Sheryl Sandberg. Life lessons. Commencement. Gratitude.

“It is the greatest irony of my life that losing my husband helped me find deeper gratitude—gratitude for the kindness of my friends, the love of my family, the laughter of my children. My hope for you is that you can find that gratitude—not just on the good days, like today, but on the hard ones, when you will really need it.”

Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook COO and LeanIn author) has given two commencement speeches (2016 to UC Berkeley, 2017 to Virginia Tech) both deal with the aftermath of loss (her husband died suddenly in 2015) and touch upon resilience and gratitude. Both are thought provoking reading.  The gratitude practice (which is echoed by Oprah Winfrey, and has evidence backing it from positive psychology; also noted by Anoushka in this post) along with journaling can be a powerful ritual/technique to foster resilience and happiness. I’m patchily trying it out, I think there is something to it.

“And when the challenges come, I hope you remember that anchored deep within you is the ability to learn and grow. You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process you will figure out who you really are—and you just might become the very best version of yourself.”

Excerpts from UC Berkeley below, followed by Youtube of speech and link to full transcript. Part two on Virginia tech in another post.

“...A commencement address is meant to be a dance between youth and wisdom. You have the youth. Someone comes in to be the voice of wisdom—that’s supposed to be me. I stand up here and tell you all the things I have learned in life, you throw your cap in the air, you let your family take a million photos –don’t forget to post them on Instagram —and everyone goes home happy.

Today will be a bit different. We will still do the caps and you still have to do the photos. But I am not here to tell you all the things I’ve learned in life. Today I will try to tell you what I learned in death….

...One year and thirteen days ago, I lost my husband, Dave. His death was sudden and unexpected. We were at a friend’s fiftieth birthday party in Mexico. I took a nap. Dave went to work out. What followed was the unthinkable—walking into a gym to find him lying on the floor. Flying home to tell my children that their father was gone. Watching his casket being lowered into the ground.
For many months afterward, and at many times since, I was swallowed up in the deep fog of grief—what I think of as the void—an emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even to breathe.
Dave’s death changed me in very profound ways. I learned about the depths of sadness and the brutality of loss. But I also learned that when life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again. I learned that in the face of the void—or in the face of any challenge—you can choose joy and meaning.
I’m sharing this with you in the hopes that today, as you take the next step in your life, you can learn the lessons that I only learned in death. Lessons about hope, strength, and the light within us that will not be extinguished.
Everyone who has made it through Cal has already experienced some disappointment. You wanted an A but you got a B. OK, let’s be honest—you got an A- but you’re still mad. You applied for an internship at Facebook, but you only got one from Google. She was the love of your life… but then she swiped left.

....You will almost certainly face more and deeper adversity. There’s loss of opportunity: the job that doesn’t work out, the illness or accident that changes everything in an instant. There’s loss of dignity: the sharp sting of prejudice when it happens. There’s loss of love: the broken relationships that can’t be fixed. And sometimes there’s loss of life itself….

...the question is not if some of these things will happen to you. They will. Today I want to talk about what happens next. About the things you can do to overcome adversity, no matter what form it takes or when it hits you. The easy days ahead of you will be easy. It is the hard days—the times that challenge you to your very core—that will determine who you are. You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive.
A few weeks after Dave died, I was talking to my friend Phil about a father-son activity that Dave was not here to do. We came up with a plan to fill in for Dave. I cried to him, “But I want Dave.” Phil put his arm around me and said, “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.”
We all at some point live some form of option B. The question is: What do we do then?
As a representative of Silicon Valley, I’m pleased to tell you there is data to learn from. After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that there are three P’s—personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence—that are critical to how we bounce back from hardship. The seeds of resilience are planted in the way we process the negative events in our lives.
The first P is personalization—the belief that we are at fault. This is different from taking responsibility, which you should always do. This is the lesson that not everything that happens to us happens because of us.
When Dave died, I had a very common reaction, which was to blame myself. He died in seconds from a cardiac arrhythmia. I poured over his medical records asking what I could have—or should have—done. It wasn’t until I learned about the three P’s that I accepted that I could not have prevented his death. His doctors had not identified his coronary artery disease. I was an economics major; how could I have?
Studies show that getting past personalization can actually make you stronger. Teachers who knew they could do better after students failed adjusted their methods and saw future classes go on to excel. College swimmers who underperformed but believed they were capable of swimming faster did. Not taking failures personally allows us to recover—and even to thrive.
The second P is pervasiveness—the belief that an event will affect all areas of your life. You know that song “Everything is awesome?” This is the flip: “Everything is awful.” There’s no place to run or hide from the all-consuming sadness.
The child psychologists I spoke to encouraged me to get my kids back to their routine as soon as possible. So ten days after Dave died, they went back to school and I went back to work. I remember sitting in my first Facebook meeting in a deep, deep haze. All I could think was, “What is everyone talking about and how could this possibly matter?” But then I got drawn into the discussion and for a second—a brief split second—I forgot about death.That brief second helped me see that there were other things in my life that were not awful. My children and I were healthy. My friends and family were so loving and they carried us—quite literally at times.

