Dancing at Lughnasa: When ‘Atmosphere Is More Real than Incident’

From left, Bláithín Mac Gabhann, Alison Oliver, Louisa Harland and Siobhán McSweeney in ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ © Johan Persson

‘Look at yourselves, will you! Just look at yourselves! Dancing at our time of day? That’s for young people with no duties and no responsibilities and nothing in their heads but pleasure.’

I recently saw an excellent production of Brian Friel’s 1990 work ‘Dancing at Lughnasa.’ (The National Theatre, London until 27 May.)

This ‘memory play’ is shot through with nostalgia and wistfulness. It asks us to consider how we reconstruct our own past; and how our recollections are as much forged from atmosphere as incident.

A middle-aged man Michael Evans recalls the summer of 1936 when he was a young boy living with his unmarried mother and four spinster aunts in rural Donegal.

Oldest sister Kate, a teacher and the only wage earner in the house, is prim, devout and worried about how to make ends meet. Joker Maggie sings popular songs, tells riddles and smokes Woodbines. Chris, Michael’s mother, is dreamy, romantic and prone to depression. Quiet, thoughtful Agnes, in wraparound apron, takes particular care of wellington-booted, ‘simple’ Rose.

‘When are we going to get a decent mirror to see ourselves in?’
‘You can see enough to do you.’
‘Steady on, girl. Today it’s lipstick; tomorrow it’s the gin bottle.’

The sisters babble, bicker and bake soda bread on the large iron range. They tend to their pet white rooster, fetch turf and pick bilberries by the old quarry. They reflect on old friends and missed opportunities; on family secrets and whether to attend the forthcoming harvest dance. 

Justine Mitchell & Siobhán McSweeney. Photo by Johan Persson

‘This must be kept in the family, Maggie! Not a word of this must go outside these walls – d’you hear? – not a syllable!’

Humour, discipline, determination and faith sustain them through what are clearly tough times. Their world is on the cusp of change. The school plans to lay off Kate due to falling rolls, and a new factory seems likely to deprive the two younger siblings of the little money they earn knitting gloves at home. Even the civil war in faraway Spain threatens to impact on their lives.

‘Even though I was only a child of seven at the time I know I had a sense of unease, some awareness of a widening breach between what seemed to be and what was, of things changing too quickly before my eyes, of becoming what they ought not to be.’

Through it all the women lift their spirits by dancing to their unreliable wireless (fondly referred to as Marconi). To the fast heavy beat of a ceili band, one by one they break into a jig. Knitting dropped, feet stomping, arms, legs and hair flying - they sing and shout and spin and turn. It’s a wondrous sight of wild, raucous, almost pagan, abandon.

‘I had witnessed Marconi’s voodoo derange those kind, sensible women and transform them into shrieking strangers.’

‘Oh play to me, Gypsy, the moon's high above,
Oh, play me your serenade, the song I love.
Oh sing to me, Gypsy, and when you are gone,
Your song will be haunting me and lingering on.’

Gracie Fields, ‘Play to Me, Gypsy’ (K Vacek / J Kennedy)

Brian Friel. Image courtesy of RTÉ

Friel was in his early sixties when he wrote ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’. It was based quite closely on his own upbringing. What’s striking about the play is that not too much happens. The sisters have to tend to their brother, who has returned from missionary work in Uganda suffering from mental illness. Chris must navigate occasional visits from Michael’s charming but feckless father. And Rose goes walkabout. In a concluding speech Friel explains that his recollection of this distant time is constructed more from mood than particular events.

'There is one memory of that Lughnasa time that visits me most often; and what fascinates me about that memory is that it owes nothing to fact. In that memory atmosphere is more real than incident and everything is simultaneously actual and illusory.'

In the communications business we, quite appropriately, spend a good deal of time constructing narratives. Stories are powerful vehicles for messages; for conveying features, benefits and rewards. But do we sufficiently attend to atmosphere – to the mood, spirit and feelings that we wish our brands to express? Surely atmosphere provides the fabric for enduring recollections.

As ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ demonstrates, you can convey a great deal without recourse to specific incidents, actions or narratives – and sometimes without using words at all.

'When I remember it, I think of it as dancing. Dancing with eyes half closed because to open them would break the spell. Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement – as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements. Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary…'

'Twas on the Isle of Capri that he found her
Beneath the shade of an old walnut tree.
Oh, I can still see the flowers blooming round her
When they met on the Isle of Capri.
She was as sweet as the rose at the dawning
But somehow fate hadn't meant it to be,
And though he sailed with the tide in the morning,
Yet his heart's on the Isle of Capri.’

