the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
146 - Unleashing Your Inner Showman (Showmanship & Play 28 of 30)
The delicate dance between performer and audience reveals itself as we explore the self-motivated, voluntary nature of play in this deep dive into showmanship. Drawing from personal experiences during the pandemic and inspired by observing children at play, Captain Frodo uncovers how true connection emerges when audience members move from passive viewing to active participation.
At first glance, the power imbalance between showman and audience might appear problematic. The performer directs while the audience receives—but this apparent asymmetry holds surprising depth. When handled skillfully, this relationship transforms into something beautiful and reciprocal. The audience's voluntary attendance and attention become gifts, while the performer offers their crafted experience in return.
The magical moment occurs when audience members "lean in"—transitioning from mere attention to genuine interest. This pivotal shift marks when they become co-creators rather than spectators. The performer's initial promise hooks their attention, but only when they eagerly anticipate what happens next does the true connection form.
Every performance operates within a framework of rules that provide structure while allowing for creative freedom. The establishment of these rules—and their strategic breaking—creates the foundation for comedy, surprise, and meaningful engagement. Understanding these rules allows meaning to emerge not as something delivered by the performer, but as something that happens dynamically in the shared space between performer and audience.
The ultimate goal extends beyond entertainment. When audiences fully participate in this dance of showmanship, they carry the experience with them, potentially transforming how they view the world long after the show ends. This is the true power of showmanship—creating moments that resonate far beyond the confines of the performance space.
Ready to deepen your understanding of performance and play? Subscribe now and join us as we continue exploring the transformative way of the showman.
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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 guide along this way, and I will be your host and guide along this way. Today I re-read an essay In fact it was the essay called In Defense of Children, which makes up episode 5 of the Way of the Showman, something that I wrote during the pandemic, and it's interesting there that I you know you haven't when you write and go on about things as much as I it's like this episode five in defense of children is a call to arms for this entire season that we have been doing. Now. You see it in seed form there. What I have fleshed out now over what will be 30 episodes or so, where I say that I have to talking about hope and new life and a way forward in this was during the pandemic and that her, my daughter, being an inspiration and a reminder not to get overwhelmed by the future and that I have to face it playfully. To get overwhelmed by the future and that I have to face it playfully.
Speaker 1:I go on in this one about play and playfulness and why it is so important. It's how one is when one is in the moment and when things can be just fine and dandy in the moment, whilst if you look at the future or you think about your past, there will be things that you haven't processed and things that you still haven't managed to step through or take up as a part of you or accept as a part of you. So, whilst in the moment you might be sitting somewhere and everything is actually fine, and if there's anything that play does, it is to bring you into the moment and make things okay. When we are in the moment, when we do play, when we are letting ourselves go and caught in the flow, then things do seem to be all right. So this was my sort of discovery then during the pandemic in those moments when I was actually perfectly content, we had enough food, there was enough toilet paper All these things that we worried about in Las Vegas at the beginning of the pandemic. We had everything and I was there with my daughter and then I was drawing inspiration from her attitude towards life, being in a moment, playfully, all the time. So that was interesting to see. It was coming together that I read that now, just towards the end of this long run that we've had. I read it for unrelated purposes, so it was great. A little synchronicity, as Carl Jung might have called it. But let's jump into the synopsis, for last time I don't want to go into too much detail here.
Speaker 1:We basically wrapped up our talk about the second criteria of play, which is that play is apparently purposeless and that it is done for its own sake. And what we spoke about was first, friendliness and the importance of friendliness and how, the, how we can be friendly towards an animal and we can even think that it's like if you are friendly towards a mountain. What does that mean and how this could work out positively for the entire existence? And then I actually um, sort of we, I wanted to talk about show deficiency, and that lined up perfectly with a piece that I had written about play deficit, which, what happens, the, the, the things that one can expect to happen when a child does not get enough play or for some reason does not play enough for inner or outer reasons. So I spoke about those things first, and then after that, I talked about the possibility, if it could give us anything, any insight, any inspiration, to talk about the possibility of a show deficiency and just in the way that the world seems to connect up whilst you're busy thinking about something, one of the things that I talk about when would we know that the world got to experience less shows, less gatherings of where they could experience something like showmanship, be it in the form of a lecture, be it in the form of a magic show or a street show, catching the man-awares on the street in one of those glorious gifts that going down a walking street in a town might afford, that all these were gone, that opera houses were closed and theatres were closed, etc. And of course, I am no expert on these things and sociology and sociologists and people will be working out these things. But from the surface level exploration that I did, I did find some evidence that collectively, we suffered a bit of show deficiency, and suffering from show deficiency has eerily similar effects to what play deficiency might have. So yet another little tantalizing bit of evidence that play and showmanship might be closer than the average person might think.
