the Way of the Showman

143 - The Metaphorical Showman: Connecting Performance to Play (Showmanship & Play 25 of 30)

Captain Frodo Season 4 Episode 143

Have you ever wondered why some performances captivate you completely while others leave you checking your watch? The secret might lie in the ancient art of play.

In this expansive exploration of showmanship through metaphor, Captain Frodo delves into the profound connection between performance and play. Drawing on both philosophical underpinnings from Aristotle to modern cognitive scientists like Lakoff and Johnson, this episode reveals how metaphorical thinking shapes our reality—not just in language, but in thought and action.

At the heart of this discussion is a powerful insight: successful showmanship transforms audiences from experiencing clock time (Kronos) to being fully present in experiential time (Kairos). When performers approach their craft playfully—keeping their audience's experience central, making presentations gripping rather than boring, and inviting participation rather than merely demonstrating skills—they create those magical moments when everyone stops and thinks, "Oh my god, this is it, I get it."

The episode unpacks the first of five criteria of play—that it's fun, enjoyable, and something we don't want to end—demonstrating how this maps perfectly onto the performer-audience relationship. Both audience and performer enter a sacred space where ordinary objects and actions take on extraordinary significance, creating a shared experience that benefits everyone involved.

Whether you're a performer seeking deeper connections with your audience or simply fascinated by the psychology behind captivating experiences, this episode offers fresh insights into how metaphorical thinking transforms our understanding of performance arts. These aren't abstract musings but practical approaches that can elevate any presentation from merely impressive to genuinely transformative.

Subscribe to The Way of the Showman to continue this journey through the metaphorical landscape of performance and discover how embracing play might be the most serious thing a performer can do.

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Speaker 1:

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. I'm Frodo and I will be your host and your guide along the way. And today we would very much. We here in the studio, which is mainly me and my little dog, teddy, which this season you've probably heard more about than in any of the other seasons we would like you to help us out, and it's pretty easy. One of the ways, and the best way, is just to follow the podcast. Wherever it is that you download your podcast, just go over, click subscribe, click follow. I mean, in the end of the day, who wouldn't want to follow the way? So if you do that, that'd be totally awesome. So, with that said, let's just jump into a quick summary of last time. But what we spoke about last time, about alive on the inside, wasn't so much something that I would want to summarize. It was more almost like a prose poem, where we take on a playful attitude towards describing the carnival and describing the sort of mythopoetic setting of the showman. A lot of it was centered around this idea of being that it says on the banners of the freak shows it would say alive, and one of the often repeated phrases of the one that stand outside and talks to gather a crowd and gets them in to buy tickets and go and see the show that they say it's here, right here on the inside. Come and see the tickets and whatever it is that's on the outside, it's nothing, it pales in comparison to what's on the inside. I just, if you take that kind of approach seriously, take those words like if you only listen to those words and you take it, what does it mean? It's like we've got an inner sanctum. There is other more beautiful thing that happens behind the velvet curtains that separates the outside from the inside. We looked a little bit at Merce, eliade and Sacred and Profane of what it means to create a sacred space, or basically, then, a space where different rules apply, where the way that you encounter and the way that you interpret what it is that's going on in that space is different. When you walk into an art gallery, when you walk into a church or when you walk into someone's living room, the expectations and the way that you interpret the objects and the way that you interpret the activities that goes on in those spaces are quite different, so I spoke a little bit about that. So, anyway, I'm not going to do much more of a synopsis than that. We're just going to get cracking.

Speaker 1:

This will be a little bit of a long episode and we are beginning the end here. First I'm going to talk a little bit about metaphors and that which we have done before, and then I will get cracking on looking at criteria, one of showmanship and how that directly then relates up, some ideas of how it connects up. So let's get jumping and let's get cracking into the world of ideas. So let's look more directly now on how our craft is play. If our craft is play, then it should match up with these five criterias. And if it is that, then how can we then internalize ourselves as players or as playful beings? And we're going to look at some approaches to how we can develop and shape our skills as performers to be more playful. And if we do that, then that could afford us deeper connections, as we've seen that that is one of the things that play does. Play is about creating connections and a particular kind of relationship to people, which might then lead to greater performance experiences, both for ourselves as performers and for our co-creators, the co-creators of the shows, which is the audience, a key component of our craft. So we are going to look at that.

Speaker 1:

But to be able to do that, we're going to revisit something that we spoke about in the very beginning when we started here, back in episodes 96 and 97, I believe it is when we're talking about the lens of showmanship quite directly. So for anyone who has not listened to those ones, those are good to have listened to before we talk about this. But let's delve back into metaphor, because that is the domain that this entire season has been. We have been developing the metaphor that showmanship is, play and how the two connects together. So, starting again, as we talked about Aristotle back when in 96 and 97, there and he says, ordinary words, ordinary words convey only what we know already it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh. So there it is, aristotle keeping it fresh after all, this time With metaphor. How does Aristotle stay fresh? Metaphor, apparently.

