141 - The Sacred Art of Play (Showmanship & Play 23 of 30)

What if the most profound aspects of human experience—from religious ritual to artistic expression—have their roots in play? In this thought-provoking exploration of serious play, Captain Frodo challenges the false dichotomy between seriousness and importance, revealing how playful engagement offers access to deeper realities than solemn endeavors often can.

Drawing on Plato's assertion that "life must be lived as play," we explore how imaginal play allows us to embody different identities and perspectives, transforming how we experience the world. When a child becomes Zorro or a martial artist imagines standing in flowing water, they're not merely pretending—they're accessing genuine transformative experiences that reveal aspects of reality otherwise hidden.

The connections between play, ritual, and religion run deeper than most realize. Scholars like Johan Huizinga have shown how ritual creates a "magic circle" where different rules apply—much like the stage creates a space of possibility for performers. This understanding elevates performance art from "mere entertainment" to a profound human activity that creates shared realities and offers new ways of being.

For performers, this perspective transforms how we approach our craft. Rather than apologizing for being "just entertainers," we can confidently assert that art forms the axis around which human culture revolves. By taking play seriously—recognizing its power to transform perspectives and access deeper truths—we honor the profound importance of what we do and strengthen our connection with audiences.

Whether you're a performer seeking deeper meaning in your work or simply curious about the hidden importance of play in human experience, this episode offers transformative insights that will change how you see both playfulness and purpose.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to The Way of the Showman
• 5:33 Seriousness vs. Importance in Art
• 8:27 Plato on Living Life as Play
• 13:02 Understanding Imaginal Play
• 22:13 Serious Play and Transformation
• 29:35 Play, Ritual, and Sacred Experience
• 39:36 The Magic Circle and Human Connection
• 43:22 Art as the Axis of Human Endeavor

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to the way of the showman, where we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo and I will be your host and your guide along the way, and it's a pleasure to have you back with me. And if this is your first time, then welcome. You've arrived at a peculiar time. If this is your first time you listen to this, because you've just arrived in lecture 22, or episode 22, exploring the relationship between showmanship and play. So you will find value in today's episode just as a standalone thing, as you will all the way through. But if you want to get the most out of this episode, then I suggest going back to Episode 94 and listen your way up to today's episode. And listen your way up to today's episode, since from episode 94, which is the introduction and that lies out a little bit what it is that we are attempting to do in what's basically going to be about a year's worth of episodes. But if not, then you will still enjoy the scenery. But I would say that your horizon of understanding will vastly be expanded by taking this journey in from the beginning until the end. That said, let's just go back, not all the way to the beginning but go back to the last episode that we did in this series and in that one we basically I based most of the stuff on the ideas of Alan White and basing it on one particular essay from a book of his, and the essay is called the Dismal Sacred Word, and we were talking about seriousness, because people look at what we do. When you're doing magic, when you love performing, when you do juggling or whatever it is that you do, people always kind of think this is not a serious occupation, it's not a serious pastime, it's not even a serious art form, like if you, if you're a painter or or you were a sculptor or or even a, yeah, then they might sort of accept it. But if you're doing circus, that that for so many adults you know, parents that looking at their children they go, I don't know. This is not a good way to spend your life.

Speaker 1: 2:49

So we're exploring the question of serious and who decides what's serious? Because seriousness is a category and the basic thing that we explored last one last episode is that seriousness is a category. Certain things are within the category of seriousness and those things that are in that one is, on the general, claimed to be important, whilst what is in fact true is that there is no real link between what's in the category of serious and importance. There are great important things happening in circus. There are great important things happening in every sphere. Whether you're laughing at it or whether it's a musical, whatever it is, there can be great seriousness or not seriousness. There's great importance in that thing without it being serious, by which we mean sort of solemn or describing some catastrophe or whatever.

