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Archive for 2012
Theatrical Staging? Or Real Estate Staging? A LESSON LEARNED
My husband Roger and I recently sold our big old New York City apartment on Riverside Drive. We had moved into the building in time to celebrate our daughter’s first birthday in 1975, and six years later our son was born there (well, almost – we got to the hospital just in the nick of time!) When the apartment next door came on the market we borrowed money to connect the two spaces so our kids could run and play.
We were two country kids at heart, lucky in love and real estate, living our dream in Manhattan with a spectacular river view.
Thirty-seven years later we knew it was time to cash in our asset and (gulp) move on. Our kids had been happily independent for years, and even with two grandchildren FIVE bedrooms was ridiculous.
Deanna Kory, our highly esteemed real estate broker, recommended staging the apartment. (What?) THEATRICAL staging refers to the mounting of a play; REAL ESTATE staging, I learned, means removing all traces of people living in the apartment so prospective buyers don’t get distracted; they’ll be able to imagine themselves living there.
To be blunt, I hated the idea. One theatrical truth I’ve learned over the years is that specificity makes a landscape universal; removing specificity makes it generic. But that was the point: Deanna advised that staging could increase the selling price from 5 to 125 times the cost of staging (!) so Roger and I immediately got to work.
© Samuel Morgan Photography
Rented furniture (beige), lamps (square), towels (ugly) and chatchkas (weird) appeared. Plasterers, painters, window-washers invaded our turf, as did (thankfully) Amanda Wiss and Urban Clarity, who got us organized. Our son Sam, an architectural photographer, did a photo-shoot, and his fine photos didn’t resemble the comfy home in which we’d raised our family, but it sure was ready to sell.
Preparing to show the apartment reminded us of the half-hour-call that precedes every theatrical performance: it looks hectic but in fact, it’s a meticulous routine.
Our routine: make beds, poof pillows, empty wastebaskets, clear every surface, vacuum (Roger), arrange fresh flowers (me), leave no traces of normal life, EXIT to the Metro Diner, contemplate our future and wait for Deanna’s “all clear” text, and head home.
Eventually the perfect buyers arrived. And as the lovely young mother vividly described how her family would live in our space, I knew the staging had worked. But there’s another chapter to our story… where did we go?
HA! Not very far: we are now living 10 feet 2 inches below our former home. And here’s the beauty part: our new apartment was NOT staged, which I believe is the reason we got it.
We were always fond of the elderly couple downstairs – they were good neighbors. Distinguished college professors who loved world travel and NY’s Upper West Side, they often gathered students in their book-lined home for heady salons: discussions of physics, languages and art.
It seemed natural that when our dear neighbors died (a couple of years apart) it was in the home they loved. In fact, their clothes were still hanging in the closets when the apartment was being shown, and their books and paintings were everywhere. It looked as if one of their salons for their students was about to begin. Their apartment reflected a highly specific way of life – in other words, it was staged according to the theatrical definition of the word. And it simply did not sell.
We knew that our neighbors’ apartment was for sale six months before ours, and we would’ve bought it in an instant if we didn’t have to sell ours first. But we couldn’t make an offer contingent upon a sale. Then Deanna’s brilliant and diplomatic negotiating skills proved it’s not just a rumor that she’s the best realtor in New York: 428 days after our neighbors’ apartment came on the market our offer to buy it was accepted.
I will forever recommend real-estate-staging to anyone who wants to sell their apartment. (And Deanna Kory, of course!) Theatrical staging? Nope. Though it sure worked in our favor!
In the meantime, the Hudson River is a most inspiring setting. Roger and I thank our lucky stars for it every day.
We may have moved… but we’re still here.
Conflict in the Workplace? Follow Your Fear!
(Revised from a piece published September 30, 2009)
A Theatrical Intelligence blog reader posted a question a while ago about everyday conflict in the workplace, wondering if theatrical intelligence can help. Depending on the conflict of course, the answer is yes. As long as one is open to alternative ways of facing the challenge!
Conflicts at work are often reminiscent of family quarrels and hierarchies from our past: we feel embarrassed, uncomfortable, powerless, and usually that familiar 4-letter-word rears its ugly head: FEAR.
One of the great secrets in improvisation is to “follow your fear”, an expression coined 50 years ago at Second City by the late great Del Close. Using this technique (even though it may seem counterintuitive) can yield surprising results.
Professional actors follow their fear in rehearsal and performance by looking for obstacles to overcome. This creates dramatic tension, and requires them to step into unknown territory, which results in emotionally unpredictable, sometimes humorous behavior. When this behavior happens in places other than improvisation, we can laugh about it and learn from it – when it’s over!
The only way to really screw up in improvisation, is to deny “reality”. In this case “imaginary circumstances” = “reality”. This is another little jewel we can steal from improv.
