Okay, thank you everybody for joining us this evening for the this wonderful conversation we're having double-edged theater and the city company thank you for tuning in from afar housekeeping please everyone that's here in the room turn the Wi-Fi off your phones it'll help the web streaming for audiences that are not able to be with us here that'll be a big help you can turn off the phones or you can just put them into airplane mode so we'll just we'll get started my name is Matthew Glassman one of the co-artistic directors of double-edged and I'm people welcome welcome there's seats over here so this conversation it's gonna give a very quick introduction of this this conversation is a part of a week-long residency that's an exchange between our two ensembles it's in thanks to the wonderful network of ensemble theaters exchange grant which has made this possible so let's hear from net city and double-edged have a lot in common a lot of differences and a lot in common and has been crossing paths for many years in lots of different ways and decided for a number of reasons a host of reasons that it would be really interesting to share space together to train exchange training exchange questions about how our ensembles work and also be thinking about the future the future of our companies and the future of the field and the future of humankind has come some conversations as well so don't worry and the future of our students which is dark and as part of this residency are the city company conservatory artists who are here double-edges advanced immersion students and alumni participants so there is this question for the two companies first and foremost about how who and how we are as ensembles that have been around for a certain amount of time how is training part of our work how do we train how does that training go into our performances and also how do we relate to our our idea of community these are all things that were impetus I think at the beginning of when we first start talking about this possibility and also how how do we connect and juggle these things training students creating work touring in the administrative organizational components of our work how do we find holism where's their room for improvement so these are the questions and themes that I think began our early conversations when we wanted to spend this time together we don't do want to add anything to know that's I mean the more we talked in that when we first started discussing plans for this the more it became obvious that this was a thing that needed to happen it was really kind of obvious and every time we somebody would have an idea there was almost there was so little descent it was almost disturbing because it was like oh you want that too yeah that's what we wanted so it was a really hand-in-glove feel which has carried through into the week oddly I think for the most part it's been very very successful as long as we don't screw it up tomorrow which I don't think we will or now or now we're going down in flames when it's shutting off hell around right now but you know and it really is I mean I want to again underline what Matthew said about thanking the NET the National Network of Network of Ensemble theaters because I think we've all experienced what's happened here as very much reflecting the goals of that organization and I think I think we've certainly it's been really eye-opening to us to to put our values in front of another company and to see those values reflected back in a way that has illuminated our own work to us again in a really interesting way that I think I think we're going to be processing for some time in our own world and that perhaps this is the beginning of of more adventures and hopefully our our student artists will be will be part of that conversation as well I'm wondering if we should introduce ourselves at least by name and position or role at least for people and then we can say a little bit about our companies in this context I'm Anne Bogart and I'm one of the three artistic leaders of City Company and the one who isn't here is Ellen Lauren you're probably wondering why the women are on the outside and the dudes are in the middle what does it mean I don't know what it means this was decided by chance operations no it was it was completely conscious I wanted to sit on the end I asked Anne if she wanted to sit on the end no you said which end do you want to see the difference between a director and a good director a good director phrases it as a question but it's actually a demand my name is Leon Ingalls rude and I am also one of the co-artistic directors of the City Company I already went you did I did at the beginning I am Carlos Uriana and one of the three artistic directors of Double Edge Theatre and I am Stacy Klein one of the three artistic directors and also the founder of Double Edge so it's remarkable that we were both companies that started with single artistic leadership and then moved to shared artistic leadership and we agree that it might be a good idea to start with that conversation Stacy what happened okay well it started 32 years ago but I won't give the whole history I guess what we were we were talking about this beforehand and we realized that in both of our cases this was an organic process that led to shared leadership in our case I think we shared leadership we share leadership with more than the three of us but we also shared shared this kind of artistic leadership for a while before we identified that that was the way it should be we tried we actually have our working with a strategic planner and we tried a bunch of different ideas for how the company should be or what she calls the portfolio of the company should be because it's interesting to know what those options were yeah I mean we actually did some of those options we even did some of those options predating her when when we realized that Matthew was a leader and needed to be a leader and already was a leader this was like three years ago I think we tried executive director and he was busy working his butt off for a really long time and like practically collapsing but in a business way in a like leading the business of double-edged way so when we came upon this need to find another way we we ended up dividing all of our business more or less our business leadership into seven people so our ensemble is nine people and and to associate ensemble members seven people are leading areas of the theater and Matthew was still kind of leading all of that work for a while and then Matthew and Carlos and I talked about this is not what we really mean by leadership we want to have really have the artistic leadership be that and then we can still have a different organizational structure for the organization so we started that I feel after we actually were doing that because we there's never like a project that we do where the three of us don't talk about it in a deep way or an idea or even if like one of us is away we're still in sync about this this project or whatever we're doing like Matthew was the one that started this exchange and then went out of it because he was he wasn't even on the phone calls and and that was okay because we had we really knew what we were bringing to it together it's like a juggling that becomes necessary when the growth that you're all working on manifests I would also say we started having a shared artistic leadership long before it was declared so as you say and as a matter of fact the ethos of the company has always been shared is been collaborative and the old hierarchical structure of artistic director managing director etc. didn't ever sit well with us and but I have to say that ever since we actually kicked it into real functioning recognized us sitting here tonight with you talking about this for me it's been a huge relief and I wonder Stacy if you felt the same way I feel so relieved not to feel the weight always on me whether or not I was actually doing the work but actually the the emotional weight did you do you feel that I definitely think that relief is the operative word there and in the sense of I think that declaration or identification is it's important because the world sees it differently so it's not like everything is coming to me and when I don't even own everything so it can't come to me like I have to really think well they shouldn't really be talking to me about this because I don't know so and and also that it's that dialogue which is fundamental to our training and everything else we do it doesn't make sense that we wouldn't have a dialogue in our leadership as well so I would ask the dudes here so so coming into a position of shared leadership from from both Stacy was that easy or hard or is it hard or easy or how's it going I personally no matter what the director said I always consider myself a director and I always tried I've always tried to not just in the village in all the other experience I try to be a leader of sorts is something I like to do I think it relates to the amount of responsibility you're willing to hold like I always think that one of the best we have many activities that are non theatrical but I think are very theatrical a double agent one of them is moving furniture you don't know how many times we move things around on the on a span of a day like these things weren't here today they're all here and they're gonna be gone by the time you're gone so there is a metaphor when you're moving something let's say that you have a team of five or four that are gonna move a gigantic piano right it's all about weight and distribution of weight and also looking at the space at the time the same as an actor that's why I think is a wonderful practice both for a group dynamic which theater is a group dynamic and for for theater which is a group dynamic so it's good but if you observe there is somebody always that can hold several weights at the same time the weight of the piano but also the weight of the of the how the piano needs to fit in that little door that doesn't seem that it's gonna fit and how you tilt or not and somebody's calling the shots so that is about taking responsibilities different sort of responsibility that's how I see myself I'm not all I'm not the one that maybe is calling shots around but I'm always trying to hold things and I think that you know it's being natural so far I think that one of the like ants said and is becoming evident was true for double edge as well internally the the dynamics of how the company was being steered had always reflected