Speaker 1:

So we began this exploration many episodes ago with a quick overview of how I understand the nature of showmanship process to be what it is, and we've talked about that in the whole of season two. So I spent a good bit of time actually then going over how geometry could serve as a way to picture what happens when an audience and a performer meets and connects, how a new area emerges, when emerges, when a line transforms into a triangle, which happens when we introduce a third point and connect the three dots. I liken this to the showman and the audience being two points forming a line, and the third point is then the show. The show is what emerges in the shared act of attention between the showman showing and the audience watching. A third point not on the line between the two points, as it is not either, but both is the emergent third point of union between the two, not wholly one, not wholly the other, but both. This deeply participatory process of shared attention between showman and audience produces a new, strictly human, experiential dimension, which we call the show. So that was a pretty uh, boiled down, quintessential, uh idea of what it, what a what showmanship is. If you try to picture it, um, as a triangle which we have done several times on this podcast and going over it again and again Sometimes I know from when I'm watching other people's lectures that all of a sudden, this thing that seems to be of great value to them and that they keep repeating, all of a sudden it takes root in me and I go oh now I see, I hope that happened just then. So anyway, in other words, when we began this process, we juxtaposed two things performance and geometry.

Speaker 1:

The likening of the process of showmanship to the geometry of triangles is a kind of metaphor, or it is a metaphor and something is a metaphor when it brings two unrelated elements together in a kind of comparison, with the aim of providing understanding when one object or action is held up to or viewed through the lens of something else which it is not literally applicable to. So the whole point of a metaphor is to bring together the whole of one thing with the whole of another, so that each becomes different in the light of each other. The meaning found at the root of the word metaphor is to carry over, to transfer or to change, much like how the process of showmanship is completely reciprocal. The meaning goes back and forth between audience and performer. The audience is making real or making sense of whatever it is the performer is doing, and in this way we could then say that the carrying over. In the metaphor it goes both ways. It's not just that showmanship is triangle geometry, but it's also that triangle geometry is showmanship, whatever that might mean. It's a topic for another time.

Speaker 1:

So this process of being placed together offers a creative and dynamic tension which expands our understanding of both if we take it serious and we look into it, hold both things loosely and then see how they fit together. And the best metaphors are those that are alluringly close yet different enough to afford us connections which we would not have made without it. Perhaps it's illuminating to think of the result, if we can call it that, of a metaphor the fruit emerging, the new, further understanding. That happens through the carrying over and transforming, as a kind of metamorphosis. The two things reciprocally are carried over into each other and viewed through each other, and this creates in us humans something altogether different. Yet it is essentially the same.

Speaker 1:

But this could, I think, beneficially be looked at like how a butterfly larvae liquefies inside its pupa and then emerges as something all together sublimely other, like it goes in as a larvae and then it sort of actually turns into liquid, and as it comes back out again, it is so different that to all extents and intents and purposes you could say it's almost like it is a different species, something which has been argued, almost like it is a different species, something which has been argued. Yet experiments reveal that, despite the almost complete liquefaction, which is like as it just turns into mush in there, like into liquid of the caterpillar, some of the memories and experiences remains in the butterfly. So in the pupa of metaphor, the two unlike things liquefy and then emerges through metamorphosis as an extended butterfly of understanding from the reciprocal dialogue of the meaning of the two. So the two things goes in to the pupa, the two things in the metaphor, triangles and showmanship, or in as a really. What the real topic is here that I'm skirting about is then showmanship and play. When they go into the pupae they sort of liquefy and then, as they come out, in the other side it's something different, but it carries within it real memories, and real, yeah, memories, something from the old. And the thing I'm doing here with the metamorphosis is to kind of say that in the pupae there's kind of two things going in. I don't know, I haven't thought this through too much, but hey, don't want to lose my edge by so. So let's talk about this the actual gap, then this gap, that of that is implied when something is carried over, which is what the metaphor originally meant.

Speaker 1:

In this book, the master and his emissary, ian mcgillchrist, points out that metaphor, which means carry over, carries in it an implied gap which it carries you over. And this gap, he says, is something which is created by the fact that we express ourselves through language. A gap emerges because language is only a re-presentation. It's not a yeah, it's being re-presented. Language describes the world, but fundamentally it is something different. It's a web of meaning-bearing. Sounds Like how human is a word, but it refers to the kind of being that you and I are.

