Concurrence September 2016 by The Painted Sky

“The arts

have served as a complementary vehicle to more traditional learning approaches. They have helped to change attitudes by letting employees confront their assumptions in a nontraditional and non-intimidating environment. -Terry McGraw, Chairman, McGraw-Hill Group

4 Inception

“Anything can happen, if you let it!” If you resonated with Terry McGraw’s words, read on: “Theatre methods have been utilized (in McGraw-Hill) in order to improve employee communication, facilitate the exchange of diverse forms of information, or to increase the motivation and improve the moods of staff. The McGrawHill Company's leadership development programmes used Shakespeare to illustrate the principles of human motivation and theatre exercises to disseminate the corporation's values. Our partners collaborated to create an environment conducive to change by using performing arts techniques." McGraw-Hill is one among many organisations around the world where Theatre is leveraged actively as a tool for messaging, to drive change, explore possibilities and stimulate expression. In my experience, Theatre is possibly the oldest form of Art-Based people development initiative in the business world, and the popularity of the form and its many manifestations and interpretations is still growing. This issue of concurrence, I am delighted to say, is a ‘Theatre Special’, an issue that looks at the use of Theatre in different spaces and formats, to enhance professional development in the business world. I am proud to have my teacher Ms.Radha Ramaswamy from the Centre for Community Dialogue and Change (CCDC) share her thoughts on how she has seen the landscape evolve over the years. Around the same time when Radha was penning her thoughts, I was having a freewheeling conversation with my friends and fellow-travellers Madhu Shukla and Ranji David, who are not just established names in the space of professional Theatre in India but also two exciting people always ready to push the envelope of applying Theatre in the corporate training and development space. The dialogue was fun and quite eye opening. Finally, I am honoured to have another teacher and friend Sudhindra V., a designer at heart (who also works as the Chief Design Officer India at IBM Interactive Experience), write in with his views of how we can make deisgn and Design Thinking more meaningful for users. We also have some more stuff that underline our raison d'être – what can businesses learn from the world of the arts and artists. Including a wonderful article on what start-ups can learn from artists. Hope you enjoy the fourth edition of Concurrence. Please do provide your feedback and thoughts, to encourage and improve our offerings. Happy reading!

Anirban Bhattacharya

Contents Inception Happenings Point of View Masterclass Tete-‐a-‐tete Happenings Insight Column

Page Anything can happen, if you let it! 4 Dr.Charles Limb explores what we can learn from Jazz 6 Anirban Bhattacharya: Help! There’s an Actor in the Room 10 Radha Ramaswamy: The Serious Business of Games 16 A Conversation with Ranji David and Madhu Shukla 25 The New Yorker: Improv for Cops 38 The New Yorker: Tech’s Unicrorns and Art Valuations 42 Sudhindra V.: By Design 47

Dr. Charles Limb explores:

What We Can Learn From Jazz Musicians.

“I must be one of the luckiest surgeons in the world,” says Dr. Charles Limb. “I get to get up in front of an audience and talk not about surgery, but about music.” Listening to jazz musicians improvise, how the piano player’s chords toy with the sax player’s runs and the stand-up bass player’s beats, it may seem like their music-making process is simply magic. But research of jazz musicians’ brain activity as they improvise is helping shed light on the neuroscience behind creativity, and it turns out creating that magic is not as serendipitous a process as we might think. Limb regularly discusses both—he’s a Baltimorebased neurologist with a passion for music. And being on faculty at both the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where he is an associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, and the Peabody Conservatory, he has a lot of insights to offer. “I started looking at jazz musicians playing the blues as a way to understand how the creative brain emerges from a neuroscience perspective”. Limb, a jazz musician and music lover, and his team designed a plastic keyboard that jazz musicians could both play and hear while they were inside an MRI machine. Limb asked the musicians to play a

memorized piece of music, and then improvise with another musician in the control room. “A word of advice,” he said. “If you’re going to do an experiment like this, make sure you write something you don’t mind hearing two thousand times.” Limb captured images of their brains as they played. In the first experiment, jazz pianists were asked to improvise over Limb’s compositional framework, a C-minor blues. In the second, another group of pianists (including Mike Pope, better known as a bassist) traded fours with Limb over another blues. In the third (“nothing short of hilarious,” said Limb, who infiltrated the Baltimore hip-hop scene to find participants), rappers improvised rhymes using random words from Limb’s written rap. The fMRI machine scanned the musicians using Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) imaging, a technique that measures blood flow to neurons across various regions of the brain, allowing experts to determine which of those regions are activated or inhibited by the stimuli in the experimental conditions. The results were fascinating. The solo improvisers showed increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex—the brain’s “autobiography” center—and decreased activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex—the self-monitoring center. Simply put, when musicians improvise, their brain turns up the self-expression, while releasing conscious control of the performance activity. This, Limb explained, leads to “a defocused form of attention that may encourage spontaneous associations and sudden insights.” The musicians who improvised exchanges with Limb showed even more compelling results: activity in Broca’s area, the brain region associated with language production. This refers not to “language” as jazz theory and technique, but to communication. “Music has an ability to communicate primal, emotional messages that resonate on a noncognitive, noncerebral level,” said Limb. “Seeing this in our experiments, I think we’re on to something.”

“When you’re trying so hard to come up with ideas you can’t do it, you can’t force it”

When musicians go to an improvisation, the brain switches, Limb said, and the lateral prefrontal lobes responsible for conscious self-monitoring became less engaged. “Musicians were turning off the self-censoring in the brain so they could generate novel ideas without restrictions,” he said. Interestingly, the improvising brain activates many of the same brain centres as language, reinforcing the idea that the back and forth of improvisation between musicians is akin to its own language. The same principle applies to something like writer’s block. “When you’re trying so hard to come up with ideas you can’t do it, you can’t force it,” Limb said. “Then at another time, some flip switches and you’ve got this flow going on, this generation of ideas.” When the stakes are higher and the brain is actively over-thinking something, it can interfere with processes that have become routinized, causing behaviour or performance to suffer.

CREATIVITY CAN BE DEVELOPED Luckily, creativity isn’t an unknowable, mystical quality. It can be developed. “You have to cultivate these behaviors by introducing them to children and recognizing that the more you do it, the better you are at doing it,” Limb said. The problem is a lot of kids don’t get much unstructured time either in school or out of it. School is often based on right or wrong answers, leaving little room for students to come up with ideas that haven’t been taught to them before.

“It doesn’t have to be so directed all the time,” Limb said. “We’ve taken a lot of the joy out of things that used to be joyful.” Even a lot of music lessons have become about the discipline of learning to play well, not the joy of creating the music. Children should have part of every lesson reserved for improvisation and free form play, Limb said. The same could be said for free play on the playground and experimentation with new ideas in the classroom. Unprogrammed time is necessary for students to practice using their creativity. Limb emphasizes that “This is the kind of science that has no answer.” Hence, instead of conclusions, he ended with questions for future study: Do the mechanisms of musical creativity generalize to other forms of creativity? What is creative genius? Can creativity be learned? Because funding for such impractical science is hard to come by (and the NIH has expressed disinterest in supporting Limb further), these questions might remain unaddressed. Limb’s current findings, however, are intriguing enough on their own.

In recent years many schools have cut their art programs as non-essential subjects. At the same time, leaders are crying for more creative thinking in students. “We tend to look at education of creative aspects of children as something that happens incidentally and that is entertainmentbased,” Limb said. But that misses the connection between creativity and the idea generation necessary for strong problem solving skills. “Art may be one of the best ways to train the brain to have this kind of creative fluency,” Limb said. He believes art is as central to education as math and reading, especially when created in collaborative environments like band or orchestra.

Creating is core to the human experience throughout time, Limb says. “The brain has been hard wired to seek creative or artistic endeavors forever,” he said. “We don’t need it to survive, you wouldn’t think, and yet the brain wants it and seeks it.”