this and there's been there's been a little bit of a of an uphill push to get people on the outside to understand it and and to to take it into account and change change practices but it's when we when we made the decision to make it official I remember one of the things that somebody in the company said I don't remember who it was said well it's more honest this way this is this is it's more honest to the outside world that this is the way that we actually operate and some of you know there's one way to look at shared leadership as saying you're taking this thing called leadership and you're cutting it in you're cutting that pie into three pieces so now you've distributed it across three people there's another way of looking at leadership that says now you have three pies you have a lot of leadership pie now and so everyone gets more pie right and and that's that that's actually the way it works and and maybe it's even exponential maybe it's it's actually you've cubed your amount of leadership because it tends it tends to to grow exponentially I have a question about that then so does that mean that there is more work and more work in the sense of growth as well as more work doesn't having more leaders generate more work we are about to take that on we the the city companies we're right in the early stages of a kind of shift in direction that for us is the shared leadership coming into fruition in a sense and what that shift is is changing our our model of creating work from a model in which we're making one big piece at a time and we've always had several work sort of in the in the pipeline or lined up but usually we've concentrated on one thing tried to get our funders behind that get a commission for it and and off it goes we put all our energy there we're changing from that to a strategy of trying to make multiple works simultaneously and a complicated and to to launch that the first the first part of that that we're doing each of us three artistic directors are going to direct a play just to sort of lay that out really schematically for the world and so that's that's gonna bring that up it what is the better answer maybe in terms of the past is to say we've gotten things done that weren't getting done before more than it had than it created work it meant it's meant that our staff and our our company members have had more access hopefully to leadership to be able to that we don't have to we don't have to wait to get to and to get to solve a problem we can just go okay we'll just do that oh by the way in the spirit of non-hierarchical and non-patriarchical structures you if you have a question we don't have to wait for the Q&A section of this evening just shout it out in the spirit of the way we work no except you with online questions if anybody online out there has a question yeah to answer your question and it is hard and really and sort of like it really profound in a way I'd say sometimes it feels really precarious and it's sort of moving to me I have to say because yeah I at some point I looked up the etymology of the word precarious and I think it has to do with the feeling it actually relates I think it ultimately relates to God but uh no it does it in the etymology of it and let you know no in the etymology it does have something it's some the word is used in there but it has to do with not not having the faith that that when you fall you'll be caught so that's what it is to be and so the feeling at times the feeling at times is precarious and maybe it's because there is a really necessary interpersonal tension and then you're it feels like or you are high off of the ground when you're on that tension on that line and you don't know if if you'll be caught you know and then it has these amazing rewards when you feel like you are you're caught the person that you're you're working with or you're trying to find in these sort of labyrinthine the spaces of finding out how to lead together and you face the doubts of you know as I'm sharing the search for either autonomy or power or visioning not knowing not knowing if you are really together or not Carlos's notion of a metaphor of moving furniture is a really profound one because the notion or maybe it's like a Ouija you put your fingers on the Ouija board you ask a question and then you see where it wants to go it's similar to moving furniture you know we G similar to yeah but the interesting thing like with you lead a group of people who are moving a piano you don't after that process is over say I moved the piano you say we moved the piano right and that's what well I want oh let's okay actually can you be louder yes I want to know if you know of any companies or if it would never work with the company depending on the size at what point does the artistic directorship separate from the rest of the ensemble and would it ever work that everyone in the company would share in the artistic directorship there there are examples of that I mean the first one that pops to mind is the the rude Max in Austin Texas they are all producing artistic directors of the company that's true yeah what is the separation of the responsibilities when what how does someone's responsibilities dictate that their title is artistic director of a company what what are the differences I guess described in the title artistic that who is who is saying you know what a director does usually quite wrong you can we're going over this way that's what a director does you don't really know why and everybody says okay you do that in terms of the artistic issues of a company that's it seems like a really good description artistic direction I think that there are jobs you can if you look attentively you know however amount of time in theater you have had already you will see that the jobs are they're sort of clear I want to say and I wanted to say that we were talking about history today a little bit because remember and mention about Stanislaski there has been responses to to techniques and methods of organizing theater although theater has been organized for 2,000 years we're still reorganizing theater and then this is because we don't work on a vacuum we are part of a society that is larger and we we are a part of something that is larger than ourselves so the fact that Stanislaski and then this trust we responded to two systems of production the Russian communists and the American Western Europe capitalists which is responded to movie they responded they were part of a machinery and they were creating something within there but then at the same time my whole was creating something and other people were creating something and then they you know Grotowski came about and then Suzuki and then and then there are these responses that in some cases were patriarchal right now we are in the presence of two leaders and there are many others there are ladies or female leaders that have created a different a different canvas for work and I'm not really sure or articulate about that the other night I said something was kind of like it didn't come through the way I wanted to think about it and you were there I was talking about that Casey I think that this is also a response to to a society that that the way of production that we had until 1990 2000 it has been crumbling therefore the behavior of the society has been changing the fact that a lot of it small business is now being up to people and you know at home with it with the internet it's new we have all been taught by a system of teaching that is prepared to prepare us to be in an assembly line well that's that's about to be gone the schools as we know them are about to not be there anymore it's gonna it's a matter of time the way they were there's gonna be a different educational system and we're seeing new responses and we are you know I am honored and I'm benefited from being around these people that have making these changes and I also push for those changes now this way of organizing so socially is the same as marriages you know it's there's not an accident that we have gay marriage that the structure of the families are changing we need to understand this is economic is moral is spiritual is social is all of the above is anthropological if you wish you can look at at any angle this is also anthropological and we are some somehow a reflection of that one thing to respond is these things aren't aren't defined and you as as young artists now thinking about how you're building your own world when we when we make a company even when we make a play we're making a proposal we're saying how about this right here's a way you might organize it here's a way you might make a society here's how we're going to try to get along and we're trying to be we're trying to be thoughtful we're trying to be mindful we're trying to find the best in each other and and apply that and be sensitive to what's going on in the world that doesn't mean we found it that means we found what our place is you need to look at that and then go okay if that's your proposal here's my counter proposal because here's what you missed that's your job so it's not that those things are defined those definitions we made them up for us given all the assumptions that we got from the previous generation so then you have to go and make them up now too and do something that makes us look like a bunch of dinosaurs I mean I think that artistic director is it's it's not the same as owner and therefore it's not really comparable to ensemble in in our group I'm more on Matthew's wavelength of precarious which I like I think that every time you have the word art in something you should be saying precarious but the organization is not precarious and the and the ownership of the organization is not precarious and in double-edged all of the ensemble are owners of the organization so and the direct the board of directors so in the sense that you could own a non-profit we are all responsible for the health and livelihood of the organization but not everybody would want to be or is ready to be leader of that so it's like that if that person wants to be then they would take the responsibility to work towards that there's no rule that says there can only be three or there has to be one or whatever it is there's there's very few places that start with a whole group as the direct the artistic directors and survive that because people are different and people want different things so even like Carlos is saying how he's always been a leader that's true but he always refused to be one of the artistic directors