Energy Efficiency in Professional Theatre:
In the first book I told you about the amc = v equation. Now here’s how it’s used in professional theatre.
Professional theatre companies are an excellent model of collective groups that survive or fail according to their complicity with human evolution. This happens in two ways. First, because professional theatre companies constantly compete against each other and with other threats to their survival, they are ruled by the law of survival of the fittest. Second, because theatre is one of the oldest studies of human behavior in the world and people who are particularly sensitive to human behavior are naturally attracted to work in theatre, laws of human behavior are employed more intentionally and effectively in professional theatre than they are within society at large. That is true even if those laws of human behavior are actively employed by professional theatre artists only by intuition, which is most often the case.
In effect, professional theatre companies advance their own survival interests by manipulating the amc = v equation to maximize the gross output of the company, even without theatre artists being conscious of the equation. The best example I’ve seen was in the company at the high school where I taught technical theatre. While it wasn’t a professional theatre company in the sense that company members were paid, the director operated it as a professional theatre company anyway, in order to maximize its gross output. He was very sensitive to human behavior, and he had been making his living by turning human behavior into art for over 20 years.
As I’ve said already, theatre artists break dialogue down into beats. Another fundamental rule of the use of beats in professional theatre is that, if possible, beats are always positive. This isn’t always possible, it isn’t true in real life, and it is used much less effectively in movies and television, but in theatre it serves a very specific purpose.
By every character always trying to have a positive effect on the other characters, the audience is made to sympathize with every character in the play. That makes the conflicts in the play much more intense, because it makes the audience want every side in the conflict to win, which isn’t possible. That pulls the audience’s emotional connections to the characters in the opposing directions of every character in the play.
Often, there is no character who is clearly right in a conflict, which makes the conflict that much more tragic to the audience. Unlike the characters in the play, the audience members can sense that every character is trying to do what they think is right, but they are coming into conflict with each other anyway.
Even when one character is clearly a villain, by playing only positive beats the actor makes the character feel much more villainous to the audience. While the audience members can see that he is a villain intellectually, they can feel themselves sympathizing with him emotionally anyway. The actor plays the villain in a way that creates conflict not only within the play, but also within the audience members themselves.
The director at the high school had been using beats professionally for so long that he used them in dealing with people in real life also. Sometimes he did it intentionally, but often he did it out of habit. He played positive beats in dealing with people virtually all the time. By playing his beats in ways that accomplished his own objectives in the interpersonal communication while benefiting his listener also, he evoked much more positive reactions from his listeners. In effect, he was the exact opposite of a villain.
One example of his positive approach to communication was that he perceived all ideas as good ideas, but some ideas as better than others—that is, he inspired creativity among his students by never labeling their ideas as wrong. Another example was the way he never used emotional aggression to try to convince students to do what he told them by diminishing their sense of self-worth. Instead, he spoke to them as adults who possessed the intelligence to see that he was right. Other examples were generally keeping a good sense of humor about life, rarely losing his temper when students made mistakes, and sympathizing with his students even when he had to punish them for breaking theatre company rules.
As a result, everyone who knew the director said that talking to him always felt spiritually uplifting. By employing emotional communication that inspired the students to excel instead of using hostile or threatening emotional communication to coerce cooperation from them, he focused the combined energy of the members of the group on their mutual interests, instead of wasting energy in conflicts. As a result, when the theatre company competed against a dozen equally matched high schools at the state drama competitions every year, it had taken first place nine out of the previous ten years, and took second place the other year only because the director suffered a serious illness in the middle of the rehearsal schedule.
By setting this example of the uses of emotional communication, and showing their obvious benefits to the group, he inspired virtually all of his students to follow his example. Within the theatre company he built a culture of cooperation, minimized conflict, and inspired his students to help maintain it, thereby maximizing the net human energy output of the theatre company.
By being aware of the amc = v equation— although not in intellectual scientific terms—the director was able to put it to active use. In this case, he put forth a relatively small amount of his own effort to figure out how to increase the students’ desire and willingness to put forth work energy, and thereby dramatically raised the value of a from what it would have been had he not put forth that effort. Since the equation refers to ability, motivation, willingness to put forth energy toward a goal, value of available resources, amount of available resources, cultural adaptation to available resources, and the product resulting from the combination of those factors, the basic amc = v equation applies to any endeavor, with the one difference that the value of v is only written in the person’s DNA for the search for meaning in one’s life. In this case, the director was applying the amc = v equation to operating a theatre company—which could be referred to as amc = t.
By always being sure to play positive beats in dealing with his students, the director always interacted with them in ways they could readily perceive benefited their own evolutionary interests (mainly survival), even if they only perceived that intuitively. If the director had played negative beats, he would’ve threatened the students. The students naturally would’ve defended themselves by retaliating against the director, by diminishing their own sense of value of themselves to match their perception of the director’s sense of value of them, or by resorting to any other defense mechanism. Any defense mechanism the students used would’ve diverted their attention and energy away from their performances.
By intentionally playing beats that advanced the students’ evolutionary interests compared to the way most people talk, the director increased his students’ motivation and willingness to put forth energy toward their goal, and thereby raised the value of a. As a result, the students worked harder and won their competitions. As a by-product of intentionally raising the value of a in the amc = t equation, he also raised the value of a in the amc = v equation, which made people feel more satisfied with their lives when dealing with him—which was why talking to him felt “spiritually uplifting” to so many people.
This basic principle is understood throughout the business world—that productivity can be increased by minimizing conflict and motivating employees. The reason the director was able to employ this principle so much more effectively than most business leaders is because he honestly did want to raise the value of a in the amc = v equation for the people with whom he dealt, and people could perceive that.
A business leader who tries to raise the value of a in the amc = t equation for his employees without trying to raise it in the amc = v equation won’t be able to raise a as high, because he isn’t raising the value of a at its single most fundamental level to his employees. At best, he can raise the value of a to a lesser extent and with a greater amount of effort on his own part. At worst, he can accidentally reduce the value of a for his employees, if they perceive that he is trying mislead them in his attempts to raise the value of a in the amc = v equation when in fact he is only trying to raise it in the amc = t equation. (The most immediate effect is that the employer will reduce his employee’s sense of value of their lives by making them realize that their livelihoods depend on working for someone who treats them like robots.) If the employees perceive that their employer is attempting to deceive them, it will threaten their survival instincts, which will create conflict instead of motivate them and eliminate conflict.
By putting forth some effort ahead of time to learn the uses of emotional communication and then putting them to use in creating the cultural background of the theatre company, the director greatly increased the energy output of the group from what it would’ve been otherwise. That is, he created a system whose net human energy output exceeded its human energy input reliably and sustainably. In effect, he built a human potential reactor.
Since the director intentionally altered the equation, and since that alteration to the equation wouldn’t’ve remained without his guidance, it can be said that he raised the value of t by raising the value of a. In a typical professional theatre company, however, there is no single person who is responsible for altering the equation intentionally. In that case, the company raises the value of t by raising the value of c. Each group of people who are talented and skilled at emotional communication competes against every other group of people who are talented and skilled at emotional communication, which means the members of each group are faced with a higher level struggle for survival based on their ability to increase the value of t than are the people of any other groups that compete professionally. Without being aware of the amc = t equation, these people who are talented and skilled at emotional communication act in the way they feel best benefits their survival. As a result, each of them behaves in the same ways that the high school director behaved in order to raise the value of a, and by doing this collectively, they raise the value of c. In other words, they build their human potential reactor out of shared cultural values, not out of intentional manipulation of their work environment.