Novelist and cultural critic Daniel Quinn provides a useful way to make sure that each person you add to your company will increase your chance of success.
forming a company (part 1)
My previous post, “William Shakespeare: Owner,” connected Shakespeare’s monetary and (to some extent) artistic success, as well as his productivity, with his being part owner of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and The Globe (i.e., “controlling the means of production”). But you might have gotten to the end of that post and thought, “Hey, wait a…
William Shakespeare: Owner
Christmas 1598 found the Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s theater company, in desperate straits. For two years, they had been unable to perform in their usual venue due to a dispute with their “prickly” landlord, Giles Allen, from whom they had leased the land upon which they built The Theatre. Their lease there had run out, with…
Means of Production
When I say that it is time for the theater artist to “take back the means of production,” I’m using a term used by Marx to differentiate the social classes, and I’m using it in exactly the same way he did: to reflect the individual’s (or the group’s) relationship to ownership and control. In an…
Follow-Up: Robert Porterfield
Porterfield’s central idea: what might it look like today?
theater ghosts pointing the way: robert porterfield
Now that we’ve “(temporarily) forgotten everything,” it’s time to start hearing from the theater ghosts who might be pointing the way to “building a new model.” It’s 1932, and a young actor named Robert Porterfield is on the train back from a national tour of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Walter Hampden, one of the last…
Someone Else’s Dreams
Seth Godin on releasing joy.
forget everything (for now)
The first thing we have to do to create a new system is to forget everything about the old one.
nothing
The past couple days, I’ve had the song “Nothing” from A Chorus Line stuck in my head as I fixed breakfast in the morning. When I was an undergrad, I saw the show in NYC, and wore out the record I bought. What was driving me nuts each morning was that I could remember most…
answering a few questions
A few readers have questions!