and in fact wouldn't allow anybody to use the word director in his title so this is a whole new reality that's a no-no that's a no-no an artistic so he what I'm saying is that he grew to that and grew to understand that that didn't mean that he couldn't still be an anarchist or whoever he was that didn't want that before so I think it's it's always about what steps are you taking that make your ownership more you like you can own but how do you become you every single day and you is now for me you my you is that I don't want to be the only one so that wasn't the way it was several years ago I wanted to be the only one I was the only one even though I wasn't really just repeating what you said said I think distinguishing between owning and leading is really brilliant I'd never thought about that before and it's true the company it's true a city company to the city the company owns the company and they're responsible to it the board of directors I'm just repeating what you said but I think it's worth repeating but that our job is something else that's not about so it's not my company it's a company I have I have taken this role of leadership in and and it's a it's a role or it's a what were you saying earlier it's a function and there's always this confusion because again we're you know even we are all grappling with what was the legacy we're bringing so we have understandings that are a little bit as cute but it's hard to let go of them so so the fact that like I'm an artistic writer but I did not change my function as an actor at all and I'm not really directing pieces and I don't care I mean about doing that but I do want to direct artistically the the thing as a whole instead of like I don't care about directing a performance or small things I care about directing training for instance or leading training I do care about that that's something that I was watching today in our session was that have that company members are all directors too so you have to admit that it's it's not the ethos of double-edges not about waiting for a director to tell you what to do everybody is responsible for directing their own work and I found that very encouraging today watching there is one thing that that I think that they ask as society changed the groups groups of theater groups of groups of friends evolve and evolve evolve into different like you know ways of taking responsibility of making jokes of you know of of role there are roles that are like for instance there are roles that you would see that are you can write down this is the job but then there are roles that are not written down like you know my role to be like a container of crisis I like to do that give me a crisis I'm happy don't put me in a stable situation I don't know what to do with those days so but different people have different roles and those and then there are like like secret packs that we have so there is you know there is a short circuit of Carlito or there is you know how do we go forward you know and you wait for the for the person that you know is gonna go forward like the same as you play a sport you know like that's why we play soccer to understand that so speaking of playing soccer yes Matthew oh there was there's a hand also I think someone in the the ether the inter-ether is my question is when you have shared leadership on the artistic level how do you deal with the challenges of different aesthetic values or different perceptions of quality and what helps to guide you through those challenges so the question was for those of you who didn't hear it when you share the artistic leadership how do you deal with differences in aesthetic value and such and then what guides you through those those differences have I told you about precarious just dance with it I guess just dance with it I think and I think there's well there's one thing from being well I think it's it for me I guess I want to say like I I started as a student here I did not I was not nearly old enough to be a part of its founding both Stacy and Carlos founded companies and I came as a as a you know as a mentee so I have a lot of training about from that process also and afterwards as an actor about how important things don't die it must be true so I you know there's that I think there's I feel like time is always a friend in that sense and I feel that there's a patience and then there's a continual back and forth so and I also think there's times where they're not gonna meet and I have an inventory of things that I'll you know put into something else someday I think it's also and it's maybe a parallel between the two situations but that idea the idea of how you deal with aesthetic disagreement is a constant part of an actor's relationship with the director because it could be that if I'm if I'm and the reason why I bring that up is that in both situations we have shared leadership between people who were functioning just as directors and then actors who were working with them already so nine times out of ten working on anything and aesthetic opinion I'm great fine let's go with that that one time out of ten because I have experience working with her as an actor I know how to negotiate that in terms of okay yeah and then and then as an actor part of part of your art is finding how to find your own aesthetic skin in the game of something that didn't start out as something that you were that interested in you have to grow that you have to find that or you also find subtle ways to mind control and see what happens and sure and sometimes sometimes you would you act as if you didn't hear it correctly and you you know do it and then she goes like oh that's actually better and sometimes is like no do it the way I told you to but that sort of negotiation that sort of negotiation is part of the process it's part of the work and and it's it's not it's not the case I mean sometimes I think people think about shared artistic leadership as we when we're confronted with something we vote and there's and it's and it's you know it's a tricameral government but it's not that it's it's that it's that we when we're faced with something we find consensus amongst the amongst the three of us and and we have and from working on plays we already have decades of doing that doing and not just doing it occasionally doing it all day sitting in a room with each other and finding consensus moment to moment to moment because that's what it is to build a play and so for us it makes complete sense and it's completely natural but I think sometimes yeah I think it's a really really natural question that you ask but it's it's something that is is baked into how how we already had related to each other essence or ethics and I mean the main thing I've heard is like you just stay together but if there's any type of like essence to what that is that could be defined that would be interesting well I think one thing maybe that makes that question not so difficult is that we're we're we're not sharing something a business well we do have a business but we have an ensemble so anytime somebody disagrees whatever they're doing they could do next time because the ensemble stays together and works together so you're if it's important like we say our improvisations we we use two percent of our improvisations and the rest goes into the trash can or it goes into the archives that you take something important out of that and you do it the next time so you have a constant source of being able to achieve your aesthetic or artistic or whatever necessities so that one time it might be like we can't have a residency now because we have too much work and we really somebody wants to have that residency well maybe we do have too much work so we can't have it now but that doesn't mean that in two years that person can't achieve that residency so there's really no no place for there there is disagreement but it's about schedule it's about maybe time or or something but not about the essence I think that something that I tend to think it has been like a you say that word in English Panacea Panacea Panacea is training for this particular thing the fact that we train even before we are even thinking about we constantly train we're not thinking about the product we're not thinking about the business that allows us to have a ritual where we can learn or relearn how to think these things because we we do have differences in training but but you learn how to deal with them so this thing that Stacy was mentioning about the time there is also in three hours of a training that you create an indefinite amount of time where you're relating with these nine ten eleven people that you're working with if you do that constantly every day that teaches you something it's like a re retraining I really agree with that and when I brought up soccer the other a few minutes ago was in order to move to training and which is something that both companies share and when when the city company started the actors got together and they said what does it mean to be a city company actor and they all agreed instantly that they trained together and I mentioned this the other night to a number of here of those who were here so I'll just repeat it which is we were in Dublin a number of years ago doing two shows at the International Festival in Dublin and the next week we did a third show at BAM and the following week after that we did a fourth show in Los Angeles and I was saying to my friend Jocelyn Clark who's a a he's a dramaturg from Ireland I said how he knows this very well I said how are we managing that I mean this is impossible and he said oh you're managing it because you trained together and the profundity of that hit me I think the reason we share an aesthetic and aesthetics picking up on Matthews etymological discourse actually just means sensation like anesthetic is what happens with no sensation and and that what we share is sensation and sensation is created through time spent together and training and was there can we go on to training or there was a question actually I think it fits really well oh good the question is from Toby Bercovici and it's how do you recognize what areas of growth your ensemble members need as performance and artists as in you might find a training group and get really good at one thing but how do you keep pushing the envelope and knowing where to push it mystery well part let me I'll take a stab but part of it is that I think like if we think of an ensemble as an artist or a collective functioning as an artist and a really important