What Joy to Sing Again

After the longest, most challenging year in most of our lifetimes, a group of We the People actor/singers and various and sundry friends gathered in a snowy parking lot in Hanover, NH.  Thanks to the clever technology developed by the Denney family in Massachusetts (#drivewaychoir) and thanks to the generosity of the Choral Arts Foundation of the Upper Valley who purchased the gear and is providing it to local groups, we were actually able to safely sing together.  It was glorious! It was thrilling! It was heartwarming! I am running out of superlatives. 

Our wonderful piano man, Matt McGrath, was inside on the keyboard.  He had even brought his sound effect machine so that we could hear thunderous applause after some of the songs.  I stood out in front of the building, looking down at the 20+ cars that had gathered and did my best to lead the singing.  I am no conductor.  At best, I'm a camp-style song leader, but I did my very best to keep us together. There were kids and dogs in cars and friends who had come along to listen and enjoy.  And then there were my intrepid singers.  We had sent lyrics sheets in advance of the songs we planned to sing and most people had them on iPads or printed in their cars. Each car was given a headset and a wireless microphone to sing into. This allowed the group to stay safely sequestered in their cars while the full sound was broadcast back to the headsets and/or the car radios. We weren't perfect. We forgot some of the trickier bits of songs and our pitch might have wobbled once or twice. But no one cared! We pressed on even through the most intricate songs. "One Day More" from Les Mis comes to mind. What a stirring song with multiple parts overlapping, sometimes in counterpoint.  Much to my amazement, we got through it with aplomb!  Then there were the more sentimental songs that fit the time we are in.  

"The sun will come out tomorrow, Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, they'll be sun" (Annie) 

"Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh so mellow" (The Fantastiks) 

"Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect and whistle a happy tune, and no one will suspect I'm afraid.   (King and I) 

"Kiss today goodbye and point me towards tomorrow, we did what we had to do, and I won't forget what I did for love, what I did for love." (Chorus Line)

We soldiered through some of the songs from our last three shows.  We sang songs from Working and from 1776.  Then we were all granted an enormous treat when our own Don Quixote, Ham Gillett, lead us in singing The Impossible Dream from Man of la Mancha, the production that never quite made it onto the stage a year ago.

Don Quixote speaks- "It is the mission of each true knight... His duty... nay, his privilege!.."

To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go;
To right the un-rightable wrong.
To love, pure and chaste, from afar,
To try, when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star! 

You know the rest. I trust that you are singing along by now. Fortunately, I was far enough away from the assembled crowd so that no one could see the tears in my eyes. Even though our production was cancelled a year ago, on this day, in this place, with these people, we were singing our hearts out again.  Our driveway choir gave each person the joy of seeing dear friends, even from behind masks, and of singing together. It brightened a gray day on the cusp of mud season after a year like no other.

And finally "Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes. 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?" (Rent)

How can we measure a year like the one we have had? It will take a long time for many of us to leave it behind. We will move slowly with caution and undoubtedly will feel awkward as we try to get back to our friends and our fun. But there is one thing that is for certain. There will be music and theatre at the end of the tunnel. I hope many of you will be in the audience.

Expect a Miracle

Art, Community, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit

I am often moved to write when I've been part of a collaborative theatre project.  This time, it has taken me a bit longer to put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard.  This time, I was part of something that was extraordinary in ways that I could have never anticipated or imagined.  A very dear friend told me that he believes that we should go through life "expecting a miracle".  That is what happened this winter on The 1776 Project.

This time, a group of wonderfully talented and dedicated people came together and created something magical, something that moved a community and created real meaning for the people who experienced the performance.  Many people have asked me how I pulled it off?  How did I bring this disparate group of people together and create such magic?

Well, I expected a miracle.  I have spent a good portion of my business career working at early-stage companies for some wonderful entrepreneurs.  I learned from them what it is to believe in a vision and assemble a team to make it happen.  I learned from them about not giving up even when confronted with obstacles and bumps. And there were definitely bumps.  There were people who dropped out, who couldn't stay with the project.  There were actors who were sick and actors that missed rehearsals. There were the normal challenges with the design team.  Mercifully, there were no significant weather challenges which was it's own miracle since we are in Vermont and the show opened at the end of March.  All in all, we weathered all of the small storms and managed to get a cast of 26 humans along with a crew of 12 to stay on their feet through a three-week run.

