Well, the more I read, the more I like Stanford. Their first year is core classes, the second year is ALL electives. My type of program.
But get this. If you get a Certificate in Public Management -- non-profits -- when you graduate, you may be eligible for the Loan Forgiveness program. Basically, if your next job is for a non-profit at a sufficiently low salary, you can perhaps have some or all of your loan forgiven.
To my leaping perch-like mind, this means you could get $80K of education -- studying non-profits, strategy, leadership, & entrepreneuring -- turn around and start a theatre company -- FOR FREE. Or almost.
I'd like learning about for-profit and not-for-profit. Not to mention building a network of people who might consider this their theatre as well... and become board members, supporters, managing directors, or who knows what.
I envision being a director... with a company... that pays all our salaries... and does amazing work... in beautiful surroundings... in nature... until eventually we're world-famous, in our quiet integrity way. Because otherwise, you self-produce until the cows come home, OR keep going back to work in software, and either way that's a ragged tired life.
I like that this would move me forward on many tracks at once.
- In theatre, it prepares me for setting up a company
- In business, Stanford MBAs get terrific starting salaries
- At a university, I have a degree to teach with
- Moving to Europe, the degree helps get work, visas, teaching jobs
- Becoming a CEO (a variant of the first two), I have the biz knowledge to underpin my vision and team skills.
Wow.
Only theatre could drag me into Managerial Economics and Modeling for Quantitative Analysis.
But you know... after you've done your third show in amateur costumes because you can't afford to hire a designer, let alone a cutter, draper, dyer, or people to sew; and after you've seen the Seattle Opera costume shop and realize what you're missing... well, then you get interested in Managerial Economics.
This might, of course, just be a flash along the path. During periods like this, I can never tell what's going on. Only later, looking back, can I see what was emerging.
my teachers whisper
contradictory words of hope --
samurai lovers
dowsing for beauty
on cobblestone roads of plum
blossoms, sweetgrass, wind
inside my heart, a
yearning for folded truths, for
salt-fished Mystery
great texts comfort and
unbind me; like the Blackbird,
I drip oil and wait
there is a truth un-
der all truths whose Name cannot
be spoken. Wail! Dance!
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2 comments:
Wonderful, thoughtful post. I have been thinking about your remarks all morning.
I am coming to believe it is all sacred making. If you begin with that vision, you can grow your company that way. Like Morgan Freeman says, "If I believe, you've got no choice. None a-tall."
It's Stanislavski all over again -- create the conditions in which Life appears; in which people drop their masks, surrender to the impossible, and ignite.
Eugenio Barba says the artistic director has a different complicity with the actors than with the staff. I don't think that needs to be true -- it can be the same complicity. EVERYONE goes into the rehearsal room, at least at first.
(laughing) I have never said that before. But, since my 6 years training actors have been spent training computer scientists, llama farmers, electricians, Jehova's Witnesses, graphic designers, CIA agents, translators, college professors, au pairs, housewives, metalworkers, policemen, attorneys, mortgage brokers, accountants, receptionists, carpenters, vice presidents, realtors, facilities guys -- I know these techniques work for everyone who is ready for them.
I don't personally have much boundary between theatre, business, life. I think it's because of Teamworx, where business was more incendiarily art-like than most art. And because of BCC rehearsals, where the boundaries got so fluid. And because of me training actors, then hiring them, then living with them, then realizing we could easily be doing business together.
I like AWAKE people.
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The best model I have found for a theatre is a monastery. It is
a) an intentional community
b) whose primary work is devotion
c) whose secondary work is service
All monasteries live partially on donations and beneficence; they do their work; and then, they connect to their communities in various other service ways.
There is a monastery in New Mexico whose monks are web-designers, figuring it lies in the tradition of scriptorium illumination.
There is a monastery in Oregon,
I think, whose monks run a thriving recycled printer toner business, specializing in low rates for non-profits.
There was a Zen Center in San Francisco Bay Area that ran a thriving bakery and whole-foods restaurant.
Eugenio's theatre monastery, the Odin, does as their service, 1) education, 2) barters, and 3) conferences. They are making more, and getting hired more, from their workshops and seminars than for their performances right now; people buy three workshops, and then a performance "while you're here."
Benedict's Rule -- how to have a self-sufficient monastery -- still applies.
Man. You have really made me think. Maybe I should study monasteries at biz school. I'm sure the church would fund it.
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I need to figure out whether to do the theatre company for-profit or non-profit. And which country to do it in. I look at biz school as two years of dedicated consulting, plus an immersion in people who are starting businesses and being trained to succeed.
You're right, no one has done it before. But, very few people believe it's possible. Even fewer have experienced it -- business done like art, art that was a thriving business.
Leonid Anisimov says, "To make a theatre, you must have one person who never loses contact with god. If you have that person, money will come, talent will come, genius will come."
Eugenio Barba says, "Use everything you know. Whatever you do, do it with your whole self."
Andrew McMasters has taped above the Jet City doorway, facing his desk: "Every artistic decision is an economic decision. Every economic decision is an artistic one."
Art and money are not the DNA helix I had thought. They are a moebius strip -- like wavicles, a single two-form thing.
I've also been thinking about, how do I keep a sacred practice going, to ground me while I'm there.
I think I'll teach acting to the MBA students on Saturdays. "Improv for MBA's." "Acting for the Non-Actor MBA." "Shakespeare for CEOs."
Nyuk, nyuk. But, I'm not joking. I think this would work great. Gotta figure out how to get the faculty into my class. And some VCs.
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