Gracie Fields, 'Isle of Capri’ (J Kennedy / W Grosz)

No. 419

‘My Nails Are Longer Than My Future’: ‘Our Generation’ and the Power of Verbatim Reporting

'They make you remember so much things. And it’s just like a waste of brain space. Yeah, like my brain’s only thirty-two GB.’

I recently watched ‘Our Generation,’ a fine play articulating the perspectives of contemporary teenagers. (The National Theatre, London, until 9 April, and then the Chichester Festival Theatre, 22 April to 14 May.)

‘If I-I don’t get my top grades I’m just gonna go into policing. I feel like I’m good at investigating like when something goes on at home. I’m very good at solving the crime.’

Over a five-year period Alecky Blythe and her team of ‘collectors’ interviewed twelve young people in London, Birmingham, Northamptonshire, Anglesey, Glasgow and Belfast. She then edited these testimonies into a tapestry of the concerns, obsessions, fears and fantasies of a generation. The teenagers are played by talented actors who retain the hesitations, repetitions and deviations of the source material.

‘I switched, um, friends groups. Er, I’m hanging more round with Sienna, cos like, Sienna’s a quiet girl and she hangs around with, like, people like Amy and Charity and they’re, like, quiet people. And then, yeah cos of that, I think that if I continue hanging around with her then I will get myself into less trouble.’

The young people come across as at once charming and frustrating. They oscillate wildly from one subject to another. Sometimes they are uncannily wise and sometimes extraordinarily foolish. They worry about exams and fitting in and relationships. They dream of wealth, celebrity, America and Primark. 

'Celebrities are a big part of my life because I’ve always wanted to become one.’

‘I’ve gotta be at a hundred per cent health so I can watch Love Island.’

‘I’m not falling in love because one, I’m not allowed; two, I can’t be bothered with it; three, it never works out.’

Their worldview is naturally narrow and self-centred. And they have a tendency to catastrophize.

‘Be obsessed with yourself because you never meet anyone like yourself.’

‘I’ve stopped going out, I’ve got no friends, I’ve got no life.’

Occasionally they reveal heart-rending vulnerability. 

‘So, mm, as I got older I started realising that, you know, um, I’m not really, like, I don’t know I just feel like… I’m not pretty.’

To some extent these concerns are timeless. I recognise many of them from my own distant youth - with a pang of melancholy. But then there are also themes that are particular to the modern world.

‘I love my phone. So much. It’s my life. I’m not even lying. It’s got my whole life in it.’

‘I just need to take a picture, like, yeah? That’s my mentality, take a picture. Instagram’s gotta have a picture.’

‘I got nine’een likes on that, eighty-two on that, hundred and twenty on that, a hundred and three on that, a hundred and twenty-two on that.’

‘Maybe it’s FOMO culture; we’re constantly seeing what everyone else is doing so we wanna be involved, so we never get a break.’

‘Our Generation’ is an excellent example of what’s termed verbatim theatre. It documents the spoken words of real people, and as such it has a very particular, authentic resonance.

I have always been struck by the way verbatim text sounds so different to what we are accustomed to hearing on stage and screen. Here we are confronted with the pauses, stutters, malapropisms and grammatical errors of everyday speech. It’s raw, genuine, true.

‘I’m not accepting this. This isn’t, this isn’t, this isn’t my result. I can do much more better than this… I don’t want to be in this class any more. I made the choice. I don’t wanna be in this class.’

I began my career as a Qualitative Market Researcher. I’d go up and down the country talking to consumers about beer and boilers and baked beans. When we presented our findings, I tried to impress my Clients with my insight, analysis and eloquence. One day I realised that the Clients were not that interested in my intellect. They were, however, fascinated by the occasional direct quotes that I inserted into the debrief. Suddenly they looked up and leaned in. These verbatim statements put the consumer in the room - unfiltered, unmediated, unvarnished. When subsequently we were able to video respondents, the effect was enhanced still further.

‘I don’t like to think about my future, like ever. I literally haven’t thought about what I’m gonna eat for dinner.’

I had to come to terms with the fact that real people articulating their opinions in their own voice are more compelling than my interpretation of what real people say. Perhaps we should all endeavour, not just to report what consumers are doing and thinking – but to bring their perspectives into the room with us.

‘That wasn’t me, that was someone else.’

I left ‘Our Generation’ with a greater understanding of, and sympathy for, a much younger generation. It’s tough out there. I also emerged with a commitment to introduce a little youthful levity into the too earnest world of Middle-to-Old Age.

‘I don’t want to be like serious adult then have serious children and have serious future in a serious house and serious everything.’

‘It's a rap race, with a fast pace.
Concrete words, abstract words,
Crazy words and lying words.
Hazy words and dying words,
Words of faith, tell me straight.
Rare words and swear words,
Good words and bad words.
What are words worth?
What are words worth? Words.’

