A piece of theatre blog history, Megan Vaughan's book on theatre blogs

-History of theatre blogging cf. economic blogs

-What does a playwright need?

-My own small part in the history of theatre blogs

-David Eldridge vs Chris Goode redux 

There’s a new book on the history and influence of theatre blogs by Megan Vaughan, Theatre Blogging: The Emergence of a Critical Culture. Recommend if you are interested in blogging or have read any of the early days theatre blogs.  

Turns out I’m part of a tiny piece of internet history being amongst the first wave of theatre bloggers. 

Vaughan writes:

“...In 2005, playwrights Benjamin Yeoh (Theatre and Writing) and Stephen Sharkey (O, Poor Robinson Crusoe!) started new theatre blogs, while director Paul Miller (My London Life) decided to concentrate his personal, journal-style blog on theatre. They were joined by Ben Ellis (Parachute of A Playwright), an Australian playwright based in the UK at the time, and Andy Field (The Arcades Project), who was initially a student in Edinburgh but would move down to London within a year. In 2006 they were followed by theatremaker Chris Goode (Thompson’s Bank of Communicable Desire), and David Eldridge (One Writer and His Dog), whose recollections began this chapter. 

While those UK bloggers were all artists of one flavour or another, 2006 was also the year in which two audience members, Andrew and Phil, became so infuriated by the Old Vic’s production of Resurrection Blues that they only went back after the interval because they had ‘always wanted to boo at the end of a show’ (West End Whingers 2006). While the booing was purportedly cathartic in some respects, it didn’t quite relieve the pain of the experience for Andrew and Phil, who started their irreverent review blog, West End Whingers, just a couple of days later. [BY: Quite a few of us ended up meeting up in real life and the WEW ended up coming to my own play - which was nervy as it was my theatre blog friends]  

A month after that, Natasha Tripney, a freshly graduated writer who had begun contributing to The Stage and music website MusicOMH, started her blog, Interval Drinks. The London theatre blogosphere was gradually catching up with New York and Melbourne, just as the New York bloggers were experiencing their first moment in the spotlight…”

This phenomenon was echoed within the Economics blogosphere. 

In 2005, Mark Thoma started his economics blog - that Noah Smith charts, link end - which spawned a similar wave in economics.  That those economics blogs have spawned even wider influence than theatre is mostly to do with the size of the “market” but the shape of the progress is the same.   

A democratisation of ideas, a faster moving debate by interested professionals and amateurs: fierce opinions thrashed in almost real time. 

I think Megan Vaughan argues that blogs are alive and well in their new forms.  I think blogs are alive but that peak blogging in its old form has been eroded by podcasts, twitter and the like. (I think she agrees) 

For me it’s a moderate shame - as I loved blogs so much - maybe blogs will resurge in some form at some time - and certainly they are still valuable - maybe some time of new  forums or smaller communities or the hyper-meta-blogs like Tyler Cowen’s or Star Slate Codex (it’s noticeable to me that Patrick Collison thinks good blogs could need more incentives… see end)

Vaughan selects a number of important blog reviews and debates to include in her book and it’s recommended for that f you are interested (despite the high price of c. £25).

Personally, I would have loved some interviews with the many current bloggers and practitioners who are still around and were blogging at the time.  Maybe there will be a follow up. 

At the time the memories I have most clearly are the intense debates between David Eldridge and Chris Goode about theatre (simplistically) “devised and ensemble” vs “writer-led”. She covers this and the subsequent podcast in 2018 where they somewhat reconcile. But she doesn’t convey the intensity of the debate I felt as a young theatre maker. Two voices I highly respected debating it out and seeing those debates echo in theatres and makers and spaces of the time.  I don’t think I was the only one. 

As a recent arrival in Twitter land, I can see some of that still now - but not in the nuance of before and it seems that it’s more noisy now in an inferior way as oppose to more diverse - which it is as well. 

I will leave you with one of my first 2005 blogs - redux -  May 2005:

I’m studying under Jane Bodie (a great playwright) as part of the Royal Court Writers’ programme. One of the questions we are asking is:

Qualities that that playwrights need?

I think it’s a question writers should come back to, every now and again, whether they write plays or in another medium. Of course, there’s no “correct” answer, and whatever answer one does have will probably change day-to-day, year-to-year, relationship-to-relationship…

We came up with (amongst others):

life, language, experience, imagination, sadness, joy, emotional access, flair,

perception

observation

analysis

commitment

articulation

Interestingly, Jane suggests articulation is the one thing she can teach something of. The rest might be unteachable.

Today I would strongly add:

Empathy

Curiosity

And it almost goes without saying an idea of how people communicate. 

Links:

My £1K microgrants programme

Amazon link to Megan Vaughan’s book @churlishmeg

Noah Smith’s tribute to Mark Thoma and history of economics blogs 

Jane Bodie 

Chris Goode + David Eldridge on podcast, blog here.