Limb is working to set up an experiment testing his theory with kids who have never had drawing or music lessons before. He’d like to see what’s going on in their brains when first allowed to improvise. Capturing the brain as it begins to create could help deepen an understanding of how to support creative growth. Creativity may even be hardwired into human brains, an essential feature that has allowed the species to adapt repeatedly over the course of history. “Very early on there’s this need for the brain to be able to come up with something that it didn’t know before, that’s not being taught to it, but to find a way to figure something out that’s creative,” Limb said. “That’s always been essential for human survival.” Creating is core to the human experience throughout time, Limb says. “The brain has been hard wired to seek creative or artistic endeavours forever,” he said. “We don’t need it to survive, you wouldn’t think, and yet the brain wants it and seeks it.” Interestingly, the creating brain looks a lot like the dreaming brain, one of the most creative states humans can enter, but one associated with unconsciousness. Similar to what Limb observed in jazz musicians, when people dream the self-monitoring part of the brain is suppressed and the default network in the brain takes over. This is the introspective part of the brain, as well as the autobiographical part. That’s why dreams feel so personal, pulling from experiences or recent worries. “The brain is an organ and some of its functions are geared toward generation of unpredictable ideas,” Limb said. That’s just how it’s meant to function. The interview is here: http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/your-brain-on-jazz/ And another great piece by Limb is his TED Talk, here: https://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_your_brain_on_improv?language=en

Sources: 1. http://jazztimes.com/articles/54051-the-brain-on-bop 2. https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/04/11/the-link-between-jazz-improvisation-andstudent-creativity/

10 Point of View

Help!

There’s an Acto r in the R oom!

It’s four in the evening in training room in a large IT services company in east Bangalore. It’s Friday, the last day of a two-day programme, and the time of the day (and the week) when the 15-odd managers gathered in the room would start planning their departure from office. There’s a light drizzle outside, and normally that would make them fret more, since the evening commute home through Bangalore’s infamous traffic is never easy.

But it is not a normal evening…

The Managers are deeply engrossed in planning a performance. As participants of the programme on managing workplace conflicts, the managers, in groups, have to perform a scene in a powerful and provocative activity called ‘Forum Theatre’, where they will showcase the scenario at work “as is”, and then invite their audience to step forward and propose alternatives. The managers were all immersed in preparing to “act” their realities. The rain outside was forgotten. I look at the watch again, and smile. Things are just warming up…

Theatre in Training So what makes theatre such a powerful process to engage participants? Often the seasoned (and sometimes cynical) players who take tough decisions, manage global complexities, crunch numbers and battle workplace politics and road traffic every day of their lives? When we started our journey (at The Painted Sky) in the space of experiential learning and development, theatre was one of the key areas we found resonance in. Both in terms of popularity (who hasn’t done a “role play” in his life?) and power. In our journey of Theatre-Based Trainings, we have been exposed to many varieties, forms, process and tools that leverage theatre very effectively. It is, in a lot of ways, the most visible form of Arts-Based Training Initiatives worldwide, and, looking at the demand, the most popular. They are used in all aspects of training and people development today – to show scenarios and alternatives, to enact customer experiences, to explore alternative solutions to problems, to tell stories and influence outcomes.

Nested Stories The use of stories or theatrical performances to convey messages is not new, though. The popular trope of “story in story” has been used in human mythology and epics for thousands of years. Where protagonists either tell or sometimes enact scenes to make their points.

Art: Benjamin West -‐ Hamlet-‐ Act IV, Scene V (Ophelia Before the King and Queen)

12 The “nested story” can be found in ancient Indian literature, such as the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, Vishnu Sarma's Panchatantra, Syntipas' Seven Wise Masters, the Hitopadesha, and Vikram and Vetal. Odysseus narrates his adventures at sea to the court of king Alcinous in Scheria in Homer’s Odyssey. The stories told to Sheikh Harun-al-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, in the One Thousand and One Nights are also great examples. The idea of “play within a play” (“spiel im spiel” in German) is very famously leveraged by Shakespeare in Hamlet, where the brooding prince of Denmark and his friends resorted to theatre to expose the treachery of king Claudius. We see the idea now applied across – from many Game of Thrones episodes to movies like Deadpool. And who can forget Rishi Kapoor’s impassioned musical dramatization of a crime in the popular Bollywood movie Karz.

Rishi Kapoor in Karz, enacting the past through song

From Classrooms to Training Rooms While stories and theatrical performances to deliver messages or bring out contrasts have been done in the world of entertainment for eons, the corporate world has woken up to the potential in the last hundred years. Corporate Theatre or Organisation Theatre has grown steadily in importance, and has become much more than just role-plays and ice breakers. They are now being used to demonstrate behaviours and actions, and to dive deeper into causes. The idea behind is that watching experiences from outside and discussing them triggers introspection, akin to watching a movie you relate to. Worldwide, companies as diverse as Accenture to Addecco, McKinsey to Metlife are actively using theatre to drive learning agendas forward. And in India, our client list for Theatre-Based interventions include over fifty companies who are regularly looking at our services to work in different areas like emotional intelligence to assertiveness, stakeholder management to handling conflict, addressing change to improving influencing. "The goal is to lead a participant to an independent evaluation of life events and choices that impact their work and professional behaviour," says Mohan Madgulkar in The Economic Times, a human resource studies professor at Symbiosis and an actor.

The journey of theatre as a learning tool actually starts earlier. Business schools are drawing lessons from the theatre to enhance their students’ ability to become strong leaders and communicators. But, rather than training students as actors, they are using strategies from the stage to enhance students’ approach across a range of business situations. Using acting skills in business training is mainly a western phenomenon. In the US, a number of business schools offer tailored drama electives, such as MIT Sloan School of Management and Stanford Graduate School of Business. And in the UK and continental Europe, universities tend to use a specialist training agency rather than run a course in-house. At MIT students on the “EnActing leadership: Shakespeare and performance” programme become a theatre company for the course duration, culminating in a performance of Hamlet. According to Christine Kelly, a senior lecturer in managerial communication at MIT, identifying with Shakespeare’s characters in a leadership context gives students more presence and the ability to project well even in stressful scenarios. “Having to perform fools the brain into thinking ‘this is a real situation’,” she says.

This improves communication by reducing barriers and increasing acceptance. “When you’re the person saying yes to other people, they start to bring you their best ideas,” he says. “When you’re meeting things habitually with ‘yes, and,’ with an energy of agreement, you transform the way people perceive you.”

Studies have shown that people can improve their communication skills and lower their anxiety with regular practice. Improv’s low-stakes training increases the likelihood that team members will feel comfortable communicating in a variety of work situations. “Yes, and” is the key. This improves communication by reducing barriers and increasing acceptance. “When you’re the person saying yes to other people, they start to bring you their best ideas,” he says. “When you’re meeting things habitually with ‘yes, and,’ with an energy of agreement, you transform the way people perceive you.” Andrews adds, “If people aren’t confident, they don’t contribute as much, so you lose. It’s like group writers’ block: You only toss your idea out there if it’s perfect.”

“When you say yes to something and find a way to make it work, you actually are coming up with solutions,” says Andrews. “I believe there’s a longer-lasting satisfaction to saying yes and affirming things.”

Back in Bangalore… The rain had intensified outside as the first group walked up to the “stage”, a cleared out area where they now put up what can be best called a theatrical demonstration of a workplace problem. In the situation being enacted, the protagonist is facing a tough boss, a bully whose abrasive behaviour is affecting work, and peace of mind.

14 This is ‘Forum Theatre’ (a powerful process borrowed from a very movement called ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’), where teams showcase situations of conflict and discomfort and where the audience (interestingly named “spectactors) are encouraged to step forward and paly the protagonist’s role in their own ways. The goal is to see if these re-enactments throw up interesting options for the protagonists, and also for others who may be facing similar situations at work or elsewhere. As the protagonist begins his act, I reflect on how I have seen us at The Painted Sky apply theatre. In my experience, I have seen theatre’s power in six broad areas. These include improving communication, improving influencing and conflict management, generating alternatives, developing authenticity, inspiring creativity and building collaboration. Theatre-based tools need a strong ‘director’, and a good facilitator trained in theatre techniques can bring out fantastic responses and results from the group. And what is most important to remember that much of this is done with a strong “fun” element baked in, to disarm participants and allow them to open up and move beyond their comfort zones. And once they get into the groove, they are ready and open to explore, express, experience. Theatre is a key to a lot of closed doors. A little rain can’t dampen that!

- AB

“Theatre has nothing to do with buildings or other physical constructions. Theatre - or theatricality - is the capacity, this human property which allows man to observe himself in action, in activity. Man can see himself in the act of seeing, in the act of acting, in the act of feeling, the act of thinking. Feel himself feeling, think himself thinking.”