Speaker 1:All right, so with all that said, let's move into the next criteria, criteria three. So let's jump into the world of ideas. Criteria three out of the five, that's the one where we talk about play being self-motivated, thus voluntary, and I started off by mentioning something which I do I can't remember if I've fully quoted this before, but from James Cassstens' book Finite and Infinite Games, where he says it is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays plays freely. Whoever must play cannot play.
Speaker 1:In viewing showmanship in the light of Criteria 3, I see an interesting tension, a possible discord or perhaps a disharmonic chord. On the surface it's in full accordance. A person buys a ticket. She is motivated by Criteria 1, fun and enjoyment, curiosity and whatever other hopes for the show that might tickle her fancy. It is entirely self-motivated and voluntary and by criteria three and james casas, a third stanza, this quote that I just did, that's actually the third stanza. He divides his book up into these stanzas.
Speaker 1:What ensues is en route to be play. You know it's voluntary, all of this, and criteria one fun and exciting. And you know, maybe it's apparently purposeless. Apart from that, she hopes to have a good time. So if we return to then this idea of a street show which is like the archetypal kind of show with the showman on the market square, the self-motivation to stay and watch the show is absolutely, entirely voluntary. The threshold for walking away is very low. The only thing that is holding you there is your curiosity and the enjoyable way your attention is being held by the showman. And this brings out the first of the notes making up our potential discord. And this is the asymmetry of the showman audience relationship. If this was a relationship that was like a child's game of free play, it would look from the outside quite lopsided, like one of the children, the showman being very much in control or dictating the game, and the other child which could be. Then the audience is letting themselves be steered by the other. There is a clear difference in control, as the showman is presenting their pre-prepared material in such a way that it will, based on the performer's experience, most efficiently capture your attention. You are, to put it negatively, lured into a presentation which has, whatever material it displays, carefully crafted to hook you, to hook a spectator.
Speaker 1:When we are talking about a street show, there exists what's known in business as a formula. It's a particular structure that will, within reason, guarantee success once it's mastered. I won't go into the details. It will suffice to say that you call for attention. First, you build an audience by promising some spectacular and worthwhile finale. And then you do a slow but steady preparation for this final stunt. And just before doing your stunt, you mention money and that is what, that? This is what you do for a living or for a money. And then you do your trick, thereby fulfilling your promise, and you make a quick, funny mention of money and maybe how much you hope each individual donation will be, and finally you stand there, classically at least, with your hat in your hand and they come forward and drop in their donations. That's the rough outline of the formula.
Speaker 1:And now to the question is this asymmetry a game? And if it is so, is it a healthy game? And I ask this since anyone who has observed children playing when a game has been hijacked by some playground bully or some kid, who has worked out that they can use the threat of ending the game to force the other kids or other kid to comply with their wishes and demands? Like an imagined conversation I want that toy you're using, but this is my favorite toy and I'm afraid it will be dirty. Well then, I don't want to play. Okay then, and the kid hands over her favorite little mouse toy.
Speaker 1:This scenario is not completely made up, and witnessing it. It hurts. Maybe one of the kids don't get to play so much with other kids since they're always moving around from one town to another, so she really wants to play with this other kid. Alright, that got pretty loaded, but it certainly highlights the potential problem in any power balance. From this we see that there could certainly be an issue here which could perhaps still technically comply with criteria three, that the game needs to be self-motivated and voluntary. So the girl handing over her favorite mouse does want to play, so it is self-motivated and in theory could just walk away and say no. But these two criteria are now in discord. The chord that's resounding is distinctly uncomfortable. The player in charge is holding an unpleasant seventh chord, if we want to go with the musical analogy. But then again, who knows, as the mouse is handed over in hopeful trust, perhaps the game which ensues is the best game she's ever played, maybe in. Maybe the one demanding that. The one of the players is demanding the mouse is the most inventive and fun playmate, exactly because of his or hers ability to orchestrate games. Maybe he has an innate ability and understanding of making fun things happen, akin to what we find in an experienced showman. We have all met people like this, who might not be the best listeners but which are a whole lot of fun to be with.
Speaker 1:The point of singling out this note about the asymmetric power relationship is to show how this can make the question of how voluntary a game or then a show that it's hard to answer. We end up coming into territory which in legal circles are called undue influence. This is when one person is able to persuade another's decision because of an imbalance of power, or, in other words, if someone is using their standing within their relationship to influence the decisions of others or another person. We are now in brainwashing territory and have slipped a little far outside the scope of our examination of whether criteria three of play can be said to resonate well with showmanship. But I do believe that, even though we have asked some big questions and explored the discord, it might actually be that, although we have found that shows naturally has an imbalance in the power relationship we have throughout, like our examples, we've always, from both shows and a child's point of view, seen that this power imbalance is baked into both play and showmanship. The power imbalance, yeah, and the play it can go both ways.