...the loss of a partner often has severe negative financial consequences, especially for women. So many single mothers—and fathers—struggle to make ends meet or have jobs that don’t allow them the time they need to care for their children. I had financial security, the ability to take the time off I needed, and a job that I did not just believe in, but where it’s actually OK to spend all day on Facebook. Gradually, my children started sleeping through the night, crying less, playing more.
The third P is permanence—the belief that the sorrow will last forever. For months, no matter what I did, it felt like the crushing grief would always be there.
We often project our current feelings out indefinitely—and experience what I think of as the second derivative of those feelings. We feel anxious—and then we feel anxious that we’re anxious. We feel sad—and then we feel sad that we’re sad. Instead, we should accept our feelings—but recognize that they will not last forever. My rabbi told me that time would heal but for now I should “lean in to the suck.” It was good advice, but not really what I meant by “lean in.”
None of you need me to explain the fourth P…which is, of course, pizza…....But I wish I had known about the three P’s when I was your age. There were so many times these lessons would have helped….

One day my friend Adam Grant, a psychologist, suggested that I think about how much worse things could be. This was completely counterintuitive; it seemed like the way to recover was to try to find positive thoughts. “Worse?” I said. “Are you kidding me? How could things be worse?” His answer cut straight through me: “Dave could have had that same cardiac arrhythmia while he was driving your children.” Wow. The moment he said it, I was overwhelmingly grateful that the rest of my family was alive and healthy. That gratitude overtook some of the grief.Finding gratitude and appreciation is key to resilience. People who take the time to list things they are grateful for are happier and healthier. It turns out that counting your blessings can actually increase your blessings. My New Year’s resolution this year is to write down three moments of joy before I go to bed each night. This simple practice has changed my life. Because no matter what happens each day, I go to sleep thinking of something cheerful. Try it. Start tonight when you have so many fun moments to list— although maybe do it before you hit Kip’s and can still remember what they are…

“It is the greatest irony of my life that losing my husband helped me find deeper gratitude—gratitude for the kindness of my friends, the love of my family, the laughter of my children. My hope for you is that you can find that gratitude—not just on the good days, like today, but on the hard ones, when you will really need it.”

“And when the challenges come, I hope you remember that anchored deep within you is the ability to learn and grow. You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process you will figure out who you really are—and you just might become the very best version of yourself.”

Build resilience in yourselves. When tragedy or disappointment strike, know that you have the ability to get through absolutely anything. I promise you do. As the saying goes, we are more vulnerable than we ever thought, but we are stronger than we ever imagined.
Build resilient organizations. If anyone can do it, you can, because Berkeley is filled with people who want to make the world a better place. Never stop working to do so—whether it’s a boardroom that is not representative or a campus that’s not safe. Speak up, especially at institutions like this one, which you hold so dear. My favorite poster at work reads, “Nothing at Facebook is someone else’s problem.” When you see something that’s broken, go fix it.

Build resilient communities. We find our humanity—our will to live and our ability to love—in our connections to one another. Be there for your family and friends. And I mean in person. Not just in a message with a heart emoji.
Lift each other up, help each other kick the shit out of option B—and celebrate each and every moment of joy.
You have the whole world in front of you. I can’t wait to see what you do with it.Congratulations, and Go Bears!

Link to full transcript here.  

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Ursula K Le Guin on literature as an operating manual for life;  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address;  Charlie Munger on always inverting;   JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.   There is also Anne Lamott on writing and truth as paradox.    And Oprah on gratitude and service.

Adrienne Kennedy. Thank you.

Without Adrienne Kennedy, I’m unsure if I would have written plays. While Gideon Lester opened my mind to dramatic structure, Adrienne freed my imagination.

