So this this is exciting because this is a new episode. I don't know this one I know how many times all we have to record this one. Let's find out So I want you to cover a less technical topic there we go We just lost 50% of our viewers right there and then but goodbye. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who stayed Because I do think it's an important one for most developers. I want to talk about interviewing like particularly interviewing for technical roles. That's a Controversial topic, isn't it? Oh, well, I'm sure we'll find out in the comments if it's controversial or not But yeah, I think interviewing is really difficult As a system It's unusual. They imagine that after a speed dating session You had to send one of the people you met a marriage proposal there and then because that's kind of how interviews work, right? You spend you know, they made TV shows out of that concept, right? What with the job thing or the marriage thing the marriage thing speed dating then marriage That's interesting, isn't it? Because like, yeah shows like The Apprentice they spend a whole series on it But like some of these dating shows it is just like an hour. So I guess that is More realistically like an interview. I think interviewing well as an I Interviewing can mean so many things. It is you know you want you're looking for someone to add to your business to your company and I guess the purpose is Figuring out if that person that you are considering a candidate is actually Good for the role and if you are good for the candidates. Yeah, exactly Yeah, you get an hour or two with them to decide that and then you pick one and Propose that you enter into a long-term relationship back by a contract. There you go job done So I thought I would give my tips for interviewing. I don't claim to be perfect at it But I've been doing it for a number of years. So these are just my reckons really But at Google I was given an award for being one of the top interviewers, which means the most interviews not the best interviews Yes, okay fair enough it was more the number But they get me to do them cuz I'm cuz I'm good at them. That's what I tell myself Can you remember what the award was by the way? Do you mean the the yellow helium balloon star, that's right I got a balloon. So and it lived on your desk. I think for a considerable amount of time I had that balloon for Nine months, I think it it was a good balloon. It was a high quality balloon And even once that balloon started to drift down and hit my co-workers in the face And they said can you get rid of that? I said No, that's my balloon I got it for doing interviews and keeping it until it hits the floor that sounds like a little, you know Jokey embellishment, but that actually happens like we we were all observing the balloon Slight have her slightly lower every day as it slowly fell to his death and I people thought I got rid of it because it was gone But what I'd actually done is put it in the recycling bin knowing that when someone would open the recycling bin The balloon would come back out I'm fun to work with anyway If you're watching this at home, and you think you know better than me interviewing Where's your balloon show me your balloon and then we'll talk that's what I'm saying But yeah, a lot of this is subjective and I'm I'm looking forward to the discussion in the comments around this and hearing other points of Use provided the moderators don't delete everything as they've been doing recently. Sorry about that But here are my reckons first up I want to talk about the general attitude and And you hit upon this a Before you're trying to find the candidate who's going to be the best employee for your company The best teammate for you as well. If that's what you're hiring for My first piece of advice is don't try to defeat the candidate and This sounds obvious. I see this a lot late The candidate is competing against other candidates indirectly. They're not competing against you You're not there to try and catch them out That you should try and be on the candidate side like you would with a with a teammate and I say should because we know from Twitter and YouTube comments that there are a lot of people who have the personality of the Riddler from Batman You know, it's all of that kind of I am more superior than you therefore I win and I just say to people like that grow up pack that in and definitely do not take it into a job interview because it's Horrible thing to do It might seem like I'm laboring implement inheritance just with functions and manual prototype manipulation. You don't you fail I've definitely got that stuff wrong before as well like what you just said there. I I've used that question in interviews and I am embarrassed about it So I'm saying stuff the advice I'm giving here like I say, I'm not perfect it's based on the stuff that I've got wrong as well and it might seem like I'm laboring some of these points, but You watch TV and films and the way interviews are dramatized there. A lot of people think that's how it's supposed to be Let's take a tech example a friend of mine interviewed for an agency in London And as part of the interview they asked her to take a look at their websites their agency sites and you know Suggest things that could be improved that kind of thing and they had this 404 page that was this Big cute image, you know cute four or four pages, right? You've seen them before But she pointed out that you know their website has this consistent now at the top and at the bottom Except their 404 page and she was like well Hang on this this could be a problem because a 404 is a dead end for the user that they might have had a misspelled URL Something and you're not giving that now that that way of that they could help themselves out So that there's an improvement And this didn't sit well clearly with with well the head of design at the company and during the q&a section Launched in with I've got a question for you. Why do you hate delight? And I was told this story five years ago and it still makes me angry because it's exactly that, you know My friend did learn from that experience that there was someone senior in the company who was Toxic so kind of dodged a bullet so it was useful in some ways But seriously like a candidate is nervous in an interview situation and they're in an unfamiliar place So if you're the kind of person that takes advantage of that to land some punches You're a bully like there's no pride or honor in that there's no benefit in doing it It's a suggestion and I don't think also don't think those two things were mutually exclusive You could have still left the four-poor page cute with the head bar and a bottom bar Um, and you could I mean it's your opinion to disagree with a candidate's suggestion But you have just enough to justify your opinion as they have to justify theirs So in the end it should be an actually a constructive dialogue And I think if anything as you said the company failed that interview themselves then Yeah, absolutely My next piece of advice is uh, don't judge the candidate on unrelated things and again It's another I mean your shirt is questionable today I've come quite bright today I I actually bought this for doing these recordings because like every time we've been filming I keep getting told to wear something brighter So I actually bought this with recording in mind Which is unusual for you because you usually rep the conference shirts exclusively I usually wear shirts. I got for free at conferences But turns out conferences aren't happening right now. So I've had to start buying clothing so I think of me during the pandemic Had to buy clothes But yeah, don't judge people on unrelated things and yeah clothing is one of them But I saw this twitter thread recently where someone in the web development community was saying they judge candidates on the setup of their code editor like An example they gave was the the kind of syntax highlighting they use and this is Similar to judging people by clothes and I do have friends in old tech Who will judge people by the suit they wear to the interview And in both cases like syntax highlighting the suit thing Folks will defend that attitude by saying well, it tends to correlate with ability or it tends to correlate with professionalism in terms of the suit thing, but These things are just feeding into your biases and If you interview properly You can actually test for ability. You can actually test for professionalism You don't have to crystal ball these things. You don't have to read tea leaves of a thing because it's it's inaccurate and it's unfair Yeah, I mean statistics rule 101 is correlation is not the same thing as causation just because things correlate doesn't allow you to Look at the effect and you know imply back that the cause is also true I you know, I remember that the the core team of Go the programming language you know pretty famous people with Rob Pike and ross cox and some of the people and they all are advocates of not using syntax highlighting Are you telling me that those people are not highly productive good engineers? I am not so sure and as you say like don't I mean that the main problem is don't use proxy metrics don't If you are in an interview you can as you just said Actually measure directly whether capabilities that you need are present in the candidate There's no need to rely on proxy metrics like this person is not using the same error as me.  I didn't use it often for coding But it was sort of set up. It wasn't set up well, but it was possible And I brought that along with me for coding interviews and the reason I was bringing that along with me Is it was the only portable device I had it was the one that I could afford I had a desktop machine at home But this was the one portable device I could afford could have brought that I guess I could have could have brought the whole desktop unit Slammed that down on the desk and it's like can I get a plug socket plug socket anyone? But yeah, so so but if It's kind of horrible to think that someone would see this tiny laptop and think that that's how I normally did things or that That was the best I could set up an IDE And the same goes with clothing like to most job interviews I've been to I'm wearing what I was wearing for my job like my job at the time because if I turned up for work with a suit There's only so many times that I can say, you know wedding or funeral Well, what is it today? Or it's a funeral this time. Yeah, it's a funeral for the person that got married yesterday It was a very eventful wedding, you know, like it doesn't work people are just going to wear What they were wearing or you know what they're comfortable with But I would say there are exceptions to some of these things like Maybe there are cases where the role does involve Seeing how the candidate handles someone who's being aggressive and argumentative Maybe the role doesn't fall familiarity with some of the IDE trends plugins Or maybe the role does involve someone being dressed in a particular way Again, you should test for these things But also tell the candidate that that's what you're testing for like days in advance Like tell them that's what you're going to be assessing. So they should prepare for that Like, you know, if you're going to have a coding test, let them know you're going to have a coding test If they need to bring their own laptop let them know it's Yeah, it sounds simple, but it goes wrong in practice quite a lot. I agree and I think There could be more clarity here as well in many instances that I've seen where it's just like What you're going to test and how you're going to test it like often, you know We often talk about either whiteboard interviews Which have gotten a lot of criticism because that's not how you do your job Like you don't write code on a whiteboard and I know how I remember how painful it is to like Write code write curly braces with a big marker on a big whiteboard It's just not how your eye has been trained on a daily basis to perceive your own code And it will just Lower your abilities and even to this day often end up in a situation where I have to tell an interview candidate that You know, they expect people to write their code in a google doc, which is better than on a whiteboard But a google doc is not what we are used to writing code in so, you know Google docs doesn't take care of indentation or Syntax highlighting or any of those sort of things and so I always try to be very vocal about like I understand This is not your IDE.  