Speaker 1:Anyway, as we already indicated when imagining the game with the mouse and also when we spoke about the risk in play in an earlier episode and how games that push our boundaries just enough are often, and very often, the most exciting and gratifying games. The push and pull of power and the ensuing negotiations are found in play and in shows, and sometimes these can be the most rewarding things. I play, of course, with it myself by being within the territory of entertainment, by unease, when I say I'm going to attempt to squeeze myself through the heads of these rackets and along the way I will be doing a dislocation and then people go. I don't want to see that, but hopefully I can sell them in on my fun and games and they're laughing already so that they will stay, and then at the end of it they are actually very thrilled because the fact that there was something uneasy about this that turned out to be okay after all feels like then we've actually grown together. We've pushed through something so definitely possible in shows and in games, as we have just said.
Speaker 1:So, picking up on the idea of the kid who uses undue influence to get the mouse but then goes on to orchestrate the best game, this is, in a sense, a whole sub-genre of games. The specific example I'm thinking of is the tabletop role-playing games, where the so-called dungeon master the person in the role-playing games which functions as a storyteller and also a referee the dungeon master is the axis upon which the whole game, or the whole what is it that they call it again? They call it the campaign, that it revolves on how fun a game, or campaign as it's called is. This is overwhelmingly hinging on the skill of the dungeon master. One aspect that's hard for the master is to keep track of all the rules. Role-playing games like Dungeons Dragons have so many rules because, as we know from Criteria 4, and which we will get to in a bit, all play has rules and the Dungeon Master needs to know them well enough to not kill the game by constantly having to look them up. A great Dungeon Master is very much a showman, someone who can keep the internal experience of his players in mind, who can keep all the different characters in mind and, through improvisation around his pre-planned campaign, make it all come together and develop so it's fun for everyone. That, to me, is exactly what a showman should do, and in this light, a show could very be play of the same particular kind that the tabletop role-playing game is.
Speaker 1:I intimated that there were more possible discordant notes in our discord. The other note is closely related, as it is to be expected if we remain within the musical chord analogy. Let me go back to where we started. Someone buys a ticket, completely self-motivated. They go into the theatre and sit down, then the show starts. It comes at them whether they like it or not, as they say at the carnival roller coasters you've bought a ticket, now you have to take the ride, and we have here the exact situation from the previous note, that this is not a genuine and equal play. But we have discovered, as we have discovered, this might not be a problem. So what point am I actually making here? Only that, since the show is more unidirectional than even role-playing, are we back in iffy territory, meaning that it's like this aspect of the show being self-motivated that it might not quite fit? Is this the case? I don't think so. There are certain ways, following rules or norms which varies whether the show is a rock concert, a theatre play or a religious ceremony for that matter.
Speaker 1:Clapping, singing along, laughter, vocalized call and response, gasps and expressions of emotion, which is a large part of what makes seeing a band live, or even seeing a movie in a cinema makes this experience greater than if you do it all by yourself in your own house. It is a very different experience to see a comedy alone in your room than together with a whole bunch of people at a cinema. I think the latter experience would almost rank higher than watching it alone. The participatory nature of comedy gets increased dramatically when there are more people sharing the experience, and we are dealing with a role-playing game scenario where the relationship is more like an engaging monologue than a fully-fledged and equal-footed conversation, even though everyone is actually participating imaginatively in it.
Speaker 1:But the thing about a show or any performative event is that, by relinquishing control, you can find yourself moving into territories you would not be able to access without letting yourself be led there by someone else. And this brings in trust and, as we can see, this trust is, of course, connected to the game of giving away the mouse. It's connected to when you sit down, that you trust that this is going to end somewhere good, so that you give yourself over, because it's imperative that the showman on the market square, going back to that picture, radiates a trustworthy nature. Not that they can't have any shady, unpredictable or flawed characteristics, but on the very base level of trusting that if you invest time and attention by watching him it will be worth it. He's got to make you trust that if you follow his lead you will be glad you did.
