(2018-09-26) Guinn Deadly Holy Rough Immediate

Rusty Guinn (Epsilon Theory): Deadly. Holy. Rough. Immediate. One of its finest books – and a short read, at that – is my first recommendation for anyone who is looking to understand management, communication and civics. The book is called The Empty Space. It’s about theater.

Peter Brook’s 175-page masterpiece seeks to categorize and define the ways in which theatre – which he defines as ‘a man walking across an empty space whilst someone else is watching him’ – is performed

Brook identifies four varieties of theatre: deadly, holy, rough and immediate. Each of them is a pitch-perfect description of the ways in which any performative use of language interacts with an audience, whether it’s a theatre troupe performing a play, a politician giving a policy speech or a CEO discussing earnings.

Deadly Theatre is by definition the Common Knowledge about what theatre is.

Deadly Theatre is a performance that is so deeply abstracted from its source material that it has become painfully, obviously artificial to anyone who is paying attention.

All that we call political correctness falls into this category. We remember what it is like to be offended.

The parallels with demonstrations of patriotic correctness are no accident, for they are Deadly Theatre, too.

Like political correctness, each individual’s actions may stem from good intentions, but empty ritual is still empty ritual.

As investors, once we start looking for it, we realize that Deadly Theatre is all around us. There is the fussy baroque opera of operational due diligence on fund managers.

To the Citizen and to the truth-seeking investor, Deadly Theatre is moribund. Worthless. To be observed but rejected wherever it manifests. To be ruthlessly rooted out of our own behavior.

Holy Theatre

Holy Theatre is theatre in which those parts of life which escape our senses become manifest. In other words, it is the theatre of true memes.

It is also, as Brook writes, the true dream behind the debased ideals of the Deadly Theatre

Memes are often the building blocks of Narrative. Our natural vulnerability to memes lays the groundwork for a Narrative’s spread. So it is that much of Narrative is Holy Theatre. Its informational content is contained in the feelings, emotions, attachments and aversions that it evokes, rather than the meaning of its words

Just as Holy Theatre may be comedy or tragedy, its manifestations in political and financial markets may be directed toward good or bad ends. George Bush standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium in a FDNY jacket to deliver the first pitch after 9/11 is Holy Theatre, but so is Hitler delivering the Nuremberg Address in 1938.

To the Citizen and to the truth-seeking investor, Holy Theatre should be consumed with eyes wide open. Open to the beauty that only its deep connections with our nature are capable of invoking. Open to see the way in which others who would manipulate us would use it to further their own ends.

Rough Theatre

Much of theatre is a joy not because it meets some deep-seated intrinsic longing, but because it meets us where we really are. Physically, emotionally, plainly. Brook calls this Rough Theatre.

To me, Rough Theatre is a minor league baseball game. It is a marathon session of D&D.

Anywhere the play is play. (Amateur, Infinite Game)

While it is still subject to the kind of silly exaggerations of Deadly Theatre, there is no malice or attempt to summon memes for some lofty purpose. There may still be abstractions in the performance, but they are of the kind that exist in all language. The aim is authenticity.

And sure, authenticity! itself can be a meme, like an ‘artisanally crafted’ turkey sandwich at a Panera store

Rough Theatre in our social and political lives doesn’t really scale, because it is nearly impossible to speak authentically to a big, broad audience.

To the Citizen and the truth-seeking Investor, Rough Theatre is a necessary part our language. Sometimes small-t truth from a trusted friend or adviser is the only thing that can dispel the fear, anger, overexuberance and other emotions conjured by a parade of pompous Truths from Missionaries.

Immediate Theatre

Theatre of the first three varieties has one universal trait: its performers have a meaning in mind before the curtain goes up.

each component is necessarily abstracted from the unknowable environment in which the play will be presented on one night or another.

The fourth type of theatre, which Brook calls Immediate Theatre – is a response to this problem. Immediate Theatre is dynamic theatre – responsive to time, responsive to venue, and most importantly, responsive to the audience.

It is impossibly tricky to pull off. As any improvisational musician will tell you, your understanding of the underlying chord structure and rhythm of the music must be greater, not less, if you intend to make up the melody as you go

there is a beauty to choosing to tell a story about all of us instead of a story about ourselves. That’s what Immediate Theatre is. That’s also what we mean by finding your pack (tribe) – people whose aims you make part of your own, and whose intentions you trust implicitly.