Speaker 1:

In this way, the word is merely a label, yet it also harbours like a symbol, all that it is and means to be a human. They are completely unlike each other, as if separated by an unbridgeable gap. Yet there exists a Bivrost rainbow bridge which is metaphor. Rainbow bridge, which is metaphor. Bivros is just the that's the name of the rainbow rainbow bridge that bridges the word of the gods world of the gods and the world of the humans in northern mythology, um, but the point here is that it's like human and the actual being that you are and me, the word human will, just like any aspect of the world. It will expand as our understanding of what a human is, what it has been and what it can be. And that will always be in a flux, because we are always more than what we name ourselves. So only by thinking of the word as a symbol, as in something which is reaching out and connecting more and more to it and becoming deeper the more you engage with it, can you actually sort of say that human is yeah. So can we actually say that human, the word human and the being that we are, that is kind of a metaphor where we are mixing two things, that it's a kind of a metaphor in itself.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, as an example, mcgilchrist draws a parallel to the relationship that money has to value. Money and language are both intermediaries, which means that they are links or vessels, but neither is the real thing. Language, the word human is not a person. It's just a sound and money in the form of paper or metal, tokens, or now just ones and zeros in a computer. It carries little to none of the value that they have in our social, imaginary realm of everyday life. We all imagine that the piece of paper that I just gave you has a certain value, gave you has a certain value and therefore you accept it as a token of value that you will give me a service or give me some candy or whatever. Yet money does carry the value it does in in a social, everyday life. It money does actually carry this value that we collectively have bestowed on it, on them. On the cash you can buy real food that will keep you from starving. In real life, money has real value, yet this value is intermediary. Money and language are both keepers of intermediary meaning. They have taken on aspects of what they represent, yet they are not real in the way that rocks and turtles are real. Money has real value, language has real meaning, but both carry their signifiers metaphorically.

Speaker 1:

As McGilchrist puts it, metaphoric thinking is fundamental to our understanding of the world because it is the only way in which understanding can reach outside the system of science, to life itself. It is what links language to life. So when I was going off topic here of asking can we say that the word human and the human being as a living entity are a kind of metaphor, then I'd say, yeah, there you go. It's reaching out of itself, from a system of sounds into real life and it links language to life. So, in other words, the way language relates to life is through metaphor and the only way that the system of science, ie language, can reach out into the world and become real is through metaphor. When I say human lamb or wolf, then you know what I mean and you know that the words that I say are not the same as the real shepherd keeping the real wolf away from the spring lambs in the fields. They're words, yet language allows us metaphorically to access dimensions of the real world that would be impossible to share without this layer of reality afforded to us through language.

Speaker 1:

So language as a phenomenon is vastly complex. It's an enormous web of meaningful sounds, but it leads us to things and processes in the real world through a metaphorical process. So in one way language and life are not the same, yet in another way they really are the same, Not exhaustively so, but same nonetheless. It's when you name it, you almost invariably name it too small, as we've talked about before, using the words of David White, the poet philosopher. So the implied gap mentioned above that you get carried across can be seen as the gap between language and life, a gap which fully exists on the level of language but which, on the level of experience, does not exist. At the experiential level, when we encounter metaphors in our everyday life, the two parts of a metaphor aren't just similar, they are the same, not exhaustively so, but same nonetheless. So can we say that there are metaphors all the way down, because we started and and we got, we continued to this exploration with metaphor.

Speaker 1:

This whole thing showmanship and play has been one giant exploration of metaphor, because first we looked at showmanship as triangle geometry and then we moved on to showmanship as play, which we will finally wrap up, after this little sojourn, into a metaphor. We'll wrap it up by comparing the five criterias of play with seeing what we find when we then look specifically at the craft of performing. But it's easy to mistakenly think that all these comparisons of seemingly unrelated things amounts to nothing but abstract wordplay. Yet the more I have delved into this territory where we illuminate one thing by placing it alongside another, the two reverberating back and forth, illuminating each other, the more I see how fruitful and practical such metaphorical explorations are. There are always deep relations to be found between surprisingly varied things if you engage with it in this particular and peculiar way, not in a confusing and relativistic anything can be anything, anything else, anything can be anything else way, but rather in an everything is related and connected kind of way.

Speaker 1:

In George Lakoff and Stephen Johnson's highly mightily influential book called the Metaphors we Live by, they give a wonderful exposition of how we could say there are metaphors. All the way down they propose that our very process of thinking, the fact that we're able to think at all, is fundamentally metaphorical. Quote Metaphor is, for most people, a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish, a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. But we have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Metaphors we live by by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980. End quote.

Speaker 1:

So to illustrate how we live by metaphors. Their first example is argument is war. You just gotta yeah. They use then expressions like and pick them out to make you see it's like your claims are indefensible. Or he attacked every weak point in my argument, or I demolished his argument and I've never won an argument with him. So they use that to show how we implicitly treat these two things, then as related or, as the metaphor seems to insinuate, the same. We do see an argument as a kind of fight where one side hopes to win, perhaps even win over, as in win over and making them join you in, like they're making the other fighting, arguing party, join your opinion or join your political party, or whatever it is the argument is about, since we do use strategies and plans to win and we actually can win or lose arguments, and this metaphor is not just some abstract semantic flourish. War could be said to be a genuine feature of arguments, though argument is richer than its metaphorical connection to war. Argument doesn't have to be war.

