Confronting my anti-business bias.

L - R: Merce Cunningham, my Mom Barbara Dilley, Albert Reid in a PR shot for the European tour of 1966. I was on that tour. I was 3 turning 4.

I was not raised in a “business-centric” family. My Dad had a long career working for nonprofits and my Mom is a dancer, choreographer, teacher. I had a privileged upbringing of private schools, fancy colleges and grad school, and then - the life of the struggling actor/teacher for twenty years. I adopted the identity of the “art warrior”, a kind of rebel super-hero who “fights The Man” and aligns himself with anti-capitalism and progressive political positions. And I retain some - but not all - of those points of view. Because somehow, as the result of my mid-life crisis, I became a businessman.

Sort of . . . I run a nonprofit called Bright Invention which has an entrepreneurial program called Creative Corporate Training. Bright Invention was created from disillusion and hope. I was profoundly disillusioned with the life of the stage actor and the nonprofit ecosystem that “supports” it. And I was filled with hope that if I could somehow direct the transformative power of live performance at specific problems, I could create a new way to support actors.

The nonprofit ecosystem of regional theatres is filled with noble and principled leaders who make a lot of noise about empowering creativity, supporting artists and being an antidote to the materialistic culture we live in. And it is filled with struggling artists of all kinds who routinely can’t pay their bills, sacrifice having families, develop mental illness from the stress and anxiety of the life they have chosen, and see no other options. My lightbulb moment came when I was “successful” within this ecosystem. I was acting in two or three union stage acting jobs per year, and teaching as an adjunct at a college or two (another career path rank with institutional hypocrisy), and trying to raise two kids and stay afloat . . . and failing. My White privilege gave me a safety net many of my creative brothers and sisters don’t have - I could beg my family for assistance, an act of abject humiliation for a man in his middle age.

Meet the Medicis - one of the greatest supporters of the nonprofit ecosystem.

Here is the lightbulb: it’s actually not that the nonprofit leaders are exploiters and oppressors, it’s that the economics of it don’t work, and never have. The world of performing arts nonprofits is an ecosystem based on begging. We know we can’t function as common businesses, because if we did, tickets to our shows would be $400 each and . . . well you can see how that ends. So we make up for the fact that we can’t actually meet our bottom line selling our services in the marketplace by asking for support from donors and foundations. And thank God for them. Bright Invention would not exist but for its donors, especially The Wyncote Foundation. And it’s been this way since Michelangelo bowed before the Medicis and Shakespeare made friends with the Queen.

In order to succeed in the word of fundraising and development, you need to prove to funders that you are fiscally responsible: keeping costs down, raising money from other sources, and working with a clear strategy supported by professionals. Performing arts nonprofits are especially expensive because they rely on human beings. And human beings - at a bare minimum -need to eat and pay their bills. If theatres performed with dancing robots, well, things might be less expensive. So nonprofits are constantly underpaying artists in order to create budgets that are workable to foundations, because if they asked for the money their artists actually need to survive, no one would fund them (especially the small and mid-size theatres which employ most of us.) And the dancing robots? Mark my words: they are coming.

So where did I find my hope? In a form of theatrical performance that needs little to no capital support: no sets, no theatres, no costumes, no scripts. It’s called long form improvisation, and it was invented by a mad genius named Del Close in the 70s. It’s the foundation everything I do now, creatively and professionally. As I began exploring and experimenting with our ensemble, I discovered something else about improvisation: it’s economically nimble, and professionally adaptable. I wanted to develop a program which effectively monetized an actor’s creativity, so I developed a technique I call “scenario-based training”. Our actors perform scenarios for our clients using structured improvisation: a kind of in-between form which has the structure and repeatability of a script, and the flexibility of improvisation. I found out later this work is related to the ground-breaking work of South American theatre artist Augusto Boal.

Del Close during one of his calmer moments.

We a did a couple of pilot workshops and we knew we were on to something. Now - how to sell it? Through fits, starts, consultations and professional development I became . . . an entrepreneur, a business man, and began to think of our work as a dynamic service to sell, as opposed to artistic work to find funding for. I was immediately energized by the proactive and action-based mindset of the entrepreneur: leads, targets, strategies, connections and follow ups. It felt refreshing next to the submissive work of asking for money. Business activates, asking waits.