Expect a miracle.  In this particular project, our goals were very ambitious.  We set out to spur a conversation in the community and to engage with kids and adults around the very important issues in the play.  We invited local politicians and thought leaders to participate in talk-backs after every show. And our audiences stayed for the conversation.  The feedback from patrons has been extraordinary.  They went home and re-read books about our Founding Fathers.  They engaged with their families and friends in meaningful discussions about civics, and race and what it means to be an American.  The story is not all peaches and cream.  There were real compromises that were made in order to birth this great country. And everyone involved in the project explored that part of the story very thoughtfully.

We essentially built something from nothing.  We had no company, we had no team, we had no real support at the outset.  But we had an idea that we believed in.  We were able to convince some very generous funders to support our vision.  We began to talk about the idea and everywhere we went, people would nod and begin to get excited.  While many of the people who came out to audition and to work on the production were known to me, many were not.  There is a long list of people who simply appeared and got on board.  That's what happens when you expect a miracle.
It would have been so easy to say- whoa, this is going to be way too hard.  Who will do all of this work? Who will we get to play these very challenging roles?  Are there enough accomplished actors and singers to make this happen?  If we're planning to do community outreach, who's going to do THAT work?   And how are we going to assemble a group of musicians for the pit?  Who's going to run our spotlights and our soundboard?  But we started recruiting a team, and as the energy grew, the team grew.  When we began marketing the show, the word of mouth started to spread.  As the actors became more confident in the quality of the show, they began to spread the word with enthusiasm.  And then when our audiences left the theatre, they told their friends. The word spread.  Miracles do that. We sold out 8 out of 10 performances.  And we built something really special.  Sadly these pop-up communities are a bit ephemeral.  Actors often mourn when a show is over.  The cast and crew become like family and it's hard to replace that when it's over.

The 1776 Project is now behind us.  The gratitude that I feel knows no bounds.  And now we turn our sights to the next project.  It'll have something to do with talking to each other and with celebrating our unique stories.  And yup.. you guessed it.  Once again, we'll start out expecting a miracle.

Delirious with Spring and Show Biz

It's been a long winter.   One of the last blogs that I penned at the end of last year was called, "Winter is Coming" and look at us now.  We've just rounded the corner on Cinco de Mayo and spring is most assuredly knocking on our door. This blog has been lying a bit dormant along with the plants and flowers in my yard.  It's a bit of a puzzle why because I have been blissfully unencumbered with commitments.  I've had plenty to do to keep me busy but I have not felt frenetic nor ridiculously overloaded like I have felt for so much of my professional life.  I've been doing lots of reading and writing and thinking about what's next so I've had plenty of time to blog.  But inspiration was stirring in me in other places, with other projects.  Maybe this blog was resting and waiting for spring just like everyone else. But back to springtime.  What a glorious season!

Let's look back a bit to where it all began. We had a spectacular summer last year with the gardens overflowing with blooms, blossoms and produce.  We also enjoyed our fish pond with some beautiful water lilies blossoming several times a week and a collection of fish that I bought at the pet store for $.10/ a piece.  I had completely resigned myself to the fact that the fish would likely perish when the temps were sub zero.  So, imagine my delight when I wandered by the pond a couple of weeks ago, with the layer of ice just having dissolved.  There swimming around happily, were my fish.  This made me deliriously happy.  Unreasonably happy really.

So now I move my energy and attention to the gardens.  This is especially delightful this year because I am immersed in a production of The Secret Garden.  It is a beautiful play about a group of characters who wake up and find joy in their lives after much sadness, or dare I use the analogy- a long, cold winter.