Speaker 1: 3:55

So we looked at that. We looked at how that division has been going on since the initial dictionaries came out in the early 1600s and even earlier in the two different types of dictionaries one which is the kind of slang of the streets and one which is the high, fancy dictionaries that would explain hard words for those that are in need of developing their vocabulary. So we looked at that and then we looked at this sort of fight to become serious, how we circus performers have all sorts of ways to that are happening at the moment. You know different groups in Australia. We had the Australian Association for Circus and Physical Theatre, acapta, and they lobbied, did a whole bunch of stuff, great stuff, even just to have on the Arts Council who hands out a lot of grants, that there would be somebody on the panel who judged this, who actually understood circus, physical theatre, these things, so that, yeah, so stuff, like there's all sorts of lobbying going on. There are people who are writing papers within the academic community to be able to give people references and scientific papers about what circus is culturally and practically and otherwise. So then we started in the end to look at the value of play in itself, which we along the way have. Really there's, no, we all see the value in that, I believe, by now.

Speaker 1: 5:38

So, without further ado, let's jump in to some serious play. Let's jump in to some serious play, and what better way to be serious than to quote some of Plato. It's interesting, just in the last little bit my daughter has had about, they've been learning about the Greeks in school and they learned a bit about Socrates and we started talking about Socrates, which is, of course, wonderful for me that somebody in my household wants to talk about Socrates and philosophers, and I'm, and I was, as I was telling her, and I just struck by the importance, like the incredible node of Socrates and Plato being Socrates' student and then Aristotle being a student of Plato, that node of those three people there that basically just invented thinking so incredible, so much so that Whitehead later on said that all the philosophizing that has been happening is basically footnotes to Plato. I mean, that's a complicated debate whether that is true, but between Socrates, aristotle and Plato they certainly thought a whole lot of stuff. It's just great that my daughter is not only having about it at school but learning about it there. My daughter is not only having about it at school but learning about it there, but she's also reading a comic version, a graphic novel, of Sophie's World, which is a book about philosophy history. So that was also great A book that I loved and that really kindled my interest in philosophy back when it came out in the early 90s. And that book is like, even though you might not know about it now, if you're interested in philosophy, that is a great book to get into it. It's a young adult kind of book, but the ideas in it are. It's basically the history of Western philosophy woven into a novel, and I believe at the time it was one of the most best-selling books of, I don't know, of all time or whatever. I think it sold 50 million copies or something. So it's rare that a book that, essentially, is a history of Western philosophy, that that sells 50 million, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: 8:04

All that said, let's get on to this quote from Plato. The quote goes I say that man must be serious with the serious. God alone is worthy of supreme seriousness, but man is made God's plaything, and that is the best part of him. Therefore, every man and woman should live life accordingly and play the noblest games and be of another mind from what they are at present, for they deem war a serious thing, though in war, there is neither play nor culture worthy the name, which are the things we deem most serious. Hence, all must live in peace as well as they possibly can. What, then, is the right way of living? Life must be lived as play. What, then, is the right way of living? Plato asks Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods and defend himself against his enemies and win in the contest. I don't know the full scope of this quote, like how it fits into everything, but wonderful, wonderful there. Man must be serious with the serious, but God alone is worthy of supreme seriousness, for man is made God's plaything and that is the best part of him. So that reminds me of Schiller there and everything. This quote I didn't get it from reading Plato's Laws, which is where it comes from. I got it from reading Heutzinger's Homo Ludens.

Speaker 1: 9:54

So, as we have seen, play in the last episode and other times, play is both serious and not. It's fun, but it is also serious. Certain kinds of play is frivolous and fun, but there is also a different kind of play, a serious play. As we have seen, there is a certain kind of seriousness in all play, but some play is of an even more serious kind, if we can say that. This kind of play is not for entertainment. It's specifically for the fitting into the world and the development of oneself. It's about perspective taking and about accessing the interiority of the world and the things and agents within it. By agent I don't mean agent 007. I mean any being with the capacity to act. So an animal is an agent, a person are agents and even bacteria might be said to be agents.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Play is the way a child connects to themselves and the world. We've said that a lot throughout here, but it's an important thing. Through imagination they get to explore their relationships to themselves and they get to be anyone or anything that they want. They get to inhabit the feeling of a fox, of a monster, or a candlestick for that matter. They get to explore relationships, sometimes playing multiple characters within the same game Mother mouse, baby mouse, clown, dad mouse and superhero sister mouse. Mother mouse, baby mouse, clown, dad mouse and superhero sister mouse. All need to have their voices and their reasons and inner experiences, which comes through, they emerge in the child through inhabiting the different roles. So some might say that the process of imaginatively relating to the world isn't important or serious, since, after all, it's just imagination. There's that word again. It's just, it's mere imagination. It's just imagination, which is just something we say to belittle it. So, to avoid confusion, I'm not talking about just imagination. I am talking about the kind of serious play that we, episode 96, described as imaginal play.