During the pandemic I knew I needed to up my game if we were to survive. So I invested in online networking groups, hired a business strategy coach and learned how to turbo-charge my LinkedIn activity. It was in the networking groups that I first became aware of my anti-business bias, because I felt myself shedding it. The people I have met in these groups and through the connections they create have been business people like me, trying to grow, refine and nurture their Big Idea. Far from being the competitive, aggressive and obnoxious stereotype I had in my head about “business people”, I have been delighted by the open, curious and mutually supportive people I have met. It’s not a stretch to say that the relationships I have made in the business community over the last nine months have not only supported the growth of my business, they have also been meaningful source of real human connection.

Performing a scenario for Community Associations Institute. Pictured: Caitlin Chin and Josh Kirwin.

And here’s a wrinkle. Into my business meetings I bring with me all my years of creative training, an elaborate understanding of narrative and storytelling, and a hopeful mindset about human relationships profoundly shaped by years in the theatre. I bring with me an essentially artistic point of view. It’s a point of view that loves innovation, nurtures authenticity, dares to be bold - ironically, all high-value traits in the business world. I find the people I meet thrill to this energy and want more of it. Far from being alien to this world, I believe artists are in fact natural entrepreneurs.

There is a lot about capitalism to critique, especially as it is practiced in America. American capitalism makes a fetish out of individualism and winning. It promotes a binary win/lose mindset antithetical to cooperation and community. All too often, managers cast themselves as the winners, which means the workers have to be the losers. I pay my actors between $75 and $200 per hour for our CCT workshops - an hourly rate that more than doubles what they might make in other contracted work as actors. And still, I have a long way to go to achieve the Big Goal: salaried positions for ensemble members with benefits, working in multi-faceted full-time positions, performing, teaching, and growing the business in a variety of ways.

And let’s be honest, I am having my cake and eating it too by continuing to raise money as a nonprofit. But my goal isn’t to stop being a nonprofit, my goal is to demonstrate there’s another way to be a nonprofit, one that relies more on earned program income, and less on donated income. One that engages the dynamism of entrepreneurship, drives its resources to supporting people not products, and lives in the assumption of abundance. But in order to become that kind of nonprofit, we need to prove our value to businesses. We need to activate, not wait.

A different kind of virus.

Like the rest of America, I was gutted by the whiplash of January 6th. First, the astonishing victories in Georgia by Warnock and Ossoff, the culmination of years of work by Black communities there, led by Black women. And then, I watched our country attacked from the inside by the deranged and clownish followers of Donald Trump. And I watched our law enforcement officials treat them like friendly neighbors who had had a little too much to drink. And I thought of the protests of this past year, honoring the lives of Brionna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and others. And I fell into a pit of anger, grief and despair.

I was caught off guard by the intensity of my own feelings. My adrenaline spiked as I watched the riot. My heartbeat increased, my blood pressure rose and my thoughts become cloudy and confused. I wanted to feel a baton in my hand with which to attack them. I wanted to do violence in response to violence. I wanted to hear gunshots, and I wanted to witness a massacre. I went upstairs to bed around midnight with a tightness in my chest and hands and legs that felt as if they were vibrating. Even the next day, at the one work meeting I could handle at 10 AM Thursday, my thoughts were still cloudy. I slurred some words, and took long pauses as I searched for terms and concepts that were ordinarily automatic. Most of Thursday, I felt on the brink of tears. Even writing this hard for me - stirring up those feelings - and I have to stop now.

OK I’m back. As I came to terms with the depth of my anguish on Thursday, I had the presence of mind to take care of myself. I had to choose to do something active, to launch my own personal insurrection against the forces of despair. I walked outside. I exercised. I settled. I felt the world I inhabit come in to focus again, and I was able to count my blessings. I connected with others, and pushed my loneliness back into its cage, where it paces in front of the bars, waiting for another opportunity to escape and capture me. Self-care is everything.

Sidebar: we need to be careful with admonitions to “practice more self-care”. The ability to take time out of one’s day to, say, go to a health club, or do some yoga, is a privilege and many in our nation don’t have it. Others struggle with mental illness, making the very idea of “self-care” an extraordinary mountain to climb. I believe there are many kinds of self-care, and it is available to everyone. But not practicing it may have more to do with forces outside of our control, and not with an individual failure of will.