Tom Tom Club, ‘Wordy Rappinghood’ (C Frantz Christopher / S Stanley) 

No. 364

The Industrialisation of Storytelling: Have We Lost the Plot?

Arthur Darvill as Dave in The Antipodes at the National Theatre (Photo: Manuel Harlan)

‘I just wanted to remind all of you that what you’re doing is important. We need stories as a culture. It’s what we live for. These are dark times. Stories are a little bit of light that we cup in our palms like votive candles to show us the way out of the forest.‘
Sandy, ‘The Antipodes’

I recently saw Annie Baker’s excellent play ‘The Antipodes’ at the National Theatre, London (until 23 November).

Baker’s writing is thoughtful, funny, full of nuance and intrigue. She seems more interested in character than narrative; in atmosphere than plot. Her dramas unfold naturally, in their own time, enigmatically. Critics have called her work ‘slow theatre’.

‘The Antipodes’ is set in a brainstorming session amongst a group of creatives trying to come up with an extraordinary story. No medium is specified.

Most of us recognise the large characterless conference room with its grand glass table and carpet reminiscent of ‘The Shining’. There is the industrial quantity of mineral water, the obsession with food – ordering it with great ceremony, eating it with quiet intensity. There is the reverence for authority and process, the dominant masculinity, the awkward silences, the vainglorious Boss. There is the arrogant veteran, the patronised PA, the eccentric knitter, the selective note taker. The participant who is ‘disappeared’ half way through the process. There is the mythologizing of the company’s Golden Age. The lanyards and the NDAs. The liberal use of ‘awesome’ and ‘genius’. The swearing.

It’s all painfully familiar.

‘The most important thing is that we all feel comfortable saying whatever weird shit comes into our minds so we don’t feel like we have to self-censor and we can all just sit around telling stories. Because that’s where the good stuff comes from.’

Of course, only the Boss is allowed to use his phone in this brainstorm, and he is constantly leaving the room, distracted by domestic concerns. A conference call with senior management begins with a chat about the weather and then lurches uncomfortably into technical difficulties. Despite promises to respect participants’ time, as the project proceeds the sessions become longer and later, until finally the creatives are sleeping in the conference room. 

 ‘The stories we create teach people what it’s like to be someone else on a visceral level. As storytellers we know how to shift perspective and inhabit different viewpoints. Imagine what would happen if everyone in the world could do every once in a while what we already do on a daily basis. It would be revolutionary.’

Baker seems to be asking us to question the value of storytelling and its relevance to contemporary issues and anxieties.

We all know that stories make sense of the world. They teach our children about cause and effect, freedom and responsibility. They enable us to articulate our brightest hopes and darkest fears. They provide understanding and escape. They help us walk in other people’s shoes. They bind communities together.

But we have turned storytelling into an industry. We classify and codify it. It is a course we can take at college, a craft we can learn, a process we can teach. It’s a commodity, a business, an algorithm.

Baker quotes Christopher Booker’s 'The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories.'

Annie Baker, Photo: Zack DeZon

1. Overcoming the Monster
2. Rags to Riches
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Rebirth
6. Comedy
7. Tragedy

Baker wants to remind us that storytelling is not entirely benign. Stories can mislead and distract, exaggerate and embellish. Stories can obstruct truth and defer action. And our individual ‘journeys’ can be contrived and self-deceiving. One of the characters expresses concern that personal experiences shouldn’t simply be translated into material for storytelling. Surely some episodes are too precious to be broadcast.

‘I guess I’ve always felt like my personal life is the part of my life that I don’t want to turn into a story.’

We become aware that, while the creatives are struggling to invent the greatest story ever told, all is not well in the real world beyond the conference room. There seems to be an escalation of storms and natural disasters out there. Towards the end of the play the Boss questions the relevance of stories to a world facing existential crisis. 

‘I think maybe there are no more stories. Not that we’ve told all the stories. Or that there are only six types of stories or something. But I think maybe it’s the end of an era. Or maybe it should be the end of an era. Like maybe this is the worst possible time in the history of the world to be telling stories.’

So where does this lead us? 

Well, despite the compelling provocation posed by ‘The Antipodes’, I still believe in the power of stories to convey understanding, to create community and to inspire change. I still believe therefore that they have a role in tackling our current concerns. But I also think we need to protect the intimacy and magic of storytelling from commoditisation and industrialisation. We need to ensure storytelling prompts action rather than postpones it.  And we need to be cautious about the ends to which we deploy it.

 ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live.’
Joan Didion

'But if you disguise
What these things are doing to me,
If you criticize them,
I'll know that you can see.
Until you realize,
It's just a story.
Until you realize,
It's just a story.’