Speaker 1: 12:07

We were talking about the imaginal realm, we talked about the imaginal and we talked about Henri Corbin, the man who brought this term into use in the Western intellectual conversation from Islamic philosophy. And the concept of the imaginal has both a strong ontological connotation as a real thing in the world, but also a decisively religious flavor coming out of Islam. So ontology is the branch of philosophy which tries to grasp the nature of things in the world. Their ontologists are grappling with what's the matter with things, which is also the title of Ian McKilchrist's book from 2021. Like what are things? And it's not just the things, as in objects in the world, but what are things, what's the actual nature of something? And ontology is the study of what the world really is through examination of the state of being of the things within it.

Speaker 1: 13:13

So saying there's an ontological component to the imaginal is a fancy way of saying that the imaginal isn't just something that an individual comes up with whilst shaving. It's not just random whims of make-believe. The imaginal represents something real in the world which is part of our shared reality. Serious imaginal play attempts to access this kind of reality. As for the religious flavor, we'll look into that in a bit. So, yeah, when we are playing it's. This connects also up to what we've talked about before, to Samuel Taylor Coldridge distinction between fancy, which is just a random collage and recombination of something, and the actual living oneself into nature. In imagining, it's the imagination that allows us to see how trees, different trees are, what they are, etc. And how we see that out of all of the roses, they're all roses, even though each one is very different. They're all kind of versions of themselves. And yeah, these are examples of how we use the imagination. It's that component of us that we use to grasp the world.

Speaker 1: 14:32

So one person that has talked about serious play in his epic 50 episode lecture series called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is John Verveke. He talks about serious play there. John Verveke, which is a professor of cognitive science and psychology and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto. He talks a lot about serious play also in his numerous YouTube lecture series and conversations etc. And it is a central part of his research.

Speaker 1: 15:05

So he makes a distinction between what he calls imaginary play and imaginal play by saying that we that when we imagine something, then we picture it. We create images in our heads. If you ask someone to picture a sail ship, then they can do it. And if you ask so I can ask that to you. Now, like I'm saying, picture a sail ship in your mind and then I can ask you, how many sails does it have? Or does it have cannons? And you could probably answer that like, well, there was just one sail or there was three sails. It's like you've pictured it and you could probably answer that Like well, there was just one sale or there was three sales. It's like you've pictured it and you can answer questions about what it is. So this is what Viveki calls imaginative play an actual picture in your mind, an image in your mind that you've created, put together from who knows what.

Speaker 1: 15:59

So the nature of imaginal play, though, has more to do with, according to Viveki, assuming an identity To get inside something, like a fox, like a monster or a candlestick, and in imaginal play, the player is learning something important and real about relating to the world as these different things. They're being themselves differently, thereby grasping aspects of the world they can't so easily notice as themselves. An example that he frequently uses is a child playing Zorro, which probably shows his age, as it's been a while since Zorro was at the heart of the cultural landscape In a conversation on the Jim Rutt Show podcast, episode 134. That's an episode I listen to. Jim Rutt is a complexity theory guy from the Institute of Santa Fe, and I think he might have moved on from there, but anyway, those people who know that institute in Santa Fe, they also have some connections to Cormac McCarthy. He was hanging out there when he was writing his last books, but anyway.

Speaker 1: 17:13

So Viveki describes a child engaged in imaginal play, or serious play, in his podcast in this way Quote a child who ties a blanket around their neck, picks up a stick. And I'm Zorro. And they're assuming an identity, they're pretending in that sense and that's imaginable and you enact it. The child does not in fact have to be necessarily picturing anything in their mind. Instead, they're now interacting with the world under an assumed identity and they're assigning, at least metaphorically, identities to other things. Why are they doing that? Because what they're doing is they're trying to get a taste. They're trying to get what's it like to be Zorro? What would it be like to be in Zorro's state of mind? What would it be like to move around in the world like Zorro? What parts of the world would be disclosed to me if I had Zorro's mindset, if I had Zorro's perspective, if I had Zorro's identity? What would the world be? This is an interesting like you live yourself into it and then, by being in the game like that, as you run around, you see the world differently and you are differently in the world, and, of course, me, who constantly have this little bell ringing of imagining that every single person that ever opens their mouth and says something, which is an exercise, I do that.