So . . . why am I writing all of this and sharing it with you? I’m sure you have your own version of this experience. I hope you came through it and are breathing easier now. I guess it’s this:

Personal and political change don’t occur because of thoughts or ideas. They occur because people feel emotions. And feelings are contagious.

Think of the Capitol building as a human body. In it, various cells (the people inside) scurry about and do things. Some of them have executive functions. Others maintain the well-being of the edifice. And others, like our white blood cells, protect it from outside threats. That body is governed by well-ordered and regular patterns. And even though feelings can run high inside that body, those regular patterns ensure its continued health, even if you dislike the outcomes of its work. The overall feeling, I would argue, is one of safety. No matter how hot people get with each other in there, nothing collapses or disintegrates, because an order is maintained.

On Wednesday, the Capitol was invaded by a virus: chaos. The white blood cells failed, and the virus briefly took control. And the virus radiated outwards as viruses do, seeking new hosts. That feeling of chaos spread to anyone who observed it. My panic and despair on Wednesday was born of a viral infection I could do nothing about . . . as long as I focused on it. It was only when the original body infected regained control and order was restored (and the election was certified) that I began to feel safe again, even though I was still reeling from the side effects: grief, despair, anxiety.

The scariest aspect of it to me isn’t that the virus did what it did, it’s that it was an intentional strategy executed by a real movement led by a deranged narcissist. Nothing about Wednesday was accidental. Since Ghengis Khan, this is the playbook: disrupt the governing order through violent chaos, and then win over the populace by implementing a new order based on whatever goals the insurrectionists espouse. Think of Germany in the 30s. And, think of the American colonies in the 1770s. The overthrow of an established order doesn’t depend upon the “moral rightness” of those leading that overthrow. It depends on the injection and spread of a virus of feelings based on chaos and violence, leading to the restoration of order. To the forces of George III, the American rebels weren’t freedom fighters. They were domestic terrorists.

How do we fight a virus like this? Clearly, we need to bolster our white blood cells. We need to hunt down and hold accountable the agents of the virus. We need to capture and contain them. This is the job of law enforcement and the justice system. And as those processes are observed and their consequences felt, the destabilizing effects of the virus are diminished.

But we also need an equally proactive strategy around feelings. Part of why the virus of chaos is so effective is that chaos is the foundational terror of human existence. From the moment of our birth, we are confronted by chaos, and we begin a life-long journey to create order and safety for ourselves in the face of it. Because chaos isn’t optional - it’s a baseline fact. Existence is chaotic. Human culture - families, communities, tribes and nations - are essentially protections from chaos. So when you stir it up to achieve whatever goal you have, it stimulates the deepest fear of all. This explains the extreme reaction I had Wednesday, being a child with a lived experience of chaos myself. The attempted coup was a personal trigger for me, as I imagine it was for many millions of others.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy employs active, physical activities and adjustments a person enacts when they are feeling triggered. I practiced a version of it Thursday. I had to actively disrupt the virus by actually doing something different, even as I was feeling the effects of the virus. The activity I engaged in was an elaborate form of self-soothing. I experienced my body as strong and alive and healthy. I saw the world as beautiful and full of gentleness and light. I put myself in the company of other humans who were safe, affirming, comforting. By Friday morning, I was restored . . . or at least well enough to have a relatively “normal” day, whatever the hell that means in these times we are living through.

So this next bit . . . I’m going to try and not come off as the worst kind of Pollyanna, Kumbaya-type naif. But here it is.

We need to combat this virus with a different kind of virus. Our animal instinct (and some political theory) would lead us to combat violence with violence, and chaos with chaos. But this only feeds the virus, not defeat it. The virus of chaos is defeated through an encounter with a stronger and very different virus of feelings. Such a virus exists, and it is as foundational to our human experience as is the fear of chaos. This virus is called the joy of human connection.

Paradoxically, it was at work even in the actions of the insurrectionists Wednesday. One of the great sorrows of that awful day was observing that their horrible actions, and more broadly their allegiance to the movement that spawned it, was a deeply compelling experience of human connection for them. To them, it was the experience of being a part of a righteous brotherhood, and they felt a bond with each other as they smashed windows, destroyed offices and chanted hateful slogans. The most insidious effect of the virus of chaos, is its use of love between humans to achieve its ends. Deep in our DNA, we crave connection to others. And when we are alienated and disaffected, we will take it wherever we can find it.