Augusto Boal (16th March 1931 – 2nd May 2009)

“In a deeply polarised world,

creating spaces for meaningful dialogue is surely a worthwhile goal to pursue.”

17 Masterclass

the serious business of games -

How Theatre Workshops Can Transform People And Spaces Radha Ramaswamy Centre for Community Dialogue and Change

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"Participating in this workshop has helped me renew my commitment to building caring, trusting, and non-exploitative relationships with the people I encounter, and to encourage others to do the same. " (Feedback from a participant in CCDC's recently concluded 6-Day Facilitator training in Theatre of the Oppressed in Bangalore.)

Part I A Forum Performance Goa, September 2014. We walked into a room full of khaki uniforms- with shiny belt buckles, gleaming black shoes, and police badges. 250 people, mostly men, with a sprinkling of women, packed tight, in a narrow rectangular hall. They stared back at us, expressionless faces, secure in their uniforms.

I stood in the small clearing that served as our stage - where we were to perform our interactive Forum play on postnatal depression- surrounded on 3 sides by these men in khaki, and a few, very few, women. How do I get them into the play? How to create a space where they would feel safe to talk about depression? What made the job even harder was that they had all been 'ordered' to come- they had no choice in the matter. So they sat, stoically, and when I asked them about the challenges they faced everyday on their job, and whether they sometimes felt stressed, they shook their heads. A few said that of course the job was hard, it came with challenges, but they felt capable of dealing with it. I asked them to describe some of the challenges. Dealing with the public, they said. No one spoke about the workplace. What about the home and family life? Was that affected by their job? They looked at each other, smiled, as if to say, do you even need to ask? I waited for them to speak- slowly one or two started to speak- they never had enough time for the family, didn't keep regular hours. Some families understood, some complained. Did they have a chance to speak about this at the workplace?

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Not really. Sometimes, among themselves. The women now spoke up- expressing disagreement quite strongly they could never speak about their problems at the workplace; it was not safe. At last I felt we were getting a glimpse of the human beings underneath the uniforms. Now some of the men started muttering about problems, they started talking to each other, about shared problems. I heard a voice behind me " But what's the use of complaining, nothing will change." I opened the question out to the whole 250 strong groups. Did they all feel this way? That nothing will change? There was a thunderous chorus of 'yes'. I was exhausted, but elated that we were now having a real conversation, almost. I could now introduce the play- about a young mother who is struggling with a problem, but feels no one can help her. Maybe they'd like to see if something could be done? Nods. Phew! I had never had to work so hard to introduce a Forum performance. The Forum itself was quite revealing. I explained that they could step into the play, replace a character, and try a different strategy by which the young mother's problem could be solved. There were quite a few interventions, and after several interventions by men, the women also stepped up. It was surprising how the interventions by men stressed the need for greater sensitivity on the part of the mother in law and the husband.

After the Forum, a couple of the men came up to us and confided that they experienced frustration at the workplace, from being treated disrespectfully by their superiors. They thanked us for the programme and the opportunity to open up about a subject they generally kept under wraps. Part II No man is an island I have narrated this experience in some detail here because it highlights the main points I wish to make in this article, listed below. In Part III, I shall briefly outline how the workshops that the Centre for Community Dialogue and Change (www.ccdc.in) conducts, based on a methodology known as Theatre of the Oppressed, have the potential to address these issues.

20 1. A healthy living and working environment allows its members to express themselves freely. The uniform, in the case described above, has associations with 'toughness', 'courage', 'discipline' etc. In professional spaces these qualities are valued over and above qualities such as compassion or gentleness. A policeman shedding tears at the sight of a suffering human being is considered 'weak', even incompetent. The many roles we all perform in our lives - our invisible uniforms- tend to curb free expression. We get trapped in our own interpretations of these roles. Boss = tough and in charge. Employee = smart, always well dressed and 100 % present at work. If you had a bad day at home, your struggle needs to be hidden from your colleagues and especially your boss.

When perceptions of hierarchy dominate communication between two individuals or groups of individuals, what passes for dialogue is really only monologue One of the recurring issues participants bring up in our workshops is 'Balancing work and personal life'. 'Balancing' the demands of the two worlds is constantly held up as an ideal, but there is complete lack of clarity when it comes to specifics. For example, 'Don't bring your personal problems to the office' maybe a useful general advice to give, but does any training prepares one for the emotional battles this entails? And what is more, the struggle is a lonely path. If men admit to the problem, they are not 'man' enough for the job. If women admit to the struggle, they don't measure up to the standards of an already gender-skewed world. Thus a secret sad world of unexpressed desires, feelings, and longings hides behind the cutting edge technology, the confident power point presentations, the imposing conference room, and the men and women dressed in business suits clicking their heels on the long corridors of power. 2. When perceptions of hierarchy dominate communication between two individuals or groups of individuals, what passes for dialogue is really only monologue. When I tried to have a conversation with the group of law enforcement officers sitting in that room without the choice of walking out, their lukewarm responses indicated that they were aware of the one-sidedness of this exchange. The fatigue I felt at the end of an hour of such an exchange was proof of how difficult it is to break these barriers and create true and meaningful dialogue.

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Accepting the monologic and oppressive nature of our relationships ("Nothing will change!") Is a widely prevalent phenomenon in workplaces. We describe 'how things are' as the 'reality', thus taking away the possibility of change. Gradually we lose the ability to imagine a different reality. What could be the long-term damage of such a pattern of thought and behaviour on the individual psyche? And in turn on the moral fabric of our society? What world do we envision for our children - a world ruled by a culture of cynicism and narrow-minded practicality? Or do we dare to hope and dream and act for change? 3. The health of any community is reflected in the relationships between its members. To engage respectfully with people who are 'different' from one is a prerequisite for a healthy living and working environment. In the workshop described above there was a visible divide between the men and the women. The Forum was too short a programme to explore this divide deeply, but we did see a shift happen during the Forum, from the initial moments when the women tried to be invisible and silent in the crowd of men, to voicing their perceptions of the workplace, and then actively engaging with the issue in the play. Most satisfying was to have a young man say at the end that when he gets married, he would like to be a more sensitive husband than the one portrayed in the play!

Unfortunately our mainstream educational curricula pay no attention to the importance of listening, and respecting difference. On the contrary, we learn to show off what makes us better than others, or how to argue persuasively, or come up with witty repartees. In our workplaces these attributes are rewarded. We are afraid to listen, lest we drop our guard. We build our aloneness meticulously. Part III Building Community The theatre workshops that the Centre for Community Dialogue and Change (www.ccdc.in) conducts are of varying durations. But they all have a few features in common. Every workshop takes participants through a process of discovery that starts with games. Participants, ideally not more than 30 in number, discover that playing

22 games is not only fun but liberates the mind too. The novelty of working with the body rather than the mind is a trigger for the mind to relax and allow new feelings and thoughts to enter. The games also serve to awaken our senses, so that the mind is not only relaxed, it is also alert, and sharply aware of the minute, fleeting sensations and feelings generated in the body as it engages in the games. Participants are encouraged to surrender to the games and not 'stay in their heads', or try to analyse what the games mean. The games help bind the group and create a safe environment for everyone to express himself or herself freely.

What form change will come in is still uncertain -‐ therefore we use Forum theatre, an interactive method of theatre that invites audience to join actors in exploring solutions to problems posed in the plays Gradually we proceed to exercises that encourage participants to explore their bodies more carefully and become more deeply aware of the feelings generated. Using a tool known as Image Theatre, participants embody their feelings in response to different themes, and create images - body shapes- with their own as well as fellow participants' bodies. Working without using words, participants learn to use the language of images to tell stories of conflict. Telling their stories through images provides the artistic distance necessary for unfettered expression. The distance also promotes critical thinking, so that participants are able to reflect on the insights they have gained into themselves and their relationships. This reflection often creates a desire for change, to see what is possible, instead of settling for what is.