We all know that IDEs take care of that for us. It's about Talking about the problem knowing that you have the right solution often, you know We also know that we google a lot. We get help from the internet, which Sometimes in interviews for some reason is frowned upon which I technically I also don't understand And all these things I think should as you say should be laid out before and what are the criteria Why are these criteria there and what is allowed what is not allowed? And and most of what you just said on when it comes to coding questions Has just taken care of a big chunk of my content that's coming up later Apologies, we can just skip my comments. No, no, that's not we'll keep those in because I can just skip it later on but and I do want to talk more about Testing for coding, but first I want to just start with the very beginning of the interview Or even just slightly before the interview because I would say Make sure the candidate is comfortable Like do they need a bathroom break? Do they a break for any other reason? Do they need a drink? Some of these are more important when it comes to on-site interviews than You know vc interviews But Give an example. We had a candidate come into google who they'd had to Rush because a train was delayed so they'd sort of run to the office And as such they were sweating and so I just said hey, do you want to take 20 minutes to cool down? And They said yes, and I don't know if they would have asked for that if I didn't offer it But it felt important because well, I know how I get in that situation Like I end up in a sweat loop because I'm sweating because I'm hot then I start getting embarrassed that I'm sweating and Eventually just shame Ends up siphoning all of the water out of my body and I am not going to interview well when I'm like that No, and that's the thing if you're running, you know Evolutionarily speaking you are in fight-or-flight Which means your blood is anywhere in your muscles, but not your brain Which will significantly hurt your chances of using it correctly and those things Interviewers I think need to be aware of. Yep. You you want the candidate at their best So enable them to be that all right. Let's talk about the questions I would say maybe this is controversial, but use the same questions for each candidate Like some say I won't they prefer more flowing natural conversation But I prefer the same questions because it's a stronger basis for comparison It also avoids some unconscious bias Like you can branch off your questions with follow-ups and that kind of thing But I would say stick to the same core questions for each candidate I actually do the same thing I have the same question I've been using for a long time which actually is helpful because I know What my level of expectation should be like what is the bell curve of People at different levels. How far do they get? What kind of traps do they run into? How can I recognize early what you know? What holotype of interview candidate this is and how can I help them get over a hump that is potentially just a red herring to actually evaluating their actual performance and capabilities So I think it's it's really really good advice and yeah, you can refine it over time You can find different branches over time for people with different skills Some people care about memory optimization. Some people care about runtime optimization Some people care about the visualization and all of these things you can usually take your problem down different roads while Still sticking to the original question. So you know what to expect Absolutely, but I would say for the first question start open-ended and controversial Don't make it a big technical deep dive like try and ease the candidate in I usually go for something like In terms of work, what do you enjoy doing? Or what do you want to focus on in apologies? Yeah, I was jumping to technical Like coding questions, but you're right Obviously the interview doesn't shouldn't start with that actually because it is very important to get to know your candidate So and just you know, what kind of person are you talking to? Yeah, and it just me it gives them an easy question that they can answer as well So it kind of puts them at ease I would say especially if you're saying what do you want to do in the role or what do you enjoy doing? I have seen a lot of candidates Um, I would say this correlates with younger candidates, but that doesn't matter But it does tend to uh, we'll say something like or they'll take an attitude of like, I'll do whatever it takes So, you know, they're really eager to please And if that happens, I try and nip that in the bud and say no, like, you know Here's the things that I like to focus on. Here's the things I don't like You know by example saying look, it's it's okay To to have a focus. It's okay to have an opinion on this stuff And with this question. Yeah, it's mostly about easing them in but I'm also looking to see that they've thought about the role Uh, that they have enough experience to know the things they enjoy I mean, and this is specific to developer relations, but I always think developer relations has so many different facets, right?  You can write articles. You can write libraries You can go to conferences. You can Communicate more with the engineering team and help them out set the right roadmap There's so many different facets of developer relations that are Part of the role that actually nobody can do all of these at the same time at the at the same level You will be better at some and you will enjoy some more than others And that's exactly what is interesting actually about candidates. Where do they see their strengths and what kind part do they actually Know is part of the role which part they maybe didn't know is part of the role These are all interesting conversations to have. Yes, but no matter what the first question is there's something else that happens quite a lot And that's that the candidate has been thinking about this interview for a while they've been thinking of what they're going to say and the points they want to get across And sometimes the question you ask first doesn't quite match what they were expecting But they're not going to let that stop them. They're going to give the answer to the question they wish you asked instead and It's tempting to get sarcastic at this point but again You're not there to win avoid telling them off just let them say they're a bit and then rephrase your question and Ask it again. Yeah, and we have you have to be careful that people are going to be nervous like they're potentially they're scared to bits that they're now depending on the company have one interview two interviews five interviews and They probably want to get the job. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here And that might just inhibit them from parsing the question correctly And some people need to prepare for an interview To feel calm and to be able to get through it And so it it is as you say it is tempting to be like uh candidate can't even listen to a question but Be careful about those kind of assumptions and I always say if that's something they do throughout the interview It's not worthy that you know, they're not great at listening Maybe And that could be an issue for an employee, but if it's with the first question I wouldn't worry about it. All right. Let's do a little bit of let's do a role play for this for this next point So much. Oh boy. I want you to ask me the question that is on the screen All right, Jake Hello, how would you defeat? a giant robot army Uh, well, um a good question by the way I would build an even bigger robot suit and I would Punch all the evil robots in their robot dicks until they were very sorry about the whole thing and the planet was saved Well done 10 out of 10.  I don't have the experience now Aspirational questions are okay, especially as an opener But if there's a way to phrase your question that taps into actual experience, I would say that's usually the better way Like if you ask the candidate, how would you handle a disagreement with a co-worker? You're asking for a theoretical answer You'll get you'll get a fantasy answer and that's not as useful as if you said Tell me about a disagreement you had with a co-worker and what you did to resolve it Now you're getting something.  Well, that's that that's an important thing to learn You want to learn that is if you've got someone violent on your hands That's something you want to learn as early as possible. Hopefully before hiring them But yeah, you if you're asking for evidence you learn about their experience You learn about their attitude you also learn about their communication skills through the they're telling of the story If the candidate doesn't have an answer Offer them thinking time If they can't think of anything then say sure, okay, you can give me the theoretical version. What would you do? Not very useful to you, but at least the candidate gets through the question, uh, which brings me to my next point Try to avoid making a candidate feel like a failure like even if they Kind of are like if they if they flunk a question try and try and make it so it they didn't Interviews are stressful and high pressure You're trying to get the best out of the candidate if they struggle with a question help them through it Even if it becomes useless to you In terms of the interview at least they feel like they got through it And they're not taking negative baggage into the next question or the next interview Because it could have just been that one question that they struggle with like due to nerves They got in a mess or or whatever. Yeah, or you tapped into their weak spot in terms of topic These are all like it could just be That you as the one interviewer got unlucky with this candidate in a specific constellation and on that note I would also avoid the typical phrases where you go like, oh, that's an interesting answer because even though it is sugar coated Inter interview candidates can pick up on that and then you have just increased the pressure without even realizing so try to be genuine about Helping them and actually wanting them to succeed Also, I'd say that if you're expecting the candidate to say something negative about themselves or the company Make sure the candidate knows that's okay Like a lot of candidates are nervous about this and it'll work against them What they tend to do is actually say something positive But like wrap it as a negative like, you know, my problem is I'm too helpful Or I think the problem of the company is there's no way it can be improved or something like that So just let them know. Hey, you know say something negative about yourself or you know say that you're looking for people who Will change things about the company. So you're looking for people with those kinds of ideas So it kind of puts them you're letting them know it's safe to say negative things about themselves or about the company Okay It's time that we talked about The coding question which we've sort of mentioned You really dull my content so no is this Your points were very good because it's some of the stuff that I wanted to say as well I think it's Coding tests are controversial. I think it's good to assess the candidate's ability Whether a coding exercise is the right way. I don't know for sure I I tend to do a 20 to 30 minute coding exercise in an interview As such the questions I use tend to be simplified compared to real-world equivalents, which Is a weakness of that