Our task is to affirm that need for human connection, but disconnect it from chaotic ends. Further, it seems to me that we must use that need for human connection to create encounters between people of different backgrounds, beliefs and sympathies in which they can experience that essential joy of connection in a safe space, divorced from the cultural triggers that divide us. Not an easy task. But doable. And I believe it starts with play.

There are several well-intentioned “Red-Blue” bridge-building movements afoot, and I support all of them. But the critical mistake I observe some of them making is that they begin with an attempt to talk about the hard stuff safely. My approach is different: at the outset, let’s not talk about the hard stuff at all. Because in the current era, talking about the hard stuff devolves into an argument about what is true and what is not. Once you get to that argument, progress only occurs when one side or the other admits they were wrong about what they believe is true. And if what they believe is true is a powerful source of human connection for them, they will very rarely do that.

Instead, let’s not focus on the thoughts or ideas at all, and instead let’s stimulate the conditions for the spread of this new virus, the one that feeds on the joy of human connection. Let’s connect on stuff that has nothing to do with thoughts and ideas, but instead on safe experiences we participate in together. Games. Laughter. Play. Because as we begin to connect safely with each other through play, a bond begins to grow between us, one that we remember from childhood, when all we needed for the cops and robbers game to begin was to get the kid across the street to join in. That bond resists disconnection. Part of what makes it so powerful is that it instantly begins to replicate. It’s a virus - it spreads. As we witness bonds being made between others, we begin bonding with others ourselves, because it feels . . . awesome.

Here, let me shoot Polyanna for you. Play is not the solution. The hard stuff does need to get worked on. The solution, the “cure” for the great cultural divide we are living in, is generational. I believe we will not actually experience it unless we live long enough to see our children in position of power, the ones who grew up in this shitstorm and enter adulthood with the conviction to create a more just and peaceful society. But play is a beginning. It is one vaccine among many. It is strong medicine, greatly misunderstood and undervalued.

Those of us skilled at creating playful places, through improvisation, performance, teaching, workshops and art, have a vital and essential role to play in our recovery from this collective disease we are living through. We are called upon to offer safe play to everyone, yes, even to the Trumpists. Maybe especially to them, so that they can begin to experience their own capacity for human connection in ways that don’t involve violence.

My experience as a teacher of acting and improvisation, as a leader of classes and workshops, shows me this: that the joyful experience of human connection is stronger than any idea. Given the choice in a safe space to connect or not, we will, each in our own way, choose to connect. There is a way to get to where we want to be from where we are. Many ways, in fact. It’s up to us to disrupt the chaos and choose a new way, a different kind of virus.

2020 is Both/And

THE BRIGHT INVENTION ENSEMBLE IN MARCH 2020, RIGHT BEFORE THE PANDEMIC HIT. PHOTO BY SARAH BLOOM.

Years from now, when we look back on 2020, we may have a surprising assessment of this tumultuous year. Without question, this will forever be a year of tremendous loss of human life. It will always be a year in which a madman tried to dismantle our democracy. It will be a year when our racist culture was seen and felt in unambiguous acts of violence. But years from now it is my belief that we will look back on 2020 and see that we found out what we are made of. 

AIMEE GOLDSTEIN AND OWEN COREY IN THE IMPROVATHON, FEBRUARY 2020. WE RAISED $1,000 FOR THE WEST PHILADELPHIA SKILLS INITIATIVE!

When I teach or coach improvisation, I tell people that practicing improv is way towards the Four Virtues of Improvisation: courage, empathy, creativity and faith. Improv does not impart these to you, it allows you to discover them in yourselves. How? Through a safe and playful “stress test.” You meet another human being in a creative space and co-create a story, while being observed by others (courage). You accept everything about this other person (empathy.) You and they continuously move forward in time adding endlessly to the story you are both creating (creativity.) You believe nothing can go wrong as you co-create (faith.) 