I marvel every year at how my gardens that look to be quite dead are just waiting for the sunshine, warm days and spring rains to bring them back to life.  It's really quite miraculous.  So too is the wonderful process of bringing a story to life on stage.  It begins with a group of disparate actors, directors, and artists of all kinds.  As the director, I have been thinking deep thoughts about this play for months, but now at last, we are coming together as a collective and bringing it to life.  What a thrill it is to watch the discovery that happens in the rehearsal process. And likewise, what a thrill it is to watch the natural world out my back door come to life.  Just like in the play, everyone seems to be helping out.  The chickens are free ranging and fertilizing the ground.  The birds are busily planting their nests and distributing seeds around.  I wonder if my fish and frogs have their own dance of rebirth and collaboration?  I bet somehow they do. And if there is one lesson that the garden teaches it is patience.  We watch and we wait.  We allow all things to emerge when they are ready.  This is a wonderful lesson for a director as well. There are two months before our production will open. That is plenty of time to allow everything to bloom- both on stage and off.

Ahh.  Yes indeed.  This is my very favorite season.  I am waking up to sunshine and the world around me.  I am planting another beautiful garden both in the backyard and on stage.  And what is better than that?  I am delirious!

The Fine Line Between Joy and Grief

There is a framed print in my office with the quote- “She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short.”

It is well-documented that I have always been quick to tears.  This has been the topic of much joking amongst my family and friends for some time.  But last summer, sitting by a river on a star-studded night, I talked with a friend about what is behind the tears.  We explored the idea that just behind many joyful moments, there is some form of grief for how fleeting the moments are or how crushingly beautiful they appear to us.

I have just come off a very special experience as a cast member in a production of Our Town.  The play is a masterpiece and articulates some important truths about the way we live our lives.  Life is indeed too short and we are often not able to appreciate that which is around us each day.  There is a scene in the play when one of the leading characters , who has died in childbirth, wants to return to her life and live over just one day.  Another character explains to her that to return to earth to live over a day is painful because not only do you live it, but you see yourself living it and you know what’s going to happen.  That scene has been rattling around inside me for two months now.  It is a scene in which many audience members were reduced to tears and the actors on stage experienced profound grief.  I’ve wondered how often we are aware of the exquisite preciousness of our days and at some level know we will never see them again.

One of the times when this feeling was especially vivid for me was at the wedding of our daughter.  I even spoke at the rehearsal dinner and tried to articulate the idea of how fleeting it all is.  I reminded the assembled guests to be aware and to be alive and to hold onto the specialness of the occasion.  Through all of the busyness of the wedding weekend, the details, the logistics, the various comings and goings of family and friends, it was very easy to get caught up in the swirl.  And maybe, just maybe, we are reluctant to hold on too tight to the specialness of moments like this because it is heartbreaking to do so.

Perhaps because I am having some difficulty shaking the feelings that Our Town stirred up, I am feeling this bittersweet melancholy in other places in my life.  If you have read any of my blogs in the past or follow me on Facebook, you know that I have a new puppy.  What is remarkable about this dog is that she is a dead ringer for the first and until now, the best dog of my life.  Her name was Morganetta and she too was a yellow Labrador retriever.  She was devoted to me and when she died I was wrecked.  It took years, and I mean years,  for me to be able to talk about this dog without weeping.  So some 25 years later,  to get another yellow lab, this one named Smooch, is to revisit the pure love that I had for my first dog.  Smooch is almost six months old and has slowly but surely worked her way into our hearts.  But here’s where the fine line between joy and grief comes in.  Smooch has some kind of infection that we are trying to get on top of.  I have now had three visits to the vet and we are puzzled about why such a young dog is suffering with this infection.  Now I am an eternal optimist almost all of the time, but yesterday in the vet’s office I felt the nearly hysterical voice of doom creeping into my mind.  I began to go to the worst possible place of- what if we can’t fix this?  What if she’s going to have to eat this expensive, medicated dog food for life?  What if she gets sicker?  What if she dies?  Crazy talk, right?  But right behind my absolute love for this little creature, I am worrying about losing her. 

I honestly think that is why I weep.  My tears are my expression of what is precious.  Sometimes it is real sadness and sometimes it is unmistakable joy, but almost always, these feelings are right near the edge of the opposite side of those feelings.  For where there is joy, there is grief and where there is grief, there is joy.

So for now, I will celebrate the experience of being part of Our Town, I will love my puppy and happily feed her expensive, medicated dog food and I will savor the special moments in my life.  What about you?