system There are alternatives. I've seen companies do homework assignments or longer pair programming sessions It's a it's a difficult balance to get right like something short is short, which is good Something longer can be more realistic, but then it might not be respectful of the candidate's time Like remember they've got a full-time job. So if you're Taking them in for you know a whole day Of job experience essentially one. I hope you're paying them for that But also, you know, they've got a full-time job. Did they actually? You know, you're taking a lot of their time away to do this on the one hand, you know, the coding exercise doing an interview is inherently unrealistic of an engineering job because You will spend the entire day on coding most likely and not just 20 minutes on a problem You have just discovered where you are not allowed to google things. It is inherently unrealistic Some companies have you know, try to make it more realistic by taking a bigger realistic problem and giving the candidate a week to take it home But as you said that is not only disrespectful potentially of their time because they might have a job So they now have to sacrifice their evenings But also companies are giving them work that they could actually use like that that is useful to them And now they have interview candidates do work for them, which is also not fair So it is an extremely delicate balance to strike Yes, and I'm going to stick to my experience here. Uh, so the small coding exercise In terms of that stuff, I would say avoid write this particular algorithm The infamous invert the binary tree. Yeah, so instead of Write code to invert this binary tree present a more real world example Which could be solved by inverting a binary tree If the candidate realizes that inverting a binary tree is the right way to solve the problem That's like 85 of the problem solved like in the real world They could look up how to invert a binary tree if they if they couldn't remember it The important bit is being able to connect the the theory with the practice Uh, a lot of candidates like they cram learn all of these algorithms but If they can't see a problem and realize which algorithm they need to use You know, that's That's a gap in their learning and it's it's something that's useful to you as an interviewer to find that out early Because those connections are a most important thing. Yeah as a as a little tip from me as an interviewer who to people who Take interviews who interview at companies For me and I actually I can I only can speak for myself obviously, but If you are solving a problem and you know There exists an algorithm or you even know the name but not how it works For me, it is a 10 out of 10 points answer if you say let's assume I have the function called invert binary tree and you just call it without Like you just use it in your code without having the implementation knowing an algorithm of the top of your head and how to implement it to me is not part of the job unless you are working on I don't know the The library that is inverting binary trees and you are interviewing for that job Then yes, then that is part of the job But that is the niche in the general case if you know there are solutions and you can even name them You get full points from my end. Yeah, I would say when I'm interviewing as well It doesn't matter if they can't name the algorithm like if they write what is inverting a binary tree But they never say the words binary tree or inverting doesn't matter. I don't Need someone to name those things I would say yeah, try and find something real world as well Like maybe a problem that you solved as part of The job that they're applying for but of course if it's something that took you hours to solve It's not fair to expect them to solve it in 30 minutes So you would really sort of boil it down to maybe the the interesting parts that are solvable in a short amount of time Uh, also try and find something with multiple phases It's something that has like a simple solution that maybe isn't optimal And then you can build on top of it to make make it better or make it faster or make it hit edge cases I strongly agree with this. I I like problems with multiple solutions with different Not only complexity, but it's a trade-off and even just having a conversation about these trade-offs can be very interesting To assess how much the candidate has thought about trade-offs memory trade-off runtime trade-off Code complexity maintenance trade-off. These are all things that you know matter Usually in in real cases and it helps you Ensure that as you said earlier Feel make the candidate feel like they're succeeding because it is the more solutions that are possible The more likely it is they will find one of them and can Help you or can can explain them to you and something that actually is really nice once they found a solution Is something that I often like asked them to write one or two unit tests, which you know, that's nice makes them think about Can can they actually know abstract the interface? Can they figure out edge cases are worth testing? How do they test and all these little things can be very very interesting to talk about? Yes, and if the candidate struggles as well if you've got a multi-phased Question you can just help them to one of the phases the next phase and then call it a day And you know the candidate feels like they've achieved something. They're not taking negative energy into the into the next interview I would say if you're doing that kind of thing Be careful. You don't scare the candidate with simplicity like let them know it's multiple phases I've seen candidates freeze up because the start of a question is relatively simple They feel it's simple and they're looking for the gotcha. They're looking for the complicated bit. They haven't spotted, but it's not there Yeah, and I've definitely had that one my one of my old questions or one of my old series of interview questions for the coding started with okay, let's Make the tools we need for the bigger question. What how do you generate a random number between a and b? and As exactly as you said people froze up and we're wondering like They had a solution, but surely it can't be that simple and so I I've learned over time to be like This is not a trick question. We are building simple tools that we can put together later on for something way bigger So just roll with me. Yeah, I would say I definitely avoid using the word simple as well in case The candidate does that's a very good advice I usually say something like if you think of a solution, but you're unsure whether it's optimal or complete Don't worry about it. Write it down It's better to write something down and then we build upon that Rather than try and get it perfect first time and end up with nothing Which I have seen happen in some interviews as well during these questions helping the candidate It's fine. Just make a note of how much help they needed because that's part of your assessment Again, it means they leave the question. Hopefully feeling positive as well Here's here's something that you mentioned earlier as well allow them to use their own laptop Don't make them code on a whiteboard like if they want to use a whiteboard. That's fine But don't make them don't make them code in the google doc. And this is me apologizing for every Google interview where this still happens I refuse to take part in this even if the interview advice I'm given is telling me to use a google doc I don't because I just don't think it's right So yes, that does still happen. I'm sorry about it. No, people should be using the environment that they are comfortable with Also, try not to assess too much at once If you're testing the algorithmic problem solving tell them you're not worried about variable naming because that probably doesn't matter You said some of this stuff before if you do care about variable naming Maybe present them with some badly written code and ask them to refactor it to be more maintainable Because then the algorithm's already there. They don't have to worry about that. They just have to read the code and make it better Also, don't test memory Uh You said this as well allow them to look stuff up like method names like remembering How slice works versus substring in JavaScript. It doesn't matter I usually tell candidates to use me as a search engine and they can ask me any questions And I will tell them or I'll look it up myself because it's good to sort of hear where where they're What they're thinking and that's a good way of doing that. I whenever I I've done the same thing where I often offer candidates to use their editor instead of the google doc and some candidates still choose the google doc, but you know, it's their choice at that point But in in in the editor where I just asked them to share the screen with me so I can see what they're doing And I don't think autocomplete is cheating not at all. Like it is a tool. We all use when we work Why would it be cheating? I've seen this a couple of times where people You know, you are not allowed like it's more like an exam where they expect you to know everything on the top of your head which is just wildly Unrealistic and not in line with what the job actually looks like we all make mistakes more so under interview pressure And if the candidate has like an off by one error Is it worth making them sweat over it? I tend to ignore it or say hey online 12 you've gotten off by one error And they'll they'll spot it. It's it's not worth it. It's something they would see in the real world when they ran the code I'm not going to show you the coding question I use Because then I'd have to pick a new one and I like my coding question too much But here's the example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. So this would be aimed at web developers who are expected to write javascript It's kind of showing can they fetch some jason and append some stuff to the page I wouldn't expect them to remember the dom apis I'm just looking to see if they know how the dom works and How async code works because that that is something that they will have to do in the real world And then in like a second phase of the question I'd say okay our api returns 10 results at a time You know, we'll fix that one day, but in the meantime, we'd like to display 50 results at once Can you make that happen with this api? So now they have to do five fetches? It tests more advanced async stuff Can they return the stuff in the right order? Do they fetch it one by one or do they fetch it all together? Do they wait until they've got all of the results before putting any of them on the page? Like these are all little phases. They you know, they might choose Yeah, they fetch the first set of results and then they start fetching the next one And then you could say to them. Hey, you know, is there any way you could make this faster by You know, well, I wouldn't tell them by fetching it all at once unless they needed the hint But see if they could figure that out themselves like there are many layers to something like this Um, ask them if there are certain user interactions that might Cause bugs here like could they spot if the you know, the user enters submit multiple times before the previous results have come back You might end up with those sort of things into leaving. Do they know how to handle that? You know, do they know how to handle that in an efficient way? it's a really Basic question. It's something that we Tend to do in our jobs quite a lot fetching some data and displaying it But even to something like this, there are so many layers that you can add to see where the candidates are Yeah, and as and as we mentioned earlier, you can take it down many different paths depending on Where the candidates strengths are which hopefully at this point you've talked to them about if they are, you know More into visualization and you want to see and that's something that you actually need on your team as well Maybe you want to change it up and