I believe 2020 was a great cultural stress test for America. Now, let me own my optimism and romantic nature (another by-product of practicing improv.) And let me again acknowledge the pain and trauma experienced by so many Americans this year, especially BIPOC Americans. And yet, I believe years from now we will see that we collectively discovered the Four Virtues of Improvisation in ourselves this year. Not all of us. But most of us. This entire year was a national improvisation. We had no script for any of it. All we had were each other and our own innate virtues. 

It’s tempting to apply binary judgments to 2020. “It was a total and complete horror show and it can’t end fast enough.” Sound familiar? And yet here too, improvisation has something to teach us. Improv resists binary thinking. Improv is not either/or, it’s both/and. I’m constantly coaching improvisors out of binary conflicts in scenes – I’m right, you’re wrong; my way or the highway. These kinds of offers in improv scenes grind the story to a halt. I say, yes it’s true your character was deeply hurt by the other character, but the scene still needs to continue. How will you maintain the integrity of the story, and also move the scene forward? Both/and. 

For instance, in 2020 Bright Invention lost the ability to offer any of its intensely in-person programs. And, we dramatically expanded our audience reach through virtual programming. We lost a great deal of money in canceled or deferred contracts, and we made new connections online, and developed new and viable virtual workshops and shows. We missed being physically close to each other, and we discovered how essential our online connections to each other were. 

THE ENSEMBLE REHEARSES ONLINE, MAY 2020

It’s an appropriate time to reflect. Here, at the winter solstice, many are contemplating, assessing, planning. We have crossed over now. Now the days become slowly longer and the nights shorter. Maybe now is a good time to ask – what story will we tell about 2021?

Maybe it will be a story about recovery. One in which you tell the truth about what happened to you this year – all of it, good and bad. And you asked for help, and you let others help you. A story about how you gave yourself permission to fall apart and collapse, to not have your shit together, and to become aware, dimly at first, that you are still loved. Perhaps your recovery started with your body, with deep breaths and stretches, with naps and something good to eat. And in that stillness, you heard the old tapes – the ones that don’t help. And you threw them away. 

Maybe it will be a story about reconciliation. You and someone else see the enormous distance between you. It seems hopeless. And you name it. You say, there is a huge distance between us and it seems hopeless. And then you look up the canyon, to a place where the gulf narrows and both of you can see the water flowing below. Instead of trying to build a bridge – so expensive, so complex, so daunting – you both carefully climb down to the water’s edge and drink. And you discover you share a great love for this water, and that you can hear each other from across the river. So you talk. 

AUDIENCE FOR ONE OF OUR LIVE SHOWS . . .

Maybe it will be a story about redemption. You think, maybe this one is binary: I either throw people away or I don’t. Maybe you feel the grace of the present moment, in which you realize in a flash that the past doesn’t exist, it’s not real, and it only holds on to you because you invent a story – a story about how the past holds on to you. And you can choose to tell a different story. Maybe it’s about your growing awareness that the future isn’t full of monsters and plagues, and it’s not full of parties and victories either. The future is . . . empty. And you choose to begin a story to fill it with, one in which you and the guy across the river both grow and change. One in which you are not alone, and you invite others to co-create this new story with you. Yes, maybe even with him.

Here’s my plan. In everything I do in 2021, I will strive to create real human connection, between myself and others, within groups of people, through my work, while at play, in person or online. Maybe I will meet you along the way, playing “Yes, and . . . .”

Lineage

ANTONIO FAVA IN HIS WORKSHOP WITH HIS MASKS.

In 2006, I had the great good fortune to study with a master of the commedia dell’arte Antonio Fava. For two weeks I was in a group of Philadelphia theatre professionals, making fools of ourselves under Fava’s smiling countenance. It’s hard to express the impact those those two weeks had on me, not only for the fascination and awe I developed for the extraordinary genre he was teaching, but also in what I learned from him about being a teacher of acting and improvising. On that latter point, if I could distill it down, it would come to this: the master teacher loves his students, especially when they fail.