The Teardrop Explodes, 'Treason (It’s Just a Story)’ (G Dwyer / N Michael / J Cope)

No. 257

‘The Divided Voice’: There Are Two Sides To Every Story

Alan Bennett, photo Gemma Levine / Getty Images

‘Nobody saves anyone’s life. Just postpones their death.’

I recently saw ‘Allelujah!’, Alan Bennett’s fine new play about the National Health Service. (The Bridge Theatre in London until 29 September.)

‘Allelujah!’ focuses on the Beth, an old fashioned, cradle-to-grave hospital that is at the heart of its local community.

‘Here at the Beth, cosy, friendly and above all local, we believe that yesterday is the new tomorrow.’

The Beth is threatened with closure by a Department of Health that favours efficiency drives, centres of excellence and specialist units.

‘What makes a good hospital is an available bed.’

In an effort to court favour with the Minister, the Beth’s management has renamed its wards: from Princess Margaret, Wordsworth and Mountbatten, to Shirley Bassey, Fatima Whitbread and Dusty Springfield. It has also mounted a campaign to fight for the Beth’s survival.

But a consultant close to the Minister reveals that their efforts to keep the hospital open will ultimately prove futile.

‘Small, badly run and in the red, it would undoubtedly close. Efficiently run and meeting its targets it should close too, because, if it is profitable, why is it not in the private sector?...The State should not be seen to work. If the State is seen to work, we shall never be rid of it.’

We know that Bennett’s sympathies are with the Left. But ‘Allelujah!’ is not a piece of straightforward agitprop. In the course of the work the playwright explores the various perspectives of patients, their families, staff, management and Government. He wants to tease out his own point of view by probing the healthcare dilemma from many angles.

‘You don’t put yourself into what you write. You find yourself there.’

In his Introduction to the play Bennett directly addresses the question of the authorial voice.

‘Writing a play I have never tried to hide the sound of my own voice. It hasn’t always been where an audience or critic has thought to find it and certainly not always in the mouth of the leading character. It’s often a divided voice or a dissenting one; two things (at least) are being said and I am not always sure which one I agree with.’

We live in an era of conviction. We celebrate single-mindedness, clarity and commitment. We like to secure ourselves in a social media cocoon of affirmation and endorsement. So it’s rare to encounter a ‘divided voice’: one that is undecided, open to debate, sensitive to nuance.

And yet, as the philosopher John Stuart Mill observed, an opinion that does not recognize opposing arguments is itself somewhat fragile. 

'He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.’

John Stuart Mill, ‘On Liberty’

I think we in the marketing and communications industry would do well to reflect on these words.

We like to encourage passion and positivity. But sometimes our enthusiasm and evangelism translate into dogmatism and obstinacy. Our unchallenged convictions are boldly expressed, but sustained by shallow roots.

Back in the day, when we presented draft strategies to our boss Nigel Bogle, he would respond with provocations that usually began: ‘I could easily construct an argument…’ He knew that recognizing alternative beliefs and courses of action served to test, evolve and support our own; and that through the melting pot of diverse opinion we could forge new ideas and fresh opportunities.

Agencies should learn to be comfortable with discussion and dissent. They should be environments that support different perspectives and points of view; that examine and challenge established assumptions; that celebrate the ‘divided voice.’

There is of course one caveat. Whilst encouraging a broad range of thoughts and theories, we should be ruthlessly disciplined around facts - now more than ever. As the former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked:

‘Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.’

‘There are always two sides
To every story.
But two wrongs can't make it right.
Oh, and two mistakes will only bring you heartache,
And you both will end up losing the fight.’

Etta James, 'Two Sides (To Every Story)’ (Bill Davis)

No. 193

‘The Landscape of Fact’: How Measurement and Language Can Become Vehicles of Control

Photo: Colin Morgan by David Stewart for The National Theatre

‘Yes, it is a rich language… full of the mythologies of fantasy and hope and self-deception — a syntax opulent with tomorrows. It is our response to mud cabins and a diet of potatoes; our only method of replying to … inevitabilities.’

There’s an excellent production of Brian Friel’s 1980 play ‘Translations’ running at the National Theatre in London (until 11 August).

The drama is set in 1833 amongst the Irish-speaking community of Baile Beag, Donegal. Bibulous Hugh, ‘a large man, with residual dignity’, teaches Latin and Greek literature to the local peasantry at his informal ‘hedge school.’ In a ramshackle old barn his students learn grammar and word derivations, and swap quotations from Homer, Tacitus and Virgil.