Speaker 1:

Lakoff and Johnson asks us to imagine a culture where arguments instead are viewed as a dance, where there is no attacking and and defending, but instead the goal is a balance of give and take, of lead and follow, and in this culture there would then be widespread real life differences. People would view arguments differently and arguments would happen differently. And in this way we understand that by living by one or the other of these metaphors, the world and life, real life, would actually be different, and I was touching on this when discussing the book Humankind Hopeful History in previous episodes. How different does not the world, people and history look through the lens of humans are selfish and brutal, versus, as Reuter Bregman puts it, humans are pretty decent, which is a completely different lens. The interesting thing is that both can be true or both are true.

Speaker 1:

As we look through one lens, we see certain aspects of reality, but as we do so, certain other aspects won't be easy to spot. They become like blinkers and biases, which foregrounds some things and backgrounds others. And reality is multivalent and no thing is easily or even complicatedly captured in any comprehensive way by any human definition. The word is not the same as the thing it describes. The map is not the territory. Reality is simultaneously many things at the same time, and any statement will, by necessity, only capture facets, only parts of the endlessly rich whole, which means any metaphor that we live by will necessarily afford us only a limited aspect, a map of a territory, not the complete, exhaustive territory itself. So the fact that metaphors allows us different routes into reality. As we saw from the dance versus war view of argument, they actually create different real worlds, which means that there is a great value in choosing one's metaphors with care.

Speaker 1:

It is with this in mind that I have so deeply pursued the idea that showmanship is play and why I have been persistent in my thinking about this for years and seeing that the metaphor, showmanship is play, is of great value. So that point has probably been made, and you've understood that by the fact that I'm recording the 25th episode about it and wrote a very big manuscript about that. So let's now sort of try to concretize this a little bit and ask is showmanship really play? Is showmanship like play, or even is showmanship a kind of play, in the same way that a bird isn't just like a dinosaur but actually is a type of dinosaur, a flying one, an avian dinosaur, as it's called. It's the only group of dinosaurs that are still around. So the answer is probably yes to both.

Speaker 1:

Showmanship is like play and it is also a kind of play, much how we just looked at language and life and the gap between them. The two aspects, the two phenomena of showmanship and play are not exhaustively the same, yet they are the same nonetheless. And better grasp the intricate relationship of this, I think it would be valuable to place the two processes alongside each other to see what comes up. And although I did share one definition of play back in the ancient times when this first started Stuart Brown's definition, I believe it was, and I firmly believe, along with practically all ludologists, people who study play, that the nature of play is better captured through a list of features than a definition which, as we have looked at at length, has a tendency to name things too small.

Speaker 1:

So in our explorations of what play is, we described five characteristics which are crucial for what play is. We have visited these before, so coming back to them now we are. As TS Eliot said, we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. That's TS Eliot from Little Gidding, four Quartets 1943. So as we arrive back at the shore here and we're looking out over it, when we look at showmanship again here now and go through these criterias, we won't have to talk about all the details because they are imbued now with a lot more. So we return to the five criteria with the ideas that belayev and ludmilla foxes of juvenileization, of neoteny, of play deficits and the truth about seriousness and importance, and relaxed field and triangle geometry and the nature of metaphors. So, seeing these five criterias again, I hope that we see them anew and know them expanded and enriched, as for the first time.

Speaker 1:

Criteria 1. Play is fun. It's intensely pleasurable and enjoyable. So when we play we don't want it to stop. Criteria 2. Play is apparently purposeless. We play for the sake of playing, not to achieve some further goal. Three Third criteria Play is self-motivated, which means it has to be entered into voluntarily. Criteria four Play has rules. Criteria five Play is imaginative and improvisational. So the idea now is to playfully look, like I just did when I looked at alive on the inside in the last episode, in that more playful kind of feeling, allowing myself to go into half-baked ideas or whatever, to try to open up, uh, what the possibilities are. Not name it too small.

Speaker 1:

The idea is then to look at these phenomena of play and showmanship alongside each other and to see how they overlap and enrich each other. As I go through these, I will just highlight certain aspects and correlations, as well as some rather practical viewpoints in how things from your acts and shows to see them as games and play will improve your connection with and appreciation from the audience. And as a precautionary note, I would like to add that any metaphor is endless in its depth and its web of interconnected meaning that can be found, and in that sense there is nothing worse than trying to tell someone what a metaphor is. If two seemingly unrelated things indeed are in a relationship, where a story of some pigs and farm animals actually is just a commentary on what went wrong in Tsarist Russia, then we are indeed dealing with an allegory and not a metaphor. And I believe that we are now squarely in the metaphorical territory here, and thus I am reluctant to make a list of how showmanship is play, yet as much as I am reluctant to tell you what it means. I would also be a poor presenter if I did not at least give some indications and point out some directions of how I see these two are directly related. I will just stress, before we begin the next and final part of our exploration, that what follows is in no way meant to be exhaustive or indeed authoritative. The form of the following is deliberately attempted to be a little fleeting and rambling, as it might be in a conversation which I am, in a sense, having a conversation with my own text here, and I am having a abstract conversation with you. But when you're talking in a real conversation if you and me actually spoke in person, which would be wonderful if that happened one day then it has a tendency to go and jump a little bit more, and I have attempted to give this following stuff, which will be over the next few episodes, to give just enough imperfections for you to insert yourself into it by disagreeing or concurring, or as sparks setting off fires in the dark forests of your mind. Whether I have succeeded, you be the judge. So let's explore the overlap and direct correlations between criteria, one about fun and enjoyment and how we don't want it to end so.