lead it down that path. Maybe they can visualize the in-progress request or something like that It's nice to have these questions that are flexible and you can bend them a little bit to fit more towards the candidate So you can make the candidate shine at their strengths Absolutely. And once all that's done Say goodbye to the candidates You still got work to do because you need to rate the candidates performance I would say make sure you stick to what happened in the interview This comes into play when the candidate is someone you know Either a friend or like someone of a an online profile that you're aware of Let's say that candidate a performs better than candidate b But you know candidate b and you know, they didn't show their best in the interview and you decide Oh, they're actually better than candidate a right based on some other stuff, you know But maybe candidate a wasn't showing their best either. So it's kind of unfair that you're You know offering that leeway to candidate b and not candidate a I would say if you're unsure Do another round of interviews get them both back in again Also, write your assessment straight afterwards make notes during the interview But write up your conclusions straight away because your memory doesn't get better with time No, it really doesn't And I would also say that's something that I have Experienced and therefore do in my when I interview as well Tell the candidate that you are taking notes because especially right now in a virtual setting It can often seem like You're not paying attention. You're just chatting with your work friends while you're waiting for the candidate to come up with a solution Um, because you know, maybe you're touch typist and you can look the person in the eye while typing I can that to an extent but often especially when it's cody things. I do look at my notes um Yeah, just make sure the candidate knows that you are being respectful and you're listening even if you're not Looking at them and typing. I've been on both sides of the table on that one I've yeah, I felt like I was being ignored because they were just sort of looking away going. Uh-huh tap tap tap tap Uh-huh tap tap tap tap. Yeah, but they're making notes. That's which is the right thing to do Yeah, also agree on a rating system. So each interviewer is scoring the same way that that kind of thing really helps also come to your conclusion before speaking to anyone else who was doing the interview because Group and attitude polarization is a thing They even without you knowing it by talking to someone else your opinion It might even change, but it's more likely to become more extreme. So record your own viewpoint So when you discuss it with other interviewers like you can be persuaded, of course You know, they can say well, I felt this and you could you know adjust your own viewpoint But make sure you have your initial viewpoint and make sure that's heard Yeah, I think in general biases are a thing to be aware of and it can be biases introduced after the interview As you say by talking to other people with without, you know Somehow writing down your conclusion first, but also make sure in the interview to be aware that we as humans Suck at being neutral and open-minded. Usually we see a person We have an opinion somewhere in the subconscious of our brain and it can and most likely will affect How you perceive what they're doing their gender their race Their earrings all of these things can and probably will affect Your evaluation and you need to work hard to not let them influence you and use fair criteria Yeah, and that's really at the root of all of these tips and rules that I've that I've put into this presentation It is is to just try and avoid Bias and avoid unconscious bias as much as possible. It can't be eliminated, but you can avoid it through some of these methods But that's all I've got But it did get me a balloon and it also got me some good teammates as well Well, wow, I'm not sure about that Focus on the documentation and the naming I squeaked while I said that Make notes during the interview, but write up the conclusion straight away because your bedroom I can't speak today. We're so close to the end


up from the tree in a place need a break, there was a stage, and a red velvet curl. When he died after ten years of work with this company, I mean to me, we've been in Columbia for thirty years to see generations of my students kind of training the next generation. So I'm going to kind of hand it over to Tonika Tolerova who is there just a director of Silent Theater and Isaiah Washington is the director of the company, and Laura Fisher and Curtis Jackson are unsolvable members who have been with the company since the beginning. Hi you guys, thank you so much for coming out today, and thank you to all of you students for lending your talents to us, the crash scores of sound, your divisive work, the advising work. We actually started from college, we're old so that you're sitting on this panel today around the night, and our, well my last collegiate experience here was the show called Little of Black and White Sound, and when she saw an excerpt of the collegiate students performing, it started because Sheldon particularly gave us this play that seemed nebulous to me when I was reading it, it was very germinous, stilted, the language was difficult to handle, and we thought what if we just take this product and apply this very specific aesthetic to it, eliminate all the language and just calm all the action and see what the play has to say now. And it has taken so many different transformations, every single time there was a new cast member or a new addition, it would take shape because we were relying on this talent and the new performers would bring in to augment what we already have set base for. And ultimately the production got produced professionally here in Chicago, and we bought this big old school bus and we painted it and gutted it and left our jobs and our family and our friends and got on the bus and left for New York. But without anything, there was no financial support, we just kind of did the show to survive, to eat. And we went to New York and ended up in San Francisco and telling more about these stories, ran out of money and we had to do the show to survive in New York. So this is sort of this big adventure that started us off and created a family, we had to live together, we had to do laundry together and eat and it created this very much family bond between us. These are my brothers and sisters, I'm the only child that considers sound to be my family and I love these people. And when Tanya says we had the idea to do this, what she means is she, and then she had to fight with us here at Columbia and we, that's how we got started. I do have to say that Sheldon was a huge advocate for us. I think Sheldon always wanted to see new things come through and I know that there's certain institutional practices.  Yeah, we were fresh in our good place here. Yeah, it was all new people, which is wonderful. This was back before the 24-hour play festival came along. There were certain rules that were put into place for institutions to really teach their students to apply theatrical skills in the outside world. Where we were coming from was pioneering a completely new different thing, and how do you take this and treat it as an ensemble-based performance and take it out into the real world as a new genre of performance, physical theater genre performance that wasn't necessarily playing to the orthodox style of how things go theatrically. You go out in the world, you audition for two minutes in a fluorescent room, you're talking to thin air and you get cast and you don't know if that person has the right chemistry with other people. You really want to turn it into a more workshop process and see how the two parties gel. I would also say for those of you who are not familiar with our program, and I've been here for a long time, that the inception of the program was a traditional Stanislavski-based second city training program. And in the last 10 years, particularly with our new chair, John Green, who you all have met, the bringing into the curriculum, devising different physical theater pedagogies, I think has really broadened and widened what the student is living with has in their skill set. So I'm really appreciative of that building on that John did. And these folks were really, as Taka said, pioneers of learning, taking a Vedic in play, taking a piece of Pandora's Box or Earth Spirit and creating it in this kind of way. And you have also been committed, as I said, new methodologies that are not ongoing, which is really wonderful. Yeah, I have to say that we stumbled around a lot trying to figure out how to figure out how to go about doing what we do. We actually, it's taken us a decade to really be able to explain how we approach our work and how we execute it. Because I feel like a lot of it is very unorthodox. We have this kind of rule now when people will say, well, what's the first thing you need to remember? And it's not about jumping into this process with your head or your heart. You're not feeling it, you're not really thinking about it. It's really about jumping in with your feet. If you don't know what you're doing, then you're thinking about what you're doing and that's not really interesting to watch on stage. So once we... I mean, I think you guys have all tested this. When we started working with the Columbia folks a few weeks ago, it was more about you need to get from point A to point B. Figure out how to get from point A to point B later, but we just know that you need to enter here and you have to execute this by the time you're gone. And also, of course, I'm going to let you speak a little bit about music because I have to say music is such an important factor. It's a backbone of what we do. Oftentimes in rehearsal before we can go back to figure out what we're doing with the band is we'll experiment with all these different types of music that will fuel the action and sometimes change the moon and sometimes change the plot of what's going on. And then Isaiah and the band will come in and they'll create music around that and add those little accents as canes are coming up and slaps are coming down. We used to didn't do that way. We used to be around in rehearsals all the time and you'd be sitting there going like, oh my God, you know what they did. No. It was, you know, in my opinion. Yeah, please take the time. You know, it's been a really, it's always an interesting process and it's never, it's never a waste of time to be there during the entire rehearsal process.  And the majority of the cast, you know, and any given incarnation of this show has been made up of a majority of people who have done it before, but perhaps in a different role. So, and what I do in a nutshell, what I do musically is I try to, with this show, I try to establish a musical theme for each character because there is no spoken dialogue, you know, we have to know that that's the father who's in, that's the drunken father who's entering, because although that's his music, you know, and he's coming in and his character and every, you know, and so on and so forth.   But let me backtrack in terms of being there throughout the entire rehearsal process because each actor brings a different physicality to any character. So...  Who was the ingenue? I don't know. Versus my big girl. Versus... I mean, and I had it, I wrote a lot of things like, you know, ten years ago, and I hadn't really played a lot of them in a long time. Versus... Okay, so, like, for instance, there's some... there's a perfect example, okay? There's a medic and there's a brother, okay? And every time we open a scene and the maid is there, and she's cleaning, and...  Ah! Yes! Gotcha! My girl is big, and then there's a knock at the door. So there's a knock at the door, the butler who's always been played by Marvin, right? Yeah. And Marvin comes out and he does... Curtis, would you please? I'll try, yeah. So this is how we play, right?  