This African-American lady slight of stature but with an eloquence and gravitas that belied her physical size.

We read. We practised writing.

With the passage of time, I forget the specifics but the impressions remain powerfully.

She could speak of Edward Albee, the revered and the famous of 1960s Britain (Beatles, Tynan, James Earl Jones), and suggest that we should write what we want to write.

Reading her work - noting its power - I was challenged to consider: can plays be almost  plotless? Why can’t a character be a negro-Sarah one scene, and a white Queen Victoria the next scene? How far can you bend and break structure?  Symbols, poetry, history - an imagination almost hard to grasp.

Seeing race through the lens of a black american lady writing through absurdism (not wearing reality on its sleeve), sitting there telling me - write!

Suzann Lori-Parks in this wonderful conversation with Adrienne Kennedy says:

“A person who’s new to theater can read your work and think: I can do anything I want. That’s what your plays did for me. I can do with theater what I think needs to be done—it’s liberating. It’s a profound experience.”

I felt that. It certainly impacted my writing (along with the word-love Forrest Gander was nurturing in me at the time; the structure from Gideon). I’ve never particularly written that well made realist play or tv script (my radio plays perhaps being closest to that mould) and for better or for worse, Adrienne was a spark that started that path.

Adrienne has not had particular wide-spread popular audience success. She is taught in academic circles in the US. There has been a more recent rival of her work, but when I studied with her, she was not (and remains not) famous.

That also taught me something about the nature of artistic success and what it should or could mean (Chris Killip teaching me photography across the Yard echoed some of those thoughts) and that fame was not going to be the measure of my success.

Here is a short Youtube from Zakiyyah Alexander that gives a 2 min snap shot on Adrienne.

“She broke all the rules in a time period where women were writing very specifically well-made naturalistic plays; Adrienne Kennedy did something else… She was too black and female for the white male avant-garde theatre and yet she was too avant-garde for black theatre so she had no place to fit in”

Below a Youtube (2015) interview with her (listen to her speak about John Lennon trying to keep her involved in his play in the 1960s) and Canaan Kennedy.

Here is Youtube of Funny House of a Negro, perhaps still her most famous play from 1964 (some people still tell me it is my best, though that’s disappointinng given how long ago I wrote it)

(From Funnyhouse of a Negro.)

When they first married they lived in New York. Then they went to Africa where my mother fell out of love with my father. She didn’t want him to save the black race and spent her days combing her hair. She would not let him touch her in their wedding bed and called him black. He is black of skin with dark eyes and a great dark square brow. Then in Africa he started to drink and came home drunk one night and raped my mother. I clung to my mother. Long after she went to the asylum I wove long dreams of her beauty, her straight hair and fair skin and grey eyes, so identical to mine. How it anguished him. I turned from him, nailing him on the cross, he said, dragging him through grass and nailing him on a cross until he bled. He pleaded with me to help him find Genesis, search for Genesis in the midst of golden savannas, nim and white frankopenny trees and white stallions roaming under a blue sky, help him search for the white doves, he wanted the black man to make a pure statement, he wanted the black man to rise from colonialism. But I sat in the room with my mother, sat by her bedside and helped her comb her straight black hair and wove long dreams of her beauty. She had long since begun to curse the place and spoke of herself trapped in blackness. She preferred the company of night owls. Only at night did she rise, walking in the garden among the trees with the owls. When I spoke to her she saw I was a black man’s child and she preferred speaking to owls. Nights my father came home from his school in the village struggling to embrace me. But I fled and hid under my mother’s bed while she screamed of remorse.
 

Read my thanks to Gideon Lester and his influence on me. 

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Ursula K Le Guin on literature as an operating manual for life;  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.  Or Charlie Munger on always inverting.

Coney. Annual review. 2017.

What enriches humanity?

Last year, I wrote about how Coney keeps the theatre ecology enriched and fertilised. Flitting

from the tiny (undernourished singleton artists) to the mammoth (centuries-old institutions).

Our playful makers still do that. More now than ever. We form part of the argument for why

art matters.

We shout it. We whisper it. We write it. We make it. We dream it. We play it. We sleep it.

We dare to dream more and we ask why not?

We are not the enduring National Monument  nor the ship tanker that can’t change course.

We increasingly attempt to cut across silos. Across the Arts. Across industries.

In this noisy, polarised, bite sized echo chamber of our world we try and gather people - all

people - all diverse wonderful people and start  a dialogue. A positive playful conversation.