Speaker 1:

A showman is an entertainer. He is an artist working within the field of entertainment, which means his art is characterized by being easy to pay attention to. If you can effortlessly pay attention to a performance, then it is an entertaining experience. If you are effortlessly paying attention, you are captured by the action, sucked into the moment, and the experience is enjoyable, as long as we accept that a showman is an entertainer, then fun and enjoyment are cornerstones of showmanship. What we as show folk choose to do, how we do it and how we conduct ourselves as characters throughout, and how we conduct ourselves as characters throughout, can take whatever shapes and forms that one wants, as long as the event is experienced as fun and enjoyable.

Speaker 1:

If you don't adhere to those things, people go oh, it was an art event, it happened in a shopping center, but it was an art thing, so people didn't understand it or whatever they weren't effortlessly able to pay attention. So if you have something to express which is so complex that the presentation of it is hard to understand, thus hard to pay attention to, then perhaps an entertaining show is not the best particular avenue for this idea. The content and concepts that you want to express might find better expression and thus better reception when presented in a different arena than, say, the circus ring. Perhaps a lecture or a performance, art presentation is more apt. In part that is why I am talking to you here, because I can't say this stuff in my shows. So in these other arenas of lecture halls and art galleries there are other expectations to the content presented. This does not mean that entertainment does not have a role to play in these different venues.

Speaker 1:

Amongst professors, teachers and performance artists, there are also examples of presenters which manage to capture and catch people's attention better than others, thus being entertaining. If they manage to get their class effortlessly to pay attention and have the best of times whilst they're taking in the material, then you could say that that class was entertained. What can entertain a class of PhD students is quite different from what entertains the general public. The doctoral students might find themselves gripped by a professor's expounding of certain cutting-edge research which is looking to change their field of study forever, whilst the general public only hears a barrage of technical mumbo-jumbo. The students might find such a lecture both fun and enjoyable, and perhaps dotted with moments of oh my god, this is it, I get it. See below, I'll be talking about that in a minute that feeling.

Speaker 1:

So the manner in which something is presented, be it quantum physics, kung fu or how to cook a cheese souffle, can be done boringly or grippingly. Or how to cook a cheese souffle can be done boringly or grippingly. The latter is fun and enjoyable If it's grippingly. If it's gripping, then it's fun and enjoyable, which means that it is also playful. So the person teaching or showing grippingly keeps the learner's or audience's experience in mind, much like how children playing must's or audience's experience in mind, much like how children playing must keep each other's experience in mind to ensure that the other wants the game to continue. So if the game is the show and the kids lose their interest, or anyone who's watching is losing their interest, then the show ceases to exist, as we've spoken about. But if the lecturer is is boring, then the students minds will wander and thus actually severing the connection between the two, leaving the lecturer to talk to themselves or or to no one. Because if you're really bored bored by ideas you might just be reading out aloud whatever lecture you'd intended for the kids and you're bored with it because it's first year students or whatever, and it's not what, where your passion is. But, um, you know, if a lecturer standing up there basically talking to themselves and no one's listening, then if you talk to yourself, that is can can be a a sign that there is something going on with mental health. That might not be all positive. But if one child is as another example, like if one child is hogging all the toys and is enforcing their will and only their will, then the other children, or the other child that they're playing with, will lose interest in the game and the little tyrant won't get their will after all.

Speaker 1:

I use professor and performance artists as examples precisely because they are edge cases of showmanship. But the same is, of course, even more obviously true for how we choose to present a magic trick or a sequence of juggling or hand balancing feats. As we have already looked at deeply, the arts we find in circus, theatre and market squares are already practically indistinguishable from play. Hence the general public's repeated query is this your real job? Stemming from the perhaps unconscious question can one play for a living?

Speaker 1:

But returning to the matter of how deeply an audience is gripped by a performance, there are, also in circus arts, great difference between a performer's ability to capture their audience and presenting their skills. Sometimes we see the presentation of a skill or a trick and it feels like a momentous event, whilst other times, perhaps, that very same trick, that done by someone else, just leaves you indifferent. Perhaps these latter performers could do well with contemplating how playful they are in their presentation. Are they inviting someone in? Is there any connection there? Is it playful enough? So they might quite likely, I think, find that their performance, which leaves people nonplussed and uninterested, that it is lacking a playful aspect, their system of science as, using the language we spoke about a little while ago, which is their skills and tricks, that could be said to be a kind of system of science, and they are perhaps being presented like this rantings of a tyrant child, unaware of how their mode of playing fails to include and invite their playmates, which makes up their audience. That's a good way to think of it, isn't it? It's like that. The audience are kind of playmates and you are there engaging them and you know.