Chris Goode on Twitter @beescope

David Eldridge on Twitter @deldridgewriter

Patrick Collinson Questions:

“Could there be more good blogs?

It seems that they heyday of of blogging is passing. If so, that's unfortunate. Blogs can be a remarkably efficient mechanism for disseminating ideas and facilitating discussion and debate. Twitter is good, too, but there's lots that blogs are great for that Twitter can't replace.

Part of the problem with blogs is that they're less rewarding than Facebook and Twitter: your post may perhaps get some thoughtful responses but it doesn't get immediate likes. And part of the problem is, of course, that writing a good post is much harder than writing a witty tweet.

Are there incentive structure tweaks that yield more good blogging?

Follow me on Twitter below:

• Max Roser @MaxCRoser examines this for @OurWorldInData in this essay: https://t.co/aZcovskaC7 Obesity, opioids, hi… https://t.co/qcq3PArGco

  14 Jul 2022, 9:27 am
• Thank you @stripepress team, @s8mb @salonium @rebeccahiscott + Team, for publishing Pieces of the Action. Beautiful… https://t.co/DTqutWaqG2

  13 Jul 2022, 10:52 pm

Grant Winner: Ioana Mischie, maths books for autistic children

I’ve awarded a grant (£500 - £1000) to help Ioana Mischie complete a set of maths books to help autistic children. She writes:

“It is a known fact that Maths is hard for a high percentage of the population, especially for primary school children. 

There is a myth going around that autistic children are Maths geniuses and have an amazing memory. This is true but only for a small number of them. Most autistic children are struggling with basic maths concepts due to its abstract nature. Having stated that, you would expect that mainstream school that accept these children will have some adapted resources in order to facilitate learning. However, even the highest-ranked schools are not prepared for full inclusion.

I have been an autism Tutor (1:1 - shadow), working in mainstream schools for over 5 years. During this time, I had to develop the skill of teaching tricky Maths to children that could hardly do basic addition. I had to come up with my own strategies of breaking down abstract concepts to very small and simple steps using various strategies such as errorless teaching, backward chaining and endless repetition. I did this for so long as it became second nature creating strategies on the spot. Over the years, I gathered all my strategies having in mind that this might help other children too. That's how I came up with the idea of publishing a workbook.

When it comes to word problems, I came across a strategy that fits the level of understanding of ASD children, called SCHEMA, which refers to the underlying structure of the problem. The workbook will be focusing on additive SCHEMA (combine, difference or change).

Having access to a workbook containing over 100 word problems gives autistic children the opportunity to systematically move through SCHEMA  word problems concepts and consolidate each level of difficulty.

Additionally, it facilitates teaching as the workbook is designed to be worked on independently, once the strategy has been fully explained. The workbook will be accessible to children as young as 7 years old as the emphasis is mainly on comprehension including basic addition and subtraction equations. It will be finalised within the next couple of months and with Ben's support for founding, published in the spring time, on Amazon.”

Congratulations to Ioana.

More on the £1K grants for people making positive impact here.

Maps, Streets vs Roads - dates the age of a city

I found this map of city streets / roads / lanes and naming fascinating. It turns out that the naming of “street” or “road” is tied back to the time of when roads were made….

How many roads do you think lie within the border encompassing the City of London? The answer is NONE. Because there are no “roads” in London.

There are however a lot of streets, alleys and lanes. The reason that there are no streets called 'road' in the City of London is because the use of the word 'road' to indicate a byway did not emerge until the late 16th Century - a long time after most of the roads in the City of London were established and named.

The historical emergence of the use of Road as a name for streets in the late 16th Century can be observed in the road maps of most English towns and cities. Streets which were established before the 16th century are very unlikely to be called Road. Conversely parts of towns and cities which were built after the 16th Century are likely called Road.

A map looking at this here, which zooms and looks around the UK.

"Fake Meat", origins with Chinese Monks

I was discussing with a new friend the origins of “fake meat” – it happens to be deeply rooted in ancient Chinese cuisine. Beyond meat is 1000 years behind chinese monks. Fuschia Dunlop (one of the great writers on Chinese food) comments below - but I first heard it from my Mum and I’ve eaten some of the food in Asia.

...Vegetarian cooking in China owes a lot to Chinese Buddhist monks, who have existed in the country since the late Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE), after Indian missionaries brought the religion to this part of Asia. One tenant of Buddhist ideology is vegetarianism. Not wanting to break tradition when outsiders came to visit their monastery, China’s Buddhist monks would copy classic meat-based dishes, replacing the meat or fish with vegetables, tofu, or gluten.

Dunlop: “The imitation meat dishes are particularly associated with Buddhist monasteries, although monks themselves live on very simple vegetarian foods, they also have to entertain people from the outside, like patrons, potential benefactors, and visiting pilgrims.”

“A lot of these people would have been normally eating meat but they would eat vegetarian food when they went to a monastery.”