We become the change we want to be, one playful rabbit step at a time.

Coney, our makers, our board will continue to guide, live our values and make the world a

better place. Why not? Join us.

Read the Coney Annual Review here

Dickie Beau. Blackouts.

I enter a waiting room full of beautiful exquisite hip dressed men. There is a smattering of New York cool.  Girls I’d never dare to say “Hello” to as “Hello” seems too mundane. There is a gay culture, an arts culture, I am an outsider too. A small poorly dressed hair falling out Chinese looking Brit. I am here to watch Dickie Beau Blackouts: Twilight of the Idols.

My dress sense is consistently forward. It almost never fits. Curiously awkwardly off-centre.

I am not unwelcome. And as Andrew Solomon has helped me understand, this horizontal identity amongst the LBGT is to be cherished perhaps how I cherish the autistic experience.

Still.  How I ache to be a beautiful man amongst beautiful men, confident in my beauty. It is not to be.  

There is a cabaret tradition. There is a lip synch tradition. There is a physical drag tradition. That sits squarely in this culture.

It crosses geographies. The lip synching lady-boys of Thailand impressed me over 30 years ago, another half world away. Funny, poignant, sharp - it echoes from a 7 year old mind to a middle aged man.

There are other roots. The female icons of Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. The verbatim tradition (no intentional reference, I don’t sense, to Charles Reznikoff in poetry or My name  is Rachel Corrie in theatre) but ringing to my ears, sensitive to the found work of the visual artists and sculptors (Du Champ to Andre to Rauschenberg) and the verbatim work in theatre.

In the jittery walks, and white painted face, I even have a sense of Noh and a nod to Jacques Lecoq and the clowns. The tragic clowns.

All this swirls in my mind, as I walk into a theatre I have never seen, with a beautiful people I am not part of, in a city which is not mine.

The box office desk declares: “You have a cushion seat.” “What’s that?” “You will see.” I hardly know any thing in any case, another unknown hardly weighs a feather.

And why does everyone have such exquisite shoes? Somehow unique but hip. Proclaiming, I am full of character yet mysterious and delightful.  Huh. Maybe, I have to buy more than one pair of shoes every 12 months.

We are ushered backstage. I do not fully appreciate this, never having been to this theatre. The back may as well be the front. But it does at the end of the performance provide one of the most dramatic theatrical reveals of place, that I have experienced. Perhaps, better for not knowing where I am or what I am doing.

I take a cushion seat. Between a beautiful man, and a beautiful woman. Of course.  Here my tiny threads to Gideon Lester and Coney save me and place me. Next to a producer:

-Gideon taught me dramaturgy 20 years ago.

-Gideon’s husband taught me dramaturgy. (Artistole links us) I know Coney. I’m interested in their work.

And I know Under the Radar, and I don’t feel quite so strange.

The performance starts.

Dickie Beau has an astonishing visceral physicality. It is mercurial as it shifts character so smoothly. Yet very present, and barely surpasses as if an inner spirit could break out at any time.  This is heightened by the lip-synch technique. It seems to channel the spirit of the original words through the physicality of Beau.

If you look at Francis Bacon’s work and read his conversations with David Sylvester (and in Brutality of Fact), you can sense that through his paintings, Bacon - when successful (and he destroyed so much of his work) - comes closer to the truth by transforming surface reality into something deeper that hits at a visceral essence while bypassing the exact surface portrayal.

At its best, Beau hits these notes where although he is a man with a painted white face, his transformed physicality lip-synched to an ethereal verbatim voice bypasses the surface qualities and engages a deeper visceral sense of being.

This is at times funny, awkward, painful, poignant and never less than astonishing.  The transformations seen in real time are beguiling and extraordinary. I party wished that some of the seamless theatrical blackout-type transitions did not occur, so I could always watch the real transformation of Beau as they occurred in front of me.

The characters portrayed are icons. Are gay icons. They are also lost and damaged goods. They are impossible to figure out truthfully. I liked that.

Nevertheless, I did overhear some audience be lost over the lack of narrative thread. 

I doubt you can have a classic narrative and achieve the same mercurial, visceral yet true effects. Perhaps. 

On the work itself, the central parts are recordings Dickie Beau took of his conversations with Richard Meryman, the last journalist to have interviewed Marilyn Monroe before her death.  This is framework with additional archival recordings from Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. Some of the recordings, I think Beau may have had almost unique access to.