Speaker 1:And the showman might look a little wacky. Maybe their hair is collared and styled with jaunty collars and cut, which often is the case, and maybe you're, like me, not just positively kind of inclined towards people that I don't know that costs me in the street or wants my attention, just as a sort of general inclination. There might be something iffy about the start of the encounter in the way that the person who has bought a ticket, forking over their hard-earned cash, might be sitting in the auditorium thinking, well, this better be worth it. And I've heard that it's a rule in jazz for as much as there are rules in jazz that you should never linger too long on notes that are a minor ninth over whatever chord you're in when picking out a melody, and my understanding of musical theory is too sketchy to be able to fully grasp the mixing of numbers with notes. But what it essentially means is that you can play a discordant note, but only if you use it sparingly, and it leads to something rewarding, much like how everything became all right when the mouse was not smooshed into the dirt in the game but instead became the springboard for the best experience. So the discord in the this better be worth it. Where the person is reluctant to throw themselves in they have joined in but they're still not sure. And then the natural trepidation in encountering a street performer with red spiky hair, playing loud music and waving a stick on fire around while standing on top of a bin. This might be like that spearingly played minor ninth that they talk about in jazz. It's the beautiful tension awaiting release in the fruition of the show.
Speaker 1:So the show then starts, and if you, as as a performer, does your job well, you will get their attention as the curtains open, and you will maybe have placed some of your best material up front for the exact purpose of winning them over. You got their attention, and now you need to modulate it into interest. This, though, when we get down to the nitty-gritty details, is, at least when we break it down, sort of, theoretically, a two-step process. The first is to make them, the audience, want to know or learn more. This is actually part of the definition of what interest is. You have their attention, but that can be gotten by colouring your hair red and waving fire around or popping a paper bag.
Speaker 1:But making the audience want more needs something more, and one way one can do that is that we mentioned from the sort of street show formula is of promising them something, something amazing that will happen in a while. That will happen in a while, but it can also be thought of as a story, or indeed it can be a story, whether it is in the form of stand-up comedy, a skit or any kind of more abstract narrative structure. Like a magician going here, I have a little red handkerchief watch as I push it into my closed fist. There is now a promise, attention and expectation inherent in what happens and the fact that the person is a magician. You have your ideas of what might happen now, with this red hanky, the interest and desire to know more can emerge.
Speaker 1:Encountering like it can emerge in encountering an intriguing or a likable character and you might find yourself relaxing and enjoying spending time with that person on stage, like if you're actually getting into just the actual encounter, like if this person who's out there that through their first you know five minutes or whatever, of the show, that, whatever it is, whether they're doing high skills or they're doing tricks, or they're blowing your mind with crazy juggling and whatever that thing is, if that is, if that person seems to be endearing to you and it that you are relaxing, then you might want to spend more time with that person and all these kind of aspects, and that's, of course, a highly favorable thing. But these aspects can instigate what I call the leaning in in the audience, which is what I take as a sign that they are hooked, that they want the show to continue, they want to learn and know more, which is that interest. It's that they literally lean a little bit forward when you go and now are you ready for the next thing? And they lean in, they go. What is happening? That is a wonderful point to be in, when you feel like, oh, I don't have to push them, or pull them for that matter. At some point the show starts to roll, it starts to go downhill and you can pick up speed together when they stop wondering about this whether this is going to be worth it and let themselves come along for the ride. So once they've done that, once they've leaned in. Then then there is one more step.
Speaker 1:But before quickly mentioning that, I want to just point out the point I have been wanting to make all along, which is that in this moment, when they lean in, the show once again completely fulfills the self-motivated part of criteria three. So that's the key thing how I solve this kind of this imbalance that we have. When we think of the showman just standing in front and just pushing out their show at the audience who sits there just receiving um. Whilst I think, in that moment, when attention is modulated into interest, when it's not just the banging of paper bags and flashy colors and lots of movement and and swearing and whatever else might happen, that could just oh, whoa, whoa, um, the promise that somebody's going to dislocate their arm, all these things, that makes you go whoa, whoa, whoa, but when it modulates into interest, when you want it to continue, when you want to know how the story ends, then I think that the show steps into this territory where it is now fully self-motivated. It never really was not self-motivated.
Speaker 1:The audience wants to be there or whatever, but still it's not becoming full play until or not full play, it's not becoming equal play. Until this moment when they're genuinely leaning forward and wanting the show to continue, when they want to know what happens, when their mind races ahead as to the possibilities of what will happen with a little red hanky, with the lovers that you are telling the story of or with whatever it is that your show is promising. So they have bought their tickets through self-motivation. They're in the audience voluntary. Then there is that minor ninth note in the melody where they perhaps aren't completely self-motivated where they're going. I wonder if it's going to be worth it.
Speaker 1:But then, as the audience leans in and want to know and learn more, we are back in full play mode. They are voluntarily there and they genuinely are self-motivated participants in the show which, bringing it to a close, is the final stage of modulating the audience experience. It is the immersion and deep participation the audience feels when the show is fully rocking and rolling and bringing then with it, as so many surfers on the waves created by the showman's showmanship. The audience is fully pulled in and part of the show, like players of a thrilling Dungeons and Dragons campaign, like the participants who wholeheartedly feels part of a religious ceremony, or as members of a larger unity of people connected to the many others sitting besides them, facing the same way as themselves, whilst facing on the stage before them a lone showman who faces the other way and who so fully showed himself worthy of their trust and gave them back the time and attention they gave him, refined as showtime, as the best possible time one can have together.
