Live 2.0 Edition 2: The Innovation Edition

We hope you enjoy the Innovation Edition of Live 2.0. This month’s Edition features:

Innovation and Obsessing About the Sparkly Rock by Jim McCarthy

Carmen Ruest of Cirque du Soleil: Creativity on a Budget of 25 Cents or 25 Million

Why I (Reluctantly) Started Producing My Own Shows by Johnny Steele

The Secret Engine is the Theatre Itself by John Sylvain of the Sacred Fools Theatre

My Greatest Ambition, Natasha Tsakos of “Upwake”

Innovation and Obsessing About the Sparkly Rock by Jim McCarthy

“There’s a way to do it better — find it.” –Thomas Edison

Innovation means nothing more than doing something differently, but the concept can be intimidating. It sounds like something that only creative geniuses can do, and even then only in a flash of late-night inspiration. (Probably after too many drinks and a bout of moping over a lost love.)

Innovation can also sound expensive, like something that results from a week-long conference in Aspen with Tony Robbins and Prince, where assembled minds try to bring about a “paradigm shift.”

But innovation isn’t hard or expensive. We do it all the time. Somebody realizes they can leave work 10 minutes early, use a wireless laptop on the train, do the same amount of work and get home an hour earlier. That’s an innovation. It’s a small and personal innovation, but in a way, the simplicity of it should teach us about the nature of innovation: it often starts with the small things. Here’s an even more basic example.

Imagine our stoniest Stone Age ancestors as they sat huddled under a cliff to get out of a rainstorm. The last of their berries and half-cooked deer meat had been eaten, and the fire they had stumbled across (probably caused by lightning) had gone out with the storm.

They were hungry, cold, and, not only that, their entertainment options were limited. Downright scant, I’d say.

How did we get from that state to one in which most of us could get our favorite kind of sushi inside of 20 minutes? A state where if you want an ionizing air purifier or a copy of “Maid in Manhattan” or a ticket to a dark comedy about marriage, you could probably have all three before you get home tonight.

We got there by building a tower of innovation. Some primitive human, bored to tears in that clammy cave, thought to himself that as long as he was stuck there, he might as well do something that could help him avoid these situations in the future.

So he picked up that interesting rock he had found a couple days earlier and started to look at it and play with it. When he hit it against another rock, a spark of brightness jumped off it. Eventually, one landed on his arm, and it burned a little bit. Like fire…

For the next month, he obsessed about rocks, which he then noticed were pretty easy to find. The other tribesfolk mocked him, even blaming him for the fact that they missed the kill on a boar because he was messing with his rock. Even worse, he was getting dirty looks from his brother because a shower of sparks flew from the rock to his brother’s beard, singing it. This was not winning him any friends, nor was he influencing any primitive people.

Until the day he figured it out. Using this weird rock, he could make fire anytime. They could cook the meat they caught, which means the mysterious stomach pains that came after eating mostly went away. And during the rainstorms, they were now warm. And, being much more comfortable, someone decided to pass the time by telling the tribe a story.

I may not have the anthropology exactly right, but the point is that this was the bottom stone on a mighty tower of innovation. In this example, “doing things the way we’ve always done them” was a dead end. And all it took to try something new was a person who took note of that tiny speck of brightness coming from an ordinary rock.

Have you noticed anything odd, difficult to explain or unexpected at your organization? For instance, why does the bar keep running out of rum, but not vodka, at intermission? Why does the crowd laugh at the same “wrong” place in the show every night? If Saturday night is your “big” night of sales, why do Friday night’s balcony seats keep selling out first?

All of these could be potential sources of innovation: Maybe your patrons have developed a taste for Mojitos, which you could turn into a pre-show event; maybe the line that mentions Elvis Presley is funny because Weird Al just put out a song about Elvis’s love of jumpsuits, and you could benefit by working that into a few more places; maybe Friday night’s balcony keeps selling out because the Red Hat Society loves your show and is coming en masse on Friday nights. You should probably reach out to them.

At any given moment, we’re standing on the tower built by past innovation, but we’re also at the base of a future tower that will be built by innovation. All you have to do is make it part of your routine to investigate the oddities and see what you find.

The live entertainment industry has been incredibly innovative over the last several years, but for live entertainment to take center stage in the entertainment economy, we’ve got to obsess about innovation the way our caveman friend obsessed about his sparkly rock.

Because the things you’re staring at all day have the same secret magic hidden inside them.

Find it!

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Carmen Ruest of Cirque du Soleil: Creativity on a Budget of 25 Cents or 25 Million

Interview with Carmen Ruest, founding member and Director of Creation of Cirque du Soleil:

Live 2.0: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today, Carmen.