VYACHESLAV (SLAVA) DOLGACHEV

A couple of years earlier, I studied with another master. Slava Dolgachev is the Director of the New Drama Theatre in Moscow. His own acting teacher had been a student of Contantine Stanislavsky. For a person steeped in the process of rehearsing, performing and teaching realistic acting, I felt like I was two degrees away from the legend who invented it all. But what I got from Slava was not at all what I expected. Rather than lectures on performance theory, he put us (a group of acting teachers) through a series of drills and exercises on our feet that were entirely experiential. In one, we had to move around he room with a partner, maintaining the distance of an imaginary stick between our outstretched hands. In another, we attempted to stop a blindfolded partner from moving away from us by jerking our head up and focusing on their back. The number of times this actually worked made the hair on my neck stand and tingle. I asked him about Stanislavsky’s interest in spiritual energy. He paused and said, through his interpreter, “Acting is not for ‘smart people’, acting is for people of faith, who dive in, who are a little crazy.”

Both of these men practice and teach their art from a distinct and acknowledged lineage. I remember Fava telling us that his own father (or uncle?) was a commedia performer. And Dolgachev worked on the plays of Chekhov, the playwright who was in essence Stanislavsky’s partner in realism. And so I am led to ask . . .

What is my lineage? What is yours?

The word obviously comes from the root “line”. The suggestion is we can draw a line from who we are (creatively, familiarly, politically) to a person or persons who came before us. In the arts, this is usually a teacher or other mentor figure, who we feel has imparted to us foundational ideas about art and creativity. And if we name ourselves in that person’s lineage, then we are saying that who we are and what perform and teach has been deeply affected - almost formed - by that person in our past.

MOM PERFORMING WITH DOUGLAS DUNN IN THE GRAND UNION

All of this came to the fore for me when I participated in an online conversation last weekend with my mother, the dancer, teacher and choreographer Barbara Dilley. Called Talking Improvisation and moderated by my friend and colleague Amy Smith, this was a fundraiser for Bright Invention attended by members of both my mom’s and my own art tribes. It has been source of curiosity to me that many of my creative undertakings and approaches to teaching have been deeply influenced by my mom, even though I never had anything like an apprenticeship with her, never studied with her, and in fact, have had to navigate an occasionally fractured relationship with her.

Mom was discussing her work with the Grand Union, the seminal dance/theatre group she was part of in the early 70s, that improvised all its shows. She came to that work out of a tightly choreographed experience with Merce Cunningham. I came to long form improvisation from the scripted work of stage acting, and this parallel we share - from scripted/choreographed work to improvisation - was a subject of our discussion. My mom has developed an exercise called “Lineage tree” - you can read about it in her book!

ME PRACTICING LONG FORM WITH ENSEMBLE MEMBERS AIMEE GOLDSTEIN AND OWEN COREY

Mom calls Merce and his partner John Cage her “art fathers” and Yvonne Rainer and the Grand Union her “art mothers.” Its a beautiful way to honor both approaches to dance without choosing one over the other. As she spoke I longed for such a neat lineage, but the truth is mine is blurrier, at least for now. Perhpas Bobbi Block, who introduced me to long form, is one of my art mothers. But so is Virginia Ness Ray, my voice teacher at the Yale School of Drama, who taught the work of Kristin Linklater. And speaking of Yale, Earle Gister, my first year acting teacher there, is certainly one of my art fathers. But so are Slava and Fava, even in the brevity of my time with them. I know I carry some of them into my creative work to this day. It feels as if I don’t have a lineage as much as I have a kaleidoscope, a great mandala of teachers who are significant pieces of the ongoing design which is me.

In some communities, your lineage is biological, and for the most part you can’t choose it. This has given rise to generations of oppression, as “chosen” lineages oppress others in order to preserve and consolidate their power. Think of Indian castes. Think of English peerage. Think of white supremacy.

But also think of your own parents. Perhpas the clearest lineage I have creatively is to both my mother and my father, Lewis Lloyd, who was professionally an administrator and producer of performance. My dad was a stage manager, company manager for the Cunningham Company, managing director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, leader for the New York State Council on the Arts, public television manager at WGBH. As Executive Director of Bright Invention and also improvisor and artistic director of the ensemble I am somehow, almost comically, a perfect combination of my mother and father.

So I invite you to create your own lineage. Think of it as a thought exercise - not a destiny or edict. The great thing about this exercise is you get to notice what parts of your art mothers and fathers you hold on to and what parts you’ve left behind. In this way, you are “purifying” what made them so powerful, distilling them to their essence in your own work and play, keeping the best parts of them alive. It’s a way to do something I think we don’t do enough of these days: honor our elders, their love, their wisdom, their experience. Who knows. Maybe someday you will be in someone else’s lineage . . . and may they honor you when they put you there.

