What happens when a piece of material gets stale? How do you keep the audience - and yourself - interested?

Beth offers some great advice about how to keep your material fresh, find material that will stay fresh the longest, and tips on integrating this freshening practice into your creative process and your life.

Let Beth help you take the 'ow' out of Now at The Comedian's Way workshop for Writers, Performers & Other Humans this Sunday, Nov.1. Also meets Sundays, Nov. 8, 15, 22, Dec. 6 & 13 from 1-4pm at M-Bar, 1253 N. Vine St. LA 90038.

Register for single classes. Discounts on multiple classes. Audit any class for just $10. For more info, call 323-993-3305 or e-mail us.

Beth always opens The Comedian's Way workshop sessions with some inspiring thoughts about the creative process. Here she talks about finding the right context for your work - and how you have to translate a particular piece of material when you adapt it to a different medium or context.

She couldn't do the kind of personal intimate storytelling that she wanted to do in the mainstream comedy clubs and that's why we started Un-Cabaret to begin with.

Click here for more info about The Comedian's Way workshop.

I posted a recipe for persimmon pudding and someone misread it for permission pudding! An idea which everyone seems to be ga ga about. A big heaping bowl of yummy permission.

Q: Why are we all waiting for permission?

A: Permission comes from: per- "through" + mittere "let go, send." And letting go? Is sooooo hard.

What are we letting go of? For one thing, the idea that someone else needs to give us permission!

In fact when we want permission, whatever it is we want permission for, it is to change. Permits are given to marry, build, drive, travel. Change always requires a letting go of the old. Thus permission.

It's like we're in school waiting for the bathroom pass.