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Confident in their artistic ability, participants now move on to the next phase in the workshops, creating plays that tell powerful stories of struggle and conflict containing in them the seeds of change. What form change will come in is still uncertain - therefore we use Forum theatre, an interactive method of theatre that invites audience to join actors in exploring solutions to problems posed in the plays. A widely used method in Theatre of the Oppressed globally, Forum Theatre allows a community to explore an issue faced by the entire community, in a uniquely interactive, non-judgemental way. It taps into the community's collective wisdom to consider several strategies and solutions, and each strategy or solution is examined for its effectiveness on stage- not through discussion. The technique is known to give actors and audience a valuable experience through the multiple perspectives that emerge in a democratic way. In a deeply polarised world, where all communication is viewed with suspicion and mistrust, creating spaces for meaningful dialogue is surely a worthwhile goal to pursue. .

“Everything is Improv. The evolution of Earth is an improvised process!”

tête-‐à-‐tête

I have a confession to make, a “full disclosure”!

Ranji David, in his avatar as learning & development head of a technology company in Bangalore, was my first client. It was back in 2011, and The Painted Sky was a fledgling idea that needed believers and patrons. And Ranji had invited us over to do a short demonstration of what a painting-based session could be. In terms of organisation, flow and impact. Till date it is the only pro bono session we have ever done, but beyond that, Ranji David is a friend who I consider one of those early visionaries who had the imagination to connect the dots, to see the potential of Arts in the training room. I met Madhu Shukla in a completely different space – in Psychodrama workshop she was co-facilitating. I was new to theatre as a training tool, and I was mesmerised by Madhu’s poise, skill and grace. And the ease with which she shaped herself to roles, contorted and fearlessly flung herself into character. That too to demonstrate a conflict scenario, not on a live stage show! I can say that I have closely followed the career paths of these two theatre stalwarts from Bangalore. With interest, and deep admiration. I have seen Ranji break free from the corporate world and dive into the deep end of the pool to make a name and a living in the Organisational Theatre space. And seen Madhu step out on her own from working with other training companies to lead fascinating ventures in story-telling and Improv Theatre. At the heart of it, both Ranji David and Madhu Shukla are artists. And qualified artists at that – while Ranji studied theatre at The London Internation School of Performing Arts, Madhu holds a diploma in acting from the National School of Drama, New Delhi. And both now take their art to corporate campuses and help

organisations leverage their significant skills to derive value in their training and development of people. So, I could not think of two better people debate the Concurrence question “What Can Businesses Learn From the Arts?” with. In the last few editions, we have asked this question to leaders in the business and academic spaces. This time, we focus on the folks on the other side, who are taking the arts to the corporate campuses. Here’s that rambling, free-flowing chat.

Ranji David is the Founder, Organisational Theatre, and Artistic Director, Yours Truly Theatre Repertory. Madhu Shukla is an applied theatre practitioner and has set up Playspace to offer theatre-based learning experiences for organizations and communities, and is a part of the brilliant Improv Comedy Bangalore group.

In conversation with Anirban at the Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore Anirban: So tell me how has 2015 been to the two of you? Ok, Madhu let’s start with you – Madhu Shukla: 2015 has actually been a fairly a phenomenal year. I think, of course for me personally in my own life as well, professional life as well. For me both the personal and professional life come from the same space. And I think, if I have to describe 2105 or last year, I think, it’s “riding the wave of possibilities”. So, I think, I have been in the space of facilitation and theatre for over 10 years now, and one of the things, in a way, in the initial part of my career, what I struggled would be to even make a case for theatre in a learning space. And I had to start with educational space. And I had to start with educational spaces, where with, please we want to have a drama teacher for our annual production at the end of the year. To really push back and say yes that could be one of the outcome, there would be larger impact drama and theatre can have when as a process people, and took a while, when finally, everyone said Ok, we can do life skills through theatre. There seems to be some correlation and connection. Today people are actually reaching out, I am talking specifically about training being in the learning space and leadership space, which who are now actually reaching out and saying classroom training is no more relevant. Yes, they are of course relevant, but true transformation is going to happen through something else. And to look at the larger picture outside transformation or the organisation’s transformation, we need to first start with personal transformation. And one of the ways that personal transformation can be made accessible to everyone is by an artistic experience. And therefore the shift that I am seeing in these 10 years is that we have now being reached out, and saying, “we know that something is possible. Can you come and help us figure what’s possible?” And that for me is very exciting, which is to not to go with set answers, and say, here, I have a theatre based communication program for you and I have this, but for me the exciting part is to say “ this is where we are and we are interested in exploring. How can an artistic or theatre based process, as in my case, add value and truly make it a significant experience for the participant?” AB: Excellent! Ranji, what would you like to add to that? Ranji David: Maybe, I will a share a story. I like sharing stories, put into perspective. This is almost 16 years back, I was trying to do theatre based training / intervention, what ever you may call it back then, with a big organisation. Unfortunately, very often the challenge with the organisation 15 years back was that people would look theatre as purely like an icebreaker activity.

Madhu: “How can an artistic or theatre based process, as in my case, add value and truly make it a significant experience for the participant?” And there are so many clients in the organisation with whom I had deep engaging, meaningful conversations which all funnel down to you playing the icebreaker. I felt that either I have lost or you have lost or somebody has lost. I jumped in to do ice breaker activities, but I always felt that I want people to see what is possible, that is more than icebreaker activity. If I was doing an ice breaker, I would have my own agenda or doing a little bit more, stretching them a little bit more and few activities to let them feel “Oh, I just didn’t do an ice breaker that it turned out be something else!” You know, I was in that journey and many organisations back then were in that level, level of looking at theatre as an icebreaker activity as purely what we could do differently. Suddenly the languages of clients and customers have changed. They have evolved over a period of time, which was when I started talking to so many business leaders. They were in my terms still in Icebreaker stage, so I told them that, I am more than happy to come back in 15 years. I don’t know how long and take you through some more exciting stuff. So I would say, the year 2015 has been like a “funnel”, a culmination of years of frustration, anger, reflection, and failures… And so, I would say for me the year 2015 was definitely was not a joyride, was a lots of moments of sitting and doing nothing certain times, certain times of sitting and doing a lot of complicated work with niche client. It’s been a year of reflection, colours, failures, resentment, so a combination of ups and downs. AB: Excellent! Thank you. Now, lets talk more about the theatre work you guys are doing. And I think in Improv theatre, what ever it means, what ever shape or dimension, what ever it is, what does it mean to you and there is a tailing question to that, why do you do, what you do? RD: Improv puts you in a space of absolute nothingness and from nothingness you have to create “everythingness” or “somethingness”! And the fact that Improv puts me in a space of nothingness is something that I enjoy, love and love being there. Imagine a tool that forces you to not to think of anything, to come into the entire space empty and then begin the process on stage, while you’re with an audience. For me, I had reached a state because doing playback theatre for some time, I could see a connection of Improv and spirituality. The merging of two worlds, and that’s where I was coming from the perspective of nothingness, because, Improv and its, in its present form and purest way, it kind of creates ripples with in you and around you. Ripples of many vibrations; and audience feels it, the actor feels it, the individual feels it. That I think its what’s all about and it really pushes your forms of creativity.

30 You just can’t say whatever you want to say and do whatever you want to do and be happy with that. You are constantly on the edge. On the edge of the building trying to jump off. But there is no net on to catch you. But with a team to hold on to you and a team to support you and the audience is there to support you. Once you feel they are there, they are all there with you. Otherwise, you are free falling down the building into the oblivion. MS: So Improv happened very early for me. I remember that my first production that I ever did when I did theatre; I did theatre production with Bangalore Little Theatre, back in 1999. It was a double-billed production, and the entire second piece was something called “Playback theatre”, which at that point in Bangalore no one had even talked about it, at that point of time. And that was back in 1999 and now I am working a lot with “Improv”, because “Improv” is used in many ways. I think somewhere, Improv, brings me back to the basics .I think it disarms me completely.“ One has to truly drop judgements about oneself. One has to truly drop judgements about others. Specially since I have started performing, practising Improvisation as an artist, the more and more I am seeing that it is a way of life. Everything is Improv. I mean the evolution of Earth is an improvised process. And so I find Improv to be this beautiful Fractal - I see its patterns everywhere, where everything for me is similar to an Improv process. Where we don’t know what the outcome is and we have to trust the impulse we are going to bring into a situation. It is not about “Mindless spontaneity”. It is very mindful, it is being very mindful of myself, people around me and the space I am in and it is really making the best of that whatever resources are there available in the here and now. And if that something I am giving my time to practice and if that is something I am sharing with a larger community, I do not see why I should be doing anything else. You know, sometimes I feel so, sort of excited and passionate about the entire piece.

