Collab Company

AGON
My people are the people who cheered when Cap finally summoned Mjolnir, who cried as Sam lifted Frodo onto his shoulders, who nodded at every encyclopaedic monologue from a kid in Hawkins.

Why do so many stories we love trigger the same emotions in us no matter how many times we revisit them? The answer… is the agon. The conflict which exists to drive and define the arcs of dramatic characters.

The protagonist who is torn between two versions of themselves.
The antagonist who forges others into something more.
The deuteragonist whose journey is the parallel we need to widen our lens.

Steve/Tony.
Frodo/Sam.
Eleven/Vecna.
Didi/Gogo.
Hamilton/Burr.
Chidi/Eleanor.
Hamlet/Horatio.
Holmes/ Watson.
Ezio/Sofia.
Elphaba/Glinda.

The agon is woven between all of them.

All creative communities understand these resonances. We post about traits we admire in the characters of Lord of the Rings. We get quotes from Wicked inked on our skin. We psychologise the works of Shakespeare again and again and again. Why? Because the agon moves us. The arcs we discover and then rediscover in the stories of light over dark, good over evil, right over wrong...

Why then do some in the creative community also:

🧿 remove names and faces from pitch decks so they might gain business from work that was never theirs?
🧿 weaponise logos and hashtags as a way to evidence proxemics?
🧿 ask an arts organisation founded on principled practice to set aside their ethos because it might become an "inconvenience" to uphold their (signed) code of conduct in practice?
🧿 steal teaching resources and present them to impressionable minds who need role models now more than ever?
🧿 DARVO any situation of accountability that relates to safeguarding protocols or ways of working?

How can we continue to call ourselves a community who write, produce, teach, and celebrate the stories we love whilst simultaneously opposing aspects that the agon of these stories demands of us?

I am still working on an answer to that for myself but, in the meantime, Sisyphus keeps pushing that dang boulder up that dang mountain, waiting for his community to move closer to the story it keeps telling others about itself.

FLYING MONKEYS
The flying monkey is a pop psychology concept which has been fascinating to observe and experience in action. Of course, these are only the experiences of one Sisyphus over the course of one decade of making and teaching theatre in the UAE, but 10 years has given me enough of a front row seat to this deeply disturbing phenomenon.

First up are those who carry harm by proxy...

The Wizard of Oz saw them bound by a spell from a Wicked Witch and stripped of their choices. Wicked saw Elphaba commanding them from a place of misguided belief which she then attempts to rectify. The flying monkeys I have observed tend to have aspects of both in them which is to take nothing away from those who are deliberately sycophantic. For a decade it has looked like:

🧿conversational chit chat that evolves into a bizarre blend of intimidation and coercion.

🧿being reprimanded about the unwritten rules that tend to apply only when a Sisyphus stops, turns to the stage left wing, and starts asking questions to Zeus who is hiding backstage.

🧿a front row seat at a production you have worked on for months with the cast and crew. Not to watch -oh no!- but to be seen watching. Not for the show on stage, but for the opportunity to seek out anything that could be used as ammunition (because phoning the Department of Economy and Tourism for a shut down never worked this time)

🧿the friend telling you to move on from your decision to consciously stay away from some spaces – you know, for the everyone's sake since "We should all just get along!"

🧿colleagues who remind (you) every time the topic is brought up (by them) that they are someone to whom none of this has ever happened - the subtext being that their absence of experience is a convincing enough reason for them to continue working with those who harm.

Then there are those who carry harm through proximity. I think it’s because they are also pushing a boulder up a mountain. Their mountain may appear immovable to them. And sometimes, in the exhaustion of that, they do not have the capacity to act against such an infrastructure.

And so Sisyphus continues to strengthen the structure of his own downfall. From inside it.