Speaker 1:And in wrapping that up, I realized that I didn't quite mention that last step there. Well, it just sort of uh blended in in the in the end there, and, and the last step is that bit when they're leaning forward and becoming interested in how it ends. But then the last step is that full participation where they now are together with you creating this, uh, creating what I call the show. We have the relaxed field and what emerges in this is the show. It's that thing which is between the performer and the audience. It's not just the music, as it was when you record it and release it on a live album. It was the actual full experience from the audience who was listening to the music in the show or watching the show, and who then takes that experience with them. Um, and that is part of what then changes their reality, because they have gone through this experience themselves because they've heard these words. Those are the and and.
Speaker 1:What are the consequences of these things? You can change your life, you can continue to go on the same thing, you can just have had fun for the moment and whatever that that will afford you, we don't know. But it's through that participation of what happens after you lean in and then, once you're sort of leaned in and you've bought into it, then you can sit or lay or stay. Then it's not about being leaned in anymore, because now you're just fully participating, you're in it. And when you're in the show, then you are playfully in it, you're looking for what is offered by the person on stage and if it's the kind of show stand-up comedy I just did a stand-up comedy gig the other day doing my own stuff, which isn't just stand-up, and there's this element of people responding.
Speaker 1:There was a low barrier and people are just chatting and having a great time and throwing in their own ideas so heckling. But it wasn't my case. Anyway, it was never negative, it was just little bits of in play and in that process there it feels like, yeah, they are feeling themselves so part of this that it seems okay to join in, and that can have its good and its bad sides, but in my case it ended up being quite fun. But that's that final step that I almost skipped past here. So that's not quite as nice an ending as what I have here about showtime being the best possible time that one can have together. But there you have it. And now, since this has just taken half an hour, I do think that I know myself anyway, I do like it when podcasts are longer, when I know that there are longer kind of exploration of whatever it is that's going on. So we're going to make this podcast a little bit longer and instead of separating the Criteria 3 and Criteria 4, I'm going to make it into one episode.
Speaker 1:So let's just get cracking on Criteria 4, which is that play has rules. As much as we would like to say that art has no rules, what we do as entertainers does have a real human connection which grounds us in the reality of the immediate response from humans experiencing our art. Since we, as show folk, are practitioners of a craft which is grounded in a participatory, shared experience, where human affect and the responses from the audience are vital, then we find a certain set of rules emerge from the spectrum of desired responses. If we, as we have discussed earlier, want our shows to afford our audience a gripping experience, one that captures them and invites them in and then keeps them inside this shared reality bubble, or this relaxed field, or this area of interest, as we've all called it before, then it places certain constraints on us as performers. This is, in my eyes, an absolute necessity for all work.
Speaker 1:Well, for work to emerge at all, if you sit in front of a canvas or step into a rehearsal room with no ideas, no tools, no tricks and really have no limitations at all, then chances are much well like chances are nothing happens. But the threshold to make something happen becomes more difficult because, at a deep, fundamental level, work is about constraint only by making choices like which tools or kinds of tricks you will use in in a show or an act or in life. If you don't know which ones of those you're going to choose to make something happen, then chances are nothing might happen. The longer you leave off making choices, the longer it takes for work to appear Just like. Formulating a good and well-defined question is an absolute necessity to get an appropriate and useful answer.
Speaker 1:Taking choices, thus creating certain restraints affords you a frame within which to create art. Once you have made those restraints, you can begin to work on the many and complex ways all the elements, such as tricks and props and tools, can relate to each other and to you, the performer. So first we must restrain ourselves and choose something, and then we must begin to explore the relations between everything now made available to us through those constraints, through those constraints, once our relational explorations have been made, the final phase then. The final phase is kind of to look at the material and try to grasp the new whole which is emerging from all these relations, like as if you have created a whole bunch of words and now you look for a beautiful meaning, a poem, if you will, in the bunch of words, and now you look for a beautiful meaning, a poem, if you will, in the discoveries of constraints and relational explorations, whatever that has yielded, and you're going to put it together now, so you have to shape it. Well, these are the things these are. So these constraints are to me a.