Ranji: “I haven’t met an organisation that is round, split wide open, so that it is willing to receive from each other. You know, a circle that has split, has 2 sides, like pouring on each other. I haven’t seen that.” I think what I am personally truly drawn to Improv is that it is not a solo act. For Improv to happen we have to work together. We have to trust, we have to respect, we have to endow each other, we have to support each other, we have to make each other look good, so as much as one would feel Improv was about me. It is actually about, how well am I doing in supporting the others.

“How do we create scenes, ordinary scenes from our ordinary lives and bring out the extraordinary in it or sometimes create very extraordinary scenes, real crazy scenes, but bring out the ordinary in it.” AB: Let’s talk about the process. How do you go about it? How do you practice? How does it become Improv, if it’s prepared? MS: We have an Improv day and what kind of rehearsal do we do – one of the biggest we do as an ensemble is really moving towards becoming one mind, one body, one voice. We go into the oneness, so that I can pickup your trail of thinking in some way. We do not have rules in the Improv. But we have norms, practices we practice. So very simple fundamentals as basic but as important is the principles of saying “Yes”, practising saying, “Yes! And…” Making the other look good. “Being changed by a change”. We have a couple of these principles. AB: Please explain those terms. MS: Being Changed by the Change” - When something happens to you respond to it. Don’t act like its not happening. Don’t ignore it. Don’t “yes, but it” by acting its not like happening nor over powering it. If something is happening to you then make your response clear.

32 “Be obvious” - It is the other thing we practice. Don’t be vague. Say what you need to say. These are some of the tenets we practice, to do different games. There are lots of games; essentially there are few more ideas sort of we practice again and again. So, we practice large frames. But what will be the content of the frame is something that evolves during the show. And interestingly, I always look for deep depth. If there is no depth in the script, I don’t work. RD: I have done a few Improv comedy shows with my team, but largely most of my Improv work has been Social Improv, using Playback, Forum theatre, Complete the Story, Simultaneous Dramaturgy, ‘Mushaira’, Black Rainbow and other forms. So being fully aware that, while I am making this funny, I am also touching the raw nerve of the audience. I am also touching the person who told something in the audience, I am also touching the co-actor somewhere. So some of the tools that we use for the actors is being wonderful, being honest, and being truthful to what is being said to you. And just replaying it to the audience, being a good mirror and not adding your colour and your masala to what’s being told, to know to make it a very interesting piece, but genuinely being able to receive and give. The whole process of being able to receive and give also goes back to what kind of person you are. Are you as a person able to receive coming on to you from the society. Hence as an actor, are you able to receive what the audiences said or you’re just adding your own bits, whatever, with all of it? . AB: Thanks. That is insightful. How do you look at the modern organisation, how do look at the organisations you work with? How do you see the overall creativity or the need to be creative? RD: For me the organisation is like a box. It’s a square box. In that box, there are number of small boxes. These smaller boxes have individuals and philosophies and processes and systems. And creativity flows with in those small boxes in its own and the organisation calls itself “we are creative”. But the fact is that there are certain limitations to that box - it can’t stretch, it can’t pull. It’s a concrete box. So no matter how much I push and pull, there are a lot of things that stops me in an organisation, in that box. I still haven’t seen an organisation that I have met so many, seen so many. I haven’t met an organisation that is round, split wide open, so that it is willing to receive from each other. You know, a circle that has split, has 2 sides, like pouring on each other. Is there an organisation that can do creativity to enhance the personal life of an employee? Is there a program that says, the creativity to enhance family life? To enhance social life? I haven’t seen that. So when people say, “We are a creative people, and we want to become more creative” I mean, “C’mon, and you haven’t even broken the box. What creativity are you talking about?” So I think we really need to step out and look in. Because when an organisation says -“Do you want to be creative?” there is a purpose to it. There is a business intention to it and finally it all comes down to money. If I have to really make it an equation, does your creativity equals to X number of actions, equals to finally money. If an organisation looks at individual to enhance its individual, his / her personal life, emotional life and then look at and say lets now translate into organisation. I feel they don’t look at the individual or enhancing the individual. They are looking at the end

product. I want to do a creative workshop so that my people become creative. Very creative people will create very interesting hammers and spanners and our machinery will work much better. But I am saying “Hey! Let’s not look at what kind of tools that they are going to come up with to enhance your machine. Just look at there, don’t so much look at what they are creating, let’s look at, what is happening, what are their needs, what are their wants.

“Very Creative people will create very interesting hammers and spanners and our machinery will work much better.”

MS: I am someone who comes from a personal perspective. I start with individual end. I just feel today at least, as an individual that is not a very sustainable format. There are so many of us now dropping out of mainstream sort of structures. I think organisations are recognising that it is not enough for us to so say when you do this, your productivity is equivalent to profit. There are lots of theories, which say money is no more the only motivator for people to stay on in an organisation. What is it? What will make people motivated? I think the biggest challenge before organisations today is “how do we /people who work in an organisation truly feel like they are contributing? How do you they truly feel that they are adding value to a system, to a process – rather than just being a cog in the machinery? And this the question for the system level. This also the question at the individual level. Organisations are no more looking at you to be following the instructions and delivering on those instructions. Because you know that, it might be easy life at a point of time you yourself are going to get sick of the role. And therefor you are going to have to now discovered how can you contribute?

34 AB: Simple question, then. I hear both of you clearly - what more is needed? What should the modern organisation do? If you have to stand on your soapbox and tell them, these are 3 or 5 things you guys need to do so to inspire creativity or enhance lives or whatever is the thing that should move, what should those be, at least some of those be. What should organisations do to genuinely encourage creativity? RD: Let go off processes/ procedures /rules and regulations. Let go off the fact that you are looking at human being to produce wealth for somebody who is sitting at the top of it. Let go of control.

Madhu: I think the biggest challenge before organisations today is “how do we /people who work in an organisation truly feel like they are contributing? How do you they truly feel that they are adding value to a system, to a process – rather than just being a cog in the machinery? And this the question for the system level. This also the question at an individual level. Let go off the fact that you think you own the people, let go off the fact that your people are your slaves, you know, people are creating stuff for you, that means the managers need to let go off their subordinates, that means – superiors and senior managers have to let go off their managers. Let there be more life. ‘Let go off “templatisation”, because in many ways, you are creating a human being of templates. Creativity is not about “templatisation”. Creativity is to breaking those templates in that purest sense. If the organisations are willing to relook at restructuring the organisation, rebuilding the organisation then we are looking at remodelling the human being. Remodelling the very tools. Enable the human beings. In this current context of boxes, you are creating more boxes, you are creating more templates, and you are calling it “creativity”. In my organisation where I work, we have around 15 of us. We work for 15 days only. Although we work 24 days, we have to come or work for 15 days only. Rest of the 15 days is your time. You go pursue painting, go pursue sculpting, pursue dancing. What ever it is there has to be a “me time” and that is strictly and strongly baked into our system. 15 days – go! Take your bag and go…discover some place and come back, go explore! That’s one thing that we do differently. Secondly, not to look at everything from the money perspective! Because we are a theatre company, we are looking at how to bring social change with our tools. I might be going to a village or an Organisation or an NGO. It’s really not the money, at the end of it.

Finally, I would add one more to that, very often, this is a new thing I am talking about to my people I work with are – Create a circle around you. Create a social circle, create a community circle. Don’t become finally an individual, so much so, that you’re nothing but a single individual.

