“Throughout all my years of teaching and making new works for the theater, I realized how you really have to be curious about life — more than anything, it’s about life, about living, about people.” ~ Stan Lai

“Creativitry,” writes legendary playwright Stan Lai in the preface to his new book of that name, “Doesn’t exist as a word. Just as all creative things do not exist — until they do.

“Rhymes with Artistry, and Chemistry, and Sorcery.

“The know-how, practice and mastery of creativity.”

The overlap, undercurrents and  interplay of creativity and curiosity come up a lot here, which only heightened my delight at being joined by creativity master Stan Lai, known as “the major contemporary Asian playwright of his time…perhaps of all time.”

We talked about his inspiration for the word “creativitry” and the delightful roots of “curiosity” in Chinese, theater as a study of life, creativity’s origins in the method of art and wisdom of life, coming to appreciate what we don’t know, the hubris of indulgent curiosity, finding underlying motivation — and stocking inspiration’s warehouse.

That was my first, most important lesson in starting to understand how to get to what you need to know. You have to first start with knowing what you don’t know.

Listen to Ep. #305: Curiosity & Creativitry: The Know-How, Practice & Mastery of Creativity, with Stan Lai

Stan Lai’s career spans the Chinese diaspora. He is Artistic Director of Performance Workshop, in Taiwan and Theatre Above, in Shanghai; as well as Co-founder and Festival Director of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival and Artistic Founder of Huichang Theatre Village, also in China. I enjoy following his new Instagram account.

CreativitRy: Asia’s Iconic Playwright Reveals the Art of Creativity was released November 6, 2025.

Stan Lai created both the opening and closing events of the 2009 Deaf Olympics in Taipei. I keep thinking: is there anything this guy hasn’t done?

If you enjoyed this creativity curiosity conversation, you might like these C2BC Classics: The Craft of Creativity, with Matt Cronin; The Ultimate Exercise in Curiosity, with filmmaker Antonio Villaronga; & Curiosity’s Part in Theater Arts, with Stan Kang.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “A Certain Lightness” by Migration, via Blue Dot Sessions.

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