Open Road

Stories connect author, actor and audience. They also connect business stakeholders, workers and customers.

Harnessing the power of stories is the most effective way to answer the questions: what do you do, why does it matter, what makes you different, where are you going, what stands in your way, and what does change look like when you accomplish your mission?

Theater is the process of signifying and cuing an audience to the meaning of the story. I bring the best practices of theater to business, in order to help you signify the meaning of your brand.

That’s what I think I do.

Peter Bruun, Founder of Art on Purpose, described what I do in this way:

“You’re an interventionist helping organizations with an identity crisis. You’re like an executive coach only for organizations. You help organizations find their soul. Your unique process allows everyone to speak. You synthesize the feedback and use your insights to ask the most difficult questions that the organization has been avoiding.

You’re focus on narrative (versus strategy) is important because the narrative helps the leader get internal buy-in. The narrative also acts like an external beacon to attract talent, funding and resources. I’m not sure what you do is branding. I’m sure that your process is the most valuable deliverable.”

Branding Lesson:

You’re audience or customer owns your brand. What you think is important pales in comparison to the experience they receive.

The two most artistically interesting people I know are Liz Lerman and Adrian Danzig. Liz is the founding Artistic Director of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, and Adrian the Artistic Director of 500 Clown. What do a dancer and a clown have in common? They ask the most daring artistic questions and risk their take on the  answer in performance. For each, differently, failure is part of the bargain between them, their ensembles and their audiences.

Whatever question I ask Liz,  she will answer with a different proposal and set of questions.  This is how she creates art as well. Built into her creation process is the willingness to destroy her own premise, see what holds up, rebuild from there. Knowing what to jettison and what to keep is what distinguishes great artists. She has a book, Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes From a Choreographer to be published by Wesleyan University press coming in spring 2011. I look forward to reading it.

Liz and I had a conversation about the difference between practice and rehearsal. Practice is skill-based. You practice the individual components of your art: plies at the barre, scales on a guitar, anatomy sketches in charcoal. The goal is perfection. Rehearsal is where you learn what doesn’t work. Rehearsal is where you try things. Where you go for the big “what if.” The goal of rehearsal is failure. If not in rehearsal where? In performance in front of an audience?

Liz and I wondered, if business is theater, then when do business performers (workers) get to rehearse.? If business is theater and process serves as the script, when and where do business performers learn what doesn’t work? When do workers get to build destruction into the business premise and come up with a better one? Unfortunately for customers, workers fail in performance when the stakes are highest. It’s hard to overcome a bad script and a lack of direction. Instead, managers often double down on the ideas and processes that got them in trouble in the first place. Management rarely questions their premise. Artists always do.

Branding Lesson–Build destruction into your own argument, see what holds up, and build around that. Repeat.

500 Clown (there are three of them), also asks big artistic questions. What makes them so unique is that their approach is to stage failure.  Yes they use rehearsal to try things and fail, and they aim to demonstrate in performance that failure  is part of the human experience, and survivable. A clown by nature subverts authority. To 500 Clown traditional theater itself represents authority. The script is authority. The fourth wall is authority. All must be subverted by clown-play. They’re clowns and clowns screw things up, of course, because they’re human. A clown by nature is also resilient!

The 500 Clown belief system goes like this…

500 Clown believes that life is worth the risk.

500 Clown wants to respect the actor as the primary artist, and not just serve as a mouthpiece for the writer and director.

In live performance it’s the actor, not the writer or director, who charges the moment. The objective is to feel something and do something authentic. 500 Clown wants to show that having a profound experience in public is survivable.

If we succeed, we show the respect for the audience and allow them to have their own profound experience.

*  *  *  That is what good branding is and does! Oh, that business would regard their workers as the “primary artist” versus the owner (author)  or manager (director) *  *  *

500 Clown recently performed 500 Clown Macbeth in Baltimore at the Creative Alliance. Their interpretation is based on a very simple premise: clown want crown. It takes them up to two years to develop a piece. It takes so long because they keep asking big questions and starting over. Their director doesn’t provide answers. She helps them decide what to jettison and what to keep. There is no single right answer. There is what works and what works more provocatively.

500 Clown deconstructs classic text, aims high and leaves no wiggle room artistically. They keep their edge by making the audience central to the storytelling. The risk of failure is high.

No one creates instant community better than 500 Clown. No one takes risks, and profits from doing so, more than 500 Clown.

Branding Lesson–Aim high and leave no wiggle room. Put your audience inside the story.

This is mine:

This is better:

I am like this:

When your audience intuitively understands what “like this” means, then you have a winning, sustainable brand.