I was struggling with my scenes in this week’s class, then had a little breakthrough in the last scene I did (we do dozens of scenes per class). The difference came about when I began by listening instead of thinking.

“Listen, then think,” says Miles. “Don’t try to make sense of the situation. Interact with it by listening.”

Here’s what happens when you think first instead of listening first:

You begin having a conversation about what’s in your head instead of about what’s in the scene. And because neither your scene partner(s) nor your audience can hear what’s in your head, you’re having a conversation with yourself, which distances you from the scene instead of engaging in it. You’re having a conversation with yourself.

Here’s what happens when you listen before thinking:

You can use your intellect to serve the scene (by doing something smart that propels the scene and makes your partner look good) instead of letting your intellect use you (”I am the smartest person in the room and here’s proof”). You’re having a conversation with reality.

Thinking is the ego talking; Listening is the world talking.

Listen. Then Think. That is the order of the opportunity in any scene you’re in.

Specific notes:

- After cautioning the audience at the beginning of the presentation about long monologues as a means of communicating, I wrapped up the presentation with a long monologue.

- Our direction was soft on a couple of the exercises. This resulted in a kind of sponginess in the middle of the two-hour session, with drawn-out explanations by Antonio and me, less focus by the teams, and a rushed ‘third act’ in the last 15 mins.

- As any improviser can tell you, you have to work on pieces of the process at a time. You cannot drop everything you know on your audience all at once. In my explanation of what we call ‘the orchestral model’ of business communication, and the concept we call ‘quantum narrative,’ I got into more detail than the audience was able to absorb in such a short window. ‘Too clever by half,”as they say in Blighty. ‘Ten pounds of potatoes in a five pound bag,” as they say in Boise.

- The teamwork that usually happens during our workshops was not so much apparent in this one. Things stayed more individualized, and less knit-together than we would like.

- The tempo at which we conducted the session was inconsistent. If I had been conducting a piece of music, it would have been in about 20 different time signatures, with me conducting at least part of the performance with my back to the orchestra. Missing cues. Dynamics roller-coastery instead of scenic.

These notes are related to our business objective for the workshop, which was to explain GameChangers and give attendees a sampling of what we do with our clients. At achieving this objective, we give ourselves a 50%. We were only about half as effective as we believe we’re capable of being.

So why are we not upset?

Two reasons: One is that because our process lets us see so clearly where the issues are, we have already taken steps to remedy them before the next open workshop.

The other, bigger, reason is that the outcomes of the session have been extraordinary, better than the outcomes of many workshops where our performance was actually  much better than it was Tuesday. A lot of credit for this goes to the people who were in attendance. One of the points we make in these introductions to GameChangers is to distinguish between objectives of the game, and the outcomes of the game, and wow, has that been our experience since Tuesday.

These are some of the outcomes:

- Our friend Ron Finley, the ‘renegade urban gardener’ connected with our friends Jenna and Adam from TakePart, who were in attendance. TakePart is the digital division of Participant Media. They are going to do a story about Ron.

- Erin Reilly, the creative director of USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, spoke yesterday to her faculty committee about having us do a one-day workshop there in March.

- Marcy and Strath Hamilton of Tri-Coast Studios, which is producing a lot of e-books, met a Ruby on  Rails coder named Patrick Maddox, who was in attendance Tuesday.  They’ve been looking for a coder. Now they’re talking to Patrick.

- T.H. Culhane and David Groder, who are working on a robotics education program funded by the U.S. Naval Research Dept., are making a presentation today (Wednesday) at Washington High School in Los Angeles, and are being joined by Ron Finley, who is a Washington High graduate. This is happening as a result of them connecting on Tuesday night.

- T.H. and Groder will soon get introduced by GameChangers associate Jamal Williams, who was in town from D.C. for the Tuesday workshop, to Nii Simmonds, the ‘Nubian Cheetah,’ a Ghanian-born D.C. resident and former investment banker who funds a program called Afrobotics, a robotics competition for African schoolchildren.

- Kevin Wall, who is producing the opening ceremonies and concert for the 2014 World Cup in Rio, was in attendance. Kevin learned for the first time that Fernando Godoy, who used to be an intern in at one of Kevin’s companies, is today a successful internet entrepreneur in Sao Paulo and is a partner in Spirit of Football 2014. Kevin and Fernando are going to meet the next time Kevin is in Brazil.

- Tri-Coast Productions and GameChangers are meeting this coming Monday to discuss two projects–a GameChangers ebook and a video series that would be produced and performed by people from our network of world-class improvisers.