thing for an artist is to stay in tune with their interest what it what are you interested in what do you want what do you what are you exploring where where what are you looking at and that's something that's always changing and something something that we often forget is that we don't necessarily it's two things and I learned this from you actually but I said that like it was an accusation dare you teach me anything the that that we we forget that we don't always know what our interest is we actually have to do things to discover what our interest is we don't just know it and what our real interests are and our interests change across time so you have to keep doing that thing and that's part of what what training is on a certain level but the as the sort of Ouija board of the direction of the company shifts all of us artists in the company are looking at that and then in terms of training in terms of study in terms of preparation we're we are responsible for trying to stay aligned with that in a in a productive way so what do I have to do so that I can pull my weight in this direction but it's related to that interest and and it's not it's not a fixed point it moves sometimes it moves subtly and there are and there are certain things that don't move there are certain things that you're always gonna want and and you can and training is is sort of home base for the stuff you're always gonna want but then there's the the the percentage of that that is shifting depending on on where you're looking and that's I mean in a certain sense that's the most exciting thing that that it's like oh now we're gonna we're gonna all study neuroscience now we're gonna you know look at that as as as an interest and each of us is gonna do that in a slightly different way and that's going to be the the collective but and rambling one of the reasons why we are interested in making this shift of directions into a multiplicity of productions at the same time instead of one is because we are recognizing that there are passions and interests within the company that aren't fully being accounted for in the one at a time model that we've been doing and that there's that there is a multiplicity of passions in the company and can we build a collective structure that allows for that multiplicity to blossom rather than always trying to bundle it into one thing there are I think that there are there are things that that merit development and they're not for us to determine that this is gonna happen now the group grows capacity but there are just to work with what Leon was was observing and what I observe is that the crux is that everybody needs to find meaning every moment I think and based on that meaning that everybody finds that each time every day every moment you go to training there needs to be meaning don't try to find it in the business or in the direction of the business try to find it in the training which is sensorial it's not about ideas it's the meaning that we find from our senses and then from there on there is a slow development of two things that to me are crucial for this to happen as a group commitment and engagement so working on the commitment and the engagement slowly progressively don't try to get you know a marriage thing you know on paper it's not gonna work you need to go step-by-step growing commitments and you know and and and engagements and that then leads to investment which is very connected to ownership right you know one of the things that we share in common to two companies is that not only do the companies train but we train younger artists many of whom are in the room right now and why is that important go go it's your turn well it goes actually go back to the original question that about about shared leadership also part of shared leadership is about legacy and I think I think city company I would speak for we all feel a responsibility to the world we live in and how we leave it and and sharing the discoveries so that you can then say they're all wrong is really important to all of us and for some reason every actor in city company is a really damn good teacher you might want to take some responsibility for that I don't know I think teaching is not something that you teach you're a pretty good example I see see on everything he's like that he's buttering me up for something I'm looking at you because it's always I feel like it's been a part of its mission and it's been almost since early on at the very least if not from the beginning or before that to have the looking for a word but I'm going to abandon that word because I can't find it although I love it to impart its training to next generation both for that generation primary let's say there's a primacy to the future generations but also I think it's part of the development of the training itself that dialogue that's why I was looking at you because I feel like that's since early and also we come from we belong in a in a constellation of theaters that have training as a part of its source and sharing training as a part of its culture and so we're but we're also recipients as well as conduits there's another thing that's on a very very practical level with it is that in the city company whenever we're training a group of artists the company members who aren't leading the class are in the class or taking the class which means that several times a year most of us go through the beginning stages of the training over again absolutely like and like in martial arts yeah and it's incredibly healthy and it's also even even when you get into more advanced levels there is an aspect of classes and and this is this is true and it's even true here in the work that we're doing here when we're when we're leading a class there is a part of your consciousness where you're not talking to your students you're talking to your colleagues that that and when you're taking the class it's not it's not fake I you know I've been working with Akiko for over 25 years I take a class that she's leading I'm learning from her right and and it's in a way that if she's leading just the company she doesn't say all that stuff I get to know how she's unpacking the rudimentary things and that and that's in a different way than she did 10 years ago and so it's a way of us staying in tune with each other and learning from each other in and it's just the stuff that you're thinking but you would just never say to your buddy but if there's a third thing there to triangulate it off we can communicate in a much more profound way it's totally connected to our research I mean I think research is at the heart of our both of our searches are mean our mission so being able to research and having trained training furthers and deep use that research we had a we had an exercise that was led by city company and it was how to see the space I've been training for 18 years now I knew and the way I saw it I knew was through you I would look at you surprising yourself and say oh right the light is coming from that end right so I was kind of like following each one of you so I was learning from you how to see the space and you so that that that is an example I think why I train people you also want to train people who aren't theater people and we do open trainings and those are really incredible and very moving because there isn't any expectation or like expectation of I need to be good or I need to show something it's just like finding the child in yourself refinding the child in yourself in the training which usually takes theater people longer much longer than people who just are like they're running around or they're going on the spool or something like that like it's fun it doesn't have a particular product or a need so that for for us those are really important to be able to have a dialogue with our neighbors or not even just our neighbors but any like on tour young people or people who wouldn't go through a whole training program or or something like that the question I'd like to ask is what do each of your companies do to feel intimate with what are the struggles of the culture you're in of the day now is there's always universal themes you can focus on and all the plays etc but there's also particular challenges in the culture right now I mean people have a really hard time keeping their marriages together people have a really hard time dealing with this government system that's working those are just two quick examples off the top of my head but what do each of the companies do to feel intimate with what is in play you know today now in the culture that you want to be you know in dialogue with in a way in the way you do what you do so that you are responsive to those such as the best questions I've heard in a and I would actually go back to the Greeks and what I've learned from the Greeks meaning the Greeks the ancient Greeks it's become clear and clear to me why they discovered theater drama in the Western tradition in the Western tradition and the logic of it is phenomenal which is somehow they understood in this particular century that that laws are necessary in order to keep hegemy is necessary in order to keep civilization in place and that when it comes to law and the ways that things have to be they must be obeyed or else there's chaos what the theater does is actually ask the questions that you want to ask about the world we're living in which you can't really ask the really important questions of family and hubris and the questions that laws are made to contain so I think that remains totally relevant right now which is an artist's responsibility to be aesthetically connected with the world you live in to be aware that one of the problems that exist because of the internet which has made time insane that makes me think that the one of the most radical things that the theater can do right now is change our experience of time because the internet is making it go so fast as you mentioned you know families falling apart new kinds of families being being re-created the fact that 80 people in the world own what is it they discovered last week yeah 48 percent of the wealth of the world you know that the fact that the middle class almost doesn't exist anymore the difference between the rich you know these issues that I think you were touching on is the theater is the place that talks about how social systems can get along and that's what distinguishes the theater from any other art form the dance is not about social systems visual art isn't performance art isn't but the theater asks the questions about