Speaker 1:

But of course, a lot of us just want to see ourselves as artists and my art is eternal and never changing, which we spoke about in the episode which is called Foreplay at the Theatre, which delves deeply into Goethe and the start of his incredible epic book about Faust. So there we talk a little bit more about that epic and eternal poetry of performance, where we're just an artist and we refuse to care about the moment. Eternal poetry of performance where we're just an artist and we refuse to care about the moment and the people we're performing for. Perhaps if that person who's doing an act with tricks that could potentially be thoroughly captivating, but that fails to be so. Maybe they don't take enough of their audience's experience into account and perhaps they thought only of themselves and how they like to play, or perhaps they look at themselves too seriously and forgot that at the heart of showmanship lies fun and enjoyment. By making suitably playful adjustments to their mode of presentation, I have no doubt that their tricks and skills, their system of science, will reach out of itself and into the real world, into the real life beating hearts of the audience, which, after all, is the purpose of showmanship to reach others, to touch others and to move others, to communicate, to respond to each other, to be together in a room and playfully connecting.

Speaker 1:

Performance as therapy for performers is also a valid and meaningful pursuit, but it has very different aims than what we here call a show. In those cases, in performance therapy, as with certain kinds of performance art, with certain modes of so-called new circus or theater clowning or any other kind of presentation, the experience for the audience might be that the aim of the show was to please the performer rather than them. Maybe this is unspoken, maybe it's unconscious, maybe they haven't thought it through, but that might sometimes be the case, self-indulgent theatre therapy which, given the right venue and the right expectations, it might be absolutely appropriate If the invitation says to come and watch me play, and not come and play with me, it is appropriate and perhaps then, rather peculiarly, even fun and enjoyable to watch someone play. When a movie suddenly ends and you go wow, these hours just really flew by. When you dive into a book and you get sucked into it so that you don't want to put it down. When you're watching a stand-up comedian and she suddenly bows and takes her leave and you realize that you haven't taken a sip of your beer yet. You have been entertained, you've been captured in play. You have been playing In a street show.

Speaker 1:

We know immediately if our audience's attention has been lost or if it's become difficult for them to pay attention because they will walk away. When I am performing a family show, I know when I have lost parents' attention because they take out their phones Whilst if I'm talking too much to the adults, the kids will begin to roam around and chat and play amongst themselves, will begin to roam around and chat and play amongst themselves. My interaction with the kids has thus stopped being play, experienced as play, and they will like the kid after a long adult steered play session, playing shop or whatever, and the kids will go. Can we play now? The thing is that we only walk away or think about other unrelated things and get our phones out when our attention and interest is broken. If we are consumed by whatever we are engaged in, we simply don't think of getting our phones out or remember, we don't sort of come to think of that. We haven't come to town to see a performer in the street show, example, but we've come to buy new bags for our vacuum cleaner and the fun keeps us in the moment and as soon as we do, you are out-competed by the project of buying vacuum cleaner bags. When a child plays, they are so absolutely experiencing effortless attention. The fun of the game captures them and makes time into the pure experience of whatever happens in the moment. Into the pure experience of whatever happens in the moment. Could we, as performers, hope for any better audience response than rapt attention to whatever you make happen in your shared moment, the moment you share with the audience?

Speaker 1:

Play transforms the player's experience of time from Kronos to Kairos, where Kronos time is clock time, the divided increments decided by the vibrations of quartz crystals, atomic clocks or old-fashioned springs slowly unfurling. Kairos time is the experience time when we are simply in the moment. In short, we could say that the difference is quantity time versus quality time. Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr described the kairos time as those moments in life when you stop and say, oh my god, this is it, I get it. When you stop and say, oh my god, this is it, I get it. Or this is as perfect as it can be or it doesn't get any better than this. And to this I would only add that when you're really caught up in play, when you are deeply inside a chaotic experience, you can't even say or think any of those things, since to be captured fully by Kairos is to be fully within the experience and not standing outside oneself so as to be able to pass judgment on the situation. It's only in the moments at the fringes of deep Kairos or deep play that you at all can reflect on the nature of the experience that you're having. That said, richard Rohr's three exclamations beautifully captures the essence of fun and enjoyment and pleasure. I personally love those. That's it, I get it.

