How are you feeling?

I studied with an improv teacher once who made us define how we were feeling to a granular level. “Good” and “bad” didn’t cut it. We had to dig down to “confidently relaxed” or “haunted by floating dread.” I found the exercise irritating, sorry, “meanderingly irrelevant”, mostly because I have never cared much about what something is called. I find labels reductive and deceiving. But she did leave me with a lasting gift. I am not lazy anymore about identifying how I’m feeling. In any class or workshop I run, I look for ways to get the participants to notice how they’re feeling. I don’t spend as much time on what they call it, but I suggest that this kind of self-awareness is a powerful tool for them to use in their personal and professional lives.

Participants at a Creative Corporate Training workshop after doing the “mirror” exercise.

One of the keys with this kind of work is that the facilitator has to engineer a change in feeling. We are much more likely to notice how we’re feeling when our feelings change. At Bright Invention, that initial feeling change is almost always joyful. Through our games and exercises participants move from nervous/bored/curious to playful/connected/ engaged. This awareness of feelings changing is the first doorway toward a kind of mindfulness called emotional intelligence.

There are two basic core competencies involved in emotional intelligence:

Personal Competence comprises your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies.

• Self-awareness: how am I feeling? How do I know?

• Self-management: what do I do because of how am I feeling? What do I need to watch out for?

Social Competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people's moods, behavior, and motives in order to respond effectively and improve the quality of your relationships.

• Social Awareness: how is he/she/they feeling? How can I tell?

• Relationship Management: what is the most humane and effective way to proceed knowing how he/she/they are feeling?

Members of the Bright Invention ensemble observe a rehearsal.

Hamza Mudassir, a lecturer in strategy at the Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge, recently proposed that working with emotion is an essential part of strategic planning. “Strategy formulation—just like emotion—is also based on a set of forecasts. You are doing what you believe to be best for your company, based on whatever you’ve experienced before. This means that whenever you embark on a strategy development process, you are in effect embarking on an emotional journey as much as an intellectual one.”

We are living through an era of global stress and anxiety. It’s important that we feel it and notice it - because it’s extreme, and it is having an impact on our decision-making, relationships and general well-being. Indeed, the worst case scenario is that we adopt this ever-present anxiety as our default, and react to it without acknowledging it. We need to give ourselves experiences which return us to joy, relaxation, clarity, for only then will we remember: oh right, it’s possible to feel like this too. In fact, it’s what “normal” used to feel like.

One last thing. Noticing how I feel requires me to slow down. In our multi-taking hypercaffeinated lives slowing down is counter cultural. But I submit to you it is essential. We need to give ourselves pauses that allow us to assess how we’re doing . . . and what we’re feeling.

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.

Diversity, equity, inclusion and improv

Concord, MA

Last June, Bright Invention offered its first Creative Corporate Training (CCT) workshop on a diversity, equity and inclusion theme to the League of Women Voters, Concord-Carlisle MA chapter. We were asked to support an investigation into the concept of the “welcoming community.” What does it mean for a community to be welcoming? Welcoming to whom? And how do we know? Concord MA is predominantly White, politically liberal community. The good people who brought this workshop together had a great deal invested in the notion that Concord is a welcoming community. And yet, they had the awareness to know that it wasn’t to some, and they wanted to explore why. We were hired by a group of folks from both the League and the local school system to use our scenario-based technique to start a collective conversation. We resisted the urge to run to Black folks and ask, are we doing this right? We knew this was our work to do.

Except in our scenario, the human is in the space ship and the alien is working the pump.

When CCT develops scenarios on a sensitive topic, one of the approaches we use is to begin with a scenario that employs humor and distance. We created a funny scenario taking place at a space station. A human driving for “Uber Gallactica” needs to get the dilythium crystals in her space taxi topped off. She stops at a space station run by two non-humans. They are rude to her, they speak in ways that are unfamiliar to her, they refuse to use the “translator” she has, and they are very skeptical of how she is going to pay. She leaves vowing never to visit that space station again.

For this scenario, we used a White actress as the human, and Black and White actors as the aliens. In this way, we were focusing on the topic - “welcoming” - without dealing directly with race in an American context. We were also pointing out that many times the first place an outsider encounters a community is through a commercial transaction: at a gas station, a restaurant, a gift shop, etc. Remember, we were not trying o fix a problem. We were trying to support a conversation.

Andre?

The next scenario employed drama and proximity. In this scenario, a Black citizen of Concord meets two White members of the local zoning committee at a coffee shop. They want to see if he is interested in joining the committee. In what should be a completely positive encounter of welcoming and inclusion, “Joe” and “Sarah” employ so many racist assumptions and micro-agressions that at the end, Andre, the Black guest, fakes a phone call to get out of the meeting and leave.

Here, we felt it wasn’t enough to demonstrate “liberal Whites behaving badly.” We wanted to activate the feedback about the scenario. So we focused the feedback around the question: how can Sarah or Joe be Andre’s ally when they witness a racist assumption? This question has become a focal point for our work in this area. When and how should White people speak up when witnessing not only Black people, but anyone being marginalized, belittled or oppressed by the assumptions of the dominant culture.

Challenging the dominant culture has different consequences in different situations. While we believe we must always speak up, we are developing workshops which explore how doing so with one’s boss is a different kind of challenge then, say, doing so with your neighbor at a coffee shop, which is different than doing so with a family member.

Finally, we acknowledge in these workshops that the deep work of anti-racism is necessarily individual work. We are each called upon to use whatever resources we have at our disposal to explore our own, individual histories and experiences with differences, race, and culture. We make sure to explore what resources are available to the companies and nonprofits we serve in this area, so that they may continue to explore this work.

Our next online demo of our scenario-based technique will use the scenario with Andre, Joe and Sarah and specifically showcase how we work with DEI issues. It’s on Friday November 5th at 1 PM Eastern online. Click here if you’d like to join us.

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.