Ranji: “Create a social circle, create a community circle. ... Have a group of friends, have people around you. It may be whoever, whatever kind of friends. But whatever create communication around you, create people around. Don’t take work so seriously that you forget these communities. Communicate, engage with these, see what’s possible, and do stuff for them. Reach out to them. Have a group of friends, have people around you. It may be whoever, whatever kind of friends. But whatever create communication around you, create people around. Don’t take work so seriously that you forget these communities. Communicate, engage with these, see what’s possible, and do stuff for them. Reach out to them. MS: I think they should truly focus on personal transformation. “Creating” entrepreneurs with in the organisation, giving that much space, freedom, and opportunity to really own parts of the work. Create free spaces. Where do we have free spaces to try something new and, create new spaces where trying something new is encouraged and not shot down? I feel what works for me very well is to work on a collaborator model. So actually dropping those hierarchies, when we engage, whomever I do engage to work with, we engage as equal partners. And I find that when we do our own work, we do whatever groundwork, but there is no boss, there is no body that’s going to tell you what you need to do. But how can we come together and take ideas. So I think, dropping the hierarchies, and really bringing and entering as equals in the workspace. Dropping those hierarchies and roles and truly honouring people, dropping these external roles and honouring the role that the person is bringing into the process is key. As an artist, I think constantly it’s a process of realigning the internal values with whatever I am doing. Is it aligned with my internal values and if there is no alignment then I feel dissatisfaction will come in at some point of time. And I think its worthwhile to question is there an alignment or not. This is very critical. I think, the quality of engagements that we bring in matter. Do we have hidden agendas when we are making engagements with people? Are we truly open about what we are intending to do in a particular process or are we truly playing out all the cards? Are we

36 truly valuing the other person? Are we truly valuing the contributions we ourselves are bringing in? Are we having open and difficult conversations? AB: Great! So, these are what you think organisations should practice. Let me turn this a little bit - we, you guys, both of you with your own organisations, are pushing the envelope in creativity, working with organisations around the world. What more should we do? Are we sitting and we are talking about it? What more can we to evangelise to build this? MS: I would say that, as an art based organisation, I have a challenge with L& D. A big challenge is to set programme formulas. These objectives we want to be met. I feel that sometimes they can limit us to what’s possible with the kind of time and engagement we have. So I will say two things we can do. One that we partner on the kind of designs that we create. And two, they must be encouraged to truly experience the Art form. Because the learning happens in experiencing the process. Very often we start saying – “we will do Role play here, and in this we will put this technique”. I feel somewhere, how about experiencing entire artistic process in its whole and then, we sort of step back and we will see what insights we are having. So experience the most fundamental, stripped down artistic– be it through painting or be it theatre, or be it through body movement or dance, experience one whole process. AB: Thanks guys. And my last question is – we have talked Improvised theatre, we have talked about organisations. I will go back to you! Being with this system and this process for a decade, how has this changed you?

Ranji: “I had a lot of hooks on my bodies and these hooks were attached to the strings and these strings were played by the society. So theatre helped me remove those strings / those hooks one by one. Some of those hooks were so deep with in me that once they were removed they ripped the very muscles and nerves out of me so badly that I was injured, like a soul in a box.” RD: When I began my first job, in 1999, I remember doing a presentation for one of my colleagues - I was shivering, my mind becoming numb. Before I began theatre, I may call I was socially dysfunctional. I had fear of meeting people. I had fear of talking in front of people. I had fear of collaborating ideas. I had fear of seeing people for who they are, had lots of fears. I was a hypersensitive person. Theatre helped me.

I had a lot of hooks on my bodies and these hooks were attached to the strings and these strings were played by the society. So theatre helped me remove those strings / those hooks one by one. Some of those hooks were so deep with in me that once they were removed they ripped the very muscles and nerves out of me so badly that I was injured, like a soul in a box. If I have to summarise theatre has transformed me as an individual and I have become more sensitive to the dreams. I have become more sensitive to the space, to people, to surroundings and for that I owe it all together. To the very “art of theatre”. I think that's what theatre does. MS: One of my key learnings is “Acceptance”. Acceptance of who I am, acceptance of my own issues with others and conflicts with in self, I feel like, theatre somewhere has unravelled. I think a lot of my own conflicts, my issues with others and self, theatre has somewhere helped me unravel them. I won’t say they are closed, I mean the conflicts. But I think it helped me to unravel in many ways and therefore truly appreciate, acknowledge and accept what life is, as it is right now in front of me has been a tremendous growth for me. Theatre has allowed me to dream, achieve those dreams, come up with new dreams and not be afraid to ‘Let go off’ some dreams, take on new dreams, so I think it has made me a fluid person. Has really taught me that about impermanence. To not get too attached to success or failure. A good show is a good show, but at the end of the day, you go home and tomorrow you come back to the stage and start again. And that’s true for every part of my life and therefore that gives me so much ease now. Move, let go, make some mistakes, make an ass of yourself, and rock the show. But also come back to ground zero and start again, all over again.

Postscript: As the interview goes for the final edit, Ranji David has just returned from a very successful theatre tour of Serbia. And the news is out that Madhu Shukla’s troupe ‘Improv Comedy Bangalore’ has been invited to perform at one of the world's most prestigious Improv Festivals — the 20th Chicago Improv Festival — making it the first time that an Indian Group will perform at the event. I can’t stop smiling.

38 Happenings

Improv For Cops By Michael Schulman Appeared here on 2nd July, 2016

A program developed with the N.Y.P.D., “To Protect, Serve, and Understand,” pairs seven officers and seven civilians for improvisational theatre games. Like a lot of New Yorkers, Terry Greiss watched the video of Eric Garner being choked to death by police officers on Staten Island, in 2014, and felt a call to action. But, instead of marching on Union Square, Greiss, the executive director of the Irondale Ensemble Project, a Brooklyn-based theatre company, wrote a letter to Police Commissioner William Bratton. “I said, in a hubristic overstatement, ‘you need what we do. As actors, we train ourselves to really look, to really listen,’ “ he recalled recently. “Within the week, I got a call from 1 Police Plaza, saying, ‘When can you come in and talk about a pilot project?’ I was bowled over.” Greiss, who has a rumpled white beard and resembles George Carlin, was sitting in the balcony of Irondale’s space, at a church in Fort Greene. The program he developed with the N.Y.P.D., “To Protect, Serve, and Understand,” pairs seven officers and seven civilians for improvisational theatre games. The goal, he said, is to “develop empathy” between the two groups. (It’s unrelated, except in good will, to an initiative to sharpen cops’ visual perception by taking them to art museums.) A few months ago, Greiss put up flyers around the neighbourhood and received some thirty applicants, though some of the cops didn’t quite know what they were getting into. “One of our sergeants said that she needed volunteers—I thought it was training,” Jaime Ramirez, an officer in the 73rd precinct, said. He turned to Guy Randel, his partner on the force since 2007. “I was, like, ‘Yo, Guy! Go talk to Sergeant So-and-So and get yourself signed up for training!’ “ After a communal dinner of mulligatawny soup, the participants stood in a circle onstage. It was their second-to-last workshop before a free public performance; the cops were considered on duty during rehearsals. The civilians ranged in age and attitude, from a twenty-something Black Lives Matter protester to a retired corrections officer. They all warmed up by singing a medieval madrigal in the round, then by collectively keeping volleyball up in the air as long as possible.

A program developed with the N.Y.P.D., “To Protect, Serve, and Understand,” pairs seven officers and seven civilians for improvisational theatre games. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY AMANDA HINKLE

Greiss stood beside a row of assorted hats and announced the evening’s first exercise, called “The Hat Game.” Two players at a time would choose hats and improvise a scene, while trying to snatch the other person’s hat. “Make sure you’re really saying ‘yes’ to every offer,” Greiss reminded them, invoking the cardinal rule of improv, known as “yes, and.” “Someone calls you José, now you’re José.” He added, “Improv is aggressive, O.K.? When you go for something, you’re going with your whole body, your whole mind.” Randel put on a police hat and played a scene with Annika Sten Pärson, a Swedish-born strategic consultant living in Chelsea, who wore a backward baseball cap. They played the scene as a cop and a vagrant on the street. “Hey, you! Kid!” Randel said. “What you doing over there? Shouldn’t you be in school right now?” As he grabbed her arm, she made for his hat and accidentally slapped him on the forehead. “That’s assault!” Stephen Barnes (84th Precinct) hollered from the audience, laughing. Some of the cops were looser onstage than others (Barnes actually minored in theatre before joining the force), and, when there was mumbling, Greiss would yell out, “Share your voice!” The group moved on to a game called “Unrelated Conversation,” in which five players expound on disparate topics of their choice, interrupting one another

40 whenever the urge strikes them. The idea is to concentrate on one thing and not respond directly. Earlene Cowie, an officer in the 79th Precinct, began, “You would think being a police officer I would be paid top dollar. Suffolk County, Nassau County, they all get paid a hundred-something thousand. My pay-check sucks!” Edward Kelly, a robotics teacher from Sunset Park, cut in, “It’s an interesting career choice, given that I never taught before I worked on computers, and now here I am teaching kids how to build a robot—” Helen Tazes (88th Precinct) interjected, “‘Don’t shoot me! Don’t kill me!’ That’s what I hear from this freaking lunatic! I arrested you because you beat the crap out of someone and it’s on camera, not because you’re black. Not because you’re from a low-income area. I don’t give a shit! I’d rather not arrest you and have to pat you down in your crevices in the July heat!” Jacqueline Wladis, who works at a fashion start-up, jumped in, “You know what sucks? Girls who work in fashion suck.”