how we might get along better so I think as was mentioned earlier when we formed companies I think Leon said we're saying this is how we think it might go and when we work on a play we say this is a proposal of how we might get along better so not only in the subject of the play which using the Greeks is still about you know he killed his father and Mary slept with his mother that's an interesting subject but also how the actors are together how the audience is getting along with each other how the audience and the actors are getting along what changes that environment is particularly in relationship to the issues that are chosen to meditate on you can't legislate moral behavior more behaviors when you freely choose to give priority to the economy so you can't legislate okay it can only be a free choice you can make all the laws in the world you want and you were talking about the Greeks and you have to follow the rules we're beyond that now we now have to somehow rise above and to freely choose to be more beyond the walls that seems like a really big important intimate conversation of this drunk on individualism society and drunk on individual freedoms so that's a big I think you just touched on a very good example of the kind of thing that we need to be in dialogue about that theater could have us wake up to you know a way that we have of course you know in imperfect as everything we do but the company our companies have a different way of producing theater and therefore like talking from our side we have a very strong integration in the way the company is produced with the surrounding community and other communities like a lot of people are through that camera they're connected today with us that's a community and we do have that intimate conversation somehow with them and it happens when they're either helping us plow the snow and because you know they come and do it and we are there also or you know helping us with the roof or you know with the truck and we we established these conversations and and the conversation happened or in these conversations like where you're bringing it I'm now I'm sensitive to what you are saying that's a way to connect I think that I about potential and trying to find in the training and the performance and ourselves and are each other a potential that may or may not be something people are attain attaining to we have a I mean I'm not gonna get into the whole things wrong with society and that's not really the point to me any time you can give people courage to try to reach their potential in whatever area they want to or just in their being instead of allow themselves to go along with the flow of life or the dictates or the demands of life and I think many people give up that willingness or courage to find their potential to me that is the the prime thing that I'm trying to do with my work with myself with my colleagues and with my audience or my community is to give some courage and it doesn't need to be a specific it doesn't really have anything to do with a specific idea or a subject matter anymore it has to do with what speaks to our willingness to go to that potential I I really like the this phrasing that that you gave it of being intimate with issues I think that's a really great way to think about it because I don't might myself I don't think that the theater is a place for me to express my opinion about those issues or to well maybe I can express my opinion it's not where I expect to transmit that opinion in a some way that's gonna try to convince you but it's very I think it's fundamentally confusing to be a theater artist right now in the United States in terms of this issue because we get very few signals from our society that they value us there we have to live on the margins that's been true for vast times of history for the theater so it's not that unique a time and place but we are not supported by the society in a way that says to us we're going to look to you for as a place to think about issues we and everything gets boiled down to the value of your product and if you don't have a product that's gonna sell millions of tickets then why should anybody care which is a very strange thing to say in the arts but we say it in this country a lot and so our role in in terms of those larger issues in the society is difficult to suss out we we're being told you have to make something that makes people want to come and see it and then we're told yeah but you didn't spank them when they did on a certain level and and it there's there's it gets there's a cognitive dissonance and Anne came up with a phrase that we've very much latched on to and have made part of our mission and because it really encapsulates I think part of what we've been trying to do in the theater fundamentally which is to see the theater as a gymnasium for the soul that we want people to come and work out and whatever the soul means that come in and we're gonna we're gonna do this thing and hopefully my hope always when I look at it to an audience I hope it's completely ecumenical that that I hope there you know that it's politically purple that that we've got people sitting next to each other that if they went past the surface they completely disagree with each other about all the fundamental things and I hope they're sitting next to each other and experiencing a common thing not that they're having the same experience but they're having a touchstone that's that's related because I think that is something I'm not confused about is the function that we are that we are something that can be looked at from more than one angle and therefore could be a place where people who are being segmented by every other force in society might say okay there's a thing you both had yes the same is true of sunsets but we don't always notice that and and so then maybe they might start talking maybe they might start noticing the commonality of their humanity which might then lead to heaven forbid dialogue I would say like let's say the world is falling apart with many many problems and what let's say double edged is doing in the artistic work to approach this what's what's happening around and I used to think like gosh we have this issue this issue this issue and there's a spectacle there's a show in a double edged that is not connected to any other things that sometimes look like for me like what we are in one spot and double edged is another one and I was trying to understand this until I did it has to do with a stage says just sad that I think a position that the single existence of the double edge is a response for what's going on you have to be brave and I understood this later it's like wow because that has to do also with the piano and I have one one question has to do with the piano too I think the piano has is a symbol like is a beautiful symbol because now yeah it's falling apart but we have a piano here that we need to carry and we cannot now it's a nice piano we very very good with and we need everyone are you willing to carry this piano with us or not um now oh my question is because I I was no I I was in acting Brazil and I have that piano too in front of me and I didn't know how to deal with that piano very much the piano what I'm saying is like I was a young actor actor I was I want to be an actor I want to be on stage I want to be an artist I want to that's what I want I don't want to be carrying piano what I I didn't want to do that so today I know that I missed that now I I I know that I didn't carry that piano a lot of things happened or didn't happen because I didn't know how to deal with that piano and because I thought that the the cake was on the stage and on the stage was everything so what can you say Matthew Carlos what can you say I'm sorry I don't my ignorance about the second company now I know a half I have I'm half ignorant with double ed I don't know everything but I just know a piece but what we say for us students now because we want to be on the stage we want to be on the front row I think I'm but we want to be now let's say we want to be a artistic director we want to be part of this like what was the really advice that you would say for us that is studying here putting up energy here and what you think like like uh uh Matthew how how did you deal with the piano before you were an artistic director how was that to do stuff that maybe would be not exactly what you were thinking about doing at them okay that's it that's my question I think I fell in love with an idea uh or or uh and uh and even more and and probably I fell in love with uh a type of space of work and then I I just wanted to continue to find out how to be in that space of work and how then to protect that space of work so um I would say uh you know when I came after I trained here Alex I came back here first because I left my car here lucky accident leave your car somewhere and then I had a question about where I needed to be next but I knew that there was a space to ask the question so I went I went to that space which was here to find out where to be next and what I found was a place and a group of people to ask my question and no matter what I was doing as long as I was engaging in that which was a feeling I felt very connected and wanted to continue um so for me like the jobs of moving hay when I came here uh and and shoveling snow and such or were very meaningful because I was also working on uh you know my my growth and then ultimately this what I think of in what Carlos would call a movement of sorts so I think it when if you're if one feels connected in some irrational or or subtle way to go nearer to it and find out what then happens and spend time with it uh and and give and receive with it it might I don't know I mean it sort of seems uh it's sort of it's just a sense it's a sensitivity thing and there's also to be uh very much in the unknown of it I don't know if I can I don't know if I feel comfortable giving advice and and training I observe something I don't know if I can give advice but I observe that when you Alex say you know I think that the the the cake was to be on stage you're already making a definition a decision of something to me it's not that I'm here to move a piano the cake is not to move the piano and and or is not to park cars or be the you know like I've been on the telephone or or you know shoveling snow but at the moment that something which is larger than me assigns me to be there that becomes the thing so then the thing you know it could be be on stage but at the same time it also could