- Andy Sternberg has since Tuesday introduced us to two friends of his whom he believes will be interested in our work.

- We were able to continue a conversation with Nicholle McClelland Betelier, a marketing officer from IdeaLab, that began at a yoga retreat in December.

- A crypto-hipster named Som showed up uninivited, and asked some of the best questions and offered some of the most thoughtful comments of the evening. Thank you, Som, whoever and wherever you are! Please stay in touch!

- My favorite outcome of the evening came about thanks to a ‘gift’ from David Groder. At the very end of the session, after my long-winded closing monologue, Groder asked if we could go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves. All 25 people introduced themselves and described the work they’re doing. It was really remarkable, not only because it completely subverted the normal order of things—introductions at the end instead of the beginning!—but also because the people in attendance are doing brilliant things in the world. Attendees are working in robotics, social media, community development, urban gardening, fashion, cause-related marketing, transmedia storytelling, architecture, criminal law, venture capital, entertainment, academia, e-books, tech, watercraft stabilization, app development, etc. etc. etc. Introductions at the end became a very enjoyable kind of reveal. Almost everyone stayed and talked for half-an-hour or more after the session, and I believe most of that conversation would not have happened if not for David’s gift to the scene.

Never get objectives confused with outcomes. Objectives are what we use to assess and improve our performance. Outcomes happen as a result of having performed. Objectives are finite. Outcomes are unlimited. Objectives create focus. Outcomes generate value.

Post-event conversations were the most productive part of the evening

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A ’scene’ can be a single meeting or a years-long campaign. It can address an immediate crisis or seek lasting change in an organization’s culture. Whatever the reason for your scene, you always have the ability to apply game structure to it.

In addition to defining game structure, we help our clients sort out productive games from the unproductive ones. It should come as no surprise to anyone that there are a lot of unproductive games getting played out there. They can be unproductive for a lot of reasons. Here’s a big one: Games that treat Objectives and Outcomes as the same thing are not good games.

Objectives are structure. Outcomes are performance. These are two very different things. Here’s an example we sometimes use in our workshops to illustrate this point:

What is the Objective of the game of basketball? It’s to put the ball in the hoop. This objective has not changed since Dr. James Naismith nailed a peach basket to the balcony of the gymnasium at Springfield College in 1891. Other elements of the game, the E the R and the G, have evolved dramatically, the O has not. It is remarkable for its unchangedness.

The Objective: same as it ever was

Now…what are the Outcomes of the game of basketball?  Let your mind play with that question for awhile, and see what kind of responses pop up. Here are just a few that I myself have experienced: the Ireland (Indiana) Spuds high school basketball team; Hoosiers; my first pair of Chuck Taylor white canvas high tops; numb fingers from playing in 30-degree weather at recess; the fact that I first learned about Crispus Attucks because Oscar Robertson played for Crispus Attucks High School; Marv Albert’s arrest and subsequent rehabilitation; LeBron James leaving Cleveland; Dude Perfect; Magic and Bird; Rick Mount; George McGinnis; Wilt vs Russell; a rubber band that I wore on my wrist for a year; the Chuck Taylor black leather high tops that Corey Feldman wore in my film, The Lipstick Camera; the Chuck Taylor brand; the relationship between Spike Lee and Michael Jordan; Bobby Knight; Extreme HORSE with my friend Tim; hoops with my sons and their friends; coaching at the Y; the 2002 and 2003 Loyola Cubs CIF Championships; my friendship with Jamaal Wilkes; Ernie Barnes’ paintings…you get the idea…while there’s only one Objective, there are many possible Outcomes. And that’s just me. Your Outcomes are different from mine. Outcomes are an ever-expending set of possibilities.

This same dichotomy between Objectives and Outcomes is applicable to any game structure for your business. The Objective is the constant; the Outcomes are the infinite unknowns, where all the possibilities and all the upside reside.

Focus on your Objective, yes, by all means, absolutely! From a process standpoint, it is the most important thing, the target, the point of the exercise, it can even be your motivation. It is not, however, where the action is. Not where growth and extension occur.  If the only action you’re open to is achieving your Objective, you’re missing most of the possibilities of the game.

The game is put the ball in the basket. The possibility is Oscar Robertson.

"High Aspirations" by Ernie Barnes

Actually, Jonathan did the presentation. He told all the stories. I designed a game that engaged the audience with the material in a way that it would not have if Jonathan had used the standard format of ‘45 minute speech + 15 minute Q&A.’