There were clever touches of light and direction. Sound most obviously used astutely. But also, a scrim, for light and lighted-word effects, a spotlight on words and a type writer; splashes of red evoking slippers and Judy Garland; a heart stopping piece of theatre as a paper-scroll-noodle is regurgitated in a splayed splintered jerky fashion from Beau’s mouth for what seems a small eternity;  a knife wielded, teetering on the edge of violence.

Then the end. Where Beau faces the auditorium, finally revealed. It strikes you that you are back stage, an interloper and a voyeur. Privy to a dark secret. Yet, the whole auditorium, the fantasy audience faces Beau, faces you as we fade to the sounds of the imaginary audience clapping.

Here more from Beau in this interview below. It also gives a better sense of his work, where I have only given the impressions it has left on me.

Time for more?  Here’s a short post on 5 things autism has taught me.  Here is   JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.

Oprah Winfrey. Life Lessons. Intention and Gratitude.

Oprah Winfrey spoke at the  Smith College commencement in May 2017. I’ve not watched much Oprah, but have been impressed by her reach and success. So, I found it notable that she attributed a key turning point in her success, when she re-framed her work from “being used by tv” to creating a platform to “be of service to its viewers”.

Oprah also had a sponsored “academy daughter” (Mpungose) and she commented:  “She came here praying that she’d measure up. She leaves confident and assured, with her heart on fire to serve a cause greater than her own. When you educate a girl, you are not just educating her, you are educating her to create opportunities for others.”

Some quotes below, and a video of her speech:

“This understanding that there is an alignment between who you are and what you do is the real, true empowerment” 

“I would no longer be used by television; I would use television to create a platform that could be of service to its viewers.”

“Shift the paradigm to service and the rewards will come”

When 19 – I was happy to have a job… I was on TV… it wasn’t until I was 30 did I realize I didn’t want to just be on tv… I was interviewing the Ku Klux Klan

(you can learn from anything)

I thought I was using them…. but I found out they were using me as a recruitment platform… I made a decision I would no longer be used by television… I would figure out a way for television to be used by me… turn it into a platform that could be of service to viewers – in that moment – my life changed… to inform, to inspire, to entertain… the notion of intention, knowing why -  could also change the paradigm for every show

I will only do shows which align with my truth…

I will not fake it.

Authentic empowerment… the real true empowerment – the only empowerment is when you use who you are, what you’ve been  to serve the calling you have…

When figured that out, the show took off…

Fulfilment is the major definition of success for me.

---

Oprah also has a strand to her personal practice of being grateful. This chimes with a decent amount of research into this.  Oprah believes gratitude → success; not success then gratitude.  This is similar to some of the happiness thinking that positivity / happiness → success; not success then happiness.

This gratitude practice also seems to have really helped Sheryl Sandberg through the death of her partner a few years ago. More on this anon.

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Ursula K Le Guin on literature as an operating manual for life;  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address;  Charlie Munger on always inverting;          JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.   There is also Anne Lamott on writing and truth as paradox.    

Serendipity Gods

Funky glamourous off-amber-red glasses. Should I tell her they look great? Nah. After 8 hours stuck in a cabin, everyone is weary and no one likes small talk.

Waiting. The transit skyway is having a slow molasses day.

She brings out a book to read. “The Empty Space”

Serious? These are the serendipity gods directing me to say something. In short:

-Peter Brook was just in London, speaking about his new book.

-Seems like it was written yesterday.

-You direct?

-Yes. I will be rehearsing in London at the end of the year. A Tina Turner show.

-I write plays. I chaired Talawa, now Coney,

-What’s your name?

-Ben Yeoh. You won’t have heard of me. And you?

-Phyllida Lloyd.

Wow! I wrote to you about 10 years ago and we had a short correspondence about my play at the Gate Theatre.

I’ve seen her work, and she is an impressive director.

I think those gods are telling me something, am I listening?

(Are they telling me to put those skates and write plays again)

Lloyd is known for her work on Mama Mia, and I’ve known her Royal Court work and some opera work. I had the sense that her all female Shakespeare work is forefront in her oeuvre at the moment. Her wiki here. I will be looking forward to more of that.

Peter Brook’s Empty Space considered seminal theatre book. Amazon link here http://amzn.to/2fJJczh  and his latest book Tip of the Tongue here http://amzn.to/2fKOeLI  Anyone interested in theatre should read Brook's book.