“There are records from the Tang dynasty, which is 618 to 907, of an official hosting a banquet serving imitation pork and mutton dishes made from vegetables. In the 13th century, which is one of the great periods of Chinese gastronomy and culinary development, there were restaurants in the southern Song dynasty capital, which is today's Hangzhou, where you could eat Buddhist vegetarian dishes.”

Dunlop in a 2019 Podcast / Chinese meal with Tyler Cowen mentioned how Chinese can view being vegetarian a little more flexibly:

“…But vegetarians in China do have a bit of a problem, and that is because the Chinese approach to vegetarian eating is very different from the Western approach. So in China, people often make a distinction between Chinese Su Shi 素食, vegetarian eating, vegetarian food, and Su Shi Zhu Yi 素食主义, vegetarianism. Many Chinese people believe in Buddhism and will have vegetarian food when they go to visit a temple or on certain holy days, but they don’t abstain from meat all the time. I’ve even met an elderly monk who was a lifelong vegetarian who said that when he was sick or weak, he would eat a little meat to boost his strength.

So vegetarians traveling around China have this problem, that sometimes they ask for vegetarian food, and it has little bits of meat in it, or it’s cooked with lard or stock or dried shrimps. It’s quite hard. You have to really insist to restaurants that “I am a total vegetarian. I don’t . . .” You have to list the things you don’t want, to explain.

The only place that traditionally you would get pure vegetarian and even vegan food is in Buddhist monasteries, and sometimes Taoist monasteries. The larger ones have their own restaurants which cater for pilgrims and patrons and do extraordinary vegetarian cuisine. So partly it’s simple vegetarian cooking, and partly it’s Fang Hun Cai 仿荤菜, imitation meat dishes. Impossible Burger, they got there centuries before you! So you can go in Sichuan to a monastery, and you can feast on spare ribs and shark’s fin and sausages and gong bao chicken, and they’re all totally vegetarian.

One change in the last few years is that there are a small number of Chinese people, maybe cosmopolitan, intellectual types in cities, who are becoming vegetarians in that Western way. It is, actually, often connected with Buddhism, but they are abstaining totally from meat, and not only from meat, but also from Wu Hun 五荤, the pungent aromatics like garlic and all kinds of oniony vegetables, which is also part of the Buddhist diet.”

Link to podcast and transcript here.

Power of Silence, Performing Thinking Bigly

I am not a performer. I have trained in writing for theater and directing for theater. But I've never trained as a performer. For my most recent work a performance-lecture, Thinking Bigly...

...It turns out. That I am the performer. As typically part of a performance lecture is that you play yourself or a version of yourself. 

Perhaps not strangely. I am quite comfortable being me. I am quite OK at it.

Performing has taught me a few things. Most of which I am still dwelling upon. Many of us won’t put ourselves in a position to perform or speak in front of hundreds, but I think it’s a useful learning.

Now having been involved in theatre making in the writing part and the directing part and the audience part and now the performer part. I did have one observation. About the power of silence. And the power of focus. 

In many a play a or any live performance 

There are often points of silence. Or pauses. Or in particular long pauses. Famously Pinter has these pauses, which practitioners have dubbed “Pinter pauses” a type of pregnant pause so long and full of meaning. 

Sitting as an audience member and being enveloped in a pregnant pause can be both an awkward and exhilarating experience. This communal silence - this waiting for the performer to say... Or do... Some action. 

As a director, I've noted these audience reactions. When to orchestrate it extend it in the text. In the rhythm of a play. And Similarly when writing a piece the power of when to use these pauses. Mostly sparingly. 

Recently as a performer,  I have come to observe the pauses on the other side of the fourth wall. There are no big or pregnant pauses in Thinking Bigly. However, there are mini-pausues between images, between slides between arguments being made. 

In my most recent performance, there was a moment when one mini-pause stretched slightly longer in a proper pause.

In that pause. I could see and feel those same sensations that I felt as an audience. 200 people. In communal silence. In my silence waiting. Waiting. For what I would say or do next. 

I recall. The way Barack Obama speaks. Peppered with pauses or moments filled with an audience sitting in those silences. 

He is a speaker, who has excised all the uuummms and aaaahs of speech and filled them with these pauses instead. 

Pretty effectively if you ask me. 

I've had to work hard to excise those umms. Trained performers  have no unintentional uuuums in their speeches. 

So in the moment where I was performing and I was standing in this small silence, which 200 people were also sitting in. But I was the one who had to make the next move the next sound. The next point. 

It was its own kind of exhilaration  and awkwardness and power being on the other side of this silence. About to make a call to action for the senior management of a university to commit to a sustainability plan. 

I could see how some people might get carried away with their silence. 

The power of it. Holding people in it. 

But I found it slightly daunting. Keeping everybody waiting. Even if it did make the performance more effective. 

Seeing the silence - from the other side - was an interesting experience of being a performer. 

I’m also glad to report that the audience seemed pretty captivated through out.