CR: It’s my pleasure to talk about what we do here and to convince more people to discover what we do at CDS.

L2: Talk about your long association with Cirque du Soleil (CDS).

CR: CDS has been part of my life for 25 years and prior to that, three years before, starting in 1980, I was part of the stilt theatre troupe Échassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul that [Cirque du Soleil's] Gilles Ste-Croix created, and in that troupe there was also the founder of CDS, Guy Laliberté. Like me, Guy was a street performer. Gilles Ste-Croix was staying in a small village called Baie-Saint-Paul near Quebec City and I was in Montreal. I was already working as a street performer with my friends here in Montreal. It was really a new thing, since the end of the 70s; let’s say since ’75, it was the birth, really, on the streets of Montreal of a new kind of street performer.

It started in these years, and I was with the first artists who started to do that here on the street.

L2: What was new about what you and Guy and Gilles were doing? What was the innovation?

CR: What was new? The first thing that was new that you had never seen before was the stilt theatre troupe. That had never been done before neither in Quebec, nor in Canada. Gilles Ste-Croix had this idea because closer to here in Vermont there was a yearly festival in the full moon of August; there was an outside festival happening in Glover, Vermont, the Bread and Puppet Festival, directed by Peter Schumann. And this man was really creating social theatre plays without words using giant puppets and stilts and he was holding a festival every month of August on his land in Glover, in the country.

It was an underground theatre thing, and we were always going there, artists of that underground thing. And that’s where Gilles Ste-Croix discovered that stilts could be part of theatre because Peter Schumann was using stilts in his show; so it was influenced by that.

Gilles decided, “Well, why not create a stilt theatre show?” He presented a project called Club des Talons Hauts (High Hills Club), the Culture [Ministry] of the Government. There aren’t so many of these anymore, but at the time, the government was giving money for special creative projects for young troupes—theatre, mime, dance, you know. He got this grant to do this project, and it was six months of work: 2 to 3 months of creating and the summer to travel in Quebec Province to perform our stilt theatre.

L2: How did that evolve into CDS?

CR: Quebec City was celebrating the 450th anniversary of the discovery of Canada, and the provincial Quebec government and the Canadian government were with France coordinating a special project and big, big celebration for the summer of ’84 to celebrate this great anniversary. Jacques Cartier, who discovered Canada in 1534, came here by boat, and at the furthest east point of Quebec Province.

Guy Laliberté had the idea to propose a touring circus for this special celebration. It was a lot of money and Guy was the one who was fortunate to travel during winter time because he had some money. He was a street musician, and he was traveling in Europe, and he saw their circuses. Here, on the street, [performances] happen only in summer time, from June to September. That’s it, so the rest of the year, I was giving dance classes or anything else that we could do to earn a livelihood. So that’s how he got the money, and started the company.

But it was already something original that he wanted to present, a circus without animals, which was something very new, and which was mixing the spirit, the free spirit, of street performing. All that created, really, a new style of performing.

We didn’t have in Quebec any circus tradition to refer to.

L2: Was there a circus tradition elsewhere that you referred to?

CR: Guy went to Europe, and also the street performers that were coming here in Quebec, there was already a festival happening in Quebec City every summer, and we had a contract to work there on the street. It was the Quebec Summer Festival, and it was the only place where we could see street performers from foreign countries.

For sure, we didn’t want to go with a circus with animals, not even a dog, you know?

L2: That was a big change?

CR: The circuses that were coming here were mostly not with animals, but with rides. But the shows that we were bringing were more in the style of Federico Fellini. Music, street bands, it was really a mix of European street bands and the bands playing here, and it was the birth of what we were going to do.

It was a mix of European flavor, theatrical skills, and the style was original. It was always with live-played original music, as well. Everything was original.

L2: Street theatre combined with a new kind of circus.

CR: For us, it was natural. I was a dancer; other people were musicians, and we were already doing parades, just playing in any village or city, without having a contract, just, you know, taking the instruments out of the truck and putting on beautiful costumes like in a Fellini movie and just walking down the street with nothing.

There was a lot of freedom and craziness, I would say. Without fear, just so natural that it was somehow starting something that even now, 25 years later, it’s still like that here at CDS. Everything is possible.

L2: Is that spirit of freedom and “everything is possible” still part of the CDS culture?

CR: Yes, I think so. Gilles and Guy are still there, and there are 6 or 8 people from the group that are still in the company. The spirit from the beginning is still there, with those concepts. Every creator that comes here, even Robert Lepage or François Girard who directed our show that we put in Tokyo last year or Michel Lemieux who created Delirium, after they do a show, they are really amazed when they arrive here that we give them a small list of parameters that we would like them to do, but they basically have in front of them a white page. They have a lot of freedom in creating and proposing concepts. This is what we believe gives a lot of freshness to a creative team here.