Fancy thinking about writing craft - see writing tool tips post here. Or  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes.

Linkedin poem

My funny little Linkedin poem in honour of UK National Poetry Day. It riffs on this fad of some posters in an effort to gain more views have taken on this elongated form of post particularly suited to a mobile phone.

Better is Rishi Dastidar's (I love I can tell it's written in Notes on a phone)

The 4 books of poetry I’ve last read are Rishi Dastidar (Ticker Tape) JH Prynne, Rebecca Bird (through Rishi), and CD Wright (One with Others).  If you fancy it, check them out.

JH Prynne to my lay mind is one of the most important British poets of the last 50 years. The CD Wright book One With Others is extraordinary (I will try a post on it some time, I can't even think to describe it in a few words). There’s a large part of me which is sad we read so few poets. That’s the way of the world, I guess.

More on Prynne here (I sat next to him and his orange tie once).  Rishi's book here. Rebecca Bird's site here.  

One With Others: "Investigative journalism is the poet's realm when C.D. Wright returns to her native Arkansas and examines an explosive incident from the Civil Rights movement. Wright interweaves oral histories, hymns, lists, newspaper accounts, and personal memories—especially those of her incandescent mentor, Mrs. Vititow—with the voices of witnesses, neighbors, police, activists, and black students who were rounded up and detained in an empty public swimming pool. This history leaps howling off the page."  New Yorker article here.

I owe a post of Thanks to Forrest Gander (who like Gideon Lester was very influential to me), so there's another post in the back log.

Hideously White. Adds Splash of Colour. Young Vic.

The London theatre world is buzzing with the news that the new Young Vic theatre Artistic Director is Kwame Kwei-Armah.

Gentle Reader, a test: name one other person of colour who is Artistic Director of a major UK theatre building? (answers at end).

I found it notable that in the Evening Standard’s reporting, it failed to mention this aspect of his appointment. I dislike the term “white”. White does not indicate race. It indicates purity. Anything mixed with white equals non-white. White is not a race but a purity indicator.

“Playwrights don't give answers they ask questions”  Britain’s greatest living female playwright has said (test two: who’s she?).  Surely, a less diverse system is less resilient, less interesting, less human than a more diverse one? It’s more fragile, not anti-fragile.

In the investment world, diversification is as close to a fundamental rule as fund managers could agree upon. In the business world, 12 people in a committee - if all 12 think the same, and agree the same, then 11 of those people are unnecessary. There is a thread of complexity to be followed here.

How do businesses, arts eco-systems and committee decision makers ensure diversity of thinking?

Quotas through the lens of race or gender are a blunt tool, constantly argued over.  Still, ignoring race (which the Evening Standard did) does not make it go away. Andrew Lloyd Webber has described theatre as “hideously white”. Kwei-Armah comes from leading Baltimore's Center Stage in the US. He is the only black artistic director in the League of Resident Theatres. The largest US professional theatre association of 70 venues. Kwei-Armah has spoke in favour of quotas suggesting his own work and career was helped by former culture secretary Chris Smith's policy and the Culture Diversity Network.

I’ve seen Kwei-Armah’s work and heard his passion in conversation. I’m convinced he will be a superb leader for the Young Vic. He will also bring much needed diversity to the theatre eco-system making it more resilient, more representative and more interesting in its humanity.

Business can learn from the arts. Diversity of thinking and inclusion lead to better decision making and more engaged employees. Company managements know this. Old white man group-think is prevalent at the top of companies.

There is a wider debate and belief in equality of opportunity.  Playwrights and investment managers tend to call it as they see it. We have more to do. Shareholders should be holding boards accountable to ensure diversity and inclusion happens to create more resilient, better companies.

Playwrights ask questions. Perhaps Robert Kennedy had an answer:

“America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity”

Answers: Madani Younis at the Bush Theatre and  Indhu Rubasingham at the Tricycle.  Kully Thiarai at National Theatre Wales is non-building (thanks Dawn Walton for pointing that out)  so not sure it counts the same.  Dawn also points out Nadia Fall recently to Theatre Royal Stratford East (appointed summer 2017).  Michael Buffong at Talawa (where I was Chair) also does not count as Talawa has no building. I’ll accept Jatinder Verma at Tara Arts, recently in a building, and Mehmet Ergen at Arcola, though some consider both Fringe.   Mehmet is of Turkish origins and I've heard some suggest that's not BAME (ii) Caryl Churchill is Britain’s greatest living female playwright considering her entire oeuvre of work which is unmatched by most living playwrights of any gender or colour.