Speaker 1:

Moments, I live for those moments, whether it is in writing here, I all of a sudden discover a massive link affording me some insight, lying hidden inside what it is that I'm writing, but going far beyond what I had set out to say, or whether it is during a performance, where something random happens and in a flash it appears an idea, that's it, I get it, which I then execute, and the whole audience erupts. And these are the moments that I chase. I keep writing and keep performing, because I never want the flow of such playful experiences and such moments of minuscule triumph to end, which brings me to how a chaotic moment also can mean the right time. So it's not just this sort of experience that you're in flow, caught in a moment, but a kairos. A chaotic moment can mean that something is on the right time or the right opportune moment for something to happen. It's a moment of significant timing, there is a right moment for something to happen and when the right thing happens at that right time, magic. It's experienced as magic or as just extraordinary. And we venture deeper then into play, like a well-timed joke or a perfectly executed kung fu attack In play.

Speaker 1:

I think this kind of chaotic moment is reflected in how we remain within the experience of Kairos or play when whatever happens in the game is the right thing at the right time. When, just as a conflict between two children is on the verge of destroying the game, a new synergistic idea emerges and explodes the possibilities of the game in just such a way as to propel the children right back into the sweet spot of Kairos again. By, let's say, someone having an argument as to which toy can be used and all of a sudden one kid goes. Well, we're having that, but if we have this one too, then these possibilities happen and all of a sudden it can just turn the game around Watershed moment and all of a sudden the dog and the large car is involved and the beanbag is now a whole new territory for them to be on. I don't know something like that. Or another example is just as your audience thinks you have exhausted what juggling, magic or hand balancing can be, then you change the game with a chaotic addition that captures them further when they thought that they were slipping away.

Speaker 1:

A great show changes the audience's experience from clock time to experiential time, from Kronos to Kairos, and as part of this, they lose themselves to the enjoyment of being in the moment, being inside a bubble of pure experience, and this happens when the experience is fun and enjoyable. Every definition of entertainment that I've come across has enjoyment and fun in its description. What we show folk producers certainly fulfills that first part of the criteria fun and enjoyment and the second part that you don't want it to stop, which is part of that play criteria, that naturally follows from this. In a performance as in play, it's the same. Fun is a quality which has immediate value in the moment of experience, and when something is fun and enjoyable, we don't want it to stop. We don't want it to end because we don't want fun to end. Good times, they're here to stay. We certainly hope for that being pulled out of a thoroughly enjoyable experience. It just isn't nice when you tell a child that it's time to stop playing because it's time to go to school. You are really met with joy.

Speaker 1:

At the end of a great performance experience, we are often left with a feeling that we didn't want it to stop. The same is true for a good movie and for readers getting to the end of a great book. We might find ourselves with the ambrivolent feeling of being excited to know how it ends, yet also sad because reaching the end will expel us from the world that we have created in our minds in concert with the reading, in a reciprocal us from the world that we've created in our minds in concert with the reading, in a reciprocal relationship with the author. The writer of such a book or director of such a movie, has treated us like the perfect playmates, letting us have our will by meeting our expectations and fulfilling what's been set up and promised throughout, but also giving us their own ideas and exercise their own will, just so that it grips us in the blissful fun of play, giving us what we want but extending it. Not just giving us what we want, but also what we need to stay entertained.

Speaker 1:

Thus far we have looked at the fun and enjoyment primarily from the audience's point of view. So what we have determined is that the audience's experience of showmanship certainly aligns supremely well with play. What's so for the showman, the performer? Does she or he also have the same fun and enjoyment when they present their shows? Are they always being presented with the enjoyment of others at the forefront of their mind? And here I can attest, as someone who spends a significant portion of my life engaged in performance, that I sure find it pleasurable. I do the same things, the same act, over and over again. So does that make me like it less? Does it make it boring? I would be lying if I said that there aren't times when my job is as in. It's a job as a job and it's like it's a chore. But I would also be lying if I claim that this was the norm In the vast majority of shows.

Speaker 1:

I get gripped by the moment. This is a powerful part of what makes it enjoyable the fact that in the moment I share my creation with the audience, it becomes real. Until then, all my acts and skills are is potential. It's like the sheet music to a fugue by Bach. It's a wonderful experience. The fugue by Bach is a wonderful experience, but the paper isn't. It's only in potential. My art, my acts only become actual, real. They only become real when I present them to audiences. This is the moment they actually live. My acts are my creation and although they aren't nearly as alive and wonderful as my child, they are still strongly resembling a kind of child. If you allow me this link, then it immediately becomes clear that I would of course want this creation to live.

Speaker 1:

To stretch the analogy, we might say that the acts are unconscious when they aren't performed. If we wanted to be kind, we might think of them as sleeping between the performances, but I do believe that the unconscious is probably a better way to look at it, that the act goes into a state of non-being even between the shows. Perhaps, though, the acts could be said to exist as dreams, since the memories of the performance lives on inside each of the spectators and also in me, the performer, so maybe dreaming isn't such a poor analogy after all. That said, I want my act, my act creation, to awaken and to be alive and flourish, and this only happens in performance. Like all games, they are only alive only in real existence when they are being played. The world is filled with cupboards and shelves with boxes of board games, which are but potential, fun and enjoyment, potential experiences, and perhaps each is dreaming, dreaming hope that you will find time in all your serious professional pursuits to open their box and let them live a little, the playing benefiting you and the game alike. Much like the show, pleases and enriches the audience and the performer, and maybe itself.

