Some of the best conversations I have had at all AOMO conferences were on day 4. And there was much that was edgy and felt important…
Different shared inquiries into the role of the arts in change, development, dialogue and way, finding, from the health sector to the Board Room, from street protest to Greenham Common, AOMO 22 brought me questions that we continue to ask, but some with such a desperate urgency now.
Some images from the day flowed by those end of day insights and reflections…
Friendships and fellowships are just two of the many treasures at AOMO.
I learned about …
Layers of work
Reflective sketchbooks
Three parallel levels of dialogue
Some other highlights…
Theatre continues to hold up a mirror for, and to leaders. Organisational theatre, research-based, issue-driven, can positively reflect and disrupt. Reflection in journals can empower students and strengthen, by example, the case for creativity in universities, in businesses. But it can still be a struggle to convince the decision makers
The conference was opened by AOMO co-founder and legend Stephen Linstead courtesy of Zoom. Stephen was as with us as possible and certainly more with it than me after a tossing and turny night in my student accommodation.
Then the Great Return was waved in by Steve Taylor and Jenna Ward.
It felt like welcome back. Good ‘ol AOMO yet plenty of new faces in the audience. No Catherine. No Lotte. Miss you.
Oh, and the welcome drinks and the cakes…
Our keynote was also on Zoom due to Covid but folk legend Frankie Armstrong but generous, her fragility worn like a bangle on the arm of the force of Nature that she is.
Her pioneering workshops in the ’60s were a groundbreaking “democratic circle” and not a performer-audience transaction. Music is “hardwired into us”. Using our voices melodically predates spoken language. Her work with voice and singing is about “teasing people out of speech”. Let NO ONE tell you that you are tone deaf! Important. Inspiring.
And AOMO 2022 is truly underway. The conversation kicks in over an indoor barbecue at the iconic Bluecoat Gallery (our home for the first day). There willbe poetry. There was slow painting and Lego. A diversity game beckons and the art of change.
i am hugging a hot chocolate and the night life of Liverpool insists through the window. Not I. An early night for the second day of promise.
So, here on a train from to Liverpool (change at Preston with time for a cuppa). Carlisle, our current stop, reminds me of childhood holidays to the lakes – caravans, long life milk and tearing up grassy slops until I had to collapse and catch my breath. The running more.
We made attempts to stay connected when we all realised with sadness that AOMO would not be happening in 2020. We met on Zoom and I valued the connection, the offered sessions and, at least, a flavour of AOMO-physical and a thread of continuity, hope for a return to flesh.
The realisation that we wouldn’t meet face to face in 2021 formed into a real sense of disappointment and an urgency to keep the flame alive. We met again, virtually and, over a couple of days, got a bit more conference-ish and not just reunion-ish. There were conversations about, and examples offered of how some of the AOMO community had transitioned their work online. Others were waiting for the Great Return/Emergence.
We wished each other well, hoped for proper breakthrough, and here I am, on the train to Liverpool.
I had planned to bring some experimental theatre, as I usually do to AOMO and Covid19 thwarted it at that time, but not forever. It still makes sense to do it. I pondered doing it online and an inner voice said no. Learning patience is something that did me good.
I am spending the month at the Edinburgh Fringe, also more properly “back’. Creating FringeReview back in 2006 is now a hobby that has got delightfully out of control and it feels strange to be travelling down to Liverpool and then back from my temporary home in August at the world’s largest arts festival, also an event in recovery and re-emergence mode.
Much of what I am bringing to AOMO this year took place in my home town in Brighton. It is very experimental and continues a creative inquiry I began at AOMO in York in 2012. It’s a solo piece of theatre, but also something else. I hope you find time to come to the performance because I seek help with this creation. Here’s the invite to The Debrief.
How do we recover from trauma? Is it possible, even necessary these days to crowd-source it? Are the days of expert and client/patient numbered? I am bringing some deep questions to AOMO but also recognise a need in myself for some very blank pages.
I’ll also be finding space to share a little of my recent autoethnographic research into how we become satisfyingly and purposefully active in the space between a virtual and a physical place, a university, a school, a place for learning.