A Letter to the Right Side of My Brain

Dear Brain,

And you know who I'm talking to.  I'm not talking to the analytical, logical, scheming left side of my brain.  No, I'm talking to the carefree, luscious, flirtatious right side of my brain.  You know, the one I've been ignoring for a while.  The one that is inspired to dream and write and take photographs and sing songs.  The one that is intuitive and a bit more trusting.  Now I could never ignore you completely.  I've still allowed you to do some dreaming and I encouraged you to be part of some wonderful artistic collaborations- most notably the production I just finished of La Cage Aux Folles.  But I was not really in the drivers seat on that one.  I was along for the ride and it was a thrilling and stimulating ride.

It I had my druthers I would probably choose to live most of the time with you, my right brain,  in charge.  I would be open to the possibilities and looking for signs from the universe.  I would be in tune with the energy around me.  I would commune more with the birds and the flowers and all God's creations.  I would choose to trust more instead of doubt.

Lately, I've had to do a lot of work with my left brain in charge.  I've had to become deeply analytical and focused on the "data".  This is no doubt useful practice.  It's not unlike the discipline required to get through those "required" courses in school.  I like to think that I can buckle down when I need to and focus and deliver information the way my colleagues need to get it.  When I invite my left brain to be in charge, I look to the data first.  I look for patterns and I look for validation.  But the most surprising thing has begun to happen.  I have found myself looking to the data, only to confirm what I had already figured out using my highly attuned emotional intelligence and intuition.  Go figure.

I have learned the important lesson that certain people need to get information in certain ways and in order to convince them of your point of view, you need to deliver the information in a way that they can understand and relate to.  Oh, would that the world would just sign on to my amazing intuitive powers and believe me without the dashboards and spreadsheets.  I know this probably sounds fairly traitorous to those who live for the data.  But remember, this is a letter to the right side of my brain.

Let's dream for a minute or two.  Remember that musical you were working on a few years ago? The one that has been sitting on the shelf waiting to be brushed off and explored again?  What about those book ideas that were floating around inside for a year or so.  What about the idea of creating a personal board of directors and writing about it?  I'm betting that there have been threads of ideas that have been percolating inside but without being invited into the light, they have stayed fairly hidden away.   Remember how much fun you had making those  beautiful wind chimes out of driftwood and wire and beads?  What about the "where have you been for the last 20 years project"? The one where you were going to connect with so many of the fabulous and inspiring people you've met along the way and hear where their lives has taken them and what they have learned along the way.  That's probably another idea that could end up in a book, or a blog, or a web series.

HA!  Look at you brain.  You're getting kind of excited.  I can feel your energy starting to bubble a bit.  You're beginning to step out a little and throw out your arms and your chest and smile at the universe. I'm not sure that I can completely put you in charge.  No, that might be asking too much. But I am inviting you to step into the light.  I am encouraging you to assert yourself a bit more.  If you want to play the piano and perhaps write a song, don't hold back.  You can do it.  I'm giving you permission.  No, I'm insisting.  Maybe we'll even go back to the desert in August to Burning Man.  Now that'll help you break out.  Imagine the possibilities.

Your devoted body and soul.

Lessons a Theatre Director Taught Me About Leadership

Apart from spending time with family and friends, there are two areas of my life where I spend the most time and energy. The first is my work and the second is the theater.  Like many dedicated theatre folks, I manage to find the time and energy to be part of productions several times a year, whilst still keeping my busy and demanding job.  One thing is for sure and that is that it's not easy to balance both.  But midway through our run for La Cage Aux Folles at the Emerson Umbrella in Concord, MA, I reflected on the experience and most importantly the lessons that I learned from our director.

This was no small production.  The sets, the elaborate costumes, the wigs, the make-up, the orchestration, the choreography,  all made for a very complex and challenging scene backstage.  There were wigs flying, fast costume changes, dancers hurling shoes in every direction.  There were prosceniums turning,  shimmery curtains opening and closing,  and sets moving.  It was all a bit head-spinning.