If you'd like to know more about my interactive sustainability show thinking Bigly, click here next public performance on March 26 in London. 

More information on my micro grants program: Where I'm giving away £1K awards to individuals looking to make a positive impact click here.

Grant Winner: Marjorie Morgan, oral history in North of England

I’ve awarded a grant to Marjorie Morgan based on her work documenting unheard voices. Recent work has included the Wind Rush generation and this grant will enable further documentation of communities around Liverpool.

A blog about the project below, more information on grants here.

#WeTalk Podcast Project by Marjorie H Morgan

This #WeTalk Liverpool Podcast Project is a continuation of oral history work and recording stories that I have been doing for decades. 

I have been writing and recording personal stories from marginalised voices - especially in the Black community -  for a many years. I was a director and oral history researcher for the Northamptonshire Black History Association (NBHA) before I moved to Liverpool where I have continued this work as an individual community archivist since my relocation in 2014. During my time with the NBHA we arranged interviews and researched histories of the target group, BAME people of Northamptonshire, and recorded and deposited the interviews in the local record office, as well as producing an award winning book: Sharing The Past.

This ThenDoBetter Grant will enable me to dedicate time to the initial research, interviews, the editing and the purchase of additional storage for the video and audio recordings for the continuation of this project in the Liverpool 8 area. Since confirmation of this gift I have now secured a location for the regular recording sessions, and I will be confirming the schedule of the next interviewees by the end of January 2020. 

I have chosen to focus on the people of the Liverpool 8 area with the aim of forging greater connections with the marginalised communities in Liverpool, specifically the Black and Ethnic Minority communities in the Toxteth and Dingle areas of the city: people who live outside of these area will not be excluded if they express an interest in contributing to the archives of these community regions.

The podcast format is designed to give people the time and space to talk about subjects that interest and matter to them. This can be personal, social, or political. The contributor can decide who and what they talk about - e.g. A Letter to … (this can even be a letter that was never sent but one the contributor wishes they could share with their earlier selves or another person).

Once recorded and edited, each individual podcast will be made available online, and a community screening will also be arranged where an edited version of all the stories can be shared, and later accessed as required. It is my vision that these podcasts will be both enlightening and informative, and that listeners will thereby build valuable connections in their communities.

The screening of this phase of #WeTalk Liverpool Podcast Project will either take place at the John Archer Hall at 68 Upper Hill Street, Liverpool, L8 1YR or at Toxteth TV, 37-45 Windsor Street, Liverpool, L8 1XE as these venues are in the centre of the communities identified.

The digital records will also be deposited at the Liverpool Central Library in the Record Office with Helena Smart, Archivist, for use throughout the Liverpool City Region Library services, including Toxteth Library, Windsor Street, Liverpool, L8 1XF.In 2018 I worked with the elders from the Steve Biko Housing Association to record some of their stories relating to their individual Windrush histories. See more here: https://youtu.be/UfdDyqMsa9o

In 2019 I interviewed a then 103 year old, British man (Jamaican-born) who served in several theatres of war for the British armed forces and has lived the majority of his life in Liverpool, Merseyside : https://youtu.be/OnePR4bj_Ak

You can see this below:

To get involved with #WeTalk Liverpool Podcast Project, or to recommend someone for me to talk with, please contact via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marjoriemorgan/

Or via the contact form here, Ben will send on details.

For more details on my work: www.marjoriemorgan.com

Other links: 

http://www.northants-black-history.org.uk/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharing-Past-Northamptonshire-Black-History/dp/0955713919

https://liverpool.gov.uk/libraries/archives-family-history/https://www.stevebikoha.org/

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£1k grants for people looking to make a positive impact.

State of the National Theatre

Does  the UK’s National Theatre reflect the UK? Divisions over Brexit, elite metropolitans vs countryside; populism/commercial vs artistic; identity wars - gender; state funding vs commercial funding. Leftist vs Rightist. Small state vs large state. [Not so far as to look at State Capacity Liberterians, cf. Dominic Cummings (?) H/T Tyler Cowen]

Helen Lewis takes on these ideas in a review of the National Theatre as an organisation and its conflicts with a dose of the Arts Council (after an interesting take on how the state effectively subsidises the commercial by allowing artists to develop in the state sector first).

Lewis notes the new language at Arts Council of “relevance” instead of “excellence” although with some push back that one can be both excellent and relevant.

Many commentators (theatre practitioners in my feed) on Twitter have critiqued the binary and polarised juxtapositions - which reflect debates on gender, and Brexit; and places David Hare (as a proponent of canon, traditionalists and, supposedly, an elite; remain) opposite Stella Duffy (as community, Leave). 

Comments like: 

NT primarily artistic or social? Can’t it be both?

Excellence or relevance? I write plays to be both.

I think those comments have validity, but I don’t think Lewis was proposing the nuance or spectrum here.