Jonathan Franklin in conversation with Disney Animation

The game was called ‘15 Themes in 45 Minutes’. Here’s how it went:

I dumped images from the Chilean Miners’ rescue that we have permission to use (abt 90 of them) into Prezi.

Then I arranged the images by Theme. We settled on a number of themes, 15, that divided evenly into 60, because that would give structure to the hour.  (10 would have worked just as well, or 12) The Themes were ideas like, ‘Extreme Conditions,’ ‘Top Drill,’ and ‘Flexible Vision’  which I know, from knowing him and reading his  book, Jonathan can illuminate with great story after great story.

Then I added animation to the images, which is super easy to do on Prezi and showed some respect for the animators in the Disney audience. A presentation with no movement is an insult to animators.

So now we had three of the four elements of what we call the ‘ERGO’ structure for a game: Environment (Disney Animation Theater, Prezi); Roles (Storyteller, Audience, Prompter); and Objective (explore 15 themes). We still needed the ‘G’ in ERGO: Guidelines. I gave the game three:

1) Audience member can at any time request a description of an image (by calling “Caption”)

2) Audience member can, at any time ask a question (by calling “Question”)

3)  Audience member can, at any time, request a new Theme (indicated by calling “Scene”)

For most audiences, I would have added another guideline or two, to encourage editing by everyone in the Audience, not just a few people, but because these were professional storytellers, there was no need to do this.

It was an excellent experience for all of us. The game took 55 minutes to play, which left 5 minutes for a few follow-up questions.  Our time together had a much better flow, it was more of a conversation with the Audience, than if everyone had tried to save their question for a 15 min. Q&A at the end.

In exploring the 15 Themes, the conversation danced through subjects like President (of Chile) Pinera’s leadership strategy, NASA technology, the physics of hard rock drilling, Chilean culture, post-traumatic stress psychology, blow-up dolls, chocolate, tactical news leaking, the saving grace of humor, the fickle nature of celebrity and similar stories of people  trapped underground or underwater (Ace in the Hole, Jessica McClure, the Soviet Sub,  Kursk). The ideas for what to talk about belonged as much to the Audience as to Jonathan. And even though we were free to explore in all directions, we did it within the structure of the game.  We never lost track of where we were because we always knew what Theme we were in.

I made a couple of adjustments to the game while we were playing it. Initially the role of Prompter (mine) was only to explain the game structure to the audience and click through the Prezi images. Once or twice, when I felt the editing by the audience was lagging relative to the time we had left, I’d call ‘Scene’ myself.

Jonathan, his wife, and their six daughters, are in Southern California for two weeks, courtesy of Oakley, who is returning the favor Jonathan did for them when (without any kind of quid pro quo) he got Oakley to design and donate the sunglasses for Los 33 to wear and protect their eyes from the severe reaction they’d have to daylight when they were freed from mine last October.

Five of the Franklin girls–Fancisca, Kimberly, Amy, Susan and Maciel–accompanied Jonathan to Disney. Afterward, the director, John Musker (”Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” “Princess and the Frog”), along with Howard Green, Stephanie Morse and Kelsi Taglang of Disney, treated us to lunch in the ABC commissary and a tour of the Disney Animation studio. John drew little sketches of characters from his films for each of the girls.

A good game was had by all.

Legendary Disney Animation director John Musker draws for the Franklin girls

Jason Terry

Interviewed after his Dallas Mavericks’ victory tonight over the Miami Heat for the NBA championship, their star shooting guard Jason Terry was asked how they did it, and he said (I’m paraphrasing)…

“We found a home for everybody’s stories. Everybody’s story came together here. Dirk (Nowitzki’s), Jason (Kidd’s), mine, Shawn Marion’s, Stojakovich, Berea, Tyson Chandler, Deshawn Stevenson’s–all our stories, together, made this happen.”

This is a really great expression of a team concept, especially, for a pro athlete in the wake of a big victory, when the cliche is to spout cliches, thank God and sponsors, credit the opponent for a hard-fought game, and then say something about going to Disneyland. A quote about the secret to the Dallas Mavericks’ success that they that they built a narrative consisting of all their individual stories? That’s an athlete’s voicing  fresh thought. And it’s an idea that can benefit any organization.

We saw this theme again seconds later when the Mavericks’ owner, Mark Cuban, deferred to the team’s previous owner and founder, Fred Carter