For example, when two actors are on stage and one of them puts her jacket over her head to protect her from… no one knows what, yet… the reality of those imaginary circumstances are a GIFT to the other actor. (Is it raining? Are there pigeons above? Is there an enemy overhead?) One of the actors establishes what the jacket is protecting them from, the other actor accepts it as a gift, and that’s the reality upon which they build their story.
In many workplaces a denial of reality is the norm: it’s “the elephant in the room” or “the dead moose on the table”, meaning no one dares mention the thing everyone knows is going on. Here’s the common wisdom:
Denial of reality breaks down trust and builds up fear
Acceptance of reality opens up worlds of possibility
So, imagine this: the next time the current-conflict-at-hand happens yet again at work… what if you follow your fear? Accept the reality and have the courage to say “That dead moose on the table stinks – what are we going to do about it?” Or, to mimic a possible workplace scenario: “Is that another of your witty insults – again at my expense?”
Opportunities will leap out of nowhere for you and your colleagues. Why? Because you’ve broken through the denial, acknowledged what is real, and cracked the conflict wide open. Can’t you just hear it? Try it! FOLLOW YOUR FEAR.
And please let us all know where your courage takes you – I suspect is worthy of acknowledegment.
My Mother’s Gift To Me… Via Frank McCourt
Jeanne O’Sullivan Sachs (15 October 1920 – 19 July 2009)
Francis “Frank” McCourt (19 August 1930 – 19 July 2009)
My mother was always a mystery to me. The oldest child in a large, Irish Catholic family, she was a brilliant beauty whose musical gifts inspired everyone around her.
I was the polar opposite: scrappy, frizzy-haired, cross-eyed, born to bluntly question and challenge the world. I was convinced throughout my childhood that I was adopted; how could I possibly be related to such a refined, remote, creature?
It became a lifelong quest for me to make sense of the distant dynamic between Mom and me.
My mother was a gifted cellist, a child prodigy who grew up outside Boston during the Great Depression and became a soloist throughout central New England.
Awarded a scholarship to a prestigious music conservatory after high school, she chose instead to work as a secretary in a Harvard cancer research laboratory to help support her younger brothers and sisters. It was there she met her future husband: a young doctor of German-Jewish heritage who shared her love of music. It was the first of many sacrifices she was to make over the next 60 years of what she always termed a happy life. I never experienced my mother as happy. She always seemed far away to me – detached – as if she wished she were somewhere else.
It was probably no surprise that Mom gave up her solo career when she married; and that she played very little music during the years she birthed and raised six children. I struggled for decades to understand the irony of the life she chose as opposed to the life she might have built.
When I read Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes in 1996, it opened a window of understanding that changed my view of my mother forever. Never has a book had such profound impact on my daily life. Not that Jeanne O’Sullivan and Frank McCourt shared similar childhoods… When young Frank was growing up in Limerick, as he wrote in the first chapter of Angela’s Ashes: “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”
Jeanne’s childhood was poor, Irish and Catholic, and filled with with the joy of music. As Mr. McCourt memorably wrote: “Happiness is hard to recall. It’s just a glow.” Those were the words that connected me to my mother.
It is somehow fitting that Mom and Frank McCourt died within hours of one another. As the Irish American journalist Pete Hamill wrote in The Irish Central (July 22, 2009): “Irony, as practiced by the Jews and the Irish, can be wielded as a weapon, but it is above all a kind of armor… Irony creates distance, a certain knowing detachment, while acknowledging membership in the club of human weakness and folly.” That was Jeanne O’Sullivan Sachs.
During her final days Mom kept her children laughing while whispering again and again that she loved us and was grateful for her happy life. I didn’t know that Frank McCourt was dying at that exact time. I wish I had thanked him for teaching me about the kind of happiness that is so unquantifiable that it just glows. Because that is what I treasure most about my mother: however far away she seemed to me, she always glowed.
Happy Mothers Day, Mom. And thank you, Mr. McCourt.
I’m imagining the two of you conversing, one more eloquent than the other, and wondering if you arrived at the gates of heaven together. Yes… I think magnificent music must have welcomed you as you danced your way into the kingdom.
Woman Of Wisdom: A Ritual
In January my husband and I prepared to move for the first time in 37 years. We had to reduce the size of our library to fit into a smaller space, and deciding which books to keep became a crazy-making endeavor for me. There were hundreds of books I couldn’t bear to let go.
Day after day I thumbed through pages that once introduced me to worlds unknown. My gushing tears seemed disproportionate to the activity, as did my frantic scribbles of words I somehow had to hold close to me.
Just as I thought I might actually be losing my mind, it struck me that I was simply doing something I’d loved since I was a child: collecting meaningful quotes I never wanted to forget.
This simple act unintentionally launched a ritual that now brings joy to my daily routine: once a day I post a beloved quote on Twitter. Most of the quotes I collected were – no surprise to me – from women, so using the ubiquitous Twitter hashtag, I label each #WomanOfWisdom.