Lewis was asking if the conflicts at the NT reflected conflicts at a nation(s) state level. That the NT itself is a state of the nation play. And in that, Lewis draws some comparisons that do seem to reflect this idea. (Toilets one battle ground). This I think is interesting for non-theatre makers. Or, once you move past the opposing construct, it gives some intriguing insights into the conflicts that an organisation like the NT has.

Do our institutions reflect our society? Often institutions are more ossified and slower moving than where society is, in my observations. So the idea that the NT is of its time (and that some of its debates eg Peter Hall vs the Unions) stretch back in history.

On that idea, if the left did win the battle of culture and the NT is a result of that, but if the right have won the ideas on market economics - a binary that I’m not entirely sure I agree - and are currently re-shaping institutional funding - does the NT survive because it is as cherished as the NHS or as important as science funding; or does it decay attacked by left and right (cf. BBC) for losing of relevance - neither excellent nor popular rather than both excellent and popular?

Given Lewis interviewed some of our major theatre figures like Stella Duffy, David Hare, Rufus Norris, Dan Rebellato - I would have loved longer notes and insights into what they actually thought.

Full article in the Atlantic here.

Lewis’ take on subsidised theatre subsidising commercial.

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My £10K microgrants programme here.

Me on what theatre teaches business.

Zadie Smith Q&A here and her writing tips here.

Hear about the chat with legendary agent, Mel Kenyon.

Some notes from listening to the literary manager of the Royal Court, Chris Campbell. (soon to be at Oberon Books)

Be inspired by Artistic Director, Kate Wasserberg’s Dauntless Theatre.

TS Eliot's love letters to Emily Hale unveiled

The love letters of TS Eliot to Emily Hale (likely inspiration for many of his famous poems) have been revealed (around Jan 2020), 50 years since Hale’s passing.

Eliot wrote a statement - more a letter - to accompany the letters, whenever they were to be unveiled.  The letter goes:

“It is painful for me to have to write the following lines. I cannot conceive of writing my autobiography. It seems to me that those who can do so are those who have led purely public and exterior lives, or those who can successfully conceal from themselves what they prefer not to know about themselves – there may be a few persons who can write about themselves because they are truly blameless and innocent. In my experience, there is much for which one cannot find words even in the confessional; much which springs from weakness, irresolution and timidity, from petty self-centredness rather than from inclination towards evil or cruelty, from error rather than ill-nature. I shall be as brief as I can.

During the course of my correspondence with Emily Hale, between 1932 and 1947, I liked to think that my letters to her would be preserved and made public after we were dead – fifty years after. I was however, disagreeably surprised when she informed me that she was handing the letters over to Princeton University during our lifetime – actually in the year 1956. She took this step, it is true, before she knew that I was going to get married. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that her disposing of the letters in that way at that time threw some light upon the kind of interest which she took, or had come to take, in these letters. The Aspern Papers in reverse.

I fell in love with Emily Hale in 1912, when I was in the Harvard Graduate School. Before I left for Germany and England in 1914 I told her that I was in love with her. I have no reason to believe, from the way in which this declaration was received, that my feelings were returned, in any degree whatever. We exchanged a few letters, on a purely friendly basis, while I was up at Oxford during 1914-15.

To explain my sudden marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood would require a good many words, and yet the explanation would probably remain unintelligible. I was still, as I came to believe a year later, in love with Miss Hale. I cannot however make even that assertion with any confidence: it may have been merely my reaction against my misery with Vivienne and desire to revert to an earlier situation. I was very immature for my age, very timid, very inexperienced. And I had a gnawing doubt, which I could not altogether conceal from myself, about my choice of a profession – that of a university teacher of philosophy. I had had three years in the Harvard Graduate School, at my father’s expense, preparing to take my Doctorate in Philosophy: after which I should have found a post somewhere in a college or university. Yet my heart was not in this study, nor had I any confidence in my ability to distinguish myself in this profession. I must still have yearned to write poetry. For three years I had written only one fragment, which was bad (it is, alas, preserved at Harvard). Then in 1914 Conrad Aiken showed Prufrock to Ezra Pound. My meeting with Pound changed my life. He was enthusiastic about my poems, and gave me such praise and encouragement as I had long since ceased to hope for. I was happier in England, even in wartime, than I had been in America: Pound urged me to stay in England and encouraged me to write verse again. I think that all I wanted of Vivienne was a flirtation or a mild affair: I was too shy and unpractised to achieve either with anybody. I believe that I came to persuade myself that I was in love with her simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness: the last seven years of her life were spent in a mental home. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land. And it saved me from marrying Emily Hale.

Emily Hale would have killed the poet in me; Vivienne nearly was the death of me, but she kept the poet alive. In retrospect, the nightmare agony of my seventeen years with Vivienne seems to me preferable to the dull misery of the mediocre teacher of philosophy which would have been the alternative.