Speaker 1: 18:52

They are talking about showmanship on the level that I'm doing. So with this, I'm going. Well, that is what a child, what a novice in any circus or any carnival. As you come in and you go. What is this? All the misfits? That when the carnival comes to town and the metaphorical carnival comes to town, they go oh, maybe I can find a place to belong in here, and then they can try on all the different roles within the carnival, where you can be a strong man in a circus or you can be a roustabout in helping to build things up or being security. Or you can be a roustabout in helping to build things up or being security, or you can. You can be in any of the shows. You can be a mind reader and you can be a tight wire walker and you can be somebody who sells the tickets or or make hot dogs, or you can be whatever you do have a fine dining experience of japanese high-end food in your special tent. Whatever it is that you do, you'll find it in there and you can try it on within the carnival. You can try it on within the carnival of dreams, in your own mind, or you can try it on in an actual carnival out in real life. So this is the kind of imaginal play that I immediately go ooh, he's talking about the carnival, my kind of metaphysical carnival.

Speaker 1: 20:07

But when we play Zorro in this way that John Verveke talks about, then we see the world through Zorro and we feel what it's like to take on his virtues and his perspectives as if they were our own. And when engaged in this kind of serious play, it can afford us genuine transformation. It is letting us relate deeper to the environment by fitting ourselves to it through a different identity, as the world not only looks but in a very real way also is different to each of us. But in a very real way also is different to each of us, be this the obvious aspects of privilege and our individual appearance by the way of physical features, skin color, or the way we dress, religiously, counter-culturally, or in the more internal differences, which manifests itself in things like self-confidence, which affords one certain line of possibilities and avenues of opportunities, which literally does not exist as options for an anxious or more introverted person. So by becoming Zorro thinking, acting and being Zorro in the world will reveal the world differently. Or, as we've talked about when we spoke about attention in season two, is that the world literally is different depending on how you pay attention to it. The way that you pay attention and what you pay attention to quite literally changes the world for you.

Speaker 1: 21:41

So another way that Viveki describes serious play is from his work as a teacher of Tai Chi. He tells his martial arts students to imagine they're standing in a river with a steady, strong current. He tells them to imagine in this imaginal way that their feet sink into the mud, that they almost have roots in the soft riverbed. He then asks them to imagine that their legs up to their hips and waist is enveloped in the flowing current of water, not standing rigid like marble columns but as living tree trunks in dynamic interaction with the shifting currents of the water. Finally, he asks them to imagine their upper bodies being in air and there they flow with more ease and speed, always placing their upper body such that it allows the feet stuck in the imaginal mud to remain firmly planted. And in this imaginal way the person attunes themselves into the right manner of being, the right manner of standing to play the martial art of Tai Chi. It's just an imaginative act.

Speaker 1: 22:51

But this is an act of serious play, not frivolous and dislocated from reality, but a way into a particular way of being in the world, better fitted to certain circumstances. To play tai chi, this way of standing and this way of locating and holding yourself in the real world, on the real ground, affords you a sense of balance and and then, if you are actually playing it, you a balance that makes it so that the opponent has a very hard time making a fall over. So the imaginal serious play affords us a lens to see and interact with the world through. So, using that language, we see that we're doing that here with our lens of showmanship, always viewing it through that, just like Viveki, who spends a lot of his time doing playing tai chi, he sees it through that lens. So what happens through this particular form of pretending is that we access a kind of as-if which is rooted in reality.

Speaker 1: 24:03

The real-world results of becoming Zorro can change one's own values by pretending or imaginary living oneself into the identity of Zorro. It becomes an experience retained as a memory of how we acted one time, how we could be. Once the game is finished, the memory remains in us and after the fact, this memory sits alongside all the other memories the emotions, the values upon which we acted and the way that we were in the world. They're now a possible way to be in the world. It's a way that we at least one time, or if we play, many times, it's a way that we have been in the world and by engaging in the, as if of embodying Zorro, we can take it on and become him actually. The more we do it actually, the more we become like it. And this adoption of a different identity gives us access to the inside of the world and the things and agents in it, not in sort of perfect, one-to-one kind of fashion, to one kind of fashion.