be moving the piano it could be moving these benches or it could be building the benches or it could be you know sharing with you in the summer but it's not it's not up to me I leave it I leave it to chance and whatever pops and you know it's being told not by any of them actually it's actually being told by something larger than us when it's no I mean we didn't we didn't decide this no that's right but it did so do you know you need to shovel that's it did the um I know you asked that but just to jump in the the city company very much formed in relationship to another company a company in Japan called the Suzuki Company of Toga where a lot of us trained and learned the Suzuki method and I was a member of that company before we formed the the city company and there are a lot of very strong beautiful parallels between that company and double edge in terms of the the Suzuki Company of Toga is located in a small village in the mountains of Japan and they have buildings and they're having to move a lot of pianos um and Suzuki used to say to us we are not actors or or designers or technicians or or cooks we are theater people we are all making theater and on any given day that might mean cleaning a toilet or manning the box office or playing the lead role and the important thing in that understanding and I really see it in in these dudes being here for a week with the really important thing is that when you're standing on the stage and eating that particular cake you don't forget that somebody shoveled the walk for you to get there and that that person is a theater maker too and that and so it has to flow both ways the consciousness of it the awareness of it has to go both ways for the collective to work and the minute the person on the stage forgets that if the person who built the stage that they're standing on hadn't done a good job they would fall over the collective is weaker that consciousness is so important that it be on all levels going both ways I also think it's not just about a company like ours but um one thing I noticed in training with you and Stephen and Akiko and and is when you go into the work there's there's no um it's a direct democracy meaning that you're not like taking everyone when you're working and showing people how to do it you're doing your work and you're sharing with the other person their work so nobody is you know I've only been doing this for a day and I've been doing this you even did that with our group so there is this is a very particular type of work we're talking about our ensembles and we're not talking about a stage and cake we're talking about again we're talking about ownership the people who are doing it own it the students have to own their part in the work even if they don't own the group they have to own their work so it's not like somebody has something that you don't have this is very antithetical to another type of entertainment theater experience so I think at its at its roots the ensemble or whatever you call this thing that we're trying to be part of is different no it's okay this is really inspiring I've had a few questions I think I narrowed it down to this one for now um having been a theater artist for a while not quite as you know some of the beautiful ones in here um having been in the city and now we've been living in rural Vermont with some other theater artists and finding it really and having done ensemble work and doing theater that that means something in the world and asking questions and and trying to make dialogue amidst a world that wants the entertainment and traditional living room sets and wanting to break free of that but not knowing how to um I guess ignite the excitement in others or create a space for that when it doesn't seem to be much I guess I want to know how you've done it and here you are your role you've done it out in the middle of Ashfield that's wonderful and and I'm sure that exists as well in the in the New York City or in other cities um because I'm just finding it very challenging so if you have any uh can I say something about double edged yeah I've observed and I've said this to you guys before is that I've been watching them for a number of years and they have changed so much in how they relate to each other I think their work is developed I think how they relate to the community and I think that's why they're so successful because they're adapt they're they're they're adjusting to what's actually happening and I think that if you come in and just say this is the way it has to be damn the torpedoes you will you will turn brittle and crumble being too I just wanted to open with that I know that's a question for you guys but that's my observation yeah I mean I think that's pretty much the key to the story um it's we're this is our 20th anniversary in Ashfield so let's say we're we're arriving at what you just all the things you just said it it's been a 20-year process of um you know hiding for a while and then not hiding and then hiding again and and finding something that worked um really um our stubbornness in the beginning was a bad stubbornness and our stubbornness now is a good stubbornness I think allowing survival to be your guide is important and I mean real survival not like well if I do hello Dolly I'll get a bunch of tickets but actually I won't really get a bunch of tickets and anyway tickets don't give you enough money so it's not that but like real like what are the values of real survival I think that's really important and it's important as as a group to really discuss that and understand that and you're not adapting your values you're growing your values I want to go back to training because to me that's really like one of the major main events of this entire week is two different companies meeting with remarkably in some ways different and also really similar training techniques so I think if you're really informative to hear about you know so far what are the resonances that you have all seen between your ways of working and also what are some of the key differences um and maybe looking ahead it's probably a little too early to really ask this but I'll ask it anyway um you know is there anything you might take from this in terms of like oh that's sort of different and maybe we've been ignoring that moment of working or like that's showing us something that we haven't been conscious of for some reason in our training work um yeah so resonances differences before that good question is answered I would like to ask you having just gone through both training well so it was interesting I uh had done like a tiny bit of B points before like a year ago or whatever two years ago and then I did this past august in two weeks a little mixed level workshop at city company um so we're doing Suzuki and viewpoints and before that I had been at double edge in various ways for a couple of years and one of which was being here for three months for an immersion um so that was sort of my backgrounds and um I remember being really excited by what Suzuki and viewpoints had because there there was um a structure there even if in viewpoints it's kind of a loose post-modern structure there there are overarching structures that you can tap into to work and to kind of like categorize the work you're doing which is very bodily based work um and that allows in some ways its own type of freedom and then there's double edge which is at least at first glance externally a little bit more much more free form and maybe mysterious um partly because there's much less talking used to Tisha um but there are actually underlying principles I think to the training here um what are those what did you learn just so you know just so you know Anne believes in this thing that's called the violence of articulation yeah it's the crisis of the of the creative moment right it's like you induce a crisis so you have to produce something so I guess that's what's happening to me now well so I don't get too much on the tangent but double edge to me is something that I've been working with coming back and a big part of my research is you you don't you know so like if you go to a double edge training you see people moving around the room in various ways it can look very different if you go on Tuesday night or Thursday night it might look completely different but underlying that it's not people just messing around and moving for the sake of moving around and using their bodies because we don't much today in Western society like that's really not the point um it's about one kind of tapping into an energy that we don't necessarily tap into normally interestingly enough Suzuki I think does that too they call it the animal energy there are other like dance techniques that work very specifically with that kind of wild irrational energy that we all have um so it's tapping into that harnessing it um learning what it is and also through physical very intentional physical actions starting to tap into something that's beyond physicality which is the psyche and the imagination which is directly linked to what we do with our body so you can go either way like some acting techniques and psychology into the body this one it's sort of body into a more imaginative world that you can live in um that was good that was really good I want to not answer this question by saying something though um I think that um this has been a very profound week for me um I I haven't had this deep of an exchange about training um with another company so um I don't have any like words about what the differences are what the same are or something I mean they they're resonating in my head but I think the idea of exchange is maybe um um like is this week for me and I think that is extremely important I share um your difficulty in speaking because the work I've seen your company you the the work with our conservatory and our company I have no words for it yet I found it's so profound and so both contemporary and ancient simultaneously and free that uh it's going to take me a while to process it it's incredibly moved by what I've seen to the point that and it's not usual for me to have no words you have nothing to say and you're saying we should take a couple before Seth can we just get go with the you're the sorry we're always taking intentional risks organizationally artistically and also find consensus how do we find consensus without watering down the final product collaborate but not compromise to a false I would like to answer that yes and and um and you're going to think I'm being irresponsible