A sampler of wisdom selected from the past 30 days is listed below:
#WomanOfWisdom Maya Angelou: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
#WomanOfWisdom Emily Dickinson: “They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.” (1878)
#WomanOfWisdom Bella Abzug: “I prefer the word ‘homemaker’ because ‘housewife’ always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.”
#WomanOfWisdom Lena Horne: “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”
#WomanOfWisdom Madeleine l’Engle: “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”
#WomanOfWisdom Rebecca West: “People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that distinguish me from a doormat.” (1913)
#WomanOfWisdom Zora Neale Hurston: “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”
#WomanOfWisdom Ellen Parr: “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
#WomanOfWisdom Emma Goldman: “Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.”
#WomanOfWisdom Wilma Mankiller: “I’ve run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.”
#WomanOfWisdom Shana Alexander: “The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.”
#WomanOfWisdom Sarah Bernhardt: “Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”
#WomanOfWisdom Anne Frank: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
#WomanOfWisdom Indira Gandhi: “You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”
#WomanOfWisdom Abigail Adams: “We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”
This ritual has eased the process of giving away my books. Over the past three months I’ve donated boxes and boxes to schools, libraries, bookshops, Materials for the Arts, and to my children and grandchildren of course.
A little piece of each book will be with me forever. And my hope is that the books will touch the hearts and minds and spirits of many who might not otherwise have been exposed to them. I love thinking about that.
How long do you suppose it will take to run out of wisdom?
When You’re Feeling Creatively Stuck…
An earlier version of this post was published as “What Role Were You Born to Play?” in June 2009.
Behind the stage door, great wisdom lives...
When you’re feeling creatively stuck, it’s time to identify those inborn talents of your youth – the ones that went into hiding as you morphed into an adult – and rediscover your Theatrical Intelligence.
Try this:
Think back to your childhood. Remember the neighborhood where you grew up?
Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and inhale the smell of that long ago place. If the neighborhood isn’t quite clear for some reason, or if you moved around a lot, breathe in a moment or two of shared secrets with your closest friend…
As you’re breathing, ask yourself: Was there a time when you and your friends decided to put together an event of some kind? A gymnastics demonstration? A neighborhood circus with performances by your pets? Maybe a swimming show with a lemonade stand? Whatever it was, your part in this event made you really proud.
Write down what you remember. I’m willing to bet that your actions resemble one or more of The 8 Roles of Theatrical Intelligence, listed below:
1. The WRITER: You had an idea and wrote it down. You understood the concept: tell the audience, tell them again, and tell them that you told them; with humor, drama and clarity.
2. The ACTOR: You performed. You lived moment-to-moment. You understood that timing is everything, and that theatre isn’t larger than life – it is AS LARGE as life!
3. The DIRECTOR: You “saw” the ideas as if they already existed, then staged it to please the audience. Your friends placed their trust in you because you gave them positive feedback about their strengths, and you made them feel good about themselves.
4. The PRODUCER: You thought up the whole event, assigned your buddies the tasks that matched their strengths, sold the idea to everyone in the neighborhood and got them to pay for tickets. You invited everyone you saw, and one restaurant owner was so enthusiastic he threw an after-show party at your request.
5. The DESIGNER: You envisioned the environment for the event. You drew it with vivid strokes and it took on a life of its own. You told your friends what to build, what to wear and why they had to wear it in spite of their objections (and they thanked you for it afterwards!)
6. The STAGE MANAGER: You knew that your best buddy’s vision could be built. You crafted the schedule as to what had to be done by when, so your friends would have a chance to practice. You arranged parking places for bikes, strollers, cars, and managed the traffic and access to rest rooms.
7. The TECHNICIAN: You made calculations from your friend’s drawings, found the right person to donate materials and stayed up all night building the set. You finished on time, and with no budget. When people got nervous and asked “What’s happening?” you replied “Workin’ on it!”
8. The CRITIC: You recognized problems from the get-go, and knew that if the project had been approached from a different perspective it would have worked better. But heck, it was fun, and set the precedent for the next time. You wrote a flattering article for the Neighborhood News, in which you had instigated the “Kids’ Column”.
Do any of these roles sound familiar?
As kids, chances are that we played at least two roles with complete abandon. And as we morphed into grown-ups, many of us ended up playing a role that didn’t quite fit.
- What was the role (or roles) that you played?
- Are you currently playing one of them in your daily life?
- If not, when did it (or they) go underground?
- What was it about the event that made it so unforgettable?
- Can you imagine experiencing it again?
The goal of Theatrical Intelligence is to IDENTIFY the roles that gave you such joy and freedom as a child, TAP INTO that creative pulse you’ve been craving, and USE IT in your daily life.
Once you’ve experienced that pulse, it will keep on beating. Hold it close to you. Unexpected opportunity awaits.
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