9/4/09 8:52 AMHeretic’s Foundation XI: Managing Complexity, From Plays to Performance « Clyde Fitch ReportPage 1 of 7http://www.clydefitchreport.com/?p=3824

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Heretic’s Foundation XI: Managing Complexity, From Plays toPerformance

Friday, September 4, 2009Heretic’s Foundation

By John Hudsondarkladyplayers@aol.comSpecial to the Clyde Fitch Report

For 200 years, some of the smartest literary researchers have worked on understanding the plays attributedto William Shakespeare, the western world’s greatest genius. Now, suddenly, some of that work has begun

9/4/09 8:52 AMHeretic’s Foundation XI: Managing Complexity, From Plays to Performance « Clyde Fitch ReportPage 2 of 7http://www.clydefitchreport.com/?p=3824

to yield fascinating new results. Could the applied narrative and problem-solving techniques developed tosolve the world’s greatest literary question have practical applicability in addressing other issues, such as thelack of agile problem-solving skills in the modern workforce?

Becoming Better Witted: Plays as Problem-Solving

One purpose of the Shakespearean plays,we are told in the preface to Troilus and Cressida, is that afterseeing them on stage, people should depart “better witted than they came.” We are also told in the First Foliopreface to the Great Variety of Readersthat to fully “understand” the plays we need not to see themrepeatedly on stage, but must read them “again and again.” Watching a play in performance would mostlyhave been a pleasurable, entertaining experience, as we know from contemporary accounts. Not even the“wiser sort,” as contemporary poet and scholarGabriel Harvey called themwould be able to cognitively“understand” a play while the actors were reciting it at 200 words — eight lines — a minute.Almost every minute there would be a musical and Biblical allusion; every few minutes some other literaryor classical allusion. All of it had to be integrated and interrelated. Even for Elizabethans, with theirsophisticated memory skills, the speed and flexibility required to do this in real time would have beenhumanly impossible. Nobody could have caught every allusion and put it all together. But even the attemptat doing so could perhaps make one “better witted” as a kind of brain exercise — a more advanced exampleof whatrecent studies suggestcan improve brain functioning.So, one under-appreciated, highly significant value of Shakespeare’s plays is not simply as passiveentertainment but as highly complex, multi-layered works designed to engage an audience as a kind of literary puzzle or sophisticated brainteaser, set in different kinds of environments. Certainly at court, wheremany of the plays were performed, there was a constant competition about who could best “decipher thefigure” of an allegory or solve an anagram. Like other pageantry, Shakespeare’s plays presented intellectualchallenges. This is not an aspect of the plays that gets much attention in theaters today. Solving the puzzlescontained in the plays today requires a sophisticated process of literary analysis. Merging it with a new kindof performance designed to promote critical thinking and problem-solving.

Skills in Critical Thinking and Advanced Literacy

The value of such skills is becoming increasingly important: stimulating creativity among employees is asignificant challenge for many companies. Speed, flexibility and adaptability to change is now rankednumber three in CEO top challenges. Unfortunately, these are not areas in which the workforce is strong.According to areport on 21st century skills, three-fourths of American high school entrants are deficient incritical thinking and problem-solving. Half are deficient in innovation and creativity. The modern laborforce also is increasingly reliant on advanced literacy. Indeed, anew Canadian studyshows that investing inadvanced literacy is the single most important tool for stimulating economic growth. In the U.S.,unfortunately, the recentNational Assessment of Adult Literacy reportshowed that the proportion of thosewho are “proficient” in document and prose literacy has declined from 15% in 1992 to 13% in 2002. It willlikely continue to decline further unless remedial action is taken. Studies have also shown that 79% of thepopulation believe thatimagination is key to innovation, and 90% believe that the arts are essential inbuilding imagination, but the majority think American schools are doing less than other countries to developthis capacity.During the Elizabethan Renaissance, creativity, problem-solving ability, cognitive flexibility andsophisticated literary understanding were critical skills for stimulating entrepreneurship and the explorationof new lands. It was no coincidence that this coincided with a period of growth in Elizabethan drama, sincedramatic arts improve creative skills— they nurture the ability to handle complexity, to integrate knowledge

9/4/09 8:52 AMHeretic’s Foundation XI: Managing Complexity, From Plays to Performance « Clyde Fitch ReportPage 3 of 7http://www.clydefitchreport.com/?p=3824

across multiple areas, to articulate new understandings.More than any other dramatist, the works of Shakespeare offer a particularly important way of developingthose skills. One might expect that applied drama (especially applied Shakespeare) would be sought out bycorporations to develop greater skills in their workforce — and valued by city officials to promote the skillsnecessary for fiscal growth.

Applied Shakespeare as Management Tool

As Peter Brown noted in his article‘Can Shakespeare really be a useful management tool?’, mostconsultancies that have attempted to use Shakespeare’s plays for business applications have not done sovery effectively — perhaps because aspects of the model they were using were inappropriate. That,however, may be set to change. For the last couple of years, I have been part of a network of knowledgemanagement and strategy consultants; we are developing the latest dramatic and narrative approaches to theplays into new methodologies designed to increase advanced literacy, creativity, improve the management of complexity, problem-solving and cognitive flexibility.So for instance our current production, which opens on Sept. 5, of theVirgin Mary allegories inShakespeare’s plays, has been specifically designed to overturn existing assumptions and promote creativethinking and innovative questioning of established models. One way it does this is by inter-relating textsthat are not normally conjoined, and using the play itself — which, downstairs at Manhattan Theatre Source,will be a site-specific production on two alternating stages, each with parallel casts — to link them together.By borrowing modern media storytelling techniques, we are able to deconstruct the underlying thoughtstructures and assumptions across these 400-year-old plays. This exercise in applied theater will thenstimulate a process of self-reflection on the narrative structures that we all inhabit.A number of actors have already trained in this new approach — with surprisingly beneficial results. In thefall, starting with a workshop at Eastern Connecticut State University, this new approach will be offered topartner colleges, schools and companies. Seemingly, techniques of managing a complex organizationalknowledge structure are somewhat similar to the skills required to envision the dynamics between 1,200different characters across 40 different plays and to transform it into performance. In the future, perhaps,applied narrative diagnostics and dramatic simulation techniques will one day become routine as a keytraining tool for corporations struggling to comprehend the increasing complexity of the modern world.

John Hudson is a strategic consultant who specializes in new industry models and has helped createseveral telecoms and Internet companies. He has recently been consulting to a leading think tank on the future of the theater industry and is pioneering an innovative Shakespeare theory, as dramaturge to the Dark Lady Players. This fall he will be Artist in Residence at Eastern Connecticut State University. Hehas degrees in Theater and Shakespeare, in Management, and in Social Science.

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