A Cultural Leader Walks Into a Bar

The community theatre director walked into my office and foomphed her folders and scripts down on the corner of my desk. 'I just feel like it's all getting out of hand and I'm panicking', she said.

Six weeks out from the launch date of her community show she'd lost the ability to lead, or more importantly, she felt she had lost the ability to lead. She didn't have the show crafted to thel level she wanted. She had run out of ways to do this, didn't have directorial assistance in this regard and felt stuck and alone.

Within 40 mins we had turned it around. And this is how it happened:

RADO to DIRECTOR: Okay, where in the script do you feel you and the cast are on target? What's working? Where do you feel good about the show? Where do you think the cast and crew are feeling good about the show?

The question provoked a range of positive examples we could put under the microscope. As it turns out she felt confident in relation to the show's current music and choral singing, lines, plot, set. We ticked the boxes on why they were working and what should continue.

But the stress was still ticking away underneath the conversation and when asked what were her three major concerns at this point...out it poured:

There were a few practical considerations that were definitely causing the Director stress. No choreographer for another week and she didn't have the skills to direct the choreography herself, a cast of people who had never acted before, and she couldn't get the large cast to all turn up to the rehearsals. These were outside her control. But once she accepted this we focussed on what elements she could control. A plan of action was formed! She'd:

• ignore the formal dance choreography until the choreographer could come and would instead focus on actor workshops for the cast to give them better acting, improvisation and choral movement skills;
• because she is a relatively new director I offered her some examples of workshop activities and we discussed who in the community could help her with these workshops and other elements of these week's rehearsals;
• develop additional rehearsals for the principals and would record the show at the next full-scale rehearsal so that if members of the cast were missing, they could work to a properly timed recording for filling in the gaps;

These all seem very straightforward but when under stress it can be very hard for an artist, who is also expected to lead other artists, to know which direction to take. In order to relieve the stress and allow her to continue our meeting allowed her to:

• get immediate feedback from a community peer (she'd rung that morning and an hour later we were talking face to face over a cup of tea);
• by determining what community support she had (set building, enthusiastic principals and crew) the environment around her opened up and allowed her to feel at one with herself and recall her vision for the play;
• determine what was currently challenging her skills level (choreography, actor training tips) and what she needed assistance with to reduce the overwhelming feeling of having to do it all;
• visualise and plan her clear, short-term goals (today and for the next week --- and perhaps a little further)
• feel in control again (or at least grasp the edge of it and swing upwards)

And after, a day or two after actually, when I thought it through I too had a strange sense of peace because I had inadvertently ticked some of my own little boxes relating to flow principles (see my first blog):

immediate feedback (contact and support turnaround times of under 24hrs - usually less);

a dynamic balance of capacities with challenges or opportunities (implementing ways to balance the wonderful feeling of being alert and inspired but without falling too often into a state of being overwhelmed or stressed);

a sense of oneness (a sense of being at one with one’s self, and one’s processes and environment);

clear goals (working with artists and cultural leaders to identify what they want out of that phone call, that funding application, that day, that year, that overwhelming community project);

a feeling of control (NOT being in control - which is rarely possible - but feeling a sense of control).

She rinsed her tea cup and stomped down the stairs (our office stairs are very hollow and noisy) and I could see her out the window and it felt good to see her go off in such a positive frame of mind. Because she had become the director again. A cultural leader in our community. Her entire cast and crew and her future audiences are relying on her to get a show done under some pretty difficult circumstances and she was ready to lead again. Sometimes it is those examples that I think exemplify the best of regional arts development.