That was Jillian's maid theme, you know? I had a different maid theme for when Robin played the maid, and Dr. Shun has his own theme, but there have been, like, four different actors I've had to come up with a theme for for Dr. Shun, and it's always been different.  These actors can attest, just today, we ran it, we put together, what, three times, right? And every single, like, even when we did it now, it wasn't, every single time that we've done it today, it's been a completely different organism, because, because it just lives that way. I think it's that way for the action on the stage, too. I mean, some of us have done Lulu, like, almost 200 times, total, over, like, 10 of a lot of years, but we, to be able to maintain sanity, very, very quiet, controlled sanity, you have to play, and the play continues, while you're doing the same play every night, so, you know, there's none of the, must be here, unless it's something that's being accented, so, like, some of those things are kind of sad. The major events of the show, we get to color in the lines of different color every time. Well, nothing, why, besides the fact. You know? But you know what, actually, coming back to that, part of what sells, well, Lulu mostly, but I feel like a lot of our work is the fact that, since you have no text, there's no subtext. You can't really deal with exposition, or what's the flashback to the future, because you're like, wait a minute, what's going on? Don't be explained to me that we're now fast-forwarded time, or we're going back. We have to really pepper it. We can't really use those unless it's a big deal. So, because the play is always present, there is a self-awareness. So, the audience and the actors and the music allow themselves to breathe together and always respond to what's going on on stage. So, if anything goes not per plan, which always does every show, there's nothing ever per plan, then it's just going with it. There is no question, oh, we should have done this. I mean, today I saw you guys just, your wave fell out, and it's like things are falling apart, so if you go with it, what are you going to do? Stage 1, I was like, well, you dropped your wager. I think one of my favorite examples is One Night, I think you ran San Francisco, and there's a spoiler, there's a scene where the Countess gets murdered by Jack the Ripper. And one night, Lord decided, and a lot of these things would happen without a prior notification to one another. We would like to surprise one another on stage.  And that happened. Jack the Ripper was really surprised. Yes, we all were.  Did I tell you? No. A lot of things that went on stage that I didn't know about, that went on stage the entire time, they were kind of all that big.  And then something happened, but honest, and then just, moving on to whatever happened next, and having to catch that, having to catch that moment in the music, and me being totally surprised, and the Antonica being totally surprised. What are you talking about? Do you ever work in that app? Do you ever make moves? Whatever. Little things like that happened in every performance. Marvin and Jillian would have a different bit every time for the maid and the butler.  We would play tricks on, I mean one of my favorite ones, you guys see it's black and white, monochromatic, right? So everything is covered, our hair is dyed, our clothes are, the way they are, our nails are black, and one night, Maddie, who plays like the young, kind of fresh puppy dog, and love boy, who's following around Lulu, like in love with her, at one point in the middle of the scene, he hands her a handful of flaming hot cheetahs. She's like, he has to then do something. Which I thought was terrible. He didn't necessarily like, when we did stuff. You know, but we were, so we went on this tour, right, because it was 2006, and our tour was around, we had gotten into the New York French Festival, and it was a really exciting time, it's summer in New York, a lot of us had never been there, it was a lot of our first year out of school, we took the school bus, and what we did to get people to show up, was just walk around, like these guys are walking around, and sometimes we'd park the bus, and have an impromptu dance party on top of the bus, and I tell you what, there's no better marketing tool than having a bunch of freaks walking around with Lulu on the side of their bus, and people would say, and then we sold out that, you know, French Festival run, and got an award. Although I gotta say, I think it does depend on where you are, because some spots people were like, I've seen it before. Oh, the bus looks freaks on me. You know, going back to Columbia, when we came out of Columbia, we decided to do this professionally, and this is part of the ensemble power, I feel like, because we didn't, we opened up a theater company to do a show, and we were planning to close it right after. We knew that ten years later, we were like, oh, Silent Theater, we're stuck with the name Silent Theater, we're only gonna do silent shows, since we didn't have a base, we had no idea how to go about producing shows. We had nothing to lose, really, so we would dress up, and we walked right into the, sometimes, and the Tribune, like Silent Telegraphs, invited reviewers to come and see our productions, because we had no other way. Nobody would pay attention to this show that's playing late night in the city lit. Nobody cared. But then the Tribune came, and gave us a great review, and then it was an avalanche. By the time we got into New York, we had such good press that we were able to be like, hey, we're in the Chicago, we just played into it, we're in the Chicago, we got all these great accolades in Chicago, and come and see us here, and we just played off of the car, we faked it till we made it, basically. The other thing that we discovered is that, is we were going through our process, and little was just scratching the surface, a lot of all these epiphanies came throughout the past ten years, not sometimes, all the time. If you take language away, people seem to pay more attention, and our body language has to be more specific, more direct, it has to be, we have to cut away all the facts so people can understand what we're saying. In essence, when we're doing that, we were able to connect with people on a different level. One, that wasn't taking a label or a word and taking this conception that people had of it, and then trying to fit into it. We were really kind of saying more without speaking. That makes sense. Opening it up for greater accessibility, so someone who doesn't have English as their first language can come and see one of Simon Theeter's plays. Individuals who are hard of hearing or deaf can come and enjoy and understand and participate in the work. As a matter of fact, in the past couple of years, there's been a lot of collaboration with the deaf community because actually ASL is a great bridge. I think that there should be some kind of a universal language. I came from Bulgaria, so when I first came to the States, I actually had a very hard time, not only where I didn't speak the language and I was trying to adapt to new culture and I was coming of age and all that, some securities, but people have preconceived notions when you don't speak the language, so it's hard to have a sheer human experience. Even as I was experiencing their kind of things like baseball games and so forth, I really felt out of place. In Simon Theeter, in a way, it has a much broader universal feel. We always say we're creating a universal language when just your time. So we take what ASL has to offer. We take what the old silent film, chaplain films have to offer and creating this human experience where we know a smile is a smile in any language. We know a broken heart in any culture and we're pushing importance of that. Do you want to talk about... No, I was just going to ask if there were questions from the audience to engage in a dialogue, but before that, I just want to say as the aesthetic, of course the aesthetic is from D.W. Griffith and Lilly Engish and all of the silent images that we know from a long years ago, but I think it's also, we heard some talk about sustainability that a company is their 10-year anniversary and kind of we know from great American institutions that have kind of stopped producing after 10 years and I'm wondering if you could talk a little this was a company that has not had a board until this year has kind of created through moxie and swag the ability to create their stuff. So anything about that that might be of interest just a little bit. Yeah, we had a phantom board I think a lot of small theater companies start because they're just actors and they want to do work which I actually very much commend. I think it's important for performers and young directors to go up and do what they love to do do it the best they can in apartments if they have to practice public presentations and also practice in the art of making art because it's too wrong thing there's the art side of it and there's the business side of it and a lot of theater companies start because they're excited and they're talented but what happens is they don't think about the bigger picture it just happened to us, that's why I'm speaking of experience they don't think of the bigger picture like well what happens when you actually need to run a theater company it is a lot of hard work and a lot of it is administrative and it tends to kill your creativity you get to a point where you're like oh god I'm just going through the general operations motions but my art is suffering and so how to balance that is a very difficult thing this year luckily our board has expanded and has taken a huge chunk of that responsibility from the artistic ensemble so the artistic ensemble can actually concentrate on the art and less on the industry and also in terms of longevity I mean it's what you saw today where we want to bring younger, fresher hardworking, excited eager, hungry performers and start devising with them create pieces with them and give it new life because Curtis and Isaiah and I have been doing it for a really long time and we still love performing and doing this together but as you get older you have families you have children you can't pick up your life and go on a bus and leave without anything but that is that thing that happened is why we're still here today too because you have to be fearless and believe that you're going to just be able to exist and create and interest people or else we wouldn't have made it five years or ten years if we hadn't just thought well what else are we going to do we might as well take the show on the road we wouldn't have stayed I don't think performing if it hadn't been for that fearlessness and I don't think we'll stay another ten years unless we have new energy and new people to create with a new life in the company and in the work so we also feel like part of our genre because it's this physical theater and we deal with human issues but it allows because of our aesthetic it allows for our ensemble to be quite diverse we don't we have performers playing male or female roles it doesn't have to be gender specific or race specific it allows it to be pretty free because everybody in the ensemble is a human performer they're cast because they're women or they're cast because they're black or they're cast because they can speak sign it's all very malleable people can come in and out of roles and we don't have a traditional audition kind of thing when we're looking for people to perform with the way that we do that is inviting them to play with us and you know put on some music and devise a scene and say like okay let's take three minutes and we need this thing and this thing to happen go play silently and come back and we'll show each other so you know it's not so much as oh they can really move and oh they're really great at making faces it's like how do you get together and how can you respond