Speaker 1:

I enjoy and have fun sharing my creations with people. I enjoy it, but I am also proud and grateful for the opportunity, as this act of performing is a key part of what makes my life purposeful, at least the work aspect of my life. Showmanship is my vocation, not because it's the only thing I can do, as the pandemic proved. I could find another job. I became a teacher's assistant and, as it turned out, I was good enough at that role to be asked to continue on and expand my commitment. But my heart truly lies in the circus, in the creative presentation of acts. So I had to graciously decline and genuinely I have the heart of a showman who finds all work, all other work, to be less passionate and more like work. I enjoy that. The audience enjoys my performance. I connect to something bigger the moment I step into the circus ring, onto the stage, and they all smile and laugh and gasp. I connect to them all by fulfilling their expectations and also push them beyond what they thought that they wanted. As they enter the circus, they expect to be surprised and that it will be fun and exciting. To live up to this and to give them more than they expected is right at the heart of what I hope to achieve as a working man, as much as all this has been based on my own experience of performance. I'm not at all that special. I should expect that every performer will share this experience of genuine fun and enjoyment in performing. If not, they might be pursuing the wrong craft after all, be pursuing the wrong craft after all.

Speaker 1:

Another aspect of performing acts that, unlike in life, I get to practice and perfect a moment of duration. In real life you just go about and everything is sort of improvised something. Somebody meets you and you have to just improvise a conversation with them. But I get to rehearse certain moments. I get to rehearse it. I get to create what is as close to a perfect portion of time, a perfect presentation of being. The shows and occasions where I get to do my act are outside the pressures of natural selection. I'm not needing to protect myself, find food or a suitable mate, although all those could and potentially be fulfilled by the performance.

Speaker 1:

I am in a relaxed field. I am getting to invite a group of people into this highly peculiar and practiced performance in such a way that they lean in and want to see it and play along. I invite them in just enough through the call and response of applause and presentation of skill and, for me, these thoughts of practice harken back to the similar features of play. As practice, all mammals play, and the play that they do is related to skills they will need in their real life. In this sense, play is a form of practice not done to learn but because it's fun, which we will talk about more in next episode, when we talk about criteria too.

Speaker 1:

What is wonderful for me is that the very practice I do is the aim itself. I I get to practice the game to perfection, like the Kung Fu master who has practiced their basic training forms a hundred thousand times to prepare them for every attack. My tennis racket act is a game I get to rehearse to such an extent that whenever a situation arises, and whatever that situation might be, when I perform it it will succeed, it will work, it will grip the majority of those who see it. I've had a chance to master a perfect game, 100% artificial and therefore completely human, as the illuminated manifesto tells us when it comes to the desire for it to continue. For me, the showman, this is absolutely real, something that I got to experience powerfully when the pandemic came and I wished I could continue.

Speaker 1:

If I don't have any work I wish that I had, for financial and personal reasons alike. As for in the moment of doing my act, halfway through the performance, I am caught up in the execution and I don't really wish for it neither to stop or for it not to stop. The start, middle and the end of my act is as much a part of it as birth, life and death is to life, caught up in it, kairotically. We don't even consider the end, and when the end comes, it's not like I didn't want it or I don't want it to end as the finale of me finally getting through the rackets is the culmination of my desire. It is the reason why I am in the ring, it's my promise and conceit of me being there. So I want the act to stop, but also, in a certain sense, I wish that one of my acts would end, but only seamlessly, rather than ending transition into my next act, keeping the audience enthralled, which I sometimes do. So to conclude this, I too love the chaotic moment of my own performance and certainly wanted to continue. So, for the first criteria of play that it's fun, that it's enjoyable and that we wanted to continue I believe we find full accordance between play and showmanship, for audience and showman alike, although it might appear that we have reached some conclusion in how Criteria 1 touches on showmanship, but this is an illusion.

Speaker 1:

I've barely scratched the surface, merely given a few pointers, like a quack reversal sign at an intersection of the trail in the metaphorical territory, or the many trails.

Speaker 1:

The trails and the places for you to discover are still like so many white pages at the back of the atlas.

Speaker 1:

All right, this has been a long episode, lots of ideas to take in, I think, and lots of correlations, new relations that have been found between things. I hope it's sparking some ideas in you and if it sparks some ideas and it feels good, then why not go to Apple Podcasts, which is the main place where people find episodes, and leave me a good review? It would really help. That really is one of the best ways that people can find it. It puts me up there or whatever While you're at it. If you are afflicted with having Instagram on your phone or something like that, then why not go in there and follow the way of the showman? Then that way we're making these little videos and little things and I can share things and you might see when there are developments afoot along the way of the showman. So until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you somewhere along the way in real life.