Speaker 1: 25:27

It's not like by imaginatively becoming a candlestick. We truly know what the experience of being a candlestick is. There are powerful arguments that it isn't like anything to be a candlestick, but there are also some arguments that consciousness might go all the way down. So maybe it is something to be like a candlestick. But through serious play these kinds of experiences can be explored. This kind of serious play allows us to try on what the world should be according to Zorro, through the lens of ourselves, should be or could be. The play outwardly might just be a boy with a blanket tied around his neck, with a stick in his hand, but the inside of that boy is, in a very serious and real way, examining the inside of what it's like to be Zorro and, potentially, the interior aspects of everything.

Speaker 1: 26:19

The game is not about what you see, but about what you can't see with your eyes, not things in the world, but about being in the world. Through play, we can see the essential, which is what the fox tells the little prince about as he leaves. And what the fox says is worth listening to. And the fox says and what the fox says is worth listening to. And the fox says and now here is my secret, a very simple secret it is only with a heart that one can see, rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with a heart that one can see, rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye, as from the Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupéry I don't know how to say that name, even though I read that book many times. So, yeah, what does he mean here that you see with the heart? It's more so that one of this, he says, is like the heart. I guess that's a symbol for what is inside us or in this particular reading anyway, because it is many things, but the heart is inside us and he says that the essential is invisible to the eye, meaning that you can't see it outside as a thing in itself, and there we are, like the most important things in you. Can't see it outside as a thing in itself, and there we are, like the most important things in life aren't things, they are relations, they're processes. So that's one way to interpret or to grapple with what serious play is.

Speaker 1: 28:01

But there's also strong aspects of play and connections between play and ritual, and many of the examples of serious play are about children. But serious play is also prevalent in adults, like Viveky talking about the Tai Chi or me taking on a role of myself, or any actor taking on a role. That's a serious kind of play as well. So the results of this kind of serious adult play is what people like Johan Heutsinger and Robert Bella, which we've talked about before, believes to harbor the origins of ritual, and from ritual is where they argue that we then get religion. So on page 92 of Robert Beller's magnum opus, religion in Human Evolution. He says, quote where all of this is heading in this book is, pretty predictably, that I think ritual is the primordial form of serious play in human evolutionary history, end quote. So there we go.

Speaker 1: 29:11

The key thing is in serious play that is ritual and that he then drives ritual on to become religion. And Johan Heutsinger says that when we are considering the primordial origins of ritual, we should not forget that to some extent there was always an element of play involved. Again, I feel I need to qualify the kind of play, since as we venture into ritual and religious territory, I want to make sure that it's understood that I do not want to denigrate or belittle ritual or religion in any way. I'm not saying that religion is make-believe. The play element that Heutsinger and now I am getting at is not fancy, as Coleridge calls it, not just random images thrown together, but rather the serious imaginal play which aims at connecting the serious players to reality in its deepest aspects, accessing reality as it is before we name the things and processes in it.

Speaker 1: 30:14

You might remember how the poet, philosopher David White, warned us in a previous episode not to name things too soon as that will make them too small. If we name things too soon, it bereaves us of the ability to see them properly. The naming makes things finite and gives the illusion of grasping or knowing them, and in the naming we allow ourselves to stop thinking about it, saying it's just imagination, it's just entertainment, it's just a dream or it's just science. Science, yeah, seems to offer this kind of stuff, seems to offer some sort of explanation, saying that it's just this, whilst in reality it's far from it. Naming the mysterious does not explain the mystery at its core. It's just the singularity at the beginning of time. Oh, is it's just the singularity at the beginning of time? Oh, is it? It's the singularity at the beginning of time? Now, I understand no need to look further into that then.