Up at the Edinburgh Fringe there is a such a strong and shared sense of relief that the festival is back. Back to what? Certainly back to some form of normality. Back to physicality and NOT-Zoomery. Back to familiarity as well. The Fringe looks remarkable like it did in 2019. Huge, unsustainable, a cacophony of creativity and hope. There is some underlying disappointment that it hasn’t transformed in some way, that the Covid-years haven’t delivered the (promised) deep rethink. Perhaps it has. Perhaps everyone just wants at least one year of back to the comforting recognisable how-things-were.
I am glad to be back, on a train to AOMO, hoping it will be the same as it was, but also hoping it will be different.
Notes from a recent theatre workshop
We worked with the theme of distraction, on stage and in life.
Each actor chose a short monologue, which they performed in front of the group who sat in a traditional audience seating. At the end of the performance the actor reflected on any distractions that had helped or hinder their performance. Distractions seemed to take them out of character, even if only for a moment, but it was enough to dilute the performance and some members of the audience could immediately tell. Distractions included a cough from an audience member, or a noise from outside. Another distraction was more “inner” and would be an inner voice saying something like “this is where you usually forget a line”. In some actors this inner voice couldn’t be stilled and created a duality in the person, which meant they were never fully “into the part”. In others this vice came only occasionally at moments of “distraction” so a voice would interrupt and say, “you’ve lost it. You might as well give up.” One or two actors experienced no distraction at all and their performances were more electric and affecting for the audience.
Then we took it further. The performances were repeated and this time audience members were allowed to fidget and talk during the performance For some, of course, this made things worse. The distraction became “annoying” and the actor stalled or “corpsed”. Other actors started using “strategies” to deal with the distraction and began to become angrier and their performances became exaggerated. One actor realised he always and involuntarily looked towards the distraction but carried on, drawn towards it like a magnet. Again a few actors were so totally into their part that the distraction had no effect. One actor found the distractions did change their performance subconsciously and in ways that actually “enhanced” the performance – a cough, for example, created a pause that actually created a nice subtle effect in the way the proceeding lines were spoken, more reflectively.
The actors who got “annoyed” and allowed their inner voice to say “how dare they” or “its all going wrong” were allowing a kind of vanity to creep in that detracted from the quality of their performance. There are bound to be distractions in this noisy world. Audiences tend to fidget more, they have mobile phones, and all kinds of paraphernalia they fiddle with, not to mention the sweet and chocolates! And sometimes and utterly silent audiences that are “behaving” can feel noisier than a more easier but less silent “quiet”! And of course, in some causes, a cough or a creaking chair is an audience members enraptured response to what s occurring onstage and can actually help to innovate the performance in subtle ways.
One further step! This time the audience were allowed to actually get up and walk on the stage during the performance. We went even further – they were allowed to physically distract the actor, even physically prevent him or her to move to desired parts of the performance area. Again, some actors stalled and “Lost it”. Others found they had to access much deeper levels of themselves and sink much more into the character to maintain the same intensity. A few realised from this exercise that WITHOUT this distraction they would never have discovered these untapped areas of energy and concentration. SO distraction can help us to find boundaries and cross them to access deeper levels of ourselves as humans and performance. It is the effort of overcoming that releases this energy. And the performance can be all the better for it.
Is it possible that there are some principles of applied improvisation that we have overlooked? Have we cast these current model in stone and is there space to play with improvisation itself? Read on…
Over the last twenty years, I’ve been involved in improvisation in a range of different fields. Through Brighton’s Theatrelab, which was based at the Marlborough Theatre (as well as other spaces in Brighton) we explored improvisation as a group from new perspectives.
The Upstairs Theatre’s play-in-a-day concept looked at how we can quickly flow from conception to live public performance.
My work in the field of applied improvisation led to the creation of many new improvisation activities. In more recent years, my work with Rational Madness Theatre involved working with improvised film making.
Also working with Conscious Business UK and the Open Space community has allowed me to explore notions of presence and emergence.
It’s been through working in both the fields of theatre and organisational facilitation that I’ve come to identify some potential new principles of applied improvisation.
The first, which I’ve shared elsewhere is the principle of improvisation as resonance. Our next action becomes inspired by the “other”. We do not originate that action as a cognized decision, but find ourselves is a mode of inspired response, which emerges through a high degree of resonance with another person, group or situation. Group improvisation then becomes a sometimes edgy and frightening, sometimes exciting and enlivening process of mutual resonance. This can be found in some versions of improvised jazz.