Greiss asked the officers to hand their police hats to the civilians. “What does the hat bring up for you?” Greiss asked them. “What does it feel like? How much does it weigh? What does it represent?”

More games followed. In “Rants,” six players stood in a semicircle as an organizer called out subjects for them to sound off on, from lint (“Those tape things, they don’t work!”) to Black Lives Matter (“Why does it always have to be involving the police?”) At one point, the instructor called out, “Why are you here?” One by one, the civilians and cops leaped out centre stage, interrupting each other: “I’m here because I’m sick and tired of everyone grouping police officers in one category, like we’re all racists, we’re all here just to lock people up—” “When I first heard about this, I thought, Oh, man, I get to, like, perform in something? But then I finally heard—” “I’m here because I want people to know that I see two sides on the story. I’m a cop and also—”

“I’m here because I wanted to make a change in my community. I mean, I’m—” “Who would pass up this opportunity? Nobody would ever call me to a theatre! But now I have—” “There are all these stories that need to be told. I think that’s so important. That’s why I’m here, I wanted to—” “We’re people, too. We have families. We have loved ones. We live in the city we want to be safe—” “People don’t even respect me! I was respected before. I was referred to as ‘Miss,’ ‘Ma’am.’ Now I’m ‘pig.’ Now I’m ‘racist.’ I am a slew of adverbs, adjectives, nastiness.” Near the end of the evening, Greiss asked the seven officers to stand onstage holding their police hats. “I want you to look at it, and endow it with what you feel about the job,” he told them. “When you’re ready, put the hat on and let your body respond to the hat.” Postures stiffened; hands rested on hips. Then Greiss asked the officers to hand their police hats to the civilians. “What does the hat bring up for you?” Greiss asked them. “What does it feel like? How much does it weigh? What does it represent?” The civilians donned the hats. Some looked uneasy, others authoritative. “Officers, watch,” Greiss instructed. “Are they wearing the hat, or is the hat wearing them?” Richard Gadson, who has been a patrol cop in Bed-Stuy for fifteen years, said, from the first row, “They’re wearing the hat.”

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/improv-for-cops

42 Insight

What Tech’s Unicorn Cult Can Learn From

The Art World By Gary Sernovitz

Appeared here on 12th June, 2016

In the thirty-one months since the investor Aileen Lee popularized the term “unicorn” as shorthand for a start-up technology company worth a billion dollars or more, the concept has gone from novelty to gestalt to frenzy to trouble to embarrassment. Some unicorns have been sold for a fraction of their once-billion-dollar values. Others have had investors mark down the value of their stakes. A few, like the blood-testing company Theranos, have been accused of fraud, hinting at a rot beneath other startups. But one transformation wrought by the unicorn phenomenon endures: where company valuations used to be concerns that were tertiary to their identity, how much a company is worth now defines it. This change looks an awful lot like what has happened in the world of art. Later this week, for example, artists, curators, gallerists, and buyers will assemble at the blingiest of the art world’s annual big-money fairs, Art Basel, in Switzerland. The wealth on display, and the market’s influence on how the work is received, has become, over the decades, a permanent feature of the event. In tech, the shift was much more rapid. Lee’s billion-dollar figure set an arbitrary but geewhiz number as the entry fee to a club of success. More subtly, it transformed “worth a billion dollars” from an adjective to a noun. And then, in a blink, that noun became an essential fact of a company. In her article, Lee counted fourteen private unicorns; today, TechCrunch’s unicorn “leaderboard” lists a hundred and sixty-eight, a hundred and two of them in the United States. This growth was driven by a feedback loop that established itself in the venture-investing world: to attract capital and recruit employees, a company had to prove that it was a unicorn or on its way to becoming one. Prospective unicorns modelled their investor pitches on the triumphs of Facebook or the current lead unicorn, Uber—and on the battle cry of “U.R.L.” (ubiquity first, revenue later). With no limit to their ambitions, they gorged on capital.

For a private company to be worth a billion dollars, it doesn’t have to be bought for that amount or even raise a billion dollars from investors. Someone just has to pay ten million dollars for one per cent of it. (Airbnb, for instance, is worth twenty-seven billion dollars, even though investors have put in only 2.4 billion dollars in cash.) Each time investors provide more cash to a company, they determine how much that company is worth. Unicorn-hunting investors steadily drove up equity prices, with the potential for market ubiquity embedded in their financial models, with no company profits (or sometimes even revenue) to anchor their estimates of worth, with capital flowing into the system from experts and amateurs alike. The art world knows about prices floating ever higher on abstraction and hope. The resonances aren’t completely coincidental. Both venture capitalists and art buyers are in the business of valuing the invaluable. Both stake their reputations on exquisite selection. Both nurture talent before it can support itself. Both have a soft spot for youth, for unbowed ego, for the myth of solitary genius, for the next new thing. Both operate in a world of frustratingly limited information and maddeningly unpredictable success. Both depend on consumer culture while holding themselves superior to it. And both the art market and venture investing have become increasingly winner-take-all games, with more clout to the companies and artists backed by the most powerful dealers or venture capitalists.

The art world knows about prices floating ever higher on abstraction and hope. The resonances aren’t completely coincidental. Both venture capitalists and art buyers are in the business of valuing the invaluable. These similarities have culminated in a parallel situation in both communities, in which price has outshone traditional ways of seeing. The art world, with decades more experience of this, shows venture investing ways to fight, succumb to, or ignore price’s glare. It’s hard to determine when exactly, in art, the price of a work took on greater significance than what it is: the record of a transaction. But for many lay people and even skilled art viewers it has become harder to see a three-hundred-million-dollar de Kooning unconscious of its price. This change came from the flowing together of two historical streams: one in which movements, such as Dada, Pop, and conceptual art, demanded that serious art contain both ideas and material (and sometimes just ideas), and one in which the hedge-funded and oligarchic super-rich embraced art as a convenient, glamorous “capital asset.” The dispiriting result, as the critic James Panero put it in The New Criterion, was that “the point of sale, rather than the point of creation, came to take precedence in determining

the primary meaning for certain works of art.” In fact, he added, “Price took on a more prominent concern in evaluating all works of art.” His critique was directed at some of today’s most prominent artists, who have confounded their critics by making moneydefined meaning the subject and purpose of their work, or, less charitably, their stunts— see Damien Hirst’s diamond skull or Richard Prince’s hundred-thousand-dollar paintings of other people’s Instagram photos. (I wait for people to start talking about “articorns,” artists whose work has sold for over a billion dollars in their lifetime.)

There are some signs that Silicon Valley is weaning itself from the cult of the unicorn. Most investors have awoken to the greed, folly, and fear that were evident, in hindsight, in the investment rounds that inflated some of the unicorns’ worth. Fred Giuffrida, a managing director at the venture fund of funds Horsley Bridge, told me that, in some circles, “unicorn has boomeranged to become a pejorative term.” Certain companies, he said, prefer to be valued below a billion dollars, to avoid the taint.

Many in the art world—critics, artists, surely even dealers who nurture the undergraduate innocence still alive in their souls—hate this. And, even as the art world has gotten asphyxiated by the bear hug of billionaires, critics have developed strategies for dealing with price in a world where artists, of course, still sincerely work. The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl, for example, argued last year that you must ignore art-market insanity for your own sanity. And Jed Perl has waged a sustained fight against the bad faith of treating “art as money.” And while visual art has not freed itself from the market—far from it—the critics’ coping strategies illuminate ways in which the technology world can think about unicorns. Unicorn critics already exist, as you would expect, considering the de-corning of unicorns that’s taking place today. Perhaps the most famous criticism of unicorn funding came in a much-discussed blog post by the venture investor Bill Gurley, who lamented start-ups raising follow-on investments at what he called “dirty valuations,” which made a company a unicorn in theory but contained provisions that hurt early investors. This and other more technical criticisms of unicorn funding are about how venture investors make unicorns, more than an existential challenge to the idea. That challenge would require something implied by the final words of Gurley’s post, a call for “a return to an appreciation for sound business execution”—in other words, a different aesthetics.

