Right Tool

Sometimes in conversation, we get confused about what we are actually doing. There is not clear agreement on “the game we are playing”. Is it advice? Is it listening? Are we just waiting for our turn to speak? The advantage of knowing what game you are playing, is that you don’t get into a situation where the games conflict and neither person gets what they are after. 

One game I call “8 Mile”, after the movie about Eminem. In it you trash talk yourself for 5 minutes, then you specifically ask people to be nasty/aggressive for 5 minutes. In a controlled setting, you go to the places you least like going. I am normally not a fan of devil’s advocate approaches, or the academic style of critique. 

I prefer a Theatre Sport approach, where you build on what the other actors do. If someone pokes you with a banana, pretending it is a sword.... go with it. Pretend too, and act like you have been stabbed. Don’t go, “but that is a banana”. 

Theatre lets us get to truths behind the truth. If people know that that is the point. A lot of the time we are playing competing games without clarity of what the point is. Of where the game is leading us. Of whether we even want to be part of the game. Different tools have different uses in different situations. Not every problem is a banana.

Wrong Tool

The Turn of the Screw

Last night I watched 'The Turn of the Screw' as part of an intimate audience. I was front row, centre. The raw emotion of a tale told in this way can not be recorded. True artists have nothing to fear from a digital world. You can not replace live. You can't scale live either. These actors get up every night and dive deep into character. They feed off the energy of the room. Two subtle and powerful performers bring you viscerally into a world that unravels over the course week at the isolated home of Blye. Then you try sleep.

The Turn of the Screw

Suzy Whitefield and Rik Grayson

Mending Shoes and Hearts (Clair)

Guest Post by Clair Whitefield

I was working in Camden and would go and get my shoes fixed at a cobbler's on Camden high street. I'd look out at the Chinese Medicine shop across the road and stare at a reflexology poster of a foot. And I thought, what if these two joined forces? What if the cobbler that mended your shoes could also heal your broken heart and fix all your physical aches and pains? What if by inserting special insoles into your shoes that tickled the right meridian channels in your feet, this was possible? And so I started writing this story about a magical cobbler who could do just that.

Chopping Chillies tells the story of Ajna Jan, a martial artist from India who inherits a cobbler's shop in Camden Town. He moves to London to take it over when his family dies in a house fire. But the story is about his unlikely friendship with Katie, a young woman who runs the Indian street food cafe next door and how this relationship changes both their lives.

It's made people laugh out loud and occasionally shed a tear. It's a joy to perform and a gift to have been able to do so every day for a month this August.

Chopping Chillies

I love going to restaurants where the Chef comes out to explain the menu. Clearly this doesn't happen often. We love great stories, and the glint in the eye of someone who is passionate about their craft spreads through the tongues of the recipients to the ears of their friends. Soon the Chef will stay in the Kitchen and you will hear about the food from the waiter. We have an innate ability to sense authenticity. We let storytellers break the rules if the story is theirs. If the story is raw and full of flavour.

Clair Whitefield is a storyteller. She is a friend of my girlfriend and I hadn't yet heard her show, but I spent the morning handing out flyers for 'Chopping Chillies' on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. I then headed round the corner to see it for myself. Her beautiful layered 40 minute tale was a lesson in the complex flavours of happiness. It was like hearing directly from the Chef, but what she was letting us taste was what I have been studying with you on this blog.

Her one-woman spoken word show builds up various characters as they experience life with all its complexity. They have their own stories. The stories weave together. And it all comes together in a way that leaves you grateful that happiness isn't just a TV dinner. It makes you laugh. It punches you in the stomach. It holds your hand. It wets your cheek. It makes you sniff.  

It feeds you with the energy and desire to take another bite.

'Chopping Chillies' - Clair Whitefield

Better Banter

I am a big fan of Theatre Sports. 'Whose line is it anyway' is the popular TV version of this entertaining way of being silly, enjoying company and actually learning pretty good life skills. I wrote about how theatre sports ideas had helped me in business meetings in 'Gaps and Elevators'. Banter is another example of real life theatre sports.

Kiwis are really good at banter. Before coming for a visit here, I was already a fan of 'The Flight of the Conchords' and 'The Alternative Rugby Commentary' (ARC) - both thick with all blackness. The idea behind the ARC is that in a country that loves rugby so much, commentators don't need to explain every detail and act as pseudo school teachers. Instead a knowledgeable public are wanting to be entertained. Bro, you should YouTube a few examples for clips that are funny as.