but I'm absolutely serious which is that all great questions have exactly the same answer and that was a great question and I'm going to answer it if you would read it one more time because it's so profound it's such a brilliant brilliant um how do we make sure we're always taking intentional risks organizationally and artistically and also find consensus how do we find consensus without watering down the final product collaborate but not compromise to a fault the answer is exactly when you can form a question like that you have started to work and that's the only place to start it's brilliant and I hope we all heard that and I would reify it in my own soul next so how do each of your companies systematically and pragmatically take ownership and fiscal responsibility for what you're doing because the hierarchy of the granting system and funding system is completely fucked as well so from going to presenter conferences that I just don't want to go to anymore the presenters up here the booking agents and the artists are like way down under negative zero so oh yeah arts northwest arts northwest apap for five years I'm gonna die well well and but part of this is is is because I you know want to make money doing so I just I wonder how your companies do it I think and it ties into what you were asking I think you know I my dad was a great salesman and I learned interesting things from him and one is that he made the most money and he made a ton of money selling door to door a product that costed $1,000 telling people that he didn't want to sell it and proving it I am not gonna sell you this and it's a thousand dollars this is a promotion and people would you know 10 days after keep asking him he sold so much the thing is not about money and the thing is not about gathering tons of people we almost no one is gonna see our work but that almost no one is already we're talking about a million in America if I one percent of the people you can reach with what you do in the U.S. I mean that's so much that you cannot even gonna be able to handle it so no and that's what I mean almost no one will reach you know hopefully through the internet we have been reaching 80,000 people at max and that's a lot and we cannot handle it even so who cares I mean we can we cannot handle it's 60 per person so and we cannot even charge money for that the problem is how we think about money and how we think about this also ties into what you're saying about the cake on stage it it's not about money it's not about masses it's not about it's about almost no one and but us believing what we do yes it does yes it does it depends how you organize and how you structure yourself I mean I've been living off of this for 10 years in Argentina not in America yeah but how because because each each person each each art each art needs to have their own how I cannot give you my how it won't work probably for you but I you know we can think about your how your how is unique and you need to find it it's part of your art I actually I hate those places that you're talking about but but there are certain individuals who are sometimes not in there but are rotating around at various bars who are actually the people who will get you commissions and money and and I had an experience and we probably have to stop after this because it's a little story is that there's a there's a film director that I admire a lot who made a film years ago called 38 films about Len Gold or 37 did you see that 32 films Francois Girard his name is Canadian and I always admired him and I was I was invited to a dinner party by some really wacky money laundering film makers in New York once and I went because they throw good parties and I ended up sitting next to him and I was so thrilled that this guy I admired so much was sitting next to me and and at the middle of dinner he turned to me and he said and he was in New York because he had a film he was trying to sell and he turned to me and he said would you like to hear the story of my film and I said yes I'd love to and he said there was a there was a man uh who who's he was a violin maker and his wife died in childbirth and he was completely bereft and as he's telling me this he's checking me out to see how the story's going and he said and he was so bereft that he took the violin that he was working on and he painted it with her blood and this guy Francois Girard started to tell me the story of this violin which went from one culture to another century to century you might know the film I'm talking about now called The Red Violin which got made and I realized at a certain point that he didn't turn to me because I was a film producer but I had no way of helping him make his film I believe that he made his film because he turned to me and said do you want to hear the story of my film and that kind of impulse in the world is why you make things because you turn to the person next to you and you say do you want to hear the story of my film and that starts a process that's completely out of your control and it's a very pure one and and that our job as artists is not to have the managing director do it for you or the book the bookkeeper do everything our job is to actually create partnerships whether that's with foundations whether that's with presenters you do have to find people who will listen and and it's not immediate and those places you're talking about there's incredible snobbery in that no but yeah but there are also amazing people and you can't yeah yeah and I just that's that's probably I love that answer thank you we are now at the stage where we're going to say thank you's um emretha yes hi everyone thank you for coming um I just wanted to share that we have a meal that we would love to share with you um that's donated um in part by some of the local businesses and restaurants around here um and that's I think speaks very much to our community and how they really connect so beautifully with us so we have donated food from the clay oven which is an Indian restaurant in greenfield from hearty eats in shelter in fall from um eslon cafe in hadley and then from bread before you which has been a long-term donor of ours they've been donating bread and pastries um almost every week so um we will have that set up and please enjoy one last one and one more and four seasons one is also there and I just want to um conclude the gratitude with two very important acknowledgments the first is to howl round for providing the platform and the conditions and the philosophy of a of a theater-based commons um for around which this conversation is happening so thank you to howl round and howl round tv new play tv and lastly to the network of ensemble theaters who we acknowledge at the beginning for making this exchange and this residency possible if you don't know about the network of ensemble theaters it speaks to your question as well terry about relating intimately to larger issues the work of net is is really important and great and we are very appreciative for this opportunity to them and thank you all


Okay, let's, let's take on some of these questions and see how many of them we can do. So these, some of them are going to be pretty random guys. So I'd love to hear the three of you respond to Stephen Pinker's unfair assessment of objectivism as Nietzschean. So, you know, Pinker said objective, he has associated objectives with Nietzsche. So is objectivism Nietzschean? No, but I don't, I don't remember the details of what Pinker said about it. So I don't want to comment on exactly his claims, but it's often associated with Nietzsche, but it is not Nietzschean. Rand read Nietzsche when she was a young woman and liked certain things about him, but disliked others even from the beginning, in particular his lack of belief in free will and his extolling of the Dionysian irrationalist elements over the rational, all the stuff this these Prager folks probably like. And so she had a kind of mixed relationship with him from the beginning, but she really appreciated the things that she liked in him, including the kind of individualism that she thought was there. And then as she developed intellectually and developed her own views, she started to see more and more emphasis on reason as what's important and distinctive in life. And she started to see whatever things she shared in common with Nietzsche as very minor and kind of matters of style and poetry. You can, there are some pieces on this in a companion to Ayn Rand, a piece by Lester Hunt on her developing view of him and some other pieces that address it. So if people are interested in the actual relation of her thought to Nietzsche's, that's a good place to look. But when someone claims that someone is an Xeon, you know, Rand is a Nietzschean or so-and-so is an Aristotelian or so-and-so is a Kantian, what's going on is the claim isn't necessarily that that person was following the other person. The person who's making the claim has a view about what the categories are and what the essential similarities and differences among thinkers are. And from his perspective, these views go together, whether or not the individual thinkers thought they did. And so we want to think about what does Pinker think about Rand and about ethics? That's that he wants to group Rand and Nietzsche together. And is he right about that? And is he how informed is he about Rand? And my sense is he's not very informed about it. And it's too bad. So that to me, it's too bad because I think of Rand as the philosopher of the enlightenment in the sense it's the philosopher of the enlightenment deserved and never got. And he could learn a lot from if what the enlightenment is grappling with and trying to have a view that you can have abstractions that flow out of sense perception. And that that's the essence of trying to understand reason and that you to understand political freedom, you have to understand the issue of rights and where rights come from. And they're not God given and the kind of thing that kind of rhetoric and more that you get in lock and in the declaration about this in some sort of sense, they have a supernatural source. And if you're rejecting as Pinker is the supernatural, that that will be like, so where do rights come from? She has a profound view about that. And then that you have to question the issue of morality and not just take over Christian morality and try to give a secular explanation for it. This is all sort of I think the project of the enlightenment, which it does a lot of good work on, but doesn't fully succeed. And these are all the central issues she's interested in and has really new positions on. So I think it's too bad that he just thinks of it as Nietzschean rather than this is a new view that's worth checking out. Yeah, and I don't know how much of the nonfiction he's read or if he's read the fiction. So I don't know. But my sense is he's mainly ignorant. An exchange between Pinker and a objective, or someone who's very influenced by Randall, I think would still call himself an objectivist, Rob Trezynski. And they did a podcast together where they talk about some of this. So you can get a sense of how we'd respond to some of these kind of points if you find that. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next...


