My Clown History

Hey Hey Hanksteristas!

It's been a while.

While I've been away, traveling the backwoods of NY Penn Station and New Jersey Transit, I've recently begun to mull over my clown history.

I recently discovered that Patch Adams (whom I know from Performing the World) -- Patch and I were on the same campus in 1970-1971 (my first year, his last year) in Richmond VA. We may have crossed the street together in The Fan, grabbed a sub at The Village, who knows? Turns out that Patch and I have traveled a common path -- a humanist path. I highly recommend you visit him.

My friend Marian reminded me today of my very first clown love -- Emmett Kelly. Tattered and torn, poor and forlorn, our sad-sack, our silent but prescient conscientious objector.

Let's respect our clowns!

NH

Marian Rich: Musings on business leadership and performance -- a word from the wise to our Congress

Good morning, Hanksteristas!

On a personal note, I happened to catch up briefly this morning with my dear friend Marian Rich and I wanted to share a bit of our history with you. Marian and I "came around" together (as we say) to the development community in the mid-eighties. Michael Jackson, compromised/ failing marriages, the end of the left as we knew it... Well, you get the picture!

Marian and I persevered.  That's our trademark.

And I was inspired when I read her latest entry today on her website, I thought that Congress could take a note from Marian. Not that they are listening... But maybe someday, somewhere....

If you haven't already, please do subscribe to Marian Rich Musings on business leadership and performance. I highly recommend this new performance-oriented blog that offers fresh, innovative and practical advice and philosophy about navigating today's world.

Marian -- thanks for all you do!!

To wit>

Marian Rich is President of Career Play, Inc. - executive coach, trainer, researcher, recruiter and performing artist. Grounded in an innovative performance-based approach to human development with over a decade of experience as a retained executive search consultant, Marian has unique experiences in building and growing innovative, out-of-the box organizations. She is an Artistic Associate of the Castillo Theatre, where she regularly performs musical improv comedy with The Proverbial Loons.



Here's her latest:

Improvisational magic

Not surprisingly I am an improvisation advocate.  This week I had a series of conversations with a diverse grouping of executives, friends, and colleagues about various life challenges.  In almost every case I found myself advocating on behalf of the basics of improvisation: 

Say yes

Actively listen

Focus on the ensemble and/or the other

Stay postive

Cooperate

Build and create with others

I've been reading a few articles this week that brought improvisation to mind. One article in the HBR this week -- How to Really Listen by Peter Bregman http://bit.ly/pAiXop -- has much to say about listening that I agree with.  Sadly Bregman leaves out play, performance and improvisation and offers readers a cognitive behavioral approach to developing better listening capabilities.  

One thing that Bergman wrote in this article jumped out at me and it is this simple statement:

Listening, it turns out, is magic. 

I think there is a magic that comes with creating conversation and a key ingredient is active listening. This made me think of the wonderful work that my colleague, Cathy Salit the CEO of Performance of A Lifetime, does with corporate executives.  Cathy is an expert at helping people actively listen and create new conversations.  Here's a wonderful excerpt to an interview Cathy recently gave with Michelle James on her blog, The Fertile Unknown http://bit.ly/pXag1w

What mindsets and behaviors do you see as essential for effectively navigating the new work paradigm?Cathy: Improvise. Perform. Relate to every conversation, meeting, and interaction as an improvisational scene in which you are a performer, writer and director. Break rules and make up new ones — not just in coming up with ideas, but in how we organize what we do together and how we do it in the workplace. Become a creative artist whose medium is everyday life.

We can all become a creative artist "whose medium is everyday life" -- now that's magic!

Marian Rich: How I became an Independent

by Marian Rich

NYC Independence Party activist Bryan Puertes asked me to write about how I became an independent so here goes…

I grew up in the Sixties on the Upper West Side of Manhattan – a bastion of political liberalism – in a household of staunch Democrats.  In our home, politics was always a topic of discussion. I remember going into the voting booth with my mother and pulling down the lever for JFK (I was 4).  My father was blacklisted in the 50s for his support of the Civil Rights movement within the Actors Equity union – I was taught from an early age that racism and poverty were not be be tolerated.  My mother was a working woman and she made no attempt to cover over the oppressive nature of her roles as wife and mother.  It was a no-brainer – our family was supportive of all of the liberation movements of the Sixties, and we were - quite naturally - Democrats.

By the time I was 12 (1968) I found myself in the highly politicized Jr. High School 44.  Our teachers were dodging the draft, the school was racially polarized, and in social studies we were debating the war in Vietnam and who we were going to support in the Democratic Party primary (the Republican Party didn’t seem to exist).  Many of us kids were for McCarthy but I stood with my family tradition of supporting the Kennedys and campaigned for RFK.  I used to do street work for him outside of the Democratic Party office on Broadway and 72^nd Street. The campaign got a kick out of me since I was their youngest volunteer.

Then in 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and shortly thereafter Robert Kennedy.  It was a horrible time – we were deeply sad, angry and fearful.  I campaigned for Hubert Humphrey because he was not Richard Nixon. I suppose it was that year that I began to question my allegiance to the Democratic Party or any political party – I started to see that something was terribly wrong with “the system.”  Richard Nixon won the 1968 election and I remained politically engaged but no longer identified as a Democrat.  I was disgusted with business as usual politics.

In high school I started to identify as a leftist.  I didn’t know to call myself an independent but I was.  I was an independent leftist.  I remember that as a freshman at Syracuse University there was a rally against Nixon during the Watergate hearings and hardly anyone else was there.  That worried me.  I wondered why, on a campus with thousands of students, we couldn’t pull out a crowd to protest.  I questioned if protest alone was ever going to change anything.  I took some time off from college and traveled and finished as a transfer student at Sarah Lawrence College.  I studied Marxism and Women’s History and theatre.  I started to think about the role of culture in changing the world.  I attended No-Nukes rallies in the early 80s.  I got married and my husband Steve and I would spend weekends “shopping around the left” – trying to find a place to hang our political hats.

We lived on the Upper West Side and we kept running into organizers in the neighborhood who were engaged in a variety of appealing efforts – the Coalition of Grassroots Women stands out - I always stopped at their table.  We were intrigued by posters in the neighborhood about an African American woman named Barbara Taylor who was exposing the political corruption in the Democratic Party.  Then one day in 1982, I saw this green bus in the neighborhood; on the back of this bus were two women who were campaigning as independent candidates for Governor and Lt Governor – one was Jewish (Nancy Ross) and the other was Black (Lenora Fulani).  I thought I had died and gone to (political) heaven. Who were they and what was going on?  Shortly thereafter I met two organizers on the corner of 110^th St. and Broadway and they asked me to sign a pledge card to pledge my vote to Ross/Fulani in order for an independent party, the New Alliance Party, to get ballot status in New York State.  I signed.  And I guess that was the “official” day that I became an independent.  That was 28 years ago and today I am a proud member and builder of the NY Independence Party.

Marian Rich is a long-time independent political organizer, an Artistic Associate of the Castillo Theatre, and one of the members of the Castillo Theatre's Brand New Improve Show.