Meet Mr. Bright

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mr. Bright. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Mr. Bright, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

Ever since I was a child, I have always found myself backed into corners where the only way I could find my place in the world was by making a world of my own. It was a private world and a personal world, but a world that allowed me to see the real world around me from a completely different lens. As beautiful as it was to grow up in Hawaii, where I was born and raised, the reality is that I was terribly bored with the way I saw the world working and could not help myself from believing that there was so much more to everything than meets the eye. Of course, the systems of schooling are not always friendly toward the instinctive curiosity and innate imagination of all young people, and I had to fight to find meaning in the journals I would fill and the stories I would create. Blank pages gave me hope. Hope that something can be formed from nothing, and that there are infinite more possibilities than impossibilities if you can believe it. I fought for this same hope when I knew I couldn’t just mold myself into the workforce after I finished high school. I fought for this same hope when I finally decided to go to Drama School and learned that I found more of my own voice when I wrote the parts I wanted to play instead of accepting the ones I was given. I fought for this hope when I encountered my own Maker who gave me the freedom to realize that I was made to shine my own unique perspective and not to hide it. And I fought for this hope when I saw that young people everywhere, the ones just like me when I was their age, are all fighting to unleash their own unique perspectives. Today, I create and share stories with children to hopefully give them the freedom to release and grow into their own individual and creative points of view. And out of love for them, and love for the boy I was before, I continue to fight for the hope that creativity can bring. I find that if I forget this very love for the ones that need to be championed, I forget how to create. But just like my Maker helps me to remember, love, by nature, must make something new. It is what love does best. Creativity, therefore, is best kept alive when love is kept alive. And for me, that’s the love of the kids I desire to reach. The ones who have their own unique world living on the inside of them just like I did.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

“Mr. Bright’s School of Stories” is the long-time coming result of a passion I have had for kids, for creativity, and for the gift of telling stories that, for centuries now, has been the main means by which we can learn and grow as people.

My late grandfather was a theatre director and educator in Honolulu, Hawaii, where I was raised, and growing up I had desired to do nothing other than sit in his rehearsals and watch the theatre work. He, what I would consider to be the former “Mr. Bright,” gave me all of the inspiration I needed to fall in love with the power that telling stories in theatrical ways could do to move the people who witnessed them and to bring out the best in those who were apart of them. And in addition to him, my father is a band director, my mom is a music teacher and choir director, my brother is now a screenwriter and filmmaker, and the list of other artists and educators in my own family goes on and on and on. For these reasons, art and education are synonymous to me with family. But if you ever were to tell me that I would move away from my own family and live in New York, the theatre hub of the world, I would have laughed in your face.

And yet after two years of studying on the east coast and then another year of studying in London, my perspective was now much more expansive than the little rock in the middle of the giant pond I had grown up in. However, this did not come with its own challenges. Schooling, pressure, and the reality of life itself can become crippling, and it wasn’t until I reached a pretty severe state of struggles in my own mental health that I knew I needed help. After hospitalization, I was brought home early from school wondering why the world within me was incessantly at odds with the world I lived in. And this was a reality I knew had been developing way back from when I was a boy. It was at this point that the Lord Jesus reintroduced his kindness, love, and devotion to that lost boy that lived in me from years ago, and helped walk me into my continued healing today. This journey of healing would introduce me to so many people from so many different places, all with their own stories, and eventually led me right into the hands of a house of prayer in New York that I found merely by following the sound of its music that flooded the streets. It was the pastor of this house that would later tell me that one day I would have a show, and it would be a show for kids. It was one of those moments where something in you awakens that you always knew, deep down, was true, but is now finally given the right to be alive. I had always loved children. I had always grown up around people who loved children. I had always loved shows. And I had always loved the idea of shows that educated. Much like family, all this stuff felt like home to me. So after a couple years of continued journeying, I had finally jumped out of the nest on this project of true passion and flew out in faith.

“Mr. Bright’s School of Stories” is now a one-man show for young people that educates and entertains through the simple power of stories, and we are about to head to schools, programs, organizations, events, churches, and any other place where kids gather to share our School of Stories with the world. We have just been privileged to share stories with kids in Dallas, we’re about to share more at schools in New York, and are even looking to share more back in my hometown of Hawaii in 2025. But because accessibility is so important for every young person out there, many stories are also being placed on our YouTube channel and social media platforms so that as many young ones can see them as possible or as many teachers and educators can use them as a resource.

At the end of the day, I, Mr. Bright, have an enormous amount of faith in the children of this next coming generation and I have faith in the children in all of us. That same child that feels so at odds with the world they live in. But perhaps, because of a story, they can be healed into a whole new point of view. One that can help them realize that the very story they’re in is more wild and wonderful than they could have ever imagined.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Love, curiosity, and play are by and large some of the most necessary qualities I’ve learned to have on this journey. Essentially, all the things an actual child might have with their friends as they’re playing on a playground. Love for each other, curiosity to discover what no one has seen or shared before, and a sincere spirit of play have carried me through every twist and turn this creative voyage has led me down.

This being said, the best advice I could give to anyone starting out on their own unique creative paths is to keep this childlike faith and wonder. It will be a saving grace and an anchor when you know you have nothing else to do but move forward.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

One of the biggest challenges of desiring to reach the kids of this very generation is that they are probably the most distracted and targeted generation there has ever been. Never have we ever seen kids so bombarded with information from the internet or so incapable of listening to another human being because they are so normalized to overstimulating media. The power of the simple story from the simple storyteller has lost its grip due to the intense demand for making stuff for kids more instantaneous and mind warping. And yet, never have we ever seen kids with more mental health concerns, disruptive behavior, and clear social/emotional needs.

Our solution at Mr. Bright’s School of Stories is simple: make something new. Our desire is to use creativity in the power of storytelling to engage with what stories do best which is to teach empathy. Stories share through the human heart, not through textbooks or test-taking or systematic learning. They share what it is to be human and therefore what it means to alive. In the wake of this next generation, this is how we desire to combat all that they may face. We share truths in a new way.

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