L2: Then it’s important to pick the people you give that freedom to carefully. There’s a Cirque coherence to each show.

CR: Of course. The result of a creative process, the initial moment, is always the same. It’s a meeting between creators. It’s a meeting between Guy, Gilles, and the creator and the director, and from that meeting the sparkling and all they talk about grows into a concept that is worked with the director and all the other creators who are joining him.

That’s why we go on and that’s how we’ll go on another 25 years, I hope.

It’s the multiplicity of creative cells. By that I mean the creative team of a show; it’s like a movie set. It’s a bunch of people totally investing themselves to create a show. We see that in cinema with a film crew or production team.

The more creative cells we can create, that’s how we’ll go on.

L2: Explain the “creative cell.”

CR: A creative cell is also called a creative team. It’s put into place by Guy and Gilles. These two guys started the company together and that’s what they do. They choose the director, and the executive producer confirms a deal with a business partner, depending on whether it’s a residential show or a touring show, but in any case, there’s an executive producer and there’s a director, a director of creation. The Director of Creation works along with the Director and the other creators and designers of the show who are mostly freelancing.

When we choose the director, he’s free to work with designers or creators with whom he already collaborated or he can find with the help of the Director of Creation the members of the team that are needed to complete and continue the creative process of the show.

L2: So each show really is a new invention?

CR: Completely. And of course, the production director is part of it too. The basic nucleus of the creative cell is the director, the director of creation, the director of production and the executive producers. And they build the team around them.

L2: The organization started modestly but grew into a creative factory. Many who are reading this or hearing this are working in organizations, many small, and they admire CDS, but like CDS in the early days, they’re not rich in resources. You’ve seen the organization grow.

CR: I’ve seen it go from playing for the family at dinner. I did that, and just playing and just giving entertainment to people to get a good beer and sandwich for lunch.

What I say is never give up your dream, and if you really, truly believe in your vision, it can happen. It does need creativity, and creativity is still happening and rolling with a budget of 25 cents or 25 million. Ideas and the dream and the vision will always be there; that’s what we did for the last 25 years, and we were able enough to convince other people to support us and also let us keep control of the creativity.

It wasn’t easy because we were really stubborn in keeping total control of the creative content.

So I say to people, believe in your dream, don’t give up ever your vision. If you believe in yourself, the people you have to talk to and convince, they will believe in you.

L2: That’s important. Having the confidence and the ability to convince others to join you.

CR: It’s from inside out, eh? It’s not outside-in that you convince people. That means that you don’t need to look like you make a lot of money and have a lot of resources; it’s more if what you say speaks from your heart. People will buy it because they believe you.

It’s to convince people to risk with you. We risk every day. As a creativity-driven company, we take a lot of risks all the time. It’s not to fear, but be confident and believe in your dream. It may be surrealistic, but this is what creativity is.

L2: You’ve been in the organization for a long time. What are the things you’re proudest of and what are you most excited about in the future?

CR: The proudest of all is that today I can say after 25 years, I am still here for the same reason: Every day, artists are giving their best to give joy to the world; it’s a good thing to do.

The most exciting thing about the future? I think that we have found a way to go on that is really secure. It’s the way we’ve done it the last three or four years, the way we’ve managed to set up the creative cells. It works so well the way we’ve found out to do it that I’m not afraid that we’ll continue to do that. It’ll work for sure.

Will it be a small show or a big show? It doesn’t matter. Would it be just a little special event for one night or a residential show or a touring show under the big top, and we’re even doing shows in arenas now, and it’s still working the same.

I think the recipe of putting together a creative cell the way we’ve done it has proven itself so successful that it works. Our creative process is measuring on the three years prior to the premiere of the show; it’s measuring every step. Are we doing ok? It took us a long time to find a good process. The process is about five years old.

L2: So at that point the organization was 20 years old, and yet you’re still innovating on process.

CR: Oh my god, yes! You should see! We must be the company that has changed its own structure, its organizational chart, four times in the same year.

L2: So it’s a constant process of reinventing yourselves?

CR: Yeah, and we give ourselves tools that are really useful. We have a creative summit, a creative forum where we invite all the creators, and we are really open to hear all employees of the company.

We’re 4,400 employees in the company now, and there are many forums where any employee of Cirque who is not in Montreal can send in information. It’s the communication and the structure that we put on, but it’s still a work in progress.

We’ve found a way to multiply these creative cells that works really well. The only negative point last year, because we opened three shows last year, was that we had three premieres in three months!

For the 25th anniversary, Guy was saying that the most important thing in this period of time on the planet when the economy is not so well is to keep the employees here, keep our people working. We’re still going on this year with three new shows.

