Layers of agreement

“Yes, and . . . “ is the foundational exercise of improvisation. It contains two essential features first defined in the “Kitchen Rules” of the Compass Theatre in the 1960s: agreement and collaborative story-building. The longer I have played with this game and the concepts it promotes, the more profound it has become for me.

Do you realize how much we depend on agreement in our everyday lives? Think about a four-way stop sign intersection on crossing roads. First we agree we will stop. Then we agree who moves first. Or forming a queue for . . . anything. An effective conversation depends on a simple agreement: you talk, I listen. Then, reverse.

I will go out on a limb here and say the following: the very existence of civilization depends upon agreements, often unspoken and unexamined. Civilization begins to break down when those agreements fall apart.

And here’s another observation: genuine agreement includes a loss of ego and a feeling of vulnerability. When we agree (even at the stop sign or the Starbucks line) we become partners. We have moved from an individual existence in which the only actions are my responses to the chaos of existence, to a shared existence in which we have seen and recognized each other and are organizing existence together. Agreement then can be seen as a defense against fear and isolation. But it requires that I don’t entirely get my way, I acknowledge you have something to say and contribute, and that I will make space for it. And though in joining me in agreement you ease my fear and isolation, your presence make me feel vulnerable . . . even just a little.

One of my foundational pieces of writing is David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water. The title refers to the a joke which plays upon the way we operate in ways we don’t even see. He calls this our “default setting,” and cautions us to be aware of when that setting is dialed in to negativity, cynicism and intolerance. But here’s a glass half full version: we can also notice when our default setting includes agreement.

We walk in the world through layers of agreement, and each one - from the “bless you/thank you” exchange after the sneeze, to the groundbreaking one in which we finally put all the anger behind us - each one is a spiritual affirmation. We are not alone. We can meet each other safely. We can move forward together.

New. Year.

I have felt for a long time that the Jewish new year is placed more appropriately on the calendar than the one on January 1st. Perhaps that’s because the academic calendar is so deeply ingrained in my consciousness. Or maybe it’s because that - as an actor - I felt the fall was the season of beginnings: new shows, new rehearsals, new events. But mostly I think it’s because the Jewish new year is in synch with the changing of the seasons. This new year begins and the world slowly transforms from heat and green to cool, and orange, red and brown. It’s as if the world reminds us: change and transformation is inevitable. After January 1st it just stays cold and dark for a couple more months . . .

Speaking of change and transformation, I believe we are in an era of cultural change unlike anything we have witnessed since the sixties. The similarities are striking. Both eras are focused on racial justice and the rights of those victimized by American capitalism and systems of oppression. Both are characterized by progressive politics and led by our youth. Both include a challenge to sexual and gender norms. And both are fiercely resisted by reactionary cultural and political forces. We live in an era in which it is impossible to remain neutral. We must align ourselves somewhere on the spectrum defined by the poles of these opposing forces.

What does improvisation teach us about this state of convulsive change we are in? Several things it seems to me:

• Listen before speaking. Great improvisors are exquisite listeners and observers. They will say “My job is to make my partner look like a genius.” It is in this deep listening that extraordinary co-creating can take place. I make my creative offers based on what I hear and see from and in you. Today it’s really hard to listen to someone who is on the spectrum far away from you. But more than ever it’s essential. The goal is not to come to agreement. The goal is to feel where the words are coming from, and ask: why? Why is this person saying these things?

• Let go of the need to know. When we are confronted by a threat we work feverishly to construct a future in which that threat is diminished. We are tempted to say: I know exactly how this is going to turn out, and perhpas engage in a pre-planned “prophecy.” But we don’t know how it’s going to turn out, or what the future holds, plan as frantically as we might. Then what are we left with? This very moment. That’s it. What is right in front us, where our feet are standing, and who we are accompanied by. Improv lives creatively in this tension between spontaneity and planning. Improvisors live in the present moment, and yet some part of our brain is playing out a series of what-ifs. The trick is not getting attached to any of them. As Dr. Angeles Arrien said, “Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome.”

• Conflict kills progress. Which is not to say, “don’t have a conflict.” Sometimes in a scene and in life a conflict is essential. Conflict is a part of the DNA of change and transformation. What is being left behind will cry defiantly and attempt to prevent change. Improv doesn’t teach us to avoid conflict, it teaches us not to get stuck in it. Watching an improv scene in which two people are locked in an endless conflict is a little like non-anaesthetized dental work. Improv thrives when it evolves, it dies when it doesn’t. I submit the same is true for our human species. I tell my ensemble and students, the conflict must evolve. Sometimes that means someone “loses”. Sometimes it means someone shouts “Look! A unicorn!” And sometimes it means the two amazing actors improvise their way into something truthful; something which doesn’t deny the conflict, allows for both characters to have integrity, and somehow gives birth to a way forward.

• Avoid the addiction to intensity. When a scene heats up emotionally, we sometimes throw gasoline on the fire by inauthentically stamping our feet, raising our voices, squeezing “emotion.” Some of us can become addicted to this state of fake noise and wheel-spinning anxious energy. In this state, listening usually goes out the window and conflicts are invited. But your intensity isn’t interesting to anyone, not even to you. If you’re honest with yourself, you will acknowledge that it is a burden. It misrepresents you. It is a useless energy drain. Because here’s the hardest lesson improv teaches us:

• You are enough. You don’t need extra energy, some missing brilliant idea, ten fewer pounds or more hair. You don’t need to prove to your teacher, parent, colleagues that you deserve to [ have that opinion / make that creative offer / lie down and rest / trust your gut and go for it / be here now. ] These eras of momentous change are like amazing and challenging improv scenes we find ourselves in, the ones Del Close used to tell us to “follow the fear” in. When we meet them, our natural human insecurity will tell us “you can’t do this, you don’t have what it takes.” But you do. You really do. Just as you are, breathing, listening, observing.

“Follow the fear” is often misunderstood to mean “do something outrageous and offensive.” No, all it means is that improv is a pathway to discovering innate (meaning you already have them) virtues in yourself. The four virtues of improv as I see them are courage, empathy, creativity and faith. Three out of the four need to have an event or encounter to be felt. Improv provides that encounter. Only creativity can be accomplished fully by yourself.

Perhaps the era we are living through, this new year, is an opportunity for us to feel the virtues we already have. I have adopted the inherently optimistic energy of improv, I admit it, but perhaps this new year is a canvas, or a stage, waiting for us to make our brave, empathetic, faithful and creative offers.

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 . . . .”