to new things coming in because as we've said we're not like we do this and then we do this and we do this it has to be very interactive with one another so we've started this devising process and we invite people in and that's what these guys have been a part of as well as we're looking to remount this show Lulu after a million years again and others may have been in it before but a lot of them will be new, fresh and we learn who the right people are by playing together and generating many many works that might play into the final project I mean I think we've seen we've done what five, six workshops where we've invited people in over the last few months to do musician workshops and things like that and there's little nuggets that get created that I know when we get into the rehearsal room we'll be like I don't know unless we did that thing in that part that was great we should try to do something with that or it's just like little nuggets feed into the whole thing and then eventually it has to open and stop working at some point but you don't really because you keep working on it so just like the music punctuates when we're in a theater it's also the lights that punctuate things we've developed a way almost tricking people's eyes into understanding where the close up would be if it's a film you know so with light or with a gesture or with complete stillness we're tricking the audience where to put their focus a lot of cinema techniques I guess we apply in the theatrical world we treat it as what if this is a camera and how do we focus film is such a manipulative art form with theater it's a little bit different because you can see the lights and the sweat and all that but I feel like there's also power in the fact that if we just go along with it we're not relying to the audience and we're not putting on a show or as a matter of fact by the office and once you get lost yourself it will come and remind you like I got ya and then try to bring it back around I actually want to throw it back to you Curtis a little bit because I feel like actually Laura and me too it's very important for a long time we just worked with each other it was a nucleus of people and we didn't really put it out to other people to join us it was dumb but then as people broke off we realized that not only were when you guys go out and do other things I know you've done some cool stuff and so forth but when you return you come back with all that experience and new energy and also a light bringing new people where they also bring a set of tools that we can play with and being able to mix that all the bad reshuffling it and reimagining it all it's such an exciting process but maybe you guys can speak a little bit more about going out of this process and coming back into it I think part of the reason why the company has lasted for 10 years now does have to do a lot with the new people that we love to work with but it also has to do with the fact that we're able to leave we're able to like go off to Paris and study mine or something we're able to go to grad school which is what I did and go to New York and get a master's degree and learn more technique and more things that I personally am interested in when I come back to sign a theater company you say, hey guys, we got to put some workshops together for X, Y and Z because I want to see how it works with you all I want to see how it works with other people who might not experience a college class or a Camilla Del Arte class or even getting into different kinds of theatrical theory which you get into in grad school that's very very heady very intellectual I get to play and experiment with my company with these people and they're somewhat always available but they're always interested and that is always again, like Laura was saying we start to develop these little nuggets that might seem appropriate for whatever we want to do in the future for things that we are currently working on or things that we might want to bring back in the past you guys are starting to wear different hats you can't just stand the role of one thing if you're in sound theater you're never just a director you're never just a performer you're never just a musical director you're just constantly switching hats and putting out your techniques and skills for good use in some way it's been quite lovely coming back in and regrouping with the company and them wanting to know what other things are we capable of doing together or with people that we have met along the way I think that's kind of how that's the longevity for me there's always room for us to like go away and come back and teach so to speak in Curtis we're kind of more of the academic route I went more of what we call talkie route I know I do plays with words but you know like just jumping into Chicago French storefront theater too has been also if you can imagine a tight little nucleus of 12 people traveling together for 4 months we are siblings and we love each other and that also got pretty intense sometimes we were lovers and friends I mean it gets messy brings all of that life together and then go and do some things on our own but then come back and know this is our theatrical home these are our creative family and I mean not just creative family we're we're there when we get married we're there when people die we're there when babies are born I think that that is what an ensemble is and the exciting thing is building upon that you know Chicago has such an amazing history of ensemble theater and this is kind of a new way of being an ensemble just stripping it down but it's the same thing it's a bunch of scrappy young people or different types of people getting together and saying well we can do this just as good as someone else can and just throwing them out there but it is true every time we step away for a project for a couple years for whatever it is and come back we're stronger when we come back together because we've got more tools in our bag a little bit thoughts from you folks about training or work for the ongoing challenges and assets and liabilities of keeping people together and reinventing their work John I'd like to talk more about the trade you talk about device obviously as Jeff said there's that lovely reference point of silent theater and generally expressions so for example what process did you take to promote wonderful students and what's the fundamental trading process there's two different types but the ones that some of the Columbia students have recently experienced is training and going towards this world of the black and white silent film and prosthetic in which we would create different scenarios so people would there would be a movement exercise that would get all of their instincts going the right way so once so they're given a task so like here's a scene for you and you have to you're in an art studio and he's painting you and you wouldn't hold still and see where that goes so once we have gone through the walkings and the character work character development you can go away on your own and come back and develop device something and then you come back and give you a piece of music and so there's a different element to add every single step of the way so our job mine specifically is not so much telling people what to do this particular bit is a little bit of a different example because we have to do an excerpt but it's more about guiding people offering a six different set of hands that they can play about that experience I'm trying to think of a specific example because we've gone through so many workshops that I think is pretty specific where our task was three people on a scene so we got put together three people and you saw today the split scene which is the tango and the Vodvillian comedic moment and those are switched back and forth with a freeze like a tableau and then the movement goes to the other person so there was one actor who played both scenes and you had to put in I think it was five tableaus so it would switch from one to the other and we had like ten minutes three actors playing two one person playing two different scenes and then two other people are playing each one scene and just going back and forth and playing with what it's like when you freeze and then how does energy get handed over to the other people so also that idea of like training the eye like here's where you're looking while this is frozen and now here's where you're looking so so things like that just giving them um it's almost like physicalizing cinematic techniques for more of a general more general broad sense of it we're doing a high school institute which is more of a general workshop that we do so we would take it mostly works with people who have never done this before when you get people who are in really high training they start to apply all that training to this and a lot of it feels actually instinctually wrong to sign theater techniques but in this general training we give everybody the same nursery run so we Jack and Jill went up the hill that should fail with water I don't know if that is exactly but you know that's familiar with everybody the same and a lot of sign theater shows that have context the audience shares fairy tales for example everybody understands they work better because we don't have to get anybody all that exposition you hear Robin and Juliet you know what that's about so it helps to have action to have higher context already so in the case of Jack and Jill we break everybody up in groups of three and they will be given Jack and Jill same text and then a genre an explanation of what that genre is Grandigno they'll have like a little bit of explanation of what Grandigno was about and they would have to take Jack and Jill went up the hill and perform it as a Grandigno piece and then we'll come around and collaborate on what kind of music would make that more would work with their genre or it's the Vaudeville genre or it's German expressionism so everybody would have a breakdown of what that's about whether they use lights to make it happen whether it's a specific type of gesticulation and body language that makes that genre specific and then we would work through it and everybody would get the chance to present it How much do you actually reference girls to look at them? I'm sorry? How much do you actually study a chapter or a lot of party or a Nussra or even the silent women well so are some of our veterans have been doing this for so long they've developed a physical language of their own and they have honed their own skill I wouldn't even necessarily say that they're emulating Charlie Chaplin because it's a reference it's like we watch something together because there's an idea in it that's interesting that we might play with and in terms of emulating silent film in a black and white silent play like Lulu which isn't all of our work we use the idea of in a silent film where there's the necessary dialogue comes on stage so we do that as well so when there's that moment where we need to know like oh they're in London now there's physicality with a freeze and a blackout and then that person comes out of it and it's as though they just got stuck in the middle of a gesture and they're moving right on through it as soon as the lights come up so that's another technique we use also something that's fun with people that are newer and when you think about stripping away language some people think you can't move your mouth at all you know or some people are like talking the whole ball all the time so learning when is it natural to mouth words like he's a man or moments like that and actually we use a lot of the crutches to our help so let's say talking through the entire thing literally talking, verbalizing through rehearsals saying okay now I'm going to come over here and now I'm going to take this thing from you talking through it and using that as a crutch is a great tool we don't think it's like a bad thing we encourage it because then it gets everybody on the scene page and then certain actors also bring a