‘There was an ancient city which, ‘tis said, Juno loved above all the lands. And it was the goddess’s aim and cherished hope that here should be the capital of all nations – should the fates perchance allow that.’

English is rarely spoken in the area ‘and then usually for the purposes of commerce, a use to which [that] tongue seemed particularly suited.’

Meanwhile British troops are camped nearby charting a map of the area for the Ordnance Survey. This entails Anglicising the local place names. So Bun na hAbhann becomes Burnfoot; Druim Dubh becomes Dromduff; and Baile Beag becomes Ballybeg.

Hugh is no admirer of the English language.

‘English succeeds in making it sound…plebeian.’

And he explains to the British sappers that their culture is lost on the Irish.

‘Wordsworth? … No, I’m afraid we’re not familiar with your literature, Lieutenant. We feel closer to the warm Mediterranean. We tend to overlook your island.’

The British are also in the process of establishing a national education system in Ireland. This is one of the first state-run, standardised systems of primary education in the world. English will be the official language, and the new system will make the traditional Irish-speaking ‘hedge schools’ redundant.

The drama prompts us to think about control. The British claim that their measurements and mapping will lead to fairer, more accurate taxation. But there’s an underlying suspicion that darker motives are at play. On the face of it the new school system will be superior to the old, and some in the Irish community regard English as a gateway tongue to travel and better prospects. But Hugh is concerned that Ireland is losing its cultural identity.

‘Remember that words are signals, counters. They are not immortal. And it can happen — to use an image you’ll understand — it can happen that a civilization can be imprisoned in a linguistic contour which no longer matches the landscape of … fact.’ 

We may recognise some of these themes in the world of commerce. Periodically our leaders, our owners and our Clients seek to monitor our output and ways of working; to map the landscape and contours of the business. We embrace timesheets and targets; scales and scorecards; ratios and rotas. Of course, it’s all in the interests of efficiency and best practice. ‘What gets measured gets done’ and so forth.

But there’s often a misgiving that measurement is a means of re-ordering priorities, of setting a new agenda, of enacting control; and a concern that the measures can become an end in themselves. As Sir John Banham, the former President of the CBI once observed:

‘In business we value most highly that which we can measure most precisely… Consequently we often invest huge amounts in being precisely wrong rather than seeking to be approximately right.’

Similarly we may find that our leaders, owners and Clients seek to impose their own language upon us. We are taught catchphrases and buzzwords; axioms and aphorisms; jargon and generalisation. Listen and repeat. Listen and repeat. As we endeavour to wise up, we dumb down. As our ambition expands, our vocabulary shrinks.

In his recent documentary ‘On Jargon’ (BBC4, 27 May), the brilliant writer and film-maker Jonathan Meades contrasted jargon with slang.

‘Jargon is everything that slang is not. Centrifugal, evasive, drably euphemistic, unthreatening, conformist. ... Whilst slang belongs to the gutter, jargon belongs to the executive estate. It is the clumsy, graceless, inelegant, aesthetically bereft expression of houses with three garages; of business people who instinctively refer to their workmates as colleagues…It is delusional. It inflates pomposity, officiousness and self-importance rather than punctures them. Slang mocks. Jargon crawls on its belly - giving great feedback, hoping for promotion.’

Now I should concede that I have been no stranger to aphorisms. When I was in leadership positions, I was prone to headlining new agendas; to punching out big themes. And I have often referred to my workmates as colleagues.

Of course, it is the responsibility of leaders in modern businesses to achieve corporate clarity and coherence. But it is imperative in so doing, to avoid clichéd conventional wisdom; ‘newspeak’ and ‘doublethink.’ And it is critical that independent thought and freedom of expression are not victims of the process.

Sometimes, in seeking to control difference, we simply succeed in making everyone the same.

One of the last of the great Cavalier Clients was Geoffrey Probert, who ran the deodorant and oral categories at Unilever. He was mindful that Agencies were at great pains to fit in with their Clients; to conform to their language and way of working. He warned against it.

‘Agencies can spend too much time trying to be like their clients. We’ve got loads of people just like us. We need you to be different. That’s the point. Just concentrate on doing the things we can’t do.’

No. 186

Just Chasing Numbers: 'I'm as Mad as Hell, and I’m not Going to Take This Any More!’

‘This story is about Howard Beale, who was the news anchorman on UBS TV. In his time, Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television, the grand old man of news, with a HUT rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969, however, his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year, his wife died, and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share. He became morose and isolated, began to drink heavily, and on September 22, 1975, he was fired, effective in two weeks.‘

I recently saw a very good stage adaptation of the 1976 movie masterpiece ‘Network’ (National Theatre until 24 March). Brilliantly scripted by Paul Chayevsky, ‘Network’ tells the story of Howard Beale, an ageing TV news anchorman whose ratings are in decline and who suffers a mental breakdown. One evening, at the end of a broadcast, Beale threatens to commit suicide on-air. This obviously startles the studio bosses, until they realize that audience figures have spiked. They give Beale more airtime, and he assumes the role of ‘an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our times.’

