me, when I use that term of logic can work against you, is if I was logical, I probably would have never gone to Ireland. It made no sense. It made no sense on paper, it made no sense in my bank account, it made no sense anywhere. It wasn't logical, but it made complete sense. It made complete sense to me. And so, and I was also raised that, you know, logic and analysis were far superior to creativity. And so, and so that's where I have, I've struggled my, you know, with my life around going, if it's logical, I almost have a, I almost have a knee-jerk reaction to it. But as a storyteller, I know exactly what you're talking about. Because if you lose people and suddenly it's not in character or suddenly you've thrown in something, that you'll lose people. It's a distraction. They won't be able to track it. It doesn't make sense to them. And so I totally agree with that. Absolutely.
Krista Monson (42:40) But even in our own lives. You know, I spent 30 years working on massive stages for hundreds of thousands of people. And now my scale, I, I realized that scale is not equal to size. I thought, I always thought scale equals size. I love this. And then after a burnout and things like that, I realized scale, the scale I was missing was in terms of increasing the scale, was emotional connection with people and truth, true stories.
And, and so for me, someone might say, "That's not logical. You were, you were, you know, you're getting offers all over the place and royalties and this and that. It's logical to say yes to the next one. Why not? You've, you've built this up, you're gonna, you know." I said, "It's logical to you. It's not logical to me. And it's logical for me to listen to my, back to the, the, the eight things, to listen to myself and my logic is different from yours. I'm not thinking in those scientific, that, that type, that, that plane of logic. I'm thinking in another way." And that's when it helps us to be with each other, to our community.
Tricia Rose Burt (43:46) But, but also your through-line is story. You're just always telling a story. That's what your through-line is. And you have been telling stories that are massive and huge and spectacle to giant audiences. And now you're helping other people tell their stories, and they're – very quickly, tell me what you're doing. I know, I know what it is, but tell people what you're doing now and these one-on-one conversations with elderly people and founders and others. Tell quickly what that, what you're doing now.
Krista Monson (44:17) Yeah, quickly. Sure. I developed, kind of by accident, through interviewing one of the co-founders of Cirque, I interviewed him for a massive, for a conference, and I found that how the video, seeing him tell his stories was, was just as compelling as listening to his words. And talk about regret. This was a big moment of regret when I'm watching him tell his stories with his hands and laughing and pausing and I thought, my gosh, I would have given my eyeteeth if I could have preserved a conversation like this with people I love that who have, who are no longer with us. So I kind of, like you with the podcast, I said, "This is what I'm gonna do." I had never edited, I had never, I had always hired editors. But now I developed a business called Sincerely Yours Memoirs. And I interview and capture someone's story in their home with video and then curate it into a living memoir of, of their life with, it's a full personal documentary.
Tricia Rose Burt (45:21) How long are the documentaries?
Krista Monson (45:23) An hour and a half to two hours. Yeah. So it's a full-length, you know, documentary. But what really interests me is, you know, journalists and theater artists like myself, I was a writer, you're always looking for the cool, the great story. The man who climbed Mount Everest with one leg, or this story, or this story. And, and then the rest of us are kind of going, "Well, my story therefore isn't as interesting."
And so I refute that. I'm drawn to the seemingly ordinary stories, even for famous people, you know, what they did when they were twelve, and, and that's so fascinating. For a small audience. There's no pitch to a producer, it's for their families and who they wish to share it with.
Tricia Rose Burt (46:10) So, and I mean, as you know, as a storyteller, I have told small-moment stories my whole life. You know, most of us don't have those life-and-death stories. And when I am teaching storytelling to people, if people say, "I don't have a story to tell," what that really means is they don't think they've done something large enough to merit the attention. And it's like, so that, it is that questioning. It's the questioning where you help someone mine for stories and, and this with, in their mind, they're dismissing,
It's just this, going back to just, it's just this, when in fact it's pivotal. It's something that really shaped who they were. And so I, I really, I love your transition from these large stages to these smaller ones, particularly, my mother just died in April of 2025. And I did, you know, I filmed her on and off with different questions I would ask her.
But at the end we did this huge movie of her, you know, I mean, still shots and song and all that. It was great. It was really wonderful. And it's, and we just, we all look at it over and over again, you know, to see Mama, you know. And if I'd had a conversation with her like you're crafting, it, you know, it would, it would really have been very, very special. So that's, you know, that's, that goes into the ministry department, Krista. I'm like, you're, you're actually doing a ministry.
Krista Monson (47:31) Thank gosh you did that. I mean, it is, it's, it's highly, highly gratifying and so fascinating to exactly what you said. Listen, really see, not just listen, but see and listen to. I mean, there's studies that it's called digital storytelling, whereas you're combining narration, photography, like still photos, music, and moving, like home videos.
Tricia Rose Burt (47:57) Yeah.
Krista Monson (47:58) When you combine those together, it's actually served to enhance autobiographical memories. Yeah. So they may walk in having a few stories in their head and walking out going, "My gosh, I can't," I mean, I've had clients who just hug me saying, "I feel cleansed again.”
Tricia Rose Burt (48:14) So here's my last question that I ask all of my guests. What do you need courage for right now?
Krista Monson (48:27) I would say I need some courage to face the unknown in a big new move where I'll be engaging within a completely new community and, and I want to bring who I am, but I also want to discover more of who I am as well. So I'll need courage for that.
Tricia Rose Burt (48:50) Well, we will be lifting you up in your move. And I'm just so grateful that you were able to be on the show and help launch this season and just, we're just gonna keep an eye on everything that you do, Krista. Thank you so much.
Krista Monson (49:06) Fantastic. Thank you, Tricia. All the best for the year.
Tricia Rose Burt (49:09) Thank you, thank you.
Tricia Rose Burt (49:23) Talk about the perfect guest to kick off season five. Krista has her own manifesto too. Both of us knew that we needed creative guidelines to help us thrive and to overcome the challenges along the way. Feel free to integrate them into your own life. Download the No Time to Be Timid Manifesto at TriciaRoseBurt.com/manifesto Check out the eight points of Krista's Creative Survival Kit in the episode transcript, or craft your own manifesto. Whatever you need to do to stay on your creative track.And keep in mind, fear is way easier to face than regret.
Thanks for joining us. Now I know you're listening while you're either driving your car or doing your dishes, so when you're done, please make sure to subscribe to the show. And if you'd like to watch the interview, check us out on YouTube and subscribe there. It helps us build our audience. And with more listeners and viewers, it means more opportunities to bring you great content. And remember, this is No Time to Be Timid.
No Time to Be Timid is written and produced by me, Tricia Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch. And our executive producers are Amy Grant, Nancy Perot, and Sage Wheeler. I'd also like to thank contributors to my Fractured Atlas fiscal sponsorship, which helps make this podcast happen. No Time to Be Timid is a presentation of No Time to Be Timid Productions.