46 A Schjeldahlian critical strategy of cheerfully wilful disregard for the market would ask Silicon Valley—and its observers in the press and the investment chattering classes—to be more focussed on what companies do and less focussed on the scoreboards of valuations and the funding process. A more combative approach, one akin to Perl’s or Panero’s, would take that a step further, and bring about real changes in how companies and investors act. The venture industry will always invest, of course, but it need not judge success by how much private capital a company raises or how quickly its valuation touches a billion dollars. Venture capitalists could celebrate a new definition of private-company success, upholding companies like the techy fashion retailer Everlane, which expanded by bootstrapping itself up from small outside investments and reinvesting profits—not from guzzling venture funding. (This approach, all else being equal, could also mean larger profits for seed investors.) Silicon Valley could adopt new investment structures, to make interim valuations less of a sport. Private companies, for instance, could be funded at constant valuations. Similar to how venture-capital firms themselves are rewarded, a start-up’s employees and founders would not mark their own worth with each successive funding round but would gain a variable share of the ultimate proceeds only when the company goes public or is sold for cash. There are some signs that Silicon Valley is weaning itself from the cult of the unicorn. Most investors have awoken to the greed, folly, and fear that were evident, in hindsight, in the investment rounds that inflated some of the unicorns’ worth. Fred Giuffrida, a managing director at the venture fund of funds Horsley Bridge, told me that, in some circles, “unicorn has boomeranged to become a pejorative term.” Certain companies, he said, prefer to be valued below a billion dollars, to avoid the taint. But opting to be a sub-unicorn is probably more a form of differentiation within the same worldview—a hipster valuation, the second-most-expensive brand of flannel shirt. The opting-out doesn’t undo the existential change of what success now means. And many of the poor decisions in the technology sector over the past thirty-one months—in how cash was invested, valued, burned—happened because of today’s definition of success: companies achieved their goal to be unicorns. But just as a museumgoer is rewarded by regarding a de Kooning as a painting, as the expression of an artist, and not as an absurdly priced object, venture investors may benefit from a concentrated effort to consider companies as companies once again, unseeing unicorns for good.

Gary Sernovitz is a writer and a managing director of a private-equity firm. His most recent book is “The Green and the Black: The Complete Story of the Shale Revolution, the Fight over Fracking, and the Future of Energy.”

47 Column

By Design

Sudhindra V.

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Design does one of 2 things 1. In terms of marketing, it connects people with brands and 2. In terms of problem solving, creates new forms of thought patterns, inculcates new habits and provides for greater efficiency. And in both these aspects, there are a couple of ways in which one can approach - they can either be clever or meaningful (and of course, both). Design Thinking allows us to think really big and when applied on digital's unbounded canvas, an idea can take a life of its own. But how much shall it live and how big can it get is something dependent on how the designer has thought about it in the first place. This is where you have to make a choice - do you want to create just clever communication or meaningful experiences?

Lets look at the most important aspects in creating great experiences people, technologies and brands. People - today have evolved in their behaviour. They need things now, free and in the time and place of their choice. They can be anyone from a worried parent to a leisurely traveller, a senior citizen looking to buy a smart phone to aspiring artist looking to self publish. And they are multiple personas in one and behave differently in different contexts. They are highly demanding and use "more personal computers" just as an extension of their body parts. And they are more socially conscious than generations before and nurture a global perspective. And our days are packed with more than 24 hours worth of events and data in this age of information overload, which is leading to attention-deficit in all of us. And PEOPLE (consumers, customers, users) are in control of brands today. Technologies - are evolving too. From augmented reality to internet of things to cloud to cognitive to audio fingerprinting to facial recognition to brain-to-brain interfaces, there is no dearth of possibilities that technologies today can offer. What limits people today is only their imagination and anything they do imagine can be brought to life. And "digital" has offered an unbounded canvas for opportunities to change people's lives for the better. Brands - In this world that is changing as we speak, brands need to be at the top of their game than ever before. They have an opportunity to use the power and the unbounded canvas of the digital to build relevant, deep rooted, meaningful experiences that tug at and touch the people at their fundamental and not-so-fundamental needs; some latent and some explicit. And while doing so, continue to seamlessly weave the story across all the various channels that people talk to brands with. Those organizations and brands that understand this go a long way and those who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, will eventually learn with casualties because as Gartner predicts, in the immediate future, nearly all of the competition is

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going to be around the way people consume "experiences" as opposed to how they consume products, services and anything in between. The organizations and brands who will top the charts are those who elevate experiences to the level of an art performance, an aesthetically pleasing choreography of channels, products, services, people needs, all within a holistic narrative across the digital and the physical world. How do we bring this all together to design meaningful experiences? Is there a formula or a guideline in doing so? There are 3 ways in which a team can make this happen. 1 Extend the Product 2 Extend the Brand 3 Make everyday a bit more meaningful

Extend the Product: There is no better example in how a product can be extended to make it more meaningful than the Nest Learning Thermostat. It has gone beyond being a thermostat into a being a "friendly companion" in the house. The thermostat itself learns on the job - just set it to the right temperature you feel like and it keeps learning. No myriad number of buttons to high, med, low, blower off, blower on, swing and a host of other things to set from. When compared with the Nest, the other thermostat controls almost resemble a warship that rely on a manual and mastery - but here's the thing, nobody actually should be looking to master this simple tool that helps keep people comfortable in their own homes. Nest understood this really well and also extended the product where one can connect it via their phones so their homes are ready to offer comfort on a hot day before they step in.

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Extend the Brand: Extending a brand involves, firstly understanding what it stands for, its very soul and then being able to find new and innovative ways of bringing this essence to life time and time again. It means creating new products, services and aspects that may not have been existent earlier to nurture the brand to be more meaningful in the ever-changing world. Disney is a great example that has been extending its brand in many ways to make this world "a happier place". What started out as an animated films company soon moved into movies, toys, books, Disneyland parks and all of them living the simple philosophy of "making this world a happier place".

Another company that has extended their brand to create more meaningful experiences to people is Patagonia. Starting from their very famous "Don't buy this Jacket" ad, Patagonia has been advocating less consumerism and a care for the environment, even at their own expense. Continuing this further, they have launched "Worn Wear", that promotes reuse of goods and eventually saves money as well as helps the environment. A wonderful example of extending the Brand into creating truly meaningful experiences for its people.

Make Everyday a bit more meaningful: Brands, organizations and companies can go a long way in making people's everyday a bit more human, bit more meaningful. This involves the companies and brands to think beyond themselves and think about people's needs, not just on what they need in terms of their products but in terms of their real psychological needs. Brands take a backseat when we use this principle; in fact chances are some of the people consuming these experiences wont even know who is making this happen but when they do know it, they become their advocates for life. Google has been doing it consistently. Project Loon, their ambitious program to connect the entire world is one such thing. So is Subway Symphony, a very creative way of transforming New York Subway.

The Khan Khajura Tesan, a brilliant, award-winning work by HUL, aims to bring in entertainment to the darkest parts of India. It makes the everyday a bit more meaningful to the people deprived of on demand entertainment through the other sources such as Television due to lack of electricity. A wonderful way to build deep and meaningful connect with people. It takes one thing more than any other to create meaningful experiences - it is a matter of CHOICE. It takes courage, ability to persuade all those involved and plain old perseverance to bring meaningful experiences to life because there may not be shortterm gains for the business and as is the case in anything innovative, it doesn't guarantee success. But when done well, it is sure to become a game changer and an asset to be proud of. It requires a deep understanding of people needs, digital capabilities and the imagination to bring them all together. And as it is said, stories of imagination tend to upset those without one. It’s a question for all of us ask ourselves - do we have the imagination and the courage to create something meaningful? In other words, do we have the courage to influence the stakeholders and brands we work with to create something meaningful instead of influencing our users to buy more? What’s your answer?

“Companies should not expect instant gratification. Arts-based training is about trying to reach the potential other methods cannot and the ‘penny-drop’ moment can happen any time after a course.”

- Stephen Broad, research lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

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