To access a video of Talking Improvisation with me, mom and Amy click here, then use the passcode: #*b3xY5B 

Here’s a silent video of me and mom improvising together in 1968 . . .

Improv 1 is free . . . ish!

“It is the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, while the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection.” — The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde

ENSEMBLE MEMBERS SHEA SONSKY AND AIMEE GOLDSTEIN

This week, the teachers of our Improv 1 class, ensemble members Aimee Goldstein and Shea Sonsky, decided to make it free to enroll, and “pay-what-you-can”. They are inviting students to make donations as they go, or to join our Patreon if they choose to. Of course, this is simply a request and anyone can take the full eight-week class without a donation if they need to/choose to. In making this decision, they were responding to some prospective students who have expressed an interest in attending, but can’t because of financial constraints, most of which have been brought on by the pandemic. This decision will mean that Aimee and Shea will make drastically less money as teachers, and Bright Invention will forgo its percentage of this tution income. Aimee and Shea are facing their own financial stress. Why would they do this?

There is a relationship to the concept of value which guides Bright Invention as we negotiate remuneration. We make a distinction between the gift economy and the commercial economy, a distinction I first understood by reading Lewis Hyde’s remarkable book The Gift. We understand that our artistic creative gifts - the ones that we refine as we become better and better actor/improvisors - have no price tag, and are not for sale. Likewise, our artistic creations - our shows - are also pay-what-you-can. We expect cash payment for services we render in the commercial marketplace, primarily our work as consultants through our Creative Corporate Training Program. Yes, we are using our creative gifts here too. But the relationship to our “audience” in this case is defined by a fee-for-services arrangement. You hire us to help you solve a problem in your workplace. Our ensemble members make between $50 and $100 per hour for this work, which, it should be noted, has taken a hit during the pandemic.

WHAT YOUR ONLINE BRIGHT INVENTION CLASS MIGHT LOOK LIKE!

Classes have always fallen into a grey area between the commercial and the gift economy. It’s not stated explicitly, but as Executive Director I never want money to get in the way of someone taking a class with us. And - I want our teachers compensated fairly. So this decision by Shea and Aimee - which was entirely theirs - touched me.

We have spirited discussions in rehearsals about the word “free”. Some feel it denigrates what we do, and makes it feel like it has no value. Others feel it is a powerful marketing word and gets people’s attention. I have landed on “free-ish”.

“[The] art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift is received.” — The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde

Something mysterious and fundamentally unquantifiable happens when an actor moves us, or a teacher inspires us. We feel like we have received something personal and precious. Most people, if you asked them to put a dollar amount on that experience, would look at you like you were nuts. Because even if we paid money somehow for access to that experience, the experience itself feels gifted, not sold. It has to do with “feeling bond” alluded to in the opening quote above. The world “gift” swirls around creativity. We speak of God-given gifts, creative gifts, artistic gifts. We artists understand that the urgent and mysterious energy that drives us to make things as something we have been given. It can be refined through practice and instruction, but its origin is essential, fundamental, innate.

This is why it’s so profoundly painful for so many if us when we feel how misunderstood and cheapened we become by selling that gift in a commercial marketplace. Because in the commercial marketplace of the performing arts, what’s actually being sold is a person. And as soon as you are in the business of buying and selling people (auditioning and casting, for instance) that person becomes a thing, a product. This is why the commerce of entertainment is dominated by visual forms: body shape, skin color, height, weight, etc. These are the measurements of things, not people. This warping of people into products does deep and lasting harm to the psyches of young performing artists - I speak from experience. Do I sound bitter? That’s okay. It’s actually outrage. And Bright Invention is my humble way to begin to address it.

So go ahead. Sign up for Improv 1 with Aimee and Shea! And play with them in the flowing circle of gifts they create online with you. You won’t be sorry, I promise. You may be inspired to make a gift in return.

“ . . . a gift is consumed when it moves from one hand to another with no assurance of anything in return. There is little difference, therefore, between its consumption and its movement. A market exchange has an equilibrium or stasis: you pay to balance the scale. But when you give a gift there is momentum, and the weight shifts from body to body.” — The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde