Theater For The Future

Ever seen one of these? It’s a big binder filled with knowledge. Procedures. Contacts. Lists. Accessible Information.

In his big comeback post, Scott Walters illustrates very clearly the reasons for an artist to be proactively collecting and sharing the knowledge of what it is they do and the tricks and insights that make the work itself easier and more effective: knowledge is power.

… Those who wield power in the theatre — the administrators, the board members, the foundation staff — do read these studies, do recognize the value of the data and the ideas, and do put them into action — and that is how they maintain their power. They think more broadly about the art form. The result of lack of knowledge is a diminished power for artists, who give over control of their art to those who will take the time to study, to learn, to think.

The lifespan of an artist within a theater company is often a lot like the lifespan of a fruit fly. Artists often want to do one thing – say, perform – and get signed on to do that, and run box office, and figure out how to market a play, and raise money for that play, and keep the bathrooms clean… It’s tiring, and the passion for your work either carries you through the balogna or it doesn’t, and after five to ten years you start dreaming of a normal adult life that doesn’t involve begging and scrubbing and poverty.

For me, there is a lot of wasted energy in reinventing the wheel here. Let’s say a company is formed in 1983, and goes through five leadership cycles in that time. There’s a big difference in quality between the company with leadership that captures the collected knowledge of the company and the company that starts from scratch every time a company member moves on. It’s the difference between accruing institutional knowledge and burn out.

But when you get your feet wet, you’ll start to notice big challenges involved in passing complex knowledge structures on to a complete noob. Awful example from my own experience: Teaching a non-technical person how to mix their first musical. Let’s say your regular technical guru is moving out of town, and you have to basicially xerox them or face the loss of quality that comes with losing talent. There are two ways to go about this, neither of them ideal: You could label everything in the booth with a mountain of post-its and basically say “never touch this – or this – or this,” thereby simplifying the job. This definitely reduces stress in the training period, but it isn’t really a long-term solution – it cripples the student’s ability to explore and learn from mistakes over the long term. It leaves them to build their own foundation of knowledge, and it assumes that the choices you make in those final stressful and despairing moments of your tenure were the right decisions for the long term health of the company – which is almost never the case.

There’s another approach, akin to the development of a curriculum for self-study: the guru creates a comprehensive list of all the pieces of knowledge that one would need to do the job.

A) Acoustic Physics – How Sound Works
1) How sound waves mix in the air
2) The controllable properties of sound – Volume, Direction, Frequency, Timbre, Duration/Envelope,

B) How the Equipment Works
1) Microphone Pickup Patterns (what microphones “hear”)
2) Speaker Dispersal Patterns (cabinet distortion, directionality, phasing problems.
3) How Theatrical Sound Equipment can distort and shape sound waves
4) Mixer routing – Inputs, Faders, EQ, Inserts, Trim, Bus/Group Outputs, Auxillary Outputs

C) Cue Operation and Programming procedures
1) Mixer Manual – for Mute Scenes / VCAs or Scene Presets
2) Sound Playback Manuals – QLab, SFX, CD Players, etc.
3) MIDI and automation – getting equipment to trigger other equipment for simple show operation

D) Common “Gotchas”
1) Everything plugged in?
2) Everything plugged in in the right place?
3) Best signal testing practices – start at one end of the signal path and move carefully to the other.
4) The psychology of monitors and mic placement – getting the performers and the producers on your team with the common goal of the best possible audience experience (or, “If I turn up your monitor there, we either won’t hear you in the house, or we’ll hear you and squealing feedback”)

To be sure, each one of these items could be a dissertation in themselves, and this is more overwhelming for a blank slate student. However, it creates an ongoing resource for the student to explore and research over time and as their experience expands. It also doesn’t set a time limit on the training period – it allows peer-to-peer learning to continue beyond the tenure of the burnt-out ex-company member.

The MOST important thing is of course to create this knowledge resource well in advance of those often gut-wrenching final two weeks of a company member’s tenure. Capturing this information while stress is a factor is a good way to get a crappy knowledgebase. If you’ve ever been trained as a temp, you know what I’m talking about – If you need to know A – Z to properly do your job, some folks will teach you A (“Turn on your computer”) and then B (“This is the Power Button”) and then when that goes off without a hitch, they’ll spring Q on you (“And so then we just need to you to file the 990 Form with Accounting”) without explaining, oh, H (“Accounting is near the elevator”), or M (“990 Forms are tax forms for non-profits.”) or even C (“We are a company that audits non-profits”). And some folks assume you know too much and will rifle through the instructions for X-Z (“Just tell the president your progress by the end of the day.”) and they’re out the door. There is never enough time for the trainer to go through A-Z. And yet real damage happens to companies in both of those moments when A-Z isn’t effectively communicated or learned by the trainee. The corporate world can easily absorb that damage, but theater companies can often die off or suffer direly in fundraising in those moments when leadership changes.

So manuals can cushion the blow as the company grows – or even simply ages – and folks move on. Some of the manuals that I have written for New Leaf and The Side Project include:

• How – and when – to update the website
• Run Sheets – how to preset and run a particular show
• Box Office procedures
• How to share files over the internet so that group collaboration is less time-consuming
• Brand manuals (use this font, use these colors, use this page layout, use this logo, and the branding rules that you can bend, break, and the ones you can never ignore)
• Marketing distribution (a checklist of places to put posters and postcards)
• Production Timeline & Checklist (what needs to get done, and when it needs to be done)

What I’ve learned about these documents is that they usually need periodic revision – so the best time to write them is as the processes are being put in place or being revised. By writing a manual as you perform the task, you can often do a better capture of clear step-by-step actions and have a better retention of all the dependent knowledge that is helpful in performing your role.

Treating manuals like a simple dumping ground of everything doesn’t work, though – they need to be more or less a complete overview of day-to-day operations, but not an exhaustive archive of everything that has ever happened ever. That’s too overwhelming to be useful. So some diligent and forward-thinking editing is always a useful habit to get into.

For these reasons, the ideal medium for a company knowledgebase is often a wiki – a living, interconnected document that allows certain basic knowledge resources to be outsourced to say, Wikipedia or other blogs & websites. Knowledge can also be organized into a structure to make critical data more clear and supporting data settle into nested structures.

At New Leaf, we’ve used a wiki and a company discussion forum in tandem for about three years, and it’s proven to work very well with our own human natures. Most day-to-day company discussion happens on the forum, filling the forum with a rich silt of acquired knowledge, planning, brainstorming, and chat. It’s almost a daily journal for most of us, a big net that captures all our ideas. We have also worked out a quick sorting and archiving process that we do as part of our production post-mortem process. When a particular nugget of knowledge from the forum discussion proves permanently useful, it finds a home somewhere in our company wiki – the repository of permanent knowledge for the company.

And on the wiki, the information is clearly organized for future company or board members. It kind of looks like this:

New Leaf Department Knowledgebase
Artistic
Play Readings
Marketing
Development, Fundraising & Grants
Production
Box Office

Agendas (these contain items that require discussion in our next face-to-face meetings so that everything gets captured)
Company Meetings
Production & Design Meetings
Marketing Meetings
Board Meetings

Meeting Minutes
Company Meeting Minutes
Post Mortem Minutes
Marketing Minutes
Committees Minutes

Timeline & To-Dos (Each of these is a calendar for each production with template dates, like “Opening -3 Weeks”. We just plug in the dates before each production, and voila, we have a list of everything we need to get done.)
Production Timeline
Box Office Timeline
Marketing Timeline

Knowledge Base
Knowledge Base – Web Tools, Important Contact Info, Stuff to Know in case of emergency
Company Bylaws
New Leaf Culture – The way we like to do things, and why
Production History
Who We Are – Mission, Vision, Values. Learn them. Love them. Live them.

Over the past few years, we’ve had the typical internal turnover at both companies that happens as artists grow up and live their lives – and new artists with fresh ambition pursue their artistic lives as a part of the company. The forum / wiki / knowledgebase process has proven its worth through the shifting membership to our newest company members. As they have time, or when they’re confused about how something works, our old discussions and accrued knowledge resources can be skimmed through and learned as needed. This is often an exciting process for a new company member, like opening up an old tome filled with old words and old thoughts. It is a training period filled with knowledge and cloaked in mystery. Can you imagine that in a corporate environment? Our old show notes create a clear picture of our context and our history – and steeping in that knowledge has helped us avoid the dangers of repeated mistakes, without limiting us to a knowledgebase of post its that limit the agility of our current operations. Understanding and remembering the old risks we’ve taken inspire better risks to be taken next time. I’d wager that our effective capturing of knowledge has helped us stretch our annual budgets as well, because we have a memory and a process that allows us to allocate money towards our artistic growth and our newest risks rather than sinkholes of productions past. Best of all, creating the knowledgebase was a dirt-simple, efficient, low stress, and even fun part of the process.

Scott’s speaking the truth again: the key to better lives for you professional artists out there is taking responsibility for your own artistic goals, and empowering yourself with the tools and the knowledge you need to achieve and reach beyond those goals. For me, the thing I needed was a way of remembering where I’ve been. Breadcrumbs along the trail, so to speak.

Thanks for the link, RZ.

The Chicago Promoter’s Ordinance is up for a vote, and it includes a new requirement for insurance that could be devastating to small event promoters. It’s aimed at the music industry, but since they’re aiming a legislative bunker buster, this kind of legislation inevitably impacts small theater venues as well. From what I understand in the ordinance, it looks like the legislation is so unclear that it may be another situation where some Chicago Theaters get thrown into aKafkaesque licensing limbo, and some may wrangle out of it politically. Looks like some larger theaters already have, like the Auditorium and the Chicago theater – which have both wrangled an exception for venues of over 500 seats.

Exclamation Point.

Glad the big guys got the hand up, and the notice. Well played.

This vote goes down WEDNESDAY, so let’s get informed, get the word out, and take whatever action you can … now. Three major resources to get informed: The ordinance itself is posted on Jim DeRogatis’ blog on the Sun Times site, there’s an an excellent TOC interview with Alderman Scott Waguespack and the lobbyist site on the promoter’s side, savechicagoculture.org has some specific calls to action.

Waguespack claims that this will only saddle most performance venues with a $700/year insurance bill. He clearly hasn’t seen my annual budget and how devastating even that expense can be. I can produce certain shows for less than $1000 – so it may mean that I produce one fewer show a year.

Sometimes the transparent-as-dirt Chicago machine system of doing business works for the art, and sometimes it hobbles us with poorly written legislation. And theaters are rarely prepared enough to spring into action with the three days notice we receive.

So let’s spring.

And since Chicago has an Olympic proposal in, any words of support from national international readers on the SaveChicagoCulture.org comments section are welcome. Chicago’s leadership is new to the whole international community idea, and they tend to listen to outsiders before they listen to, you know, constituents.

Two experiments that can help us understand how big this task really is:

1.) Internationally reknowned playboy and violin virtuoso Joshua Bell played a trick on commuters with the Washington Post. He dressed in clothes that might be described as Wrigleyville chic and played six challenging and downright magical classical pieces “like a God” on a multi-million dollar Stradivari – all this across from an Au Bon Pain.

Only a few brave souls so much as slowed to listen, and there was uncomfortable shuffling in lieu of applause. (natch)

2.) Building Stage is developing their next production, Master Builder, publicly on their blog. The goal:

We really wanted to use the blog as part of our process, something that was integral to the creation of the work, as well as a tool for opening up our process to our growing family (company members, collaborators, audience) to witness, comment on, and influence.

After starting two weeks ago, the production team has 10 posts on a broad range of production topics, including Sound Design, Props shopping, costumes, themes and directorial concept, and of course, marketing. Comments so far from folks uninvolved with the project: 1 – an interior decorator. (that’s a good start for two weeks on a blog, no?)

We’ve been chatting at New Leaf about audience experience for a while and what we’d ideally like an audience member to take away from each experience with us and our work. Over the years we’ve cooked up a number of different methods for teasing those experiences out of them. In marketing speak, this has been about changing the positioning for our theater – getting our audience to shake up their expectations of a storefront theater by experiencing us in different and unexpected contexts – at work on our blog, on their iPods – and also about integrating each world of play into a greater “world of the company” via our mission.

Theaters actually experiment with the audience/artist relationship a lot in the hopes of drumming up new interest – but the audience is uncomfortable with unexpected contexts for our work, and often gets confused, scared off, or dismissive of innovative tactics. Audiences are smart, and they are universally agile when it comes to protecting their time and interest from the possibility of public performance by disengaging from a pitch, request, or an uninvited interaction in under 15 seconds. That’s the amount of time you have to close the deal, so if you spend it trying to close the deal, you’ve already lost.

The calculated smell of popcorn works wonders for movie theaters, for example…

This all leads me to think that saying that we “experiment” with audience interaction isn’t really accurate – this ain’t no lab we’re running. We downright gamble with pet ideas that we think will work, and are usually less than scientific about using data and controls alongside with real innovation. If we somehow learned the discipline of statistics and combined it carefully with our street performer instincts that can reengage a wary patron, we might actually take away firm knowledge and show the world something it hasn’t seen before. That ultimately means change that is slower than theaters want, but faster than marketing professionals, boards, and other suits think is possible.

I think we can all agree: it’s nice to have that great music shared on the way to work, isn’t it? Maybe that should be a more regular part of our lives.

Oh, and to the Building Stage, who is creating a fairy tale world for the Master Builder out of elements found at IKEA, may I suggest this lamp to be used as a practical, it’s worked wonders for us in the past:

One thing I’m positively awful at as an artist is managing my creative intake in relation to creative output. The fact that the only way I seem to be able to describe the need for a holiday is to couch it in terms like “refuel,” “intake,” and “output” should clue you in to why this may be. I think most artists are actually pretty good at this: taking time for themselves and making sure that they get enough ‘soaking’ time to feed their art with life experience. I’m crap at it.

This is one reason I’m really thankful to work with music, because it inevitably flips that switch in my head to a more sustainable rhythm of life. (I keep thinking I need sound design this blog using some kind of internet radio, but that’s another story…) With my iPod on shuffle, the connections seem to draw themselves more clearly, and the work begins to flow again.

Yesterday, as I returned the gear on loan for Girl in the Goldfish Bowl – one of two shows I struck in preparation for my imminent departure to Scotland this evening – the song “One Down” by Ben Folds came on, and all the errands I was running that day were brought into perspective, suddenly and cogently – a song that he wrote to fulfill a quota of songwriting for his studio.

People tell me Ben, just make up junk and turn it in
But I never was alright with turning in a bunch of shit
I don’t like wasting time on music that won’t make me proud
But now I’ve found a reason to sit right down and shit some out

One down, and three-point-six tomorrow
And I’m out of here
One down, and three-point-six tomorrow
And I’m out of here

I’m really not complaining: I realize it’s just a job
And I hate hearing belly-aching rockstars whine and sob
‘Cause I could be bussing tables
I could well be pumpin’ gas
but I get paid much finer
For playin’ piano and kissing ass

this is one i wrote just an hour ago and three-point-six at last

Theater for the Future is on vacation for two weeks while Nick enjoys his long-deferred honeymoon.

P.S. – Finally got caught up with Writers and Victory Gardens on the Chicago Opening Night Calendar project, which means I’m just waiting on Goodman and Halcyon (ahem, Tony! – Just kidding) to announce firm dates and most of the largest theaters will be on there, for all your season planning needs. Also, I have discovered that this exists, which means that among other things the calendar will eventually be updated simply by updating the Chicago Theater Database, saving time and heartache for all. Keep sending those dates!

In what I’m pretty sure is going to become a regular series of conversations, several theater bloggers have teamed up today to bring you their thoughts on the value of theater today. Coordinated conversation has a way of exploding thought. And here’s my $0.075:

For me, this collaborative conversation is a value in itself that is often generated in theater – it’s an open environment to develop compelling thought. It doesn’t require a camera, microphone, or a web server, but it does require the reality check of audience interaction. It’s the simplest public interaction, and putting on a play is the only bully pulpit I know of that is ultimately accessible to all.

I often describe the “job” that we do in theater to my students and colleagues in this way: “We’re in the business of changing people’s lives.” Sometimes that means alarming your audience, and often it simply means allowing them to find deep resonance in a single moment of a play – we don’t fully understand or can’t fully predict the specific effect that a piece will have, but the effect happens because there is power and energy in being in the same room.

The theater is a place of exploration. It’s a place where resonance can be discovered in unexpected places. It’s a place of active entertainment in a world of passive entertainment. It requires – and rewards – a certain level of imaginative involvement.

Don Hall and Slay today both reflect on our common goal of boiling down the core values of theater today, and the purpose for this conversation does have potentially far-reaching implications. People who value theater value a particular kind of open-eyed view (sometimes secular, sometimes liberal, but always open-eyed) of their society. Those kinds of people – people who desire a certain amount of change of the status quo – have a problem when bringing that idea and convincing people who are comfortable in the status quo that change is needed. Like the demon in The Exorcist we need to be able to learn, as a community of sometimes-like-minded individuals, to name the thing we want to truly conquer our problem. Open-eyed people reject the dogma of talking points, but they also understand their power.

As much as we may hate them for their “violence of articulation”, we need strong, clear talking points to stand up against other media and understand what we can do. And since you’re on the team, we need to understand our negatives, and how we can turn those negatives into more focused energy on our positives: Theater isn’t not as polished as film, it’s not as solitarily immersive as literature, it’s not as energizing as music, it’s not as connected as youtube or blogs, it’s not as convenient as television, it’s not as serious as religion, it’s not as powerful as politics, and all that has resulted in a single reality: we have less perceived importance to society than any of these. We are a different creature that has a different, under-explored function. If theater was simply a cultural dinosaur, it would have gone extinct sometime in the 80s

These are a core values that are what keep me doing theater rather than web design or other such nonsense: Critical Community Thinking. Exploration. Resonance. Accessibility. Collaborative Entertainment.

That fact of accessibility – that it is ultimately possible for anyone to create a theatrical event to test their ideas – will always save theater. It is an enduring artform – and has been since the groundlings – the enduring cockroach of human interaction. As ugly as we may seem to some in society, our theaters are where the people on the fringes of society can strengthen society through subversive stories worthy of Shakespeare’s Fool. Ultimately theater teaches us enduring – and valuable – lessons about other human beings, because theater doesn’t happen unless we interact with them first. We’re in the business of changing lives, and often that life is our own.

I’d like to second Don’s question: How do you get your non-theater friends into the theater? What convinces them, other than a favor to you that they will then hold over your head? What descriptions of theater’s value that you read today resonate with you? What are your values for the theater for the future?

Other blogs across the country discussing the value of theater today:

Don Hall
Slay
Theatre Ideas
Rat Sass
The Next Stage
Theater is Territory
Bite and Smile
That Sounds Cool
A Rhinestone World

And when he speaks up, I for one listen:

Individual organizations attack these problems as best they can. But progress on a larger scale is necessary, and great projects, such as Millennium Park, need resources that no individual organization can offer. They need the involvement of an extraordinary coalition of private and public interests.

It’s not enough to acknowledge that the performing arts are a vital part of city life; that has become a civic mantra. We need to formally celebrate them, as other cities have, as a major part of our history and a source of Chicago’s worldwide acclaim. This is not a matter of pride or boosterism. It’s a case of further encouraging and energizing the arts in concrete terms, of showcasing theater, music and dance as a central part of our identity. We need something to honor the past, enrich the present and inspire the future. We need, to be specific, a Museum for the Performing Arts.

Now I could think of no better person than him to help curate such a museum, since he’s had an unflinching love for the Chicago theater scene for decades. And I know Patrick’s already collected the photos…

You’re listening to the sweet sounds of a mini-mental health break. I’ll be back with some exciting stuff later to kick off the workaday week.

In the meantime, you can download this song, which I promise will make you happy. It makes me happy.

Also, check it out! The Neo-Futurists have jumped in as the third (that I know of) podcasting theater in Chicago. While Dean Evans’ pitch-shifted antics are quite possibly the most disorienting sounds I’ve ever heard, the show does what a good podcast should do: Give you a sneak preview of what the experience of the show is actually like. And it provides a new bonus: if you like Too Much Light, you can now forward this link to your friends who also will like the show. Not that TML has an attendance problem, but there you go. I certainly always use TML for my non-theater friends and family coming to town as a sure bet for an enjoyable storefront theater experience, and this will be a useful tool to help plan their evenings. (“Dude. Check this out. if you like it, we’ll go.”) The second episode is also downright inspiring. I don’t know what they call it, but I like to think of it as “the spontaneous music and choreography episode.”

Finally, I’m gonna go ahead and ditch the whole ugly adwords thing on this site, because the traffic and readership doesn’t really justify it and it’s not helping you or me… But really? No one wanted to book a hotel in Hungary or prepare for a career in Video Game Development? I will continue to plug good music (which, shh! It’s music from my shows…) on the sidebar, of course. Buy it through me, or buy it elsewhere. Just listen to it, cause damn it’s good. And it’s my penance for flaunting intellectual copyright law. Sidebar ads as self-flagellation, if you will.

And if you’re a copyright lawyer, I’m just sitting here, providing free advertising for your client. Go sue some teenager who isn’t promoting legal downloads or CD sales.

Wow. Bitter. Back to sipping my Mai Tai on the beach, paid for by all the money I’ve made off the sweat, blood and tears of music industry corporate execs over the years…

I’m pumped for tonight.

This evening, New Leaf is embarking on something very different for us – we’re going to begin developing a play from scratch, using our lives, fears, and individual perspectives as source material.

The project originally began from a difficult point in New Leaf’s history, a night after a particularly difficult run through of The Permanent Way where we sat around a table at Ranalli’s and wrote our greatest fears as human beings down on the paper tablecloth in crayon. We’re kind of like kids when we get together, and crayon drawing is one of the most powerful ways we’re able to express ourselves.

Expressing our fears to each other gave them weight, and enabled us to gain insight into each other’s actions and the undertow of insecurity that led to those actions. It allowed us to become mentors for each other, and know when to push each other forward and provide encouragement or challenge. Expressing the fears also gave us some foothold against those fears, and plenty of raw material for our work. Knowing what was going on in each others’ inner lives allowed us to navigate each other more effectively and reduce the amount of confusion and unnecessary conflict in our company. It focused and sharpened the ensemble.

Personal lives often complicate a professional relationship, and that’s the reason creative tribes are difficult to put together. They only function on a foundation of profound trust and mutual respect. The way we are taught to operate is to hide our weaknesses, while the strong artistic choice often is to offer your throat to the world and dare the world to cut it. It’s surprising and exhilarating to display your identity and your perspective bare – the one you hide even from yourself – and it’s the core function of art. The tribe provides a collaborative environment that enables artists to do this and still maintain just enough safety net to keep pushing forward through the crushing insecurity that is generated by that level of honesty.

The support provided by a tribe is incredibly reassuring, because it has to be – it’s based on a family-type relationship that allows room for healthy and honest criticism based on years of shared experience. It also creates a people-centric co-prosperity that’s better than any pension plan you could ever hope for — Recessions come and go, but human beings, if they stay connected to each other, can maintain a stable existence of growth, pain, loss and happiness through harsh economic times. The tribe finds each other work and opportunities through lean times, and feeds resources, hopes, dreams and energy back to each other during those times when the manna rains from heaven. A tribe culture appreciates and understands your work from many perspectives, and they act as ambassadors of your work to find new clients and even new applications for your work. They find the doors that you haven’t been able to look for and they open them for you. It’s a culture that works for people more than the corporate model, because it places value on people rather than assets. It doesn’t have to convert human value into a monetary value first.