Half Breed. Natasha Marshall.

Half Breed by Natasha Marshall. Runs until 30 Sep 2017 at Soho Theatre.

Natasha, or Tash, Marshall is talented. In Half-Breed, she fizzes with energy and bursts from character to character exuding a visceral physicality that pulls you in and spits you out.

At turns frenetic and always at high octane, her performance is still precise and engaging. This is helped by an unadorned set, a complementary sound track and by direction that focuses word play, character shifts and brings out Marshall’s physical presence. It is a virtuoso performance. Fierce. Not little but Talawa (who are co-producers and creatively nurtured Marshall)

Yet for all its 110% energy always fully committed, I found myself longing for the few moments of Marshall’s softer voice. The quieter moments of reflection and realisation. The gentle rhymes and chimes of an intriguing word cascade, the unusual catches of phrase and thought. 

She spits out racial slurs with the best of them. Audience wincing as the bullets hit. The casual racism reminding the London crowd that perhaps London is really another country (pro-Other, pro-difference, pro-immigration, a city in constant practice and fight to be woke and woke against its great city Frenemies such as New York).

I liked the soft moments best. At its gentle heart, I thought I heard Marshall’s voice the clearest and at its most original. The observations of a life long childhood friendship fraying under the weight of stones and dreams and trees. The pieces of poetry which could jar but seem to me to slip through on a sharpened heightened plane. The fond characterisation of Gran.

“We sat on the kitchen floor once and we dreamed about this.

I’m sorry, Jaz, I’m holding you back.

You’re not Gran, I’m here with you now, can’t you see me [...]

She’s the only face I see,

As I’m staring at her and she’s staring at me."

All the misfits can identify. The middle of Soho has to be the heart of getting knocked down and standing up stronger. Perhaps the play’s true performance home is a Wiltshire village. The points of racism, otherness and outsiderness are well made but, to my ear, not as universally-unique as the Brog-Jaz friendship.

Maybe I don’t look - I don’t see - I don’t really look enough; because how many plays for mixed raced women are there? Count them for me. That didn’t take long, did it?

She’s just stood there just staring at me.

And I’m staring at her like “Brog help”

But she’s watching me,

Like I watched her,

And didn’t help.

And I’m staring at her,

And she’s staring at me,

And the whole room’s laughing.

Except for she

And I.

Half Breed runs until 30 Sep at Soho Theatre. It runs 60 minutes and is a fizzing way to spend an hour, you can even get home to help the children to bed.

Life lessons. Anne Lamott.

These are 12 life lessons from Anne Lamott (wiki).  “People are very frightened and feel really doomed in America these days, and I just wanted to help people get their sense of humor about it and to realize how much isn't a problem. If you take an action, take a really healthy or loving or friendly action, you'll have loving and friendly feelings.” 

Watch the whole Ted below or click here for the complete transcript and source link.  Excerpts below.

Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it's impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It's been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It's so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we're being punked. It's filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together.

Number two: almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes – including you.

Three: there is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you're waiting for an organ. You can't buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind….

Number four: everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together…

Number five: chocolate with 75 percent cacao is not actually a food.

Number six: writing. Every writer you know writes really terrible first drafts, but they keep their butt in the chair. That's the secret of life. That's probably the main difference between you and them. They just do it.  They do it by prearrangement with themselves. They do it as a debt of honor. They tell stories that come through them one day at a time, little by little. When my older brother was in fourth grade, he had a term paper on birds due the next day, and he hadn't started. So my dad sat down with him with an Audubon book, paper, pencils and brads -- for those of you who have gotten a little less young and remember brads -- and he said to my brother,"Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Just read about pelicans and then write about pelicans in your own voice. And then find out about chickadees, and tell us about them in your own voice. And then geese."

So the two most important things about writing are: bird by bird and really god-awful first drafts.

Seven: publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not.

Number eight: families. Families are hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be.

Nine: food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean.

10: grace. Grace is spiritual WD-40, or water wings.

11: God just means goodness. It's really not all that scary.

And finally: death. Number 12. Wow and yikes. It's so hard to bear when the few people you cannot live without die. You'll never get over these losses, and no matter what the culture says, you're not supposed to.

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Ursula K Le Guin on literature as an operating manual for life;  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address;  Charlie Munger on always inverting;          JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.