For years I was a divided man (just as, in a different way, I had been a divided man in the years 1911-1915). In 1932 I was appointed Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard for one year; and even Vivienne’s mother agreed that it was out of the question for Vivienne to go to America with me. I saw Emily Hale in California (where she was teaching in a girls’ college) early in 1933, and I saw her from time to time every summer, I think from 1934 on, as she always joined her aunt and uncle who took a house every summer at Chipping Campden.

Upon the death of Vivienne in the winter of 1947, I suddenly realised that I was not in love with Emily Hale. Gradually I came to see that I had been in love only with a memory, with the memory of the experience of having been in love with her in my youth. Had I met any woman I could have fallen in love with, during the years when Vivienne and I were together, this would no doubt have become evident to me. From 1947 on, I realised more and more how little Emily Hale and I had in common. I had already observed that she was not a lover of poetry, certainly that she was not much interested in my poetry; I had already been worried by what seemed to me evidence of insensitiveness and bad taste. It may be too harsh, to think that what she liked was my reputation rather than my work. She may have loved me according to her capacity for love; yet I think that her uncle’s opinion’s (her uncle by marriage, a dear old man, but wooly-minded) meant more to her than mine. (She was fond of her uncle John but did not get on very well with her Aunt Edith). I could never make her understand that it was improper for her, a Unitarian, to communicate in an Anglican church: the fact that it shocked me that she should do so made no impression upon her. I cannot help thinking that if she had truly loved me she would have respected my feelings if not my theology. She adopted a similar attitude with regard to the Christian and Catholic view of divorce.

I might mention at this point that I never at any time had any sexual relations with Emily Hale.

So long as Vivienne was alive I was able to deceive myself. To face the truth fully, about my feelings towards Emily Hale, after Vivienne’s death, was a shock from which I recovered only slowly. But I came to see that my love for Emily was the love of a ghost for a ghost, and that the letters I had been writing to her were the letters of an hallucinated man, a man vainly trying to pretend to himself that he was the same man that he had been in 1914.

It would have been a still greater mistake to have married Emily than it was to marry Vivienne Haigh-Wood. I can imagine the sort of man each should have married – different from each other, but also very different from me. It is only within the last few years that I have known what it was to love a woman who truly, selflessly and whole-heartedly loves me. I find it hard to believe that the equal of Valerie ever has been or will be again; I cannot believe that there has ever been a woman with whom I could have felt so completely at one as with Valerie. The world with my beloved wife Valerie has been a good world such as I have never known before. At the age of 68 the world was transformed for me, and I was transformed by Valerie.

May we all rest in peace“ (Source TS Eliot Foundation)

Scholars think these lines in the Four Quartets may have been about Emily Hale:

“What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.”

In his letters he wrote to Hale:

“You have made me perfectly happy: that is, happier than I have ever been in my life; the only kind of happiness now possible for the rest of my life is now with me; and though it is the kind of happiness which is identical with my deepest loss and sorrow, it is a kind of supernatural ecstasy.”

In the end, he didn’t marry Hale after his first wife died. He married Valerie.

And, no one exactly knows why. All Eliot wrote:

“Emily Hale would have killed the poet in me; Vivienne nearly was the death of me, but she kept the poet alive.”

Poetry as mysterious as poets as people as love as everyone else.

Theatre teaching business, teaming, trust and speaking up

-what theatre teaches me about elite teams and business 

-speaking up and empowering people 

I work in a high performing team within investing. This is a very competitive “sport”. There are many smart teams also competing and it’s a mix of skill and luck which is complex.  It’s very hard to beat the benchmark and competitors over time. There is a large amount of noise and bias.

In my view the best teams learn from other “sports” and industries. I’m fortunate that I’ve been part of elite teams within theatre. I happen to assess elite management teams within business and healthcare R&D, but that’s another story. 

The three concepts I’d like to discuss are:

Psychologist Safety or SpeakUp

Teaming, or when it’s not possible to do it all

Prosocial, or giving as a way to excel 

I’ve blogged previously on the Amy Edmondson work and the Google studies on the importance of psychological safety within teams. (Link end).   This is the idea that you need to be able to feel free to say anything to your team and when you can’t or don’t feel safe - then a team fails to perform at its best. 

The best theatre teams I’ve worked with always nurture this.  While it’s often led by a director, this doesn’t have to be the case. I’ve seen ensemble and collaborative work, not director led.

These teams encourage all members (including lighting, sound, costume, stage management and so on) to speak up if they have an idea or see something wrong. 

Part of this is the observation that much theatre has no “correct” answer. It’s an act of creation which may be finally somewhat completed or judged by an audience but has no answer.

I’m aware of some directors that lead by sheer force of ideas and personality. On occasion these create spectacular works but the dark side is that teams don’t or can’t speak up and feel safe. 

As I will reflect on giving and vulnerability this has allowed at times a culture of abuse where people didn’t speak up. (cf. MeToo)

I speculate as to how much greater their works might have been with an ensemble vision over a singular vision. As theatre like football is mostly a team endeavour unlike golf which is more singular.