Scott over at Theatre Ideas has been plugging for a new model for a theater organization that will function more effectively to create exciting work than the regional theater model, and it’s a problem I’ve been trying to wrap my head around on the micro and the macro level. As excited as I am about the bottom-up approach of the tribe, there’s potential pitfalls for a tribalistic mindset in a globalistic environment. The potential price to pay is in the danger of groupthink and the difficulties involved in establishing a tribe of diverse backgrounds. It’s true that global environments like the American economic indicators like GDP haven’t been historically good at calculating the value of humanity because science and statistics haven’t really been able to develop solid objective calculation for subjective experiences like “happiness.” This flaw results in some pretty nasty side effects, like the artificial propping up of industries like Oil and Gas production or diamond mining which don’t accurately weigh in the costs of the human suffering involved in procuring them.

But a humanistic tribal mindset doesn’t completely solve the problem either: In 1972, Bhutan’s king decided to address the flaws of the GDP model by introducing his own Buddhist-influenced economic indicator: Gross National Happiness. For a country with few resources, a miniscule GDP, and no desire to modernize, this was kind of a no-brainer. GNH purported to measure and therefore encourage national wealth based on four indicators:

Promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.

Sound familiar?

The problem with this model (and the tribal model) is that it doesn’t have an built-in incentive to include everybody. Wikipedia continues the story of a dark underbelly that can accompany these utopian visions of freedom:

Critics allege that because GNH depends on a series of subjective judgements about well-being, governments may be able to define GNH in a way that suits their interests. In the case of Bhutan, for instance, they say that the government expelled about one hundred thousand people and stripped them of their Bhutanese citizenship on the grounds that the deportees were ethnic Nepalese who had settled in the country illegally. While this would reduce Bhutan’s wealth by most traditional measures such as GDP, the Bhutan government claims it has not reduced Bhutan’s GNH.

On a personal level, I can see the potential for New Leaf to revel in its own ideas and backgrounds and not seek out those diverse opinions into the tribe because they don’t resonate in the “right” way. I’m happy that we have a pretty progressive male / female mix and a long history of producing plays by lesser-known female playwrights without making a big brou-ha-ha about it, but at the same time I’ve been ashamed that as an organization committed to renewal we deal very little with the issues of poverty, segregation and gentrification that face Chicago. Part of that is that the neighborhood we serve is right in the center of high-income and overwhelmingly-white Lincoln Park, but that of course has historically been how tribes have protected themselves – by not interacting with the people that do not fit the mold of the tribe.

I think there’s a middle ground here that I desperately want to find. The tribe brings with it an innovative energy and the old “many hands make light work” approach to problem solving. But the top-down, GDP-lovin’, LORT approach knows exactly how difficult and draining it is to really represent an entire community. They get the angry letters, they pay the salaries, and they see the trend of a drying-out subscriber base. I think their history and their heavy infrastructure makes it difficult to redirect the sinking ship, even if they desire to do so.

But word-of-mouth movements can have an impact on these top-heavy systems that don’t quite work. What I think is possible is a way to focus bottom-up grassroots energy and access with high-level thinking and coordination that promotes cross-pollination of ideas and culture and transparency all around. A way to unite the tribes into coordinated strategy and continue to value their independence. I’d like to see a double-decker strategy for change that gets it done with a minimum of burn out. If that thought makes you tired, you need to get yourself a tribe to help you keep moving through the fatigue.

The first step for me is tonight… To lose all my marbles and lay it all out on the table and see where our hearts are, where our brains vibrate, and to see what images, music and text we can layer and mold to tell this story with all our being. The framework is as ugly as a blog post that compares storefront theater to the economics of Bhutan, but the final product… The final product has got my heart beating faster.