Speaker 1: 31:13

So, naming categories, thus bringing to the specific, all the like any specific thing, that we're bringing the attributes of that category and, in the process, making it more difficult to see the specific and the individual for what it is in itself, in a sense, yeah, that's it's like, because science it has a tendency to look at. Oh well, we're looking at the rose, and not looking at any individual rose, but looking at what is the roseness with all these, um, of one particular variety of rose or so, whilst art in many aspects is when, um, when, van gogh painted the sunflowers, it's about those very specific sunflowers and by looking at those very specific sunflowers we learn and see and feel things about the sunflower. Whilst an illustration of a scientific planche or whatever a botanical drawing that you might see on the wall of a school or whatever, or in a book on plant, on sunflowers, if it's the scientific one, it becomes so generic that it actually doesn't quite capture the magic. You know, it might be a good illustration but it doesn't actually tell you the truth about sunflowers, which in a ecstatic truth that herzog calls it the ecstatic truth of the sunflowers told by van gogh and sunflower illustration in the botanical book that is the accountant's truth it has this many petals, the seeds look like this, etc. Etc. So this level of reality that we sort of talk about, when you name and categorize the stuff, then we're bringing to the specific all the attributes of that category and in the process making we're bringing to the specific all the attributes of that category and in the process making it difficult to see the specific and the individual for what it is in itself. And this is the level of reality that Heutzinger believes serious play can access this greater and more real in-the-moment experience.

Speaker 1: 33:41

And Heutzinger tries to imagine then how play would have changed and how that, taking the play seriously, how that would have evolved into ritual and so forth. So he starts, he, because he believes that that serious play can access this level of reality of the very specific and getting at a, at a heart and raw experience of the world. So he imagines then that, um quote the archaic society we would say plays as the child or animal plays. Such playing contains, at the outset, all the elements proper to play order, tension, movement, change, movement change, solemnity, rhythm and rapture. Only in a later phase of society is play associated with the idea of something to be expressed in and by, namely what we call life or nature. So then, what was wordlessly play in that archaic, ancient play assumes poetic form. And in the form and function of play, play itself an independent entity which is senseless and irrational. Man's consciousness that he is embedded in a sacred order of things finds its first, highest and holiest expression.

Speaker 1: 35:09

Gradually, the significance of a sacred act permeates the playing. Gradually, the significance of a sacred act permeates the playing. Ritual grafts itself upon it. But the primary thing is and remains, play. That's from page 1718 in Johann Heutzinger's Homo Ludens.

Speaker 1: 35:30

There's something in the as if which Richard Wiseman talks about how when you imagine in a very real way that is what, as if, when you take that seriously, it can literally change who you are, change the world, etc. By it becoming real. So we don't have to go too far into that. So we don't have to go too far into that. But it's this, taking the play serious, that makes the significance of sacred play, the sacred act, the way that you play. That is then what ritual, how you connect yourself to the world, and the world becomes different through that ritual. So the link Heutzinger and Bella makes to ritual that we've just sort of talked about is that when we engage in rituals we are also seriously creating an as-if situation. The ritual is a form of sacred play where we live ourselves into the world with, for the firm believer at least, full conviction that when, for instance, you drink the wine and eat the sacred wafer, you are indeed imbibing the blood and flesh of Jesus Christ. Not everyone who takes part in such a ritual has that same level of conviction of transubstantiation, has that same level of conviction, of transubstantiation. Some have a stronger, or at least more conscious as-if level to their engagement. You know, more like just playing or whatever. But this is one aspect of how ritual is a form of serious play.

Speaker 1: 37:16

In Homo Ludens, Heutzinger goes through each of the different criteria of what constitutes play and shows how they relate to the practice of rituals, like how they are self-motivated. As, like wood play, rituals only become effective and realized when the person engaged in the ritual does so out of their own free will. Engaged in the ritual does so out of their own free will. It's self-motivated and the fact that you want it to be so it makes it so. They must willingly engage in the symbolic reality of the ritual's reality, both as a transcendence process and as actions in the everyday world, for there to be a ritual experience. Ritual-like play is removed from or other than everyday reality another criteria that we've talked about and it has its own time and place, its own kind of meaning and logic inherent to itself. It's not forced to follow the rules of things like natural selection or economics. So we see here as well, it happens in relaxed field or whatever.

Speaker 1: 38:21

So quote from Heutsinger here again, just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the consecrated spot cannot be formally distinguished from the playground. The arena, the card table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc. Are all in form and function. Playgrounds, ie forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart. So there you go. That's basically it. It's a place where different rules apply. As the carnival has often been described, it's like things change within the perimeter fences of the carnival, and I like this.

