Blog

There once was a man from Nantucket… OK, so that’s the start of an infamous limerick. Not quite poetry per se, but there’s the rub. I have not really been exposed to poetry (the art form) enough to know what I’m talking about, let alone form a worthwhile opinion. My...

In contemplating Lessons From Live Performance, I had to think for a while about what I thought a “live performance” is. I’ve performed as a musician from marching bands to concert choirs to various incarnations of what we used to call “acoustic-country-rock-sci-fi”. I’ve also given talks and told stories ranging...

...think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: if you pardon, we will mend: And, as I am an honest Puck, If we have unearned...

Last month’s IDEAS On blog topic was “Improvisation,” and I shared how once-upon-a-previous-lifetime I embraced improv while writing and performing in a sketch comedy group. This month’s blog topic, “Learnings from Live Performance,” allows me to share another memorable chapter in my life journey and professional progression toward joining IDEAS…my...

In the Parable of Wise and Foolish Builders, Jesus waxes architectural about the merit of houses built on rock foundations. In his words, “everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” This well-known Biblical passage...

Improvisation immediately drives me to music. I spent a good deal of my life as a “musician” but I used to always tell my bandmates that I wasn’t a “real musician” like them. They knew stuff. They had (and still have), a deep understanding of the musical “field”-used here in...

I feel I have very little authority on the topic of improv. I mean, in various acting classes and shows over the years we’ve done fun improv games as a sort of warm up, and the way I stumble my way through life could be considered a kind of improv,...

It’s riding a rollercoaster as the track is being laid. It’s running an obstacle course shrouded in opaque fog. It’s explaining the breadth of existence in a wordless language. It’s splendidly primal. It’s ineffably sophisticated. It’s life. It’s jazz. Since I first heard Sinatra’s silky baritone crooning to the brassy...

In an early chapter of my life that was several decades ago, I was a writer and performer in a comedy group in Western New York. We had been at it for several years with some modicum of success doing sketch comedy at clubs and colleges across the northeast when...

A good story must have conflict and one way to drive that dramatic tension is having an antagonist play “the villain.” My personal favorites run the gamut from Nurse Ratched to Chernabog to Hannibal Lecter to Brazil’s Information Retrieval. But the true villain in most stories is … time. It...

Here, I presume a reasonable lay-person’s familiarity with Shakespeare. Fair, I think, and if you know but two of Shakespeare’s plays one is likely The Tempest (the other with a 98% probability is Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet or Midsummer Night’s Dream). If you are one of those people who (and...

Good vs. Evil. It is the most rudimentary of human conflicts, disputed in theatres of war, chambers of argument, and across Thanksgiving dinner tables. Our nature as logical beings is to categorize the world in comprehensible terms. We use the descriptors of “good” and “evil” as shorthand designations of our...