Often there is an alternation between self-originated action, and other-inspired action. Improvisation flips between the two, but a state of “pure” improvisation occurs when we become a mindful “vessel” or “channel” for the flow, mediated by experienced resonance.
Resonance can become an alternative to status, where we find our position and place in a group or scene of flow, not through the taking and offering of status, but through a kind of magnetic attraction to different levels and qualities of resonance. Resonant (and also dissonant and assonant) are akin to musical states.Resonance can create harmonised action similar to high levels of Yes, and…) but often the flow can become creatively complex, lost or bewildered, before sometimes (and not always certainly) converging into a synergistic flow, where an emergent property may be delightful, breath taking or even genius. So, principle 1, is that improvisation arises out of resonance and also creates it.
The second principle sees improvisation as transtemporal. It moves away from clock time to time experiences not only in the present, not only as a “Now”, in-the-moment state, but a beyond-the-moment state. We can improvise by acting on “vision”, where a future picture or imagination inspires us into present action (we act on a dream, either individually or shared in a group). We can also improvise by using history as improvisational raw material – we literally put what went “before” (behind us in time, in the past), “before us” (as something in the present and future to be worked with). We do not need to move on from the past when we improvise, we can move on “with the past”.
Here we treat the past-present-future timeline as sometimes simultaneous, as if the timeline has become spatial and we can walk (or even skip and dance) among it. We allow future vision, present reaction and proaction, and past wisdom and restlenessness, to all “play into” our improvisational state. Though this manifests in our emerging present (where we can act in time and space), we experience all as concurrent. The timeline becomes one line in more more elaborate dimension. I believe the improvisation is transtemporal, even though it may well manifest to our waking awareness in three dimensions. Then, in the improvisational state, our acts can seem to fly in, the appear out of nowhere – yes, like magic, or, at least, from mysterious sources.
Eureka moments abound in high flowing improvisation, and some of these are ideas born of genius than arise from playing with past, present and future ALL at the SAME TIME. So, principle 2 states that improvisation lies outside of timelines, its source is transtemporal. (This isn’t as crazy as it sounds, especially if you are interested in quantum physics!)
The implications for applied improvisers, if they wish to explore these principles in action, is that resonance can become a new way to explore community and connection, collaborative working and organisational integrity. The second principle takes us into largely new territory where history is seen as vital raw material for innovation and improvisation. Also we can start to see the process of creativity and improvisation as being less tied to time (especially futures thinking) and more processes that play into timelines but are also hinting at original action that can determine what manifests in time. This is, in my view, real “acting”.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this… There are more principles, but here’s two I’ve been mostly enjoying exploring.
On resonance, I have experienced something that remains mostly wonderfully mysterious for me, though I have heard this reported by several improvisers in this more focused field of A.I. It is this: that resonance may indeed be experienced as an outcome of improvisation. Yet, concurrently, I have experienced it (as have others) as also an original cause of improvisation. Clumsily put, improvisation is an outcome of resonance! This also connects with experience of time, where an improvisation process somehow uncovers or unravels something in the future that is experienced as a resolution of a “seed of potential” located in in the timeline’s past.We then experience an action in the present as a quantum input to a past state that then reveals itself as a sort of creative conundrum or even a culmination. The past is not only the ground of a consequential future,but the future state also “plays into” history, even altering it. Yes, improvisation can be time travel, not by travelling THROUGH time, but by travelling WITH time, or even INTO time.
I believe that resonance is not only an experienced output but also a start point to improvisation that occurs in ways that allow past, present and future elements to converge on an archetype and sometimes on a point of singularity, manifesting as a transtemporal “riddle”. These riddles have been embodied in zen koans and are attempts to bridge the unbridegable border between a cause and effect, time-based world and a realm in which our physical laws of space-time simply don’t operate (or not in the same way). In improvisation this is when sudden moments of genius, or uninterrupted flow that can’t be explained in terms of cause and effect alone manifest as shiver-down-the-spine performance. And sometimes they leave us just delightfully bewildered.
And you so can practice it. But it has to be without expectation of outcome. And the improvisation has to be improvised. There is no facilitated process that isn’t part of the improvisation. You don’t seek resonance. You are sometimes surprised by it, and sometimes it is a process of recognition or RE-cognition, (knowing it again, because, in a way, you’ve always known it.) You’ve mentioned a few references. I’ll offer one or two of my own that capture for me, part of what lies here:
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
Applied Improvisation, for sure, might be ready to dive into quantum improvisation,and also to finally move beyond the notion of “Presence” as its rather limiting underpinning concept.