L2: Anything else?

CR: I would like to say that we created this company pursuing the making of a dream, and that’s what we did for the last 25 years, and that’s what we want to pass to the world. We have to take care of our planet and keep dreaming!

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Why I (Reluctantly) Started Producing My Own Shows by Johnny Steele

Johnny Steele is a successful comic from the San Francisco Bay Area who realized that simply going from club to club and performing was no way to run a railroad, or, comedy career…

The truth is I never wanted anything to do with producing comedy shows. I only wanted to be a comic. I was happy with that life, traveling the country, visiting different towns, making new friends, and, perhaps most importantly for a single young thirty-something, drinking for free.

What I liked most about those days was that my only responsibility was to the audience. No press releases to send, no insurance to buy. I’d simply arrive at the venue each night, clubs often with names like Giggles or Yuck Yucks, just in time to hop on stage and perform. When I was done with my set I would retire to the bar and schmooze, my day’s work done. Only an idiot would give up that life, right? Okay, cue the idiot.

One day (perhaps after suffering an undiagnosed stroke?) I decided to start producing my own shows. I’d grown unhappy with the venues being offered to me. Yeah, some of the clubs were well run, a few managers respected the performers, and occasionally the audiences were sober and polite. But as often as not I ended up performing under conditions that made the food fight scene in Animal House look civilized.

The legendary bay area radio personality Scoop Nisker is fond of saying, “If you don’t like the news then go out and make some of your own.” I figured that since I didn’t like the venues I was working, I’d go out and produce some of my own. So armed with an old dog-eared copy of Guerilla Marketing and a truckload of naiveté, I set out to produce a summer tour of Northern California theaters.

Johnny Steele’s Summer Variety Road Show, a mix of stand up comedy, music, and interviews, hit the road in June of 1999. Each night I decorated the stage like a backyard with a clothesline full of swimsuits and towels, a bar-b-que, and a couple of webbed garden chairs, all swiped from my dad’s yard. The poor guy probably wondered why his patio seemed so empty.

The tour was an artistic success and I made a few bucks, too. Most importantly, it was a blast and ever since I’ve been hooked on producing. Each time I pass by a theater in a small town I think, ‘I wonder what that costs to rent or if they’d be interested in doing a split of the door?’.

I’ll always be an entertainer first and a producer second, but I’m hooked and will continue to produce shows forever. I do, however, miss drinking for free.

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The Secret Engine is the Theater Itself by John Sylvain

John Sylvain is one of the “Founding Fools” of L.A.’s Sacred Fools Theater.

Sacred Fools Theater is one of many small theaters surviving and thriving in Los Angeles. Small theaters everywhere run on miniscule budgets and Sacred Fools is no exception. After paying the rent, building the sets and paying actors and royalties, there’s very little money left for the crucial work of getting the word out and filling seats, so we have to be creative (meaning free) and we have to be effective (meaning if we don’t sell tickets we close the doors).

Over many years of experimenting with advertisements, mailings, handouts, posters and everything else we could think of, it has become clear that there is only one thing that really works: word of mouth.

Good reviews and slick graphics can help support word of mouth, but ultimately, with our small houses and smaller budgets, we rely on our audience to fill our seats. So we need an audience to get an audience. The problem is how do we get those first folks in the door?

The secret engine that we use is the theater itself. A small, all-volunteer theater is a community-building machine. Each cast is a tribe and each performance builds a community. Our late-night comedy show, Serial Killers, has a passionate following and that community is nurtured (in a hilarious way) by the host and performers during the show and at the weekly party afterward. Audience members feel very much like they’re part of the show. Before the 100th performance last Saturday, we all participated in a “high five city,” where everyone in the building tried to give a high five to everyone else.

This community building is much easier now thanks to all of the social media tools that are available. We use Facebook and YouTube to keep in touch with our community, remind them of upcoming performances and give them tools to tell their friends about how great our current show is.

The more we can strengthen the bond we have with these communities, the stronger we are in the long term. The health of the theater depends on the shared laughter and catharsis during performances, and the future of the theater depends on the crowd that hangs out afterward to have a beer and chat with the performers.

Come by sometime and check it out!

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Natasha Tsakos: “My Greatest Ambition”

“I would like to be the first clown to ever go to the moon and perform on the moon.”

Natasha Tsakos is a performer and artistic director who prefers to call herself a clown. “I don’t like to take myself too seriously,” says Natasha, the genius behind Upwake, a 3-D animated stage show where she interacts with virtual objects and people, including clones of herself as her onstage persona, Zero.

Keep watching the Live 2.0 site because our chat with Natasha will be posted in full in the next couple of weeks!

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