Speaker 1:It has the flavor of rules, one of the specific constraints that I face constantly in my work as a commercial artist, by which I mean that I'm making a living, ie supporting my family with the financial fruits of my artistic labors. That is, that my art needs to be relatable and effectively affective. It needs to be relatable and effectively affective. It needs to be relatable and effectively affective. My acts and shows needs to be stimulating to my audiences in a rewarding manner, whether they are individuals or organizations which has paid me to perform for them. They have expectations to what will happen or what they will get out of the transaction. And to navigate this, my friend Jay Gilligan's idea that in creating a show you always have to negotiate and you have to navigate what you want to do and express as an artist with what they, the audience, expects and want.
Speaker 1:A show is the resolution of these two factors. If you only do what you want to do and don't take the audience's point of view or their experience of it into account at all, you end up with pursuing ideas like doing your juggling with your back to the audience or even behind the screen, so they can only perceive the sound of juggling. The sound of juggling. Well, this might be a valid exploration if the audience is in an art gallery and they're expecting some kind of conceptual art flavor to their experience, but in most other venues, the juggling act that can only be heard would be pretty much a kind of fuck you to the audience expectations, thus leaving them confused and soon, perhaps, bored. So in this I find another rule Listen to the audience, let them and their experience shape how you do what you do. So and that is like back full circle, to the constraint again that we have as a showman who wants people to be immediately engaged in what you do, because if you are too self-indulgent or don't take that into account, perhaps they never lean in and then maybe we don't achieve what's in the self-motivated, voluntary aspect of criteria three, interior aspect of criteria three In Nala Lanela's book the Clown Manifesto from Oberon Books in 2015, which I have talked about multiple times and that I first mentioned being very influential in formulating both the importance of play and connect as the two fundamental domains of a showman.
Speaker 1:And to Nala and me, these are the two most important features for clowns or for me, showmans and as Nala is writing specifically from the point of view of a professor teaching clown at Stockholm's University of Arts and the showman is for me, because he's teaching clown there and helping people develop shows, or he was at the time of writing of the book, and there is so much overlap between Nala and my ideas of the shape and form of how a performer presents their material or makes their shows, happens that, as far as I'm concerned, the showman is a clown and a clown is a showman. Like any good metaphor, each has subtle and not so subtle, unique qualities not fully shared by the other. But be that as it may, nala does not talk about rules or so much about rules, but he does stress the importance of the game, saying that a clown is always looking for the game in any situation, and Nala describes that like this what is a game? A game could be an exploration of a phenomenon or a problem that has to be solved. A game needs enough rules so that you can play, but not so many as to hinder the playing.
Speaker 1:As a clown enters the stage, he does so with what Nala calls her bag of tricks. This is the props and routines and skits and gags that the clown can and will present. Yet the exact form that these will take will vary to a greater and lesser extent, based on the games that can be found, as the audience affords these games. So the clown enters with her bag of tricks, but most of all she's looking for the game. She's looking for a game with just enough rules so that there is an understanding between her and the audience. With just enough rules so that there is an understanding between her and the audience, but not so many as so that it stifles the game. Games can be found anywhere and be anything.
Speaker 1:She walks in but on the way notices that the musicians from before has dropped a sheet of music. Letting herself be distracted by this and entering fully and wholeheartedly into this random but real discovery can become the seed of any number of games. Does she greatly desire this treasure and want to steal it without the audience or the musicians that are still packing away their instruments at the side of the stage without them noticing? Is she annoyed that someone has left their trash behind? Does she want to get the audience to become her orchestra and sing the music? Either way she goes, a game will emerge and rules will emerge. If she wants to steal it, there are rules that any audience in any culture knows Thou shalt not steal.
Speaker 1:Although the Christian God gave this as one of his Ten Commandments, it is a feature of every society the world over, intimating that she wants to steal it back to the clown now, not God by looking at it surreptitiously and with a nonchalant I'm not doing anything here whistle, saunter over and then, through a prolonged sequence of exercises, attempts to pick it up and hide it in her costume. This has all the hallmarks of what Nalle calls a game, and has in it all kinds of rules. Some rules are societal rules and others will spontaneously emerge, like if the clown, for somehow or reason, decides that the best and only way that she is allowed to steal this sheet music is by grabbing it with her feet, then this is an emerging rule. The beautiful thing, though, that Nala points out is that, just like in our theoretical exploration of the rules in play, the rules in any given game can change, and Nala says, quote the clown must dedicate themselves to the game even if it changes. End. Quote At the drop of a hat, literally or metaphorically, the clown can throw out the musical notes.