And I’m well aware of the sheer impossibility of describing any of this very well in the Latinised Language of the west.
A poem might do it better. Or a piece of improvised jazz…
At the recent theatre workshop in Brighton, the idea of unimprovisation appeared. Some teams and groups can find themselves in states that border on chaos. The dynamics of the group are unbounded, and there is a lot of “random” behaviour which can be at the level of fun-poking comments, but can also be in the form if sabotaging behaviour at meetings, non-delivery of key processes. People may be having fun, or the chaos may be a cause of pain and concern.
Sometimes teams can drift into disorganisation and chaos as a result of trauma. For example, the loss of a liked and respected leader, or a painful redundancy programme. In some teams, particularly design teams, maverick behaviour can produce world-beating products, but also quickly become dysfunctional.
Meetings can descend into chaotic conversations where even useful creative ideas lie unheard. Somewhere in there is an improvisational potential lost in the anarchy.
Un-improvising becomes a tool where we seek a NEW place of play, one that, at least initially is bounded. We may reduce freedom in the short term, setting limits, ground rules, reducing space to move. We may put some discipline in place that is aimed at creating a more settled space that eventually can become a fresh, new page upon which a more self-disciplined improvisational urge may develop.
Un-improvising is the process by which we move from chaos to a lightness-based order, out of which a more functional play can emerge.
Some features of unimprovisation include:
– putting a sequence in place
– sorting activities (and people)
– simplifying
– setting time boundaries
– agreeing outputs and measurement
– recognising and respecting others’ needs and limits
Unimprovising may result in more chaos initially, as those who enjoy or are chaos-addicted fight to maintain their boundless play. The process needs to be patient and iterative. A few rules and boundaries can create:
– a more satisfyingly experienced process
– better results and performance
– calm and less stress
– a sense of collective competence based on a little discipline
– meaning – individual and collective – emerging from the chaos
Many games of unimprovisation – simple clapping games with a few rules – can suddenly bring a group together, create the thrill of collaboration and community and also a sense that a few rules actually empower our play.
Applied improvisers should not shy away from letting to pendulum swing away from improvisation and play as a short term way of finding a newer, calmer and safer play space.
What have been your experiences of “connectedness”?
The concept is an interesting one in life and in the arts. Feeling connected to the world around you. Feeling connected to your fellow friends and family.
What does it mean to be “in touch” with yourself?
On stage, a cast tends to be in touch when there is a high degree of physical and emotional trust in each other. There is comfort with physical contact, with eye contact.
Trust seems to be important and, over time, trust in a cast increases.
Where there is too much caution, a cast can feel “disconnected” and the dialogue can be clumsy and stilted.
Creating connection may involve taking risks, and here the ghosts of our personal life – our bad experiences of connection can limit our “Performance” – both in life and on the stage.
In recent years the issue of contact has become key to individual and organisation development. Getting back “in touch” with ourselves and also learning to feel more fluently connected to others has spawned approaches such as Contact Improvisation.
“Contact Improvisation is a dance form in which the point of contact with another dancer provides the starting point for a movement exploration. It is most frequently performed as a duet, but can be danced by more people. There can be music or it can happen in silence. It is about sharing weight, rolling, suspending, falling, passive and active, energy and awareness.” http://contactimprovisation.co.uk/whatis.htm
This approaches has been adapted in the world of applied improvisation and is part of a wider “movement” to encourage human beings to enjoy contact, even as legislation and codes of conduct in many organisations try (for reasons of safety) to limit or even eliminate human-to-human contact.
Yet the idea of connectedness is, rather ironically, at the heart of many business strategies. We are supposed to “keep in touch with each other”. On social networking sites online, we are regularly “poked” and “virtually hugged”. We kiss on texts and emails. We are supposed to be connecting with our customers and suppliers, and we are supposed to be “in touch” with their needs. Yet, physically, touch is becoming more publicly taboo. Touch, especially with people we know less well, is a “danger” sign. Yet in contact improvisation touch becomes something that creates confidence, and permission to connect. It is often startling to see how quickly people in improvisation workshops get confident and comfortable physically with each other.