It's not all that different from the company I worked for at the time.  In my company, there were different departments doing their thing, priorities shifting, customers surfacing with questions and feedback, employees needing to work through issues and find solutions.  The backstage scene at the theatre is more intense and more concentrated, but there are days when things felt pretty darn chaotic at work as well.  I have worked with a number of CEO's and colleagues along the way in my career and have observed very different styles to get results.  Being a leader in a company is a lot like being a director for a production.  You have a group of people (hopefully talented people) who need to come together to work hard and achieve results.  In the case of a play, they need to mount a production and invite an audience to share in the experience. In the case of a company, the work and rewards are on-going.  There may be sprints along the way or big product launches, but the team needs to collaborate to achieve great things.

There are some very simple principles that I observed during this production, all guided by a very gifted director.  Here are the lessons he re-affirmed for me:

1.  Have a plan
2.  Set a vision and articulate it well
3.  Be kind
4.  Push hard for the results you want to see
5. Value every person's contributions
6.  Do it with love

HA! you say.  The "L" word.  Where does that fit in the workplace?  I'll get to that in a minute. First a bit about the first 5 on the list.  Our director came to the first rehearsal with a very clear plan, not only of the rehearsal schedule all the way up to opening night, but also his vision for the production and the time we would spend together.  He brought photos and imagery, he articulated some themes that were important to him in telling the story of the play.  He set a very clear vision whilst still expressing his expectation that everyone would bring their own ideas and vision to the process.  It was at once inclusive and inspiring.

He was incredibly kind and supportive of every single person involved with the production.  This is not necessarily the norm.  Tensions often run high in a production that needs to get mounted in a short period of time.  Maybe it was having a clear vision and plan that allowed him to stay calm and not get too impatient as we all worked to learn our part. And he pushed for sure.  He did it very nicely but he pushed us hard and set a very high bar.  The cast in this production were all very talented and experienced so everyone knew they had a job to do and put their heads down to do it.  But there was no doubt that the cast wanted to make him and at the rest of the production team happy.  He pushed hard and we pushed to deliver the results he was looking for.  Sound familiar?

When have you been in a company or part of a team who works hard because they don't want to disappoint their colleagues?   In the best companies and among the most successful teams, people are intrinsically motivated to work hard and to be there for each other.  It's one of the great joys of being part of a high functioning team.

And finally, what about the "L" word.  I don't use this word in a sappy, sentimental way.  I use it to express the times when we are seeing the very best in each other.  When we do not come with judgment but with a joyful anticipation of the goodness that we will find in each other.  Our director wrote a long email to the cast and crew shortly before we opened and it was really kind of a love letter.  He expressed something about every single person in the show that honored them and their unique gifts and contribution to the production.  It was impossible not to feel valued and to be inspired to do our very best work.

I  have often been heard at work saying that  "I love my team."  I have found that when a team, either at a company or in a play, can truly appreciate each other for our unique gifts, then the best work happens.  I have a sign on the whiteboard in my office, with a nod to Seth Godin, that says-  "Where is your art?  What are your gifts?"

So thank you Peyton Pugmire.  I am honoring you by name here so that when you get famous someday and are receiving some fabulous award, I can say I spotted your extraordinary talent early on.  Here's to leading with love.

10,000 Hours of Practice

Much has been written about what it takes to be great at anything.  In Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Outliers, he talks about how great artists and writers and musicians and yes, even business people get great at what they do.  They put in the time.  10,000 hours sounds like a lot but when you think about the people in our society that really excel, it's probably a drop in the bucket.

When you think about the great athletes that we have loved to cheer on, consider the hours and hours and years of practice that brought them to where they are. When you consider the books that you have read and loved, consider the months and often years that the writer put in to create that piece of work.

Right now, I am part of a production of Oklahoma with a local theater group.  Doing theater is one of the great passions in my life.There are a a number of reasons for that.  But this time, I have been thinking a lot about the responsibility that I feel and the challenge we have all set for ourselves.  We are a collection of people from all walks of life, from different towns, from different age groups with different levels of experience. Yet we come together with the same goal which is to work hard, to unite as an ensemble and to ultimately delight our audiences.  Perhaps most important is that we do all the above and have fun while doing it. In this particular production, I have a fairly significant role which means that I've had to work especially hard on learning my lines and my blocking and choreography.  I have felt an enormous responsibility to my fellow actors and indeed to the entire production team to show up ready to do my part, to remember where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing. This is not trivial in the midst of a busy life and alongside a demanding job.  How much room is there left in my personal RAM?  Seriously.