certain palette we were saying like Matt and Marvin are very good mind people and Matt was standing there well I mean everybody, not just new people but veterans too and explained okay well it's about suspension you've got a balloon and the balloon is going up and all of a sudden you're pulling it down and what the tension is and all of a sudden you're flying around so he understands mind better than some people and then he'll impart it to the newer crowd so I was like I'm going to go over here and I'm going to pick you up I'm going to lift up this chair and I'm going to say hello hello it helps to get the expression the expression is a lot of the things are more about drilling listening with your bodies to other people who are also communicating with their bodies so it's more of a presence than a technique in the shitting way that the things are structured and that listening is more about kind of what Sound of Theater is rather than this is how you go about doing it because everybody comes in from a completely different perspective or set of skills they want to apply that so it's more about the chemistry between people and what we're trying to communicate with as a as a team as an ensemble and that kind of goes along with the training process that we have for anyone because this particular person right here is going to play a man in a dress completely differently than Ian or Carl sorry which is going to be different from Jeff and so trying to find out all your individual quirks and movements and how you would use that suspension on your own with the balloon is part of the fun that's part of the process, it's part of the reason why we're able to gel together so well because we're both trying to figure out how we do the same thing differently I think a thing we always do in Silent Theater work because we're really focusing in this conversation about this black and white silent thing that we do but we also do other types of work as well but a thing that I think Silent Theater is known for in their shows is setting up the rules here are the rules of the game for example like we don't talk and we do, you know I'm being madame concrete, you know the rules are the ensemble does not speak, there is one person who is our narrator who sings and speaks a little bit and interacts with the band so we set these rules up and everybody kind of once they figure out like okay here's the rules, here's how they do it then we break the rule you know and keep everybody under the toes all of a sudden maybe it'll be you know a loud noise or something like that but I think often or it's we've been playing together and like we're in this film and all of a sudden we're looking at you, you know and so I think that's another thing that we try to do to to keep it fun and keep it fresh and keep people not knowing what's going to happen and excited about it I was kicking the audience apart the audience are just as much part of the story as the story and the performers we always pay pretty close attention to you being on the journey with us Yeah Yes, Mr. Park One of the conversations that comes up a lot in our membership is about collaborative decision making and you've referenced a lot of that as you've been talking and I wondered if you might be able to just talk a little bit more specifically about what does that look like for you both artistically and then conversely, administratively is there a hierarchy in terms of roles, does that change project to project does it change rehearsal to rehearsal is it completely collaborative and so I'd love for you to talk administratively and then also artistically and I'm curious to see what that looks like for you I'll talk to you about the administrative side of it because for a long time I was like one woman orchestra I was trying to do it all and I think it was out of fear that if I engaged in artistic people into the administrative process there I wouldn't lose them artistically because I was overwhelming them with administrative tasks that is not the way to do things obviously I learned my lesson and about four years ago there was a team of four people that started doing a lot of these production tasks and that alleviated a lot I also have twins so after they were born it became very difficult for me to run a theater company but these four people came together and they started producing a lot more of the administrative tasks and I was able to concentrate more on artistic stuff artistically I always feel like it was a collaborative process there's different directors that go into you know people have ideas and they want to conceive a show once they agree that it's going to be produced by silent theater then those people become the rainholders they're the ones making decisions as far as this is what my marketing I want my marketing to look this way I want my space to look this way because we try to tailor everything to the show it's never the same from show to show so the selection of that show is a consensus process does everyone have to agree or does they're just a consumable folks it in it's not like one person making a decision so it's a consensus structure for which project we select correct anybody's allowed to bring ideas to the table you know some of the work we've done silent Christmas Carol we've done a Charlie Chaplin play Nosferatu was like a kind of cool thing that was spear cut by Brendan it was kind of completely separate from a lot of us from the artistic ensemble but it was very very much it was a silent theater show you know we just got some fresh young people in and some ideas and then we work together too and bring in you know we're at each other's outside eyes if we're not involved in the project Jackie's left in our outside eyes as well kind of helping us work out some camps and it's not like there are 12 people 15 people or 20 people who are in a company at any given moment they're not all banging down at the door saying I want to do this play, I want to do this play, I want to do this play there are some people who want to do a play and just have the thought of doing it and wanting silent theater company to produce it and we'll take the next three to five years just thinking about it just working out we will talk about it and I think everything that we've kind of done together has been talked about as I mentioned at parties, at weddings in the hospitals I'm still waiting for the silent theater western about it talking about this one it's like if I have an idea to do something we've probably talked about it for a few years before I actually try to get the vote you know what I mean and when I try to get the vote I'm like hey I think this is the year most likely everyone is like oh we already know everyone's kind of working on it already most the ensemble is we know each other's ideas for each other's projects and are working on it before we even pitch something yeah I mean I think that casual especially if you want to work with specific people we can casually mention things throughout the year but really there's in January you're just in the ensemble means and we do pitches so I'll get up and say okay I've started working on this play and everybody's got their own technique too Marvin comes in and he just re-enacts the entire play by himself and you've seen him do doing gentlemen chatting so he's incredibly animated and he's not necessarily a good scribe but he will act the whole thing for you and in his pitch and it's or some people have visual presentations or have a power point presentation the more that you put energy towards your pitch the more likely it's going to get produced within that year otherwise it might get shelved to be workshopped that year but not really produced until next year so it's all but there is a January month where we are like look at what new work is really growing right now and it's perfect to do it's also not, even if we have a show that we've wanted to do for a while if it's not the right time we can't push it we can't even announce our season and say we're going to do this and this this year we've tried this last year and it killed us because it sometimes it's just not the right time the times change politically things are different socially things are different so more about really feeling the trying to produce something in another way that we get to explore some of those things we do a quarterly variety hour at our space that we have and so that's also a time that if there's like an idea of something that you want to play with with another ensemble member it might be like oh let's do let's work on that thing for the variety hour and do a 10 minute piece and then see how people are responding to that and go into something bigger so there's always an opportunity to be playing together if the idea is strong even if it's not something that we've decided like yes, we're going to as a company do this thing, here's the next show I mean it just starts as fun little goofball moments and when we were on tour too you know another thing that we were doing while we were doing boo boo over and over and over again when we were off on Monday Tuesday nights, our only nights off in San Francisco, we were doing the variety show and working like brain new material and some stuff that was some of it was so bad and some of it was really good and like we resurrect the things from stuff that we made up in parking lots and re-noted songs it's not always silent too sometimes we are reading it pretty loud sometimes administratively it has to do with who we are and what resources we have so I mean in terms of like we're all Columbia alumni most of us are so sometimes we have the resources here to use a rehearsal room or to contact students who would like to be a part of you know devising something for what's happening today so I mean it's straight up in terms of who's executing what signature this check or what have you sometimes it also has to do with well who has better access to do that yeah we try to go for the role of the best man for the job is going to do that job because we've all been given the task before where we're like I got sent to Kinko's one time to do a program and I'm visually really bad with things I'm trying to figure out how to do it so you can fold it the right way it was just a disaster but then again it's like well I can throw a little event together no problem I can get a gazillion silent auction packages because that's what I my day job is in fundraising now too but that's because I had I had to learn how to fundraise and throw events so we could stay for like 10 years ago and then you know now I do that professionally which is pretty weird well when we were doing it I didn't know what I was doing at all just try to do the best you can and do it so well absolutely any last thoughts? what are you going to do? I think what they talked about and the greatest thing they offer after the room is is that sense of play and the sense that even though they have been doing this for 10 years and we're just jumping in the fact that we're as much there as they are and we're treated as equals it's great because we'll be working on that thing even like today they talk about things living and breathing changing and as we were rehearsing before this today they were just critique or fine tune make this gesture bigger as Curtis kept saying over and over and like not having as much experience as them it's great to to to get taught on a moment to moment basis and to take that and go I know to make it bigger so when I go do the next thing I don't have to learn that and on a technical level due to the fact that this is a very specific aesthetic you have to bring certain practices to it which you wouldn't typically bring to like a piece of theatre that is spoken one of the big things that they emphasized was in Silent Peter there are frame skips there are these moments where you can't exactly tell what's going on because that's just the way the camera is to work and trying to work through that problem on stage is a really interesting challenge for