How do we resolve this disconnect between recognising the power of connection, even as we edit it physically out of our organisational systems and behavioural norms? Will connectedness only be virtual in the future, where our “avatars” connect, but our physical counterparts do not?
There is also evidence in sports and theatre to suggest that effectiveness in groups is higher when there are higher levels of eye and body contact, where there is an “ease” with others on a physical level. In many sports the “hugs” when goals are scored are seen as tangible reinforcers and motivators towards further better performance.
In organisational theatre, connectedness is currently a regularly explored and powerful theme. In workshops, connection activities and exercises are experienced as empowering and “freeing” during the workshop; however, disempowerment and demotivation soon arises when people go back to work and find that rules and norms prevent them safely applying what they have experienced. A paradox arises – the more we provide “ideal experiences” of connectedness in our applied theatre work, the more we can actually disempower when our participants return to the more cautious, physically mistrustful “real world”
A critical incident is an event in the biography of an individual, group or organisation that is viewed by that individual, group or organisation to have a significant impact – be it psychological, emotional or behavioural.
The psychological or cognitive impact of a critical incident has the potential to:
– change or reinforce the way people think about something;
– change or reinforce a mindset or attitude towards something;
– fundamentally affect what is deemed by individuals or be correct or logical in a certain situation;
– raise deep questions in individuals, groups, and organisations;
– induce breakdown in currently held thoughts and theories.
The emotional or affective impact of a critical incident has the potential to:
– change or reinforce feelings of sympathy or antipathy (like or dislike, love or hate) for something;
– induce an emotional high or low in a person, group or organisation (possibly creating a state of bliss or deep depression);
– surface emotions and feelings that have remained hidden or suppressed;
– induce breakdown in currently held emotions, engendering either self-praise or self-criticism;
The behavioural or “active” impact of a critical incident has the potential to:
– ignite or depress the will to act in individuals, groups and organisations;
– induce experimentation in new behaviours, reinforce current behaviours or set in motion destruction of current behaviours;
– demotivate or enhance motivation.
Critical incidents can happen to us in a way we cannot control. For example, we are told by a doctor we have a serious illness, which forces us to fundamentally reassess our lives, our beliefs, and our priorities. Or we suddenly discover we have a distant relative who has just died and who has left us a large fortune in their will. There may be critical incidents over which we have some control. For example, we deliberately put ourselves in a position of risk in order to achieve a goal, such as climbing a high mountain or we may find ourselves struggling to keep a relationship together, involving hard choices and addressing feelings and behaviours.
Sometimes critical incidents are not realised as such until after they have occurred, sometimes many years after: “I realise now, all of these years later that what she said to me marked a turning point in my life”.
Many leaders of organisations look back on episodes in the organisation’s development as “critical incidents”. Often these critical incidents refer to crises or major points of decision, or dramatic events. The critical incident usually led to some kind of reflection, assessment or re-framing, leading to change of one sort or another. The critical incident was profound enough to affect not only the intellect of the leader, but also the emotions and will, leading to a real change. Often managers and leaders will recognise a need to change at a rational, intellectual level, but this will not necessarily lead to an external change. The incident needs to cut deeper if the will is to be engaged by a “feeling” that something needs to be done.
Collectively, an organisation is similar. Often a researcher carrying out interviews in an organisation will identify from interviewees a common picture of what ought to change in the organisation. People think about it. People talk about it. But it is only when an incident critical enough to engage the will of the organisation that change results.
Critical incidents of thinking help an organisation’s capacity for IMAGINATION. People will think about the change, even form pictures of it. But without the strength of feeling and the practical will to do anything about it, the change remains rhetorical, “all talk”.
Critical incidents may ignite feeling and the result can be the inspiration to change. This strength of feeling may result in argument and passionate debate. However, alone, the feeling without a clear picture may result in frustration. Researchers often uncover deep frustrations, a sense of dissatisfaction about an organisation, but are unable to identify clear pictures or thoughts about how the frustrations can be practically dealt with.
Critical incidents can also ignite the will through intuition. At the most basic level intuitions can be instinctive. The critical incident of someone throwing a brick at us can lead the will to intuit the need to duck in order to avoid being hit! In this case the will moves to action passing over thought and feeling very quickly, almost instantaneously. Where will is engaged without feeling or thought, the result may be clumsy or insensitive. An integration is required where clear imagination of what needs to be done is built upon sensitivity to feelings, whilst engaging passion, belief and enthusiasm, translated into skilful action which accords with people’s intuitions about what is the right thing to do in response to a “critical” incident.