Still there is something special about the rehearsal room. This is a space specifically designed to learn, experiment, practice and “fail”.  It’s accelerated and intense. 

Business teams would benefit from seeing elite theatre makers - directors, actors, backstage, design - in action. 

There is no failure in the best rehearsals because there’s only learning on what might work for this group at this time. Final completion can’t be until audience stage (and that may continue to develop too). There’s no fixed mindset. 

On top of this, theatre is not an activity where you can do it all yourself. Actors don’t work in a vacuum and even solo shows have lights, directors, maybe sound or movement, design or costumes and so on. There is a definitive understanding of this from the start. 

While most businesses today are in an hierarchy, they most often operate in teams and while CEOs might lead them, they rely on numerous sets of teams to keep their businesses running and they themselves - although they might not realise it - are part of a team. 

Rehearsals teach businesses and teams about continuous improvement. In terms of innovation or acts of creation, they teach about how to learn and how no learning occurs without “mistakes, dead ends or failures” - which seem to me be words with the wrong tone for innovation. 

The acts of theatre should remind business people that no one works alone and that we work best in teams. And in reality business people are already leading teams.  

Where do theatre teams go beyond the normal? It’s often in how much the players give.  Of themselves, to others. In theatre, there is (and was) the danger which we now see in MeToo but that is giving without safety - and psychological safety embedded by the whole team must come first.  

But where that is in place then the best theatre is very generous in what the players give. 

Turning to business this is embodied in the idea of servant-leaders.  Leaders who lead by giving back to the whole organisation and help try and raise up everyone else. 

Why does this giving behaviour seem to work? I don’t have solid evidence but my speculation is that what is happening is that the value of the social and relationship “asset” grows from this type of pro-social behaviour. Trust grows. Of course, it doesn’t always pay-off.  The world is complex. But typically giving is a form of investing in our relationships and our social value and humans after all are social creatures and we value that. 

There’s much more theatre can teach, which I may come back to another time, but I will leave it with those observations on the importance of psychological safety, of teaming and of how giving builds trust and that can lead to extraordinary performance.

More? Here’s my blog on what Google found on what makes great teams (Amy Edmondson work).

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Dessa, rapper, writer; memoir

I listened to Dessa rap and sing with the BBC Wales orchestra, this month. Her sparkly character glittering about the stage. Her voice has a sensual, draw you in, complex timbre. Her lyrics are complex and playful. She’s written memoir essays about her time on the road, falling in and out of love and the like.

It’s a keen intellect that shines through. One peppered with a life hard and well lived. Touching lightly on mental health and the craziness of forging your own musical path:

She writes in her first essay:

“... Today’s conventional wisdom says that the best way to live a life is to keep all the components partitioned—love, money, friends. You’re not supposed to date your boss, or go bowling with your analyst, or borrow large sums of money from your drinking buddies. We think of ourselves as a store-bought cake with a sheet of wax paper separating all the slices so that they never touch: neat, single servings. But hanging out with Doomtree, it was all one thing—social, professional, romantic. I did all of it with the same people and often at the same time. There were no hobbies and no off-hours, no work-life balance; there was just writing songs and walking to SuperAmerica for cigarettes and drafting set lists and drinking with the guys and making album budgets and goofing off and collapsing into sleep tucked into the leopard print of my boyfriend’s left shoulder. None of it came apart from the rest….”

And on deciding to be an artist:

“...Like a meteor shower, a series of questions flashed through my consciousness at regular intervals: Q: How long should I do this before I give up? Part of the challenge in becoming an artist is that you have to place your bets before you’re fully dealt. You have to assess your talent, still half-formed, and decide what you are willing to stake on it. There’s no best-practice handbook for the pursuit of unlikely dreams. How much of your life should you spend trying to be an astronaut or a fashion model or a professional rapper before deciding it’s time to redirect your energies? A year? Two? Ten?

Some members of Doomtree are genuinely art-for-art’s-sake creative types. Cecil Otter is like that, I think. He’ll emerge from a thirteen-hour production session bleary-eyed and blissed-out by whatever he heard through the headphones. I’ve never been that kind of purist. For me the communication of an artistic idea is fundamental to the endeavor. If there wasn’t someone at both ends of the line, at some point, I’d just want to hang up.

Q: What are the opportunity costs here? I knew that I was capable of making a good living in another field—I had gotten good grades, could interview well, was willing to work hard. If music wasn’t going to be my life’s path, then the time I spent writing songs and bios and press releases might be better spent doing something else—going back to school, or applying for a full-time job, or maybe teaching English abroad, where at least it’d feel like I was contributing. I was a lousy waitress. I was a pretty good tech writer, but couldn’t envision it as a long-term gig. And I couldn’t butterfly forever.