Speaker 1:That the rule that has just emerged, that the musical notes can only be grabbed with the feet, throw that rule out and exchange it with I can only pick it up if I can catch it in my hat. Uh, you know, whatever like they can just change the game. Like they pick it up and it doesn't work. And then now they have to pick it in, catch it in the hat, all of this stuff that can happen in the thing. And as soon as the they throw it up and have to they found out how to pick it up, taking a shoe, giant shoe, and a stripy sock off. And now they're managing to throw it up in the air and they're ready to catch it. But they realize that, oh, this can only be caught in the hat. Now the audience knows the rules have just changed. It's like they can't just pick it up and put it in their pocket. And if it's played and the audience is in on it, then this new rule that has emerged will now afford all manners of new complications and hopefully fun adventures. So just like how, if a child involved in an imaginative game can change the rules along the way, as long as they can convince the other players that this change will be fun. This is the same as with the clown there.
Speaker 1:If the kids are playing on their own, then these changes happen in a stream of consciousness kind of way, only guided by their own self-motivation. Did they want it to be like that. Is it fun to do that? Do I want it then? And then they just do it. But when it happens whilst playing with other kids or others, then negotiations often become necessary.
Speaker 1:Anyone paying attention to children playing will notice that a huge part of the games, particularly in the beginning, is establishing the rules. They are literally creating the structure of the world that they will explore. All right, who is who in here? What is our relationship, who decides whether it's night time and daytime, and who decides this, that and the other? And so it's this huge setting up of games, much like when you're learning a board game, that first it's a little bit of a hard slog, where you're reading the thing and translating out, working what out, what, all these different parts that you've got in a box, what are they being used for? But soon after that game proper will flourish.
Speaker 1:So in creating acts and creating shows, when we plan them, we must create and decide on the rules of our game. These rules and structures will always be present, even if you choose not to think about them. If you haven't thought it through, you might not be aware that you are constantly changing the rules in such a way as to forget that, all the while the audience is seeking to understand the rules of your game or your act or your show, they are always looking for the rules. How are they to interact? They wonder what's okay and what's not okay. Are they allowed to sit back and just watch you like a television, not clapping, not laughing, just sitting there? Are they supposed to clap at every trick? Are you telling a story? Is there a connection between all the different things that you do or is it just one random thing after the other? Is it a random fusion of both that somehow hangs? If you aren't aware of the rules of your performance, that these changes, then it could, to a greater or lesser degree, confuse the audience, hence get in the way for maximum fun and entertainment.
Speaker 1:The rules are the structures which makes whatever is going on in the performance make sense. It's the shared understanding, moment to moment, of what's going on. It can always change. From there only being one performer on stage, all of a sudden, six people from the audience might be invited, or two musicians might appear to join in, and the rules changed and it expanded the game. We thought we were playing into an adjacent possible game. The rules can change. But there are rules and, in an important way, it's the audience grasping these unspoken rules which allows them to access the show.
Speaker 1:If they can't discern the rules, then chances are they're not quite understanding what's going on, which is oh, which is, which is like that diminished nine that we talked about in when we talked about criteria three. So if they don't understand it at all what's going on, that they don't understand the rules, then that could mean that they won't experience it as meaningful, because there is a really strong link between understanding something and it being meaningful. It carries meaning, it makes sense. If you don't understand something at all, chances are you don't quite see the point of it or the meaning in it and it doesn't get written down in your diary as one of the meaningful experiences of your life if you don't understand it. But as soon as you start to understand it, then there's a link between meaning and understanding. I believe meaning isn't something which is, it is something which happens. An artist might pack their show with a whole lot of meaning but upon experiencing the art, if an audience don't understand what's going on, then no meaning can happen.
Speaker 1:If somebody reads me a poem in Japanese, then chances are that I won't find it very meaningful because I simply do not understand Japanese, but that it might have some value, like a dada poem which didn't have any words but just sounds or whatever, or soundscape poem or anything. It could have this in an art kind of way, but that's sort of beside the point for what we're talking about here. If we allow that, a 19th century Japanese poet's carefully crafted words has no more or less value when one understands the language, it's just silly, like you can listen to a poem in another language and get a sort of sound flavor of it, but the meaning of that poem, the meaning which is contained in those words, is in large part not there. So if, on the other hand, I did speak Japanese, I might be moved to tears, I might be sucked into that poem and the poet's work to the extent that I would want to write a book about her. This is the power of things we found deeply meaningful. When we understand a poem, maybe we find it to speak directly to us, which the best poems does. They speak directly to us through time and space.
Speaker 1:The philosopher Henry Bortoft talks about this in his book Taking Appearances Seriously, from Flores Books 2012. Bortoft describes meaning, not as a static thing but as a dynamically constant unfolding. It's something which happens between the reader and the text, or the showman and the audience. In a text or a show, there is a whole lot of intended meaning. Any act is the result of the meaning and the intent of the showman creating it, so the meaning that is experienced.