any other performer to go with so it's a great challenge and it also provides an interesting an interesting way to think about to think about just theatre as a whole not even, doesn't matter if it's silent doesn't matter if it's said anything at all but it really helped us learn how to like like Isaiah uses Vienna we use our bodies and as actors that's really helping to learn and even this early to learn that our bodies are our instruments and Silent Peter not only not only not only teaches teaches us that but it encapsulates it's what it is really just living in your body and just being able to to show the experiences that you're having without having to participate to kind of piggyback off of that I heard this very statistic a while back we get 75% communication from other people from our body language not necessarily the words and I think there's a lot of acting especially in other things when people are learning where they're saying these words but they're not telling that story they're telling their body and so here it's an isolated chance where you have to tell the story with your body and your whole being because that's the only route you have to tell actually that's a great that's a great point because I feel like with talking plays there's that contradiction happening all the time really be hoops even if you're doing something very very verbose even if you're doing Shakespeare the entire thing silently just so you can tell what your mind is thinking when your body is moving to try to communicate because it's so contradictory on stage sometimes I feel like in real life it's very hard to tell somebody's line because you can say oh I take it for true value whatever you say to me I take it why would I think that you're lying but on stage it's different on stage you have to convince this of your authenticity if you were saying one thing but your body is doing something entirely different so I feel like with Silent Theater we try to make it a lot more authentic by simply having the body language communicate what's true going back to what I was saying at the very beginning sometimes you're saying a lot more when you're not speaking at all and for those of us that have gone through like that Chinese into a lot of it it really does impact our work when we open our mouths to speak on stage as well it really tones that muscle so that you can bring that to the stage when you're even doing one of those silly talky plays that other people might don't know I love plays with text we do and we all actually do them yeah game Silent Theater it's not like oh let's just do it as a matter of fact every show I've ever done with Silent Theater records I'm kind of in the way one show we did a production at the wild party where I actually signed while we were at Iowa oh yeah we did it from the original I don't know who you're talking about Joseph Montier March we did a production where all the action was silent and I just kind of like wrote music to did we have to close the entire it was the whole audience it was really good you just have to go to the bathroom half way through the show it didn't happen one time one time during the wild party I didn't have to go to the bathroom and what was any other question how did you get to the bathroom I wasn't telling the bathroom I wasn't telling the wild party bathroom where I actually stopped wanting to do that with the bathroom during the show we lived in the moment very long yes we do if there are do you guys have any shows coming out we're going to do a movie though we were reimagining the story though in a kind of a big adventure way a big experience way we did this product 10 years ago it was a great experience for us obviously it was a great adventure and the quality became good because of the physical language by themselves and it was tight and sexy and visceral you felt so elicited in the audience we used to tell people we were going home and begging after this because it was just not on the way it was so emotionally alive also very sexy we didn't want to come back to this 10 years later we're now in our 30s and we're bad and slower and we got bad problems why even redo it what's the point of just redoing a show we did 10 years ago one of the elements that I kept bringing up is the fact that we told the story of Lulu and it was alive and visceral and raw and sexy and fun and energetic but we didn't really get into the psychology of why the story exists and every single time I've seen a re-increanation of Lulu whether it's the operetta or the Pandora's Box the film or other different Pandora Box stories they feel from this very male perspective that they were written as this female this male projection of this female and she's playing each role and that left Lulu living nowhere and really approaching it from that perspective why from this female and how the spirited female and why is society telling her this is wrong and this is right and she's kind of saying this is who I am and I'm never going to lie to you and this Patriarchal Society coming back to a constant call where you're the guilty, you're the person that this is happening because of so that was one aspect, the artistic aspect and the other thing is that the past 10 years we've done productions and we also run a space called HQ we try to create these experiences that have an immersive component to them so it wasn't just people watching a show and there's a four-quall and none of that so we wanted to take this adventure and turn it into a three aspect thing so we have the live presentation we also have a filmed production of the live presentation but it's filmed as a movie so it'll be a final product that's a film of the staged version and then when people come to see the live version there'll be a live taping of the audience while they're watching the show so when they go home they can download the movie we've already recorded with now these inserts of them as part of it which will encourage people to dress up there's a little interactive element that they can do before the show and during the show and hopefully create more of a part of this experience that's why we're not going to be calling it a little black and white silent play we're calling it a little light silver screen adventure light silver screen we did start hitting on this thing especially when we were in San Francisco because we were there for so long the people started participating in the work with us kind of really organically there was a photographer that just kind of kept hanging out on the bus and taking photos there was a painter that was really inspired by what we were doing was painting us and we were making films and doing things and people wanted to participate so they wanted to dress up they thought it was fun to be in black and white gear too so we're kind of taking that idea and seeing how far we can take it and we've actually played it back on stage because they don't have to remember his lines it's about being present and you just tell them the rules and put it in the aesthetic and they can experience it as nerve-wracking as it may be as the time is tapping on stage you have to go thank you so much thank you


The Cleveland Browns had a really good offseason where they addressed pretty much every single need on their team. They addressed the receiving core, they addressed the defensive line, they addressed defensive coordinator. But I still think they're a little bit away from being like that true tier one contender in the AFC. But I think they'll be good. I think they'll beat the Bengals week one, lose to the Steelers week two, beat the Titans week three, lose to the Ravens week four. They go into the bi-week, come out, they're going to lose to the 49ers because they're one of the best teams in the NFL.  They're going to win seven straight from Indianapolis all the way through the LA Rams. And then they're going to play Jacksonville. And I think Jacksonville is the top team. They might beat the Browns. Then they can beat the Bears, beat the Texans and they'll lose their last two games to the Jets and the Bengals. And that's an 11 and 6 team. That's probably a playoff team, but not quite a tier one contender. They're not there yet. But they're close.


TfNN headline news update Good afternoon everybody. I'm Tommy O'Brien company live from TfNN headquarters in st. Petersburg, Florida 2 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday two hours left to go in the trading day We got markets in positive territory yet again Markets all three the major industry is going for another record closed today after a record closed yesterday S&P's right now positive by four points trading at 31 36 Dow Jones positive by 28 trading 208,094 Nasdaq positive by 17 points trading at 86 50 gold contract catching a little bit of a bid up $5 at 1461 90 we've got oil right now off two pennies at 57 99 Notes and bonds a little bit of higher price and lower yield the 10 year of five ticks at 129 22 the 30 year up 19 ticks at 160 21 and the dollar index off 63 ticks at 98 260 Start things off. Let's jump over to the charts. We'll start it off with the Dow currently trading 28,071 I backed this up for a little bit of context with where we were last night highs overnight of 28,144 we just got above 28,100 briefly at about 12 20 p.m. Eastern time just under that level of 28,071 in the Dow Nasdaq 100 pretty similar action highs made overnight we dipped down to a low at about 4 a.m. Of 83 66 currently trading 83 94 S&P's trading at 31 36 made it to over 31 40 at one point Still would be a record close if we close where we're at right now crude oil with some volatility early this morning We're up there at 58 55 currently trading at $58 in one penny looking at the January contract and the gold contract Catching a bit off the lows that we made right around the opening bell. We were down there at 1449. You've got gold trading at 1461 83 And the euro us dollar train at 110 21 In terms of what else you have happening in the market quite a day for Best Buy and their shares are surging after BDA Expectations and raising forecasts ahead of the holidays jumping over to the Best Buy chart and before we do check Out that Vicks an 11 handle down to a low of 1142 overnight currently at 1186 and we'll finish up the update with Best Buy Continuing strength all day. This is a five minute chart. You see the initial thrust upward on earnings But the opening bell it just keeps going we open it around 77 dollars. We're now trading at 83 27 up more than 12 percent on the day Stay tuned folks. We got a replay going on right now the 10 a.m. Show But Basil Chapman filling in for Tom O'Brien live at three o'clock to wrap up the trading day Markets in record territory. Stay tuned tuned folks. We'll be right back


Appalachian Wireless has some of the best data rates in wireless on our plans and not to mention an amazing deal on one of our hottest smartphones, but that's all the time I have to explain. See store for details, better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. During Wednesday's Kentucky Valley Education Cooperatives Fire Summit, Johns Creek Elementary School students Jay Moon and Luke Lockard were recognized. First grader Jay Moon and 5th grader Luke Lockard won the open box app challenge for their app design Cousin Quest. We're cousins and we are going on a quest to find our parents and our teacher, my teacher kidnapped our parents so we're going to find them different violence of the world like Tundra Desert, Dumbledore City and Beach and we have to answer to the app questions. The boys said the app challenge was a lot of hard work, but they learned so much from the project. It's not just about creating it, buying it and playing the game. We put a lot of work to it and we worked hard, we tried to win and we did eventually. Now Moon and Lockard will get to work with open box apps to make their idea a working mobile app. The app will be available for download in the app store once completed. Reporting in Pikeville, I'm Shelby Steele for EKB News.