‘Listen to me: Television is not the truth! Television is a God-damned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business!‘

‘Network’ concerns itself with news, truth, media ethics, populism and global capitalism. It’s particularly compelling because these are issues that so trouble us today, some forty years on. The only difference is that the film focuses on the malign power of television, whereas we worry about the web and social media. 

‘Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers. This tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people.’

For people in business I think ‘Network’ represents a warning of the perils of chasing numbers. The sharp-dressed, fast-talking studio executives are obsessed with ratings and share, audience figures and syndication costs. They have lost sight of quality, truth and public responsibility. For them news is a commodity, a form of entertainment, a means of attracting eyeballs. It’s just a numbers game.

‘You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays.’

Of course, in commerce we all have to concern ourselves with the numbers: with page views, unique visitors and dwell time; with brand penetration, frequency and share; with managing costs down and income up; with delivering the bottom line. But it’s easy to lose perspective; to get things out of order and proportion. Sometimes we can be too busy chasing great numbers to deliver great product.

There’s an old business maxim that I understand they used to cite at BMP back in the day:
‘People, product, profit…in that order.’

I’ve always liked the way this adage recognizes that all three of people, product and profit are vital to business success. But there’s a hierarchy of importance – and a causal link between them: great culture produces great outputs, which in turn creates happy Clients and attracts new ones - thereby delivering commercial success.

Of course, it’s easier to identify the malaise at the heart of modern business than to know what to do about it. Howard Beale doesn’t really have any answers. But he does at least understand people’s frustration. And perhaps that’s a start. In the most memorable scene in ‘Network,’ Beale invites his audience to vent their outrage at a system that seems to have betrayed the American Dream.

‘I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!’’

Maybe we should all give this a try.

No. 159

Stick Or Twist? Learning When To Change

‘Oh, I’ve got news for you, Baby,
That I’ve made plans for two.
I guess I’m just a stubborn kind of fellow.
Got my mind made up to love you.’

Stubborn Kind of Fellow/ Marvin Gaye (Stevenson/Gaye/Gordy)

I recently saw an excellent production of the August Wilson play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which runs at The National Theatre in London until 18 May). Through a ten-play cycle Wilson, who passed away in 2005, sought to document the African American experience. He wrote one play for each decade of the twentieth century. It’s a titanic achievement and surely one day a major British theatre company will stage all ten.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago in 1927.  It considers the lives of a group of black musicians for whom slavery is a recent memory and discrimination is a current reality. Ma Rainey, the ‘Mother of the Blues,’ is booked into a studio to record, amongst other material, her signature tune, Black Bottom. Rainey is tough, imperious, defiant. Through years of bitter experience she has learned to stand up to the threats and enticements of corporate white America. Her manager and producer are eager for her to evolve her blues sound to accommodate the growing public enthusiasm for jazz rhythms. And they have an ally in the ambitious young dandy of a trumpet player, Levee, who has written a more jazz-inflected arrangement of Rainey’s tune.

Our sympathies are naturally with Rainey. We applaud her dogged determination, her inflexible insistence on doing her song her way. We want her to win.

Maybe we always side with the stubborn ones. We admire the independent voice, the tenacious spirit. Our cultural history is crammed with heroic tales of single-minded artists taking on the reactionary establishment, the carping critics, the fickle public.

So we applaud Ginger Rogers when she insists on wearing her ostrich feather dress for Cheek to Cheek, despite the protestations of Fred Astaire, who found the wayward plumes distracting.

We delight in the rigidity of Samuel Beckett’s stage directions, which preclude any new director’s interpretations of his work. 

We cheer when we hear how Shostakovitch responded to critics’ comments as he was finalising his Leningrad Symphony:

‘I take them under consideration, but not into practice.’

But are we right to side with Rainey? Perhaps her producer and manager are just thinking about money. But Levee clearly has artistic, as well as selfish motives, to adapt her piece. And why not sympathise with the audience’s appetite for change, freshness and innovation?

Is the accommodation of public opinion and preference inherently wrong? Shouldn’t any creative endeavour evolve and transform in tune with times and tastes?

I suspect that, whilst we celebrate romantic yarns of artistic integrity and defiance in the face of feedback, most of us in the commercial sector are engaged in more nuanced, calibrated calculations. Indeed the navigation of different dynamics and tensions is at the heart of commercial creativity. We’re not pursuing ‘art for art’s sake.’ We have attitudinal, behavioural and financial goals. For us creativity is not an end in itself. It is a strategy for achieving effectiveness.