Behaviour changes at the level of the will. Even if we change the way we think about something, eventually it will surface in the external world. Even we don’t appear to be doing anything differently, our words and our attitude change will affect those around us. Thus critical incidents of thinking and feeling usually manifest at the level of the will in terms of change in behaviour and action.
From thought directly to willed action
It could be that someone says something to us, or we read something, or we reflect on something within us. We think about this and the thought leads us to a conclusion that results in a behaviour change. This is often couched in rational terms such as: if this is true then that must follow, if this is the cause then that will be the effect. If I row faster then I will get there quicker – so I row faster.
From feeling directly to willed action
When my feelings are strong enough – either positive or negative – action or behaviour change is more likely to result. Thoughts inform but do not necessarily inspire. Change is more likely to result when people feel inspired by what they hear, see or experience. Too often people attend presentations and courses, hear a lot of logical arguments and facts, then simply go back to their previous behaviour patterns. It is only when the experience is dramatic enough to engender an emotional reaction that leads to a behaviour change. This is where art has a role to play, for art can have a direct impact on the emotions.
A fundamental bridge needs to be built between art and industry to ensure that innovation in life and society is both human and practical. The realm of art and culture operates according to inner laws, which are fundamentally different to the laws of science and economics. However, there is and always will be a dynamic overlap between the two realms. The bridge is a way of ensuring real connectivity and communication without dominance of one realm over the other.
Art has the potential to encourage critical incidents in people. In organisations the experience of art and artistic methods is therefore a powerful tool for real change and innovation.
New Naturalism is a style of acting that takes dramatic material and presents it in a naturalistic style using actors who have, at their root, experience of working life outside of the traditional theatre world.
These actors have often come to acting later in life, after a career in other sectors, they may have displaced into the profession from careers and jobs in offices, businesses and public organisations that they are bored with.
Some are attracted by the glamour of acting and theatre, others by a wish to experience a more creative and artistic life. They bring with them a groundedness, they have stories to tell of the Darwinistic world of competitive business, they have experienced bureaucratic hierarchies, the frustrations and joys of business life. They have hired and fired, been fired and been hired. They have bought and sold. They have learned to talk, to listen, to be in conflict, to get out of conflict, the coach, to advise, to battle and to bore and be bored.
Of course, traditionally trained actors (who I call “thespians” )have experienced some of these things but most of their gaze has been inward, into the profession, into the field of ; they have trained in the skills of acting. While the new naturalists were on team building courses or engaged in trade or politiking, the thesps have been learning fencing or studying mime. They know how to project, how to find a character, how to improvise, how to cry for real or for fake.
Often the new naturalists sees their new naturalism not as a strength but a weakness. They have romanticised the theatre world and feel they are supposed to “act” like “actors” do.
New naturalism occurs where an acting style emerges that is minimal in terms of the “over-dramatic”. It is underplayed rather than overplayed and when intense emotion is expressed, it draws from the pool if real life experience – naturally. Acting becomes a life challenge, like an other life challenge. The play is a life experience.
The new naturalists are hyper-believable on stage because their “skills” on the stage are naturally performed life skills. Good new naturalists also make use of theatre technique – they know how to articulate or project when needed, but these things are not the primary concern. New naturalists have a quieter, more easy charisma born of the pain of life itself. Thespians access this life experience too, but as an acting strategy, not because it is part of their fundamental nature as an actor. A lot of thespians see new naturalists as not talented, muscling in on their already over-crowded territory.
New naturalists use timing, eye contact, pacing, intensity, emotional impact in their work in emergent, spontaneous, “natural” ways. Often good dramatic writing will draw excellent performances out of new naturalists as the authentic realism rises up to meet the well crafted words of a script. Bad writing can magnify new naturalism and cast it down into a bit of bland realism. Powerful dramtic writing can draw the new naturalism out of the new naturalist creating charismatic, powerful performance, often minimalistic in terms of visuals and voice, yet burning with a flame of power and impact.
I am interested in a curriculum of new naturalism, an effective training for the new naturalistic actor, an alternative to the dreadful night class and weekend courses that leave them disappointed and woefully unprepared for the professional acting world, stil largely dominated by the traditional thespian.