We are heading into the final stretch... what we call "Tech week" in the trade.  It starts tomorrow and goes right until we open next weekend.  We will sweat the details of sound and lights and hair and makeup and props and cues.  We will continue to discover our characters and the relationships that we have on stage with the other actors.  We will not rest until we reach the finish line?

Have we put in 10,000 hours?  No.  Have I put in 10,000 in my lifetime, learning to sing and to dance and to be on stage with my fellow actors.  Absolutely.  I could sit back now and relax, with a hope and a prayer that we've rehearsed enough and all will be well.  But that's not what I'm planning to do. I am going to keep going over my script and my choreography.  I'm going to think about our little patch of farmland in Oklahoma and the assortment of characters that inhabit it. I'm going to ponder what it means for the farmer and cowman to be friends.  I'm going to smile as I listen to the glorious music that Rogers and Hammerstein wrote so many years ago.  Now there was a writing team that put in 10,00 hours and then some.  Aren't we lucky that there are dedicated people in our world who put in so much effort?

I applaud them whether they be artists, technologists, educators or business people.  Sure there are those among us with extraordinary, natural talent who make it all look
easy.   But most of us just need to put our heads down for much of the time and grind it out.  Would that it could always be as much fun as doing a wonderful show like Oklahoma. YeHaw!

Feedback: At Work, At Home, In the Theatre

I reflect today on the power of feedback.  I am currently in a production of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to the Forum.  It's a bawdy, zany show with a great cast of talented people.  It is far from perfect but there is great energy, lots of hilarity and generally our audiences have been appreciating the performance.  But last night was a bit different.  We had a wonderful audience on Thursday night with lots of laughter and applause, but last night the audience was different.  Now I am not going to presume that they did not enjoy the performance.  They clapped in all the right places and seemed to be smiling through most of the show.  But they gave us very little in the way of feedback.  I listened and watched my fellow actors come off the stage after their scenes, each puzzling about what was going on.  There were plenty of jokes and as most theater people do, everyone kept their spirits high and brought their best energy to the stage.

I worried a couple of times if there was a risk that we would try too hard to get a reaction.  Could we cross the line?  In this show, I doubt it, but you never know.  I know for myself, as I got ready to go on stage for my one big song in the show, I had a bit of trepidation.  I am always a bit nervous before a show.  I think it's a healthy thing.  If you don't feel some nerves and excitement, then I believe you are not ready to really bring it.  But this was more of a mental challenge.  Without the encouragement from the audience and the sense of anticipation that audiences and actors feel before each scene, the hill seems higher to climb. I went on stage and the scene went just fine.  I just had to work harder to relax and trust myself and my fellow actors that all would be well.

Feedback is such a powerful thing.  I have always worked hard in life and especially at work to bring honest feedback to my colleagues, to the folks that I manage and even to my bosses.  As a career sales and marketing person, I have been in many a meeting with some important people where the stakes felt high.  But no matter who the meeting was with, I have always believed that if I had colleagues with me, we should come out of the meeting and reflect on how it went.  What could we have done better?  What did we do well?  Where do we need to improve?  This has felt a bit tricky over the years when I have been with a boss.  Bosses, in my experience, are not as accustomed to hearing feedback and don't always hear it well.  But I believe that it makes us all better.

And what about parenting?  Isn't that just one big long road of offering feedback and guidance.  Goodness knows it is not always well received but it's kind of the job of the parent.  The trickiest thing is knowing how to offer feedback so it is received as constructive and not as criticism or judgement.  Nobody does well when they feel they are being judged.  I'm not sure what the secret is to getting this right.  I once had a colleague tell me that I managed my team like a Mom.  At first I wasn't sure if it was a compliment or a criticism.  He explained that what he meant was that I gave firm feedback, but signaled that I cared at that same time.  That seems to be a pretty good strategy.

So the next time you are in the audience at a performance or are coming out of a meeting, consider how you can offer feedback in a way that is both constructive and supportive.  We'll all be better for it.