In my experience the best Creative Directors and Strategists know when to be stubborn with an idea; when to stay with it, despite dissenting opinion and challenging research. But they can also judge when to back off; when cumulative evidence or circumstances prevent progress. Sometimes they evolve and adapt a concept to accommodate the external point of view. And sometimes they can switch effortlessly from single-minded passion to starting all over again.

Fundamentally we need to learn when to stick and when to twist.  It’s not a science. It’s a skill.

‘You notice how in winter-floods the trees which bend before the storm preserve their twigs. The ones which stand against it are destroyed, root and branch.’

 Haemon to his father Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone

In many ways Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a joyous, funny, inspiring play. But there’s also a note of sadness hanging over proceedings, as the whole cast variously reflect on their experiences of prejudice, failure and loss.  As the wise pianist, Toledo, says of his own disappointments:

‘Gonna be foolish again. But I ain’t never been the same fool twice.’

No. 72

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 14

Garden and Woodland Special

Learning from Lilies: Strip Away the Context

I recently attended Painting the Modern Garden, an excellent exhibition examining the garden in art between the 1860s and 1920s. (It runs at the Royal Academy in London until 20 April.)

In the late nineteenth century there was a horticultural revolution. Bourgeois Europeans and middle class Americans had affluence and leisure time, and a yearning to preserve something natural against the march of industrialisation. Gardening became an obsession. They studied, imported, cultivated and collected. One contemporary writer proclaimed, ‘I love compost like one loves a woman.’

Artists seem to have been in the front ranks of this revolution. Gardens provided a subject to express their thoughts about nature, beauty, colour and light. Gardens could suggest interior as well as exterior truths. Pissaro, Renoir and Bonnard; Sargent, Van Gogh and Matisse. The great painters of the day repeatedly set their easels up outside, in the garden.

Painting the Modern Garden is an exhibition of intoxicating colour: radiant, ravishing yellows, pinks and purples; intense sensory explosions. One feels the heat and languor of a long Summer’s afternoon. White linen, lace and crinolines. Let’s play croquet on the lawn, take tea on the terrace, reel around the fountain. Sunflowers, dahlias, peonies and poppies. Come consider the chrysanthemums, tend the rhododendrons with me.

And then, of course, there was Monet and his wondrous water-lilies.

At Giverney Monet painted water-lilies over and over again. He studied them, scrutinized them, isolated them in their stillness, floating in the reflective water and changing light. He removed them from their context. They became abstract contemplations of colour, tone, atmosphere and silence.

One critic observed: ‘No more earth, no more sky, no limits now.’

I was struck by this comment and found myself thinking about the role of context in brand marketing and communication.

Context is central to good marketing. If we can understand a brand’s place in the world, we can promote its relevance more effectively. And the broader the cultural context considered, the deeper the understanding. But whilst context is critical to comprehension, effective communication requires compression, distillation and focus. So ultimately we must strip context away.

Too often we fail in this respect. We try to cram our messaging with visual, verbal and conceptual cues. Show the user, signal the occasion, reference the tradition, give the reason-to-believe, bash out the benefit. Communication becomes loud, cluttered, busy and bewildering. Context can be constricting.

Imagine if you could express your brand as an abstract truth, not an observed reality; an intense distillation, not an actual depiction. Imagine if you could strip away the context, narrow the frame, focus on the essence itself.

What would you say? What would we see? How would we feel?

Why We Go on Awaydays: A Reminder from Shakespeare

‘Good servant, tell this youth what ‘tis to love…
It is to be all made of sighs and tears.
It is to be all made of faith and service.
It is to be all made of fantasy,
All made of passion and all made of wishes,
All adoration, duty and observance.
All humbleness, all patience and impatience.
All purity, all trial, all observance.’

As You Like It, V, ii

Last week I saw a marvellous production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the National Theatre in London (running until 29 February).

As the programme notes point out, As You Like It is a ‘green world’ comedy. Its characters escape the oppressive regime of the city for the Forest of Arden. They’re leaving behind convention, hierarchies and the pressure of the present. In the forest they can be more contemplative, philosophical, romantic. They can express themselves freely; they can imagine possibilities; they can explore new roles and identities. They undergo transformations, revelations.