Win! Win Win was the first production from Rational Madness. It premiered at Komedia Southside at the Edinburgh Fringe 1999.
Press Reviews…
“A fine satire” The Stage
“Turned its hearers to a giggling jelly” The Scotsman
The Original Press Blurb
You are invited to a unique event – truly a one off. Rational Madness hosts international business guru Alan Winner,
hotfoot from his “Win, Win, Win!” Tour of South America.
“Learn how to get ahead. Learn practical techniques for winning the Darwinistic Corporate Race!”
As Alan Winner says: “Do not try to win at all costs. Try to win at NO costs!”
This show takes a powerfully satirical view of competitiveness.
Insightful and challenging, practical and controversial, Win, Win, Win! is a piece of performance, a comedy, a tragedy, a practical training session. Managers, change agents, entrepreneurs, consultants even ordinary human beings will all be shocked, inspired and entertained.
Background to the show
Most people do not even question that the basic premise of a business is competition. The idea of competition seems almost a self-evident truth. It is seen as the fundamental driver of innovation in the commercial world. Business is a battle for survival, where there will be winners and losers. Survival of the fittest ideas, technologies, products and processes are proof of Darwinism in action in the human sphere.
Who could possibly question it? If a business doubts its existence it simply needs to remind itself of the statement:
I win or lose therefore I am.
Yet does business genuinely thrive within a solely competitive paradigm?
Research, particularly into the management of change and innovation, suggests that cooperation is also a powerful means to generate wealth and stimulate innovation. Of course, cynics see cooperation simply as the clever packaging of competition in a kind of ‘you don’t bomb us and we won’t bomb you’, gunfight-type standoff that creates a culture of ‘caring and sharing’ built in reality on the same old utilitarian, selfish strategies of the separate organisations concerned.
As soon as the benefits of the alliance lessen, we may well stab each other in the back, given that reality it is a hardnosed, cruel, Darwinistic fight for survival of the strongest. The less cynical believe, and indeed research into many industries suggests, that altruism, genuine cooperation based on a sense of community and good will can also act as a strong motivator to innovate and generate wealth, sustaining innovation in the long term.
Into this whirlpool of ideological discussion, comes Alan Winner, an international guru of shop floor Darwinism, who sees cooperation as the dying corpse upon which the opportunistic vultures of corporate strategy can greedily feed.
Meet a man who has reached the top of his professional ladder through practicing his creed of ‘I win therefore I am’, a living example of Nietzsche’s ‘Ubermensch’, or ‘superman’, packaged, marketed, differentiated from the competition, rich and famous, able to command huge fees all over the world, from New York to New Guinea, a man so utterly alone and unhappy that all that is left to keep his inner soul company on cold winter evenings is the gentle hum of a Psion 5 electronic organiser and the warmth of an overheating PowerPoint slide projector.
“Do not build castles in the air. Build them outside by cities and put theme parks around them.” Alan Winner
Cast
Alan WInner has been played by award-winning actor, Mark Brailsford, Paul Levy and, most recently, by Dave Mounfield.
Dave Mounfield
In his twelve years as a professional performer and writer, Dave Mounfield has done everything from Shakespeare in the Park and a year in the West End in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink to panto at Brighton’s Theatre Royal and having a nervous breakdown in a field just outside Haywards Heath dressed as Beau Brummel. As a co-author of the Cheeky Guide series,
Dave is the long-time (non-sexual) partner of Brian Mitchell, having been involved in pretty much everything he has done, from The Ornate Johnsons to The Ministry of Biscuits, and the two, as Mitchell and Mounfield, enjoy screaming rows on a daily basis. He also founded, hosted and ran The Comedy Diary and Take This And Shove It at Brighton’s famous Komedia and comperes regularly at The Hampstead Clinic and Ealing Broadway comedy clubs.
In Edinburgh 1997, Dave won, with Jerry Sadowitz, the Panasonic People’s Choice Award for a live chat show he co-wrote and performed with the curly-haired, foul-mouthed Scot. Other TV appearances include The People Versus Jerry Sadowitz (Channel 5) The Barfta’s (C4, Associated Rediffusion) and a starring role in Slightly Filthy for LWT.Dave is one of the regular performers on It’s That Jo Caulfield Again for Radio 4. He also has two cats.
Rational Madness Theatre 