Q: Am I delusional—like, fully out of my damn mind? I’d venture that there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of young women at this very moment who aspire to be the first female president. And one of them will be. The problem is it’s impossible to tell if you’re the one. When small children say they want to be quarterbacks or tap dancers, they’re applauded for their audacity. Aunts and uncles toss a ball around the backyard and buy a little fedora for Christmas. When you are a grown-up who says she wants to be a rapper, the blush is off the rose. The conversation at the Christmas table is more likely to include the words compound and interest than follow and dreams. And it is a little crazy to believe that you can navigate a career path that seems to pan out so rarely. The numbers say you’re almost certainly wrong.

Q: Could wanting it badly enough make it real? This question isn’t about hard work—that’s a prerequisite. It’s about taping blinders to your temples; categorically writing off the critics who don’t like what you do; categorically writing off the counsel of the people who love you and worry about how you’re doing, to insist, I am going to will this into reality. This is the Tinker Bell model. She’s only real because she is clapped into existence. The children refuse to entertain any alternative, and the force of their desire and their determination has metaphysical consequences. The Tinker Bell model is the nuclear option. It taps every reserve. It permits no Plan Bs. It’s bold, reckless, conceited, juvenile—right up until it works. And then, in hindsight, it’s brave, windblown, and scored with strings that sustain right into the commercial break. I’ve known artists who’ve tattooed their hands and faces to ensure they’d have no recourse, no desk-job escape chute…”

I’ve heard artists talk about no Plan B. I don’t know how many burn out - an exploding star.

But those that survive are forged into some alchemical metal.

The above passage is some of her least lyrical more business like writing. Mostly it’s cheeky and funny. Rhapsodic with Street smart lyrical-ness and amazing erudition that her rap-cleverness can’t hide. I’m somewhat in awe and a tiny bit in love. This must be what her audiences feel.

She paints faces (dressed as a butterfly) to make money before her music has taken off. The children ask her:

“...Most days, I fielded the same set of questions: Q: Can I get two? “Unlikely. This line is very long. But if there are no blank faces, come back and I’ll do your other side.”

Q: Are you a kid or an adult? The costume made it tough to tell if I was a giant child or just a parent in disguise. “I’m an in-between.”

Q: If your wings are real, then can you fly? “Kid, nobody can paint while flying.”

Q: Is this, like, what you do? Your job? Well, honey, that one’s complicated. Some days I paint faces. Yes, for money. And sometimes I write instructional manuals as an independent contractor. And sometimes I wait tables at a sports bar downtown. And sometimes I work as a temp for an agency like Dolphin Staffing—which is not as magical as it sounds—but at night, I am a rapper at a precarious point in her—

Q: I saaaaid, is this, like, what you do? Your job? “Well, I’m face painting and you’re waiting to get painted. So is that your job? Being second in line to get face painted? Are you a professional paintee?”

Q: Do you have a boyfriend? I do, but only for a little while longer. He’s becoming a famous person, I think, and there is no competing for first place in his heart because that position was already occupied by music-making when I met him. And maybe the best spot in my heart is reserved for the same thing. But all sorts of people want a piece of him now, including beautiful women who I don’t think he has the self-discipline to turn away. And I am a sizzling mess: angry and jealous and vengeful and sad. That’s the truth, but I can’t share it with you because you’re too young and this is supposed to be a party and I’m being paid by the hour.

Q: Do you have a boyfriend? “How come? Are you single? Are you asking me on a day-yate?”

And like the best heroine-quests she ends…

“...Now, years after that first NPR review and my last face-painting gig, I’ll sometimes stand at the edge of the stage during a Doomtree show. I’ll put my finger to my mouth to quiet the room. I’ll hold my mic off to the side, a gesture that will usually send a round of shhhs through the crowd. Unamplified, I’ll yell something like: “Hey, we’re Doomtree. I’m Dessa. That’s Sims, that’s P.O.S, that dapper gentleman is Cecil Otter, and my guy Mike Mictlan is the hero who thought to grab the case of waters from backstage. Here behind the tables, where the magic happens, is Lazerbeak and Paper Tiger. If it’s your first time seeing us: welcome. If you’ve been coming for ten years: thank you. The reason that seven musicians can play a two-hour show to a sold-out room—even though we don’t have a big song on the radio, even though we aren’t in Sprite ads, even though we write pop songs that are eight goddamn minutes long—is you. Our growth has been slow, and if you’ve been here from the beginning, you know that’s true. But because we make our money in ten-dollar increments at that merch table right there—wave, Ander! That’s Ander—we’ve been able to maintain total artistic control. We don’t have to ask a record executive if it’s a good idea to pick the song with a clarinet sample in 6/ 8 as the first single—of course that’s not a good idea—but it’s good art, dammit, so we’re doing it. Doomtree runs on word of mouth and pixie dust. We are real because you’ve said we are. We’re the Tinker Bell of this rap shit. So thank you….”

Read her memoir essays on Amazon here. So many interesting artists still to be discovered by me. Sign up to me monthly newsletter below.

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Here’s a Dessa song

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Fancy another blog? Zadie Smith Writing Tips here.