Speaker 1:So certain artists might think that this is the only thing that matters what the showman is presenting. They present their acts as as created. You know, whether there is an audience present or to such an artist, the only important thing is what it means to them as an artist, whilst the audience's mirror position would be that they don't care at all what the showman wants, what he thinks his act means. All they care about is whether it makes sense to them, like, does it entertain them? Do they enjoy the experience? The middle way here the midway, if you will is what jay gullion talked about, that there is this frontier between what the showman intends and what the audience understands. Or you know what? I have my ideas of what I would like to do in the show, but but I've got to meet the audience a bit If they expect it to be just a funny thing and all I do is talk about sad things that's happened to me, then they might be disappointed and just be so hard to. Yeah, you've got to be somewhere in between. Yeah, this is the dialogue between what I'm presenting and what the audience is willing to or can get from it.
Speaker 1:This is where meaning emerges. Where meaning happens, no-transcript care whether the other person understands what you're saying. There is no point in talking. We talk differently depending on who we talk to. We talk differently to children than to adults and to the guy that cuts us off in traffic and our mother. This is because we all implicitly want understanding to emerge in any dialogic encounter. When our dialogue partner understands what we're saying from or what. If your dialogue partner understands what you're saying, then, like from your words, your gestures, your volume and your facial expressions, then they will know what you mean. I mean I'm sitting here as I'm telling you this, I'm jiggling my arms and all that and pointing out and pontificating, so you know. Just to add to that, with the gesture and facial expressions, so the sum of all of your expressing will be understood in some way and from this meaning will emerge and the exchange is then becoming meaningful.
Speaker 1:If we don't understand something, it is practically meaningless. The way that you choose your words when talking to an audience of children, the way you act, the games you play with them will determine whether they understand you and find the art experience meaningful. The way this happens is through our shared understanding of rules. Each and every kid negotiates rules in every single game. They play In any game, on playgrounds or right in the moment of meeting you presenting a show for them. They are looking to rules, structures and patterns to grasp what is it that's going on here? Any rule they discover in your games will give them a way in. It will serve understanding and thus making what you do make sense to them.
Speaker 1:Breaking the rules, not conforming to what's expected of adults, what you're expecting from the children, is the greatest thing about rules. We're setting up the rules in. The greatest thing about rules we're setting up the rules in the show and then we break them. That's the foundation of comedy. If you set something up, repeats it, thus establishing a rule, then on the third beat, changing it up on them by breaking the rule is the fundamental structure of jokes broken expectations, set up rules, then break or change them. This is the underlying game in performance that establishing the breaking of all kinds of rules, one that happens only in the moment of performing and one dictated by the state or by decree and decency or nature. Whatever rules there are, break them and we got something exciting happening. But if no rules are understood as to what's going on, then we don't get that thrill and the joy of the breaking of the laws of nature. You know, it's all of a sudden. Something that should not be floating in the air is that is, the breaking of the laws of nature.
Speaker 1:So each presentation of our acts and shows is not just a straight up passing on of whatever meaning and intent you had. The audience does not just automatically transmit its meaning to anyone. The meaning of it is not just in what you are doing. It is something which can come to life again, to emerge out of non-existence as it is understood by an audience. And this is the miracle of being in the same place, at the same time, sharing attention, something you've created, a sequence of events that can be understood and become meaningful, like my example with the Japanese poet when something is understood as meaningful, it can change the world. And in this way, perhaps these rules and playing with the rules as opposed to playing by the rules is a nature of what play is and it is a nature of what we see in a great show. So when you take it in and you really see and you really get the feeling because you you thoroughly enjoy it, you are completely engrossed in the show, you are completely voluntarily and self-motivatedly participating in the show and you see these changes of the rules. You might take some of these changes that have been proposed and enacted and happened meaningfully in the show. You might take them out into the world and in that way, like the Japanese poet, like the clown stepping in front of the audience with her bag of tricks, your play with the rules can change the world.
Speaker 1:Alright, we are rapidly approaching the end of this. There is only one more of the criterias left to cover and I hope that these last few episodes have sparked some more links between your own work and the criterias of play and I hope that you, over the journey that we have covered together here, that some of these little things have successfully been adapted and adopted into your work. I hope that it has found its way, in one small or large context, into the actual act that you're working on the actual shows that you're doing, and maybe it has. If I could wish big, it is that it has found a way for you to modify your actual life, because we do have as performers. We do have our shows, but we also have our lives.
Speaker 1:I see that divided in the show and the man Show. Man, the show is a big part of us, but we're also human beings. The choices that we take have consequences for the ones we're hanging with, the ones we love and for all of this. So I hope that this has made that difference to you. And, to end it on my usual plea, it would make a big difference to me if you would tell someone that this podcast exists. Tell them that this podcast could potentially change their life, like it might just have changed yours. So until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.