In recent years we’ve perhaps become a little sceptical about Awaydays. The heart sinks at the awkwardness of seeing our senior staff in their weekend casuals. We shun the flip-charts and Post-Its, gummy bears and energiser drinks; the bumptious facilitator and the embarrassing ice-breakers. We balk at the expense in time and money. And so generally we end up just taking a couple of hours in a conference room over at the Media Agency. The future can wait…

But I’m inclined to say that genuine Awaydays justify the cost. Increasingly we have our heads down, dealing with today’s pressing challenges; we rarely look up to talk about tomorrow’s. Awaydays provide an opportunity to draw a line in the sand, to consider broader themes and more distant horizons, to dream new possibilities and imagine the unthought.

And Awaydays do indeed gain something from being away.

‘There’s no clock in the forest.’

Orlando, As You Like It

‘Let’s Play Crusaders’: The Price of Difference

Martin and I shared a bedroom overlooking the back gardens of Heath Park Road. In the summer you could see all the other kids in the street - the Richards, the Chergwins et al - playing Cowboys and Indians in their own little domains. 

‘Let’s play Crusaders,’ we determined. (The ‘70s were more innocent times, somewhat lacking a proper historical context…)

Mum made us white smocks from old sheets and we imprinted bold crimson crosses on their fronts. We completed the outfits with blue balaclava helmets and woollen tights borrowed from our younger sisters. 

And as we skipped around the garden, taking on Saladin and his scimitared hordes, it struck me that it’s not easy being different.

‘We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden’

Joni Mitchell/ Woodstock

No. 68

‘Bring on the Dancing Horses’: What Can the Spanish Riding School Teach Us About Management?

I was in Vienna last weekend and attended a performance by the Spanish Riding School.

In the stately setting of the eighteenth century Winter Riding School, teams of manicured but muscular Lipizzan stallions, guided by uniformed horsemen and women, execute a series of disciplined manoeuvers. To a musical accompaniment the horses walk, trot and canter in harmony. They leap, pirouette and stand proud on their hind legs. It’s an extraordinary sight and is justly described as ‘horse ballet.’

I subsequently watched a TV documentary (Lucy Worsley’s Reins of Power: The Art of Horse Dancing) that explained that horse ballet, or ‘manege’ as it was called, dates back to the sixteenth century. The elegant dance routines have a military origin. As warfare evolved from the heavy-armoured medieval battlefield, to the more fluid, firearms-dominated combat conditions of the seventeenth century, the cavalry had to become more agile. They had to move in and out of lines of infantry, to change direction at the drop of a hat.

Manege was a method for training horses in the physical and mental demands of this new form of fighting. In the first half of the seventeenth century manege became a hugely popular sport for aristocrats across Europe with the time and money to devote to it.

I was surprised to learn that the word ‘management’ has its origins in manege. I wonder, can we learn anything about modern management from the equine activity that inspired the term?

Well, first of all, manege combines agility with control; it has a sense of elegance and finesse, as well as power and determination; a lightness of touch as well as supreme discipline. These ingredients might make the recipe for a compelling management style.

Secondly, just as manege developed in response to the combat conditions of its day, so it passed out of fashion as military practice moved on. In the English Civil War the manege-trained Cavaliers were defeated by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army. Clearly management styles must evolve as the context in which they operate changes.

Do we fully acknowledge that the management approaches of the industrial age will be increasingly inappropriate to the age of technology?

Are we nurturing management talent that reflects the commercial and cultural challenges of the future?

Do we need a new type of management that responds to this modern era of partnership, purpose and organisational change?

'First I'm gonna make it,
Then I'm gonna break it,
Till it falls apart.
Hating all the faking,
And shaking while I'm breaking
Your brittle heart.
Bring on the dancing horses
Wherever they may roam.’

Echo and the Bunnymen, 'Bring On the Dancing Horses’
(I Mcculloch / L Pattinson / P De Freitas / W Sergeant)

We’re Only Remembered for What We Have Done

The National Theatre’s production of War Horse has been in the West End for a couple of years now and it's just announced that the run will conclude in March 2016. It's a moving World War I story about the relationship between man and beast, and it has been brought to the stage with a magical deployment of puppetry.

War Horse also boasts an evocative folk sound track. One song, Only Remembered, is a contemporary arrangement of a nineteenth century Methodist hymn. In it the workers in the field consider whether future generations will remember them.

‘Shall we be missed though by others succeeded
Reaping the fields we in springtime have sown?
No. For the sowers may pass from the earth and its toiling.
We’re only remembered for what we have done.’

It’s a melancholy sentiment. In all likelihood the industry will forget each and every one of us as it moves on to address new challenges and opportunities. There’ll be no recollection of the artful salesmanship and articulate speeches; no memory of magnificent meetings, presentations and decks; no record of the hard luck stories and ‘also rans’, the brilliant idea that didn’t quite make it to production. All that endures is the work. The rest is noise. And ultimately our legacy is what we do, what we make, what we create.

‘Ye shall know them by their fruits’

No. 50