Hey guys, this is Matt Beck from free salon education.com. We are here with Cassandra McLaughlin. You're from Florida, right? Yes, Tampa. So I can't wait to hear about your salon. You've got so much stuff going on. You also work for Paul Mitchell. Yes. So let's talk about all the different things. So first off, how long have you owned your salon? Well, we're actually just celebrated our first year anniversary in March. Okay. So we're still kind of a new baby But I owned a salon previously in Missouri as well. Oh, wow. Okay. So you did you grow up in Missouri? Partially. I grew up there until I was nine, moved to Florida. Okay. Both are home. Okay. So how did you have a salon in Missouri? Well, I did move back there for part of my adult life for about five years, opened a salon, and then moved back to Florida again. So kind of ping-ponged back and forth. Okay. So what would you say is the biggest difference between owning a salon in Missouri and owning a salon in Florida? You know, I think it's a very different process to grow a clientele in a small town versus a bigger city. I think in a small town you have such a tight network of people that that word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire, good or bad. Okay. In a bigger city, you almost have to like earn it a little bit more. You have to really stand out and that's why I know we're gonna talk a little bit about social media And that's where that really came into play. Okay. Cool. Yeah, I would have thought maybe the opposite that if you're in a big city It would be easier to build up. Did you do you think owning a salon before was it was easier the second time going into it? Absolutely. 150%. There was like this big learning curve that I just skipped with the second time around, so it was awesome. Okay, cool. So and you how long have you been with Paul Mitchell? Since the beginning. Actually July will be the 10-year anniversary of when I started Paul Mitchell the school Tampa. Okay. I was student number four, so that was right after the school opened. There was a core class of eight of us. So okay from the beginning of my career. I've been with Paul Mitchell, but I've been an educator for five years. Okay, that's awesome. And you you're working with the new product. Yes. You want to talk about that? The the color XG has been a total game changer. Which I do not I don't have that in my salon yet. So you can tell you can tell us all about it. Yeah, it's really awesome. It's you know, it's just a great addition to the color bar that we already have. I love Paul Mitchell the color PM shines and then we had the addition of shines XG last year. So this is just another level of permanent color and one of my favorite things to play with right now are the intensifiers. They just really give a lot of versatility and I think you know when you have that kind of artistic spirit, you want to micromanage your color and have control over it. Yeah, and this really gives you the ability to just pinpoint that exact color that you want or really to go to the next level with pastels or vibrant colors, but still in a permanent format. Okay, so it's a it's a whole other ball game. It's really fun. It's really fun. Awesome. So you have so you have the salon you started the Instagram and this is one of the things so I put out on social media who should be interviewed at the show. Yeah, and your name came up quite a few times, which was really cool. So why do you think that happened? What did you do within social media to grow the following that you have? You know, it's hard for me to exactly say because I feel like a lot of this happened organically in a way. It just was something that I decided to put out pretty consistently and just it was a decision to just post my work. It was an outlet that I had in the area that I was in versus going and finding going out and handing out business cards. Right. So I just started doing it. I started doing it every day and then it evolved into a little bit more and a little bit more. It got attention from things like modern salon and behind the chair and then it grew. But I think the biggest point that I kind of decided at the beginning is that I was just going to be really true to myself and who I was and have just be honest, you know, not hide formulas and not it was just being open and sharing. And I think that that really garnered a whole other audience. Well, and you have some phenomenal images that now I'm going to put up a couple as we're talking. So it'll be somewhere in here. OK, right. But we so I've looked at your pictures. I have no idea how the hell you take these pictures because it looks like you're taking them with expensive cameras. And my iPhone. Exactly. So take me through this process, because I think a lot of hairdressers have a challenge with getting a good picture of the hair that they've done. Well, I think the biggest things and I have a lot of questions, you know, what what camera do you use, what lighting do you use? And I think the number one suggestion I can give is one, taking the time. Yeah. Setting yourself up with a good style and a great style and finish is probably the most important thing, because if the hair is not finished impeccably, it will not photograph well. It's like three hairs turn into 50 on a on a phone or a camera. Right. So really, really taking the time with style and finish. And I think we just from the beginning of the salon opening built that into our service. We don't do, you know, quick finishes unless the guest absolutely has to is on a time crunch. Yeah, we really spend the time to do that. So that's number one. Number two is just finding a really good source of light. We have good light in the salon. But truthfully, the best light that we have is the sunlight from the front window. Yeah. And that really just shows the true color more than anything. So we found really an indirect source of sunlight. So not directly on the hair, but a front facing window is the best. We always get bumped out when we have a big color correction at the end of the night. Right. Yeah, no one no one gets a good picture at night. No, it's hard. It's definitely hard. Yeah. We've tried everything too. So really sunlight is I say it's the best filter for hair color, you know, and and just a really good style and finish and then taking a lot of pictures. You can't take three and expect the money shot. Like I take probably on average 20 to 30 pictures per guest. OK, all right. Yeah. And and what I love most about your pictures and Brian here, I don't know if you know, but he he works with with us. He told me about you as well. And he was saying like you're I had to look at your pictures. So I took all your pictures and they're just flawless.  Like the hair is like it's really good. So I'm impressed. I think you did a great job. There's there's a reason why you have the following that you have. And so what's next? How's this so this lawn's been a year. Yeah. So what's what's next with you? What's your plan? Well, we just hit some really one of our target goals for two of our stylists. They hit some of their big goals and we have our team that's growing. And we have three young stylists kind of in the work. So really, our next step is just to grow our team. We are kind of doing a little different thing with our schedule. We do four 10 hour days and we have a smaller space. So my goal for next year is to really start opening the salon five, six, 10 hour days and then getting a rotation and just a bigger team. But I'm still keeping that really close net family that we have because we work really closely together. We have a 1300 square foot salon. So, you know, we're pretty close, but we have a lot of fun together. We really enjoy what we do. And I think if you look at my stylist across the board, their social media, the work is impeccable and I think happy hairdressers do good hair and a good team makes for the ability to do the type of color corrections that we do or the spending the extra time on the style and finish because everybody readily jumps in and helps each other. So when I have an eight hour color service that goes into my next two services, I'm not freaking out because I know I have hands that will help me. That's awesome. And that does a lot. So that's I just want to continue to grow that. And what do you think is the the thing that makes your staff want to do that want to do that extra work or, you know, jump in and help you out? Because that's a question that we get really often. How do you inspire a team? How do you get a team to to all work together and not just, you know, I'm done with my work, so I'm going to go in the back and hang out. A few different things I think that come into play. And I think the very first one is hiring the right person. Yeah. And that sounds like, you know, duh. But I really think having a super duper specific, clear idea of who you want in your salon. Yeah. And if someone doesn't have it, you can't be afraid to say no. Right. And my mom and dad, they they do a lot of motivational speaking and things like that. And my dad always says you have to be willing to let go of the good to get the great. And so my philosophy is just hiring the great ones. Awesome. So that's that's number one. We're very cool. So if you guys are not following Cassandra, you can follow her Cassandra Platinum on Instagram. OK. And then Cassandra Blaine McLaughlin on Facebook. OK. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. I know you have to get back to work doing great here. So thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you to Millennium Systems International for letting us hang out at their booth at Premier Orlando and anything else. No, just thank you for having me. All right. Thanks, guys. We'll see you on the next video. Thanks.