The Jedi from the Alternative Rugby Commentary

I have been enjoying 'The Crowd Goes Wild' sports news. The presenters mock each other in that endearing 'but I love you, kind of, anyway' way. A buddy of mine is a banter king. You can throw anything at Papa Spanner and he rolls with it like a Theatre Sports pro. The worst thing you can do when someone sends abuse your way is empower them by taking offence. The movie 'Pride' is an entertaining look at the support given to the Miner's strikes in the UK by the LGBT community. In it they talk about owning any abuse. They get called Perves and own the word, in turn removing the sting. Call Papa a Perve and you will likely get a cuddle rather than a punch. Although you should probably not leave your sandwiches unguarded around him for a while after that.

The value of banter can also be seen in the series of ads and parody 'counter ads' being put out by Dove and, well.... people who enjoy a laugh. The real ads are moving, but I must admit to finding them perhaps a little condescending. I am not saying that societies perceptions & expectations aren't warping people's views, but there are heaps of very powerful, confident, independent women. I find it interesting that (generalising) guys who see other guys who are looking a little chubby are likely to ask them why they ate all the pies and suggest they hit the gym rather than giving (perhaps false) compliments.

Perhaps the ads work well in combination. Banter only really works when it comes from a friendly place with a twinkle in the eye. Otherwise it is just bitchiness. But if you develop your super powers like Papas and Proud Perves, you can turn bitchiness into banter and get on with what matters to you. You are, indeed, more beautiful than you think. Unless you are a guy. Unless you are Papa.

Bull Quota

Everyone should be allowed a quota of bull. When we watch movies, the suspension of disbelief allows us to enjoy the story. I suspect we would be happier if we extend the same to conversations with people whose stories are different from ours. In part this is because there are likely holes in our story too, and in part because life is just more fun that way. In Theatre Sport, it is only really funny if you go with the flow and build on what the last person has said. When you give someone the benefit of the doubt, you may find you get to the important bits of the story instead of fighting them on unimportant bits.

The truth is, they may not really have thought about the unimportant bits. We fill in the gaps. Life is too complicated for us to have thought through every situation with cold mathematical logic, applying double blind tests, and waiting for enough information to make up our minds. Buridan's Ass is the hypothetical story of a donkey (appropriately) who is both hungry and thirsty and placed exactly halfway between a pail of water and a stack of hay. Unable to decide whether it is more thirsty or more hungry, it ends up dying of both. 

Most of us aren't Asses. Using emotions and a little noise we move through life able to regularly make choices without considering everything. This is a good thing. If your story messes with other people's ability to live, you will run out of your Bull quota. That is a bad thing.

Political cartoon c. 1900, showing the United States Congress as Buridan's ass 

Source: Wikipedia

Wicked!

It took a little convincing, but I got three friends who hadn't even watched the wizard of oz to go to Wicked with me last night. I was surprised... I really thought Oz was a part of most people's growing up. Saying's like showing someone what's 'going on behind the curtain' etc. are obviously not as common as I thought.

I panicked a bit in the opening scene when I thought I may take some serious abuse. But as the story warmed up, I was really enjoying the clever twists and turns on such a 'well known story'.



Much like Clint Eastwood's two films from two sides with 'Iwo Jima' and 'Flags of our Fathers', and Heroes where you can't really tell which side is good and which is not.

It reminded me of a book I have been wanting to read by Philip Zimbardo called 'The Lucifer Effect'. It challenges the concept of good and evil and whether or not there are good or evil people.

There are lines in 'Wicked' that are very clever. The old concept of the victor writing the history books. Everyone else who disagrees with you and your concept of morality being evil, and everyone who agrees with you being good.

Raise the Curtains

On Friday night some friends and I went to watch Chicago. After a scurry to find the theatre underestimating the amount of time it takes to get anywhere in London, I sat down out of breath to hopefully the first of many West End experiences in the new London chapter of my life.

Nothing quite beats the energy of live performances. I have blogged before about how the digital world has made things that can be reproduced virtually free, and how I think this is good even if whole old world industries are destroyed. What you can't replace is flesh and blood theatre, sport, friendships and experiences. The digital world enhances by spreading the ideas, getting people to pick up the phone, sparking conversations and generating energy. But nothing replaces live performance.

I was the only person who saw what I saw on Friday. As I watched, my eyes would wander around the spectacle focusing on different actors faces. My thoughts would wander remembering experiences with friends that were sparked. My friend sitting next to me and I would laugh and celebrate fun scenes by throwing our hands up in the air and going 'Yay!'... an 'internal joke' from New Years eve where random things were cause for celebration. Each actors performance would have been slightly different from any other night they had performed. The mistake(s) that were made, made it that much more real.

The world is changing and fast. We are replacing books with ebooks, paper with bits, and recording every piece of literature, audio and visual works in 1s and 0s.

But I think it is wrong to think that that will ever replace human interaction. I think that it will spur more interaction, deeper relationships and a vibrant burst of ideas.

Exciting Times

oh... and happy birthday to me ;-)