School’s out. For some children of two working parents that means staying with grandparents or a neighbor. For some, it’s summer day-camp season, sports, cooking, art, music, or theatre camps.
My granddaughter just completed Theatre Camp. All week the six to ten-year-olds rehearsed, made set pieces and decorations, and we went to the performance of “Ratatouille.” a musical play in which rats and other cooks open a Parisian restaurant to critical acclaim, all sung with wonderful “Fake-French” accents.
The Rat Chorus sang “La Vie En Rose.”. The Cooks sang “Cooking All Day,” and the Critics sang “Let’s get Critical,” to the tune of Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical.”
The entire cast sang the finale, “We’re now finally done with Ratatouille,” to the tune of “The Macarena” complete with the dance. The parent and grandparent audience went wild.
Staff members handed us stickers that said:
I was an undergraduate theatre major, and later an unemployed actor, waiting tables, tending bar and driving a cab. My theatre experiences turned out to be valuable in my career helping leaders make change.
Here is some of what I learned:
I studied people in order to portray them. How people stand tells you a lot about how they are feeling. Are both feet at shoulder width firmly planted – the confident stance? Do they favor one side? Shoulders rounded? That could be Depression or some other kind of pain.
Are they looking at your lips rather than your eyes? They might be hard of hearing. Or are they thinking about what to say next? Or not telling the truth?
We were trained in pantomime, making different gestures and facial expressions for others to interpret.
When you ask people to change, they will tell you how comfortable they feel by how they stand, how their face moves, what position their hands and arms take.
As an actor I was listening for cues, not just the line cue which told me when to speak, but emotional cues. What was the other character feeling that I would play off?
Soliloquies told you what someone was thinking. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” – I’m a little blue. Real people don’t give you a soliloquy; you have to listen between the lines.
Good dialogue in plays was a conversation. If their were clues in one person’s speech, the other character either picked up on it, which moved the scene forward, or was oblivious, for dramatic conflict or humor.
When you’re leading a change listen for the cues. How are they feeling? Do they understand? Ask. Summarize what they say before powering up and overcoming their objection.
Some learn teamwork on the playing field, “pass the ball…. hit singles and doubles…everybody scores.” Some learn on the battlefield, “No one left behind… protect your buddy…”
You can’t lead change without everyone acting together. I learned that in the theatre. There is an expression “there are no small parts, only small actors.” When the lead acted like a star, the rest of the cast wasn’t as good.
The ensemble is what matters. Someone forgets a line you adlib to keep the action going. As a leader you build the competence and confidence of followers and everyone becomes a leader and you all change.
I was never in an improv troupe, like Second City, but I did learn improv in class, and certain directors used it in rehearsal. A lot of theatre groups now fund operations teaching improv skills to corporate leaders.
The key to improv is the phrase, “Yes, and.” You don’t block by saying “No.” You keep the scene going by building on each other’s ideas. This is the foundation of divergent thinking, used in Innovation and improvement process. This is behind the much mocked rule of brainstorming, “There is no such thing as a dumb idea.”
If you say “Yes, and,” as a leader, you keep the change going, and you find a way.
Shared Context
“The play’s the thing.” In improv someone sets the context for the scene. “You are two working parents trying to get your seven kids to bed.” All the actors then improvise within that context and it works.
In change, leaders, especially CEOs brought in from outside, invest too little time understanding the shared context for the change. They downplay the history of what got us here, and assume that everyone agrees on the need to change.
We all Love blooper reels, when the TV or movie stars we love say the wrong line, or fall down while in a serious dramatic moment. Then the director says “Cut!”, and reshoots. In live theatre, there are no reshoots.
In my first ever play “Carousel”, my character, Billy Bigelow learns that his girlfriend is pregnant. This precedes his big song where he contemplates becoming a father. He says to his sidekick “Julie’s gonna have a baby!”
In dress rehearsal, I blurted out “Julie’s gonna be a Father!”
Don, playing my sidekick, laughed a big in-character laugh and said, “No, Billy, Julie’s gonna have a baby. You’re gonna be a father.” The show went on and I didn’t make that mistake in performance.
Billy Gore, the founder of WL Gore the maker of Gortex, created an award for “the idea that looked so good on paper, but was the biggest mistake of the year.” It carried a big prize and was presented at a big all company celebration. He said this award “buys bold ideas and gives everyone a good laugh.” That sounds like something change leaders need.
I’ve read about how some film directors can’t keep a schedule. I was never in a play that didn’t open on time. There is something about “opening night” that focused tech crew and actors alike. We were ready on opening night. We all signed up for that commitment at casting.
Organizational change doesn’t always meet its deadlines. Maybe that’s because leaders don’t create the same kind of shared urgency nor get the shared commitment of an ensemble.
Maybe change leaders might take an improv course, or write some scenes to practice these lessons and in that way theatre could become their superpower.
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