Speaker 1: 39:26

This is something that a lot has been made out of this magic circle. That's something that happens within a relaxed field or within any kind of game, the particular rules of it, which of course we know as a, as a criteria for the rules, and that that happens within it. And it's interesting here that hoisinger, when he talks about the different places that he mentions you know the card table, the magic circle as an inside when you're doing a ritual or whatever, or within the temple, or on the stage, or on a screen or the tennis court, and then they go straight to court of justice. There are ways to behave within. Here we all behave, and we. When you are in court, you have to behave in a very specific way and it's I love this how he connected all together and that he did this already in 1938 and we still can read it now and find meaning in it.

Speaker 1: 40:24

So the serious game and the ritual creates a magic circle where the rules are different, where you can instigate change in the real world. So, from the gambler spitting on the dice before throwing, to the role player becoming a level nine warlock fighting off a fire-breathing dragon or a young girl taking her first communion, we're dealing with a magic circle or, as what we have called it along the way of the showman, an area of interest, a space of shared attention, a kind of show. It's a shared reality that happens between a showman and an audience or, in the case of a game, two players, both showman and audience at the same time, both showman and audience at the same time. So within this area of interest or within this relaxed field, we access a purely human domain where stories are myths, myths are never far from the play world. Within the magic circle, the different rules affords different insights, much like embodying and taking on the perspective of Zorro affords us different insights, and all of this can again afford different real-world results. The way we act in the world actually influences what happens and what we can see in the world what happens and what we can see in the world. So this is not meant to be in what we've just talked about now. Like I'm wrapping this up, this is not meant to be an exhaustive explanation of the many ways that play can serve as a serious candidate for ritual and religion, but merely a taster to wet our imagination for exploring it further. Maybe you want to go out and read some of these books and, more importantly, to show how serious play needs to be taken, as it can offer a way to understand religion, which, after all, is one of humanity's most powerful roots towards the great mysteries of life, the universe and everything. So if it turns out that we're finding play as the origin of ritual and possibly of religion, and finding then play as the origin of showmanship and deeply connected, I do feel here that we can then see play and what we do as performers really as about as important as any human activity could be. So when people go, oh, is it just entertainment, oh, it's just art. When you go. Yes, it is just art, but just art is the axis upon which the entire human endeavor pivots.

Speaker 1: 43:20

I do believe that it is the fact that I have had thoughts like these that that's a part of the kind of feeling that people have when they see me perform the seriousness or the kind of seriousness that I approach my rather ridiculous acts and whatever. I think they get the feeling that my conviction is that there's something deeper going on here. Even when I'm doing just a Christmas party or whatever, I'm doing a thing for a school here now, like 17, 18-year-olds or whatever. When I'm doing that and I come out onto the stage, I do see my role in the world as something more than just a mere entertainer or just playing or whatever, because as I go onto the stage stage, that is absolutely what I do, but I like to always be pointing uh beyond it, as if there is something more going on here. And when I'm talking to 17 year olds on, uh, having an open day at the school, 18 year olds or whatever, 16, 17, 18 year olds who are going to go to this school.

Speaker 1: 44:33

Now there is at least this aspect that you just go I am demonstrating here by being a 47 year old man that there are ways of differently being in the world, or being in the world differently, like whatever it was that you had already thought about unless your parents are also circus performers or whatever then seeing me there being in this way, a full-rounded character not actually a character, but a real person being in the world and whatever they might have heard or not have heard about me, as I'm a strange cat in a small town here, some of them might have already heard about me, but they go ah, yeah, there's that, and what does even that mean?

Speaker 1: 45:21

And what does that mean?

Speaker 1: 45:22

So when I'm pointing to these little bits outside of myself and outside of the show, then I do feel like I'm saying there is something more going on in this world that can be so much more than what you think it is, and all of this stuff that we talked about today taking play seriously is a big part of it.

Speaker 1: 45:45

So if you want to have that same strength in you, take these ideas that we've shared here today and shared in the previous 21 episodes of Showmanship and Play and see if you can make them part of the way that you think about what you do. If you do so, you'll become a stronger performer and you'll be experienced so by your clients, no doubt in my mind. So, finally, if you want to tell people that this podcast exists, I ask that every time it almost never happens, but maybe today will be that day when you actually go on and say the way of the shaman is worthwhile listening. If you do so, I'd be very, very happy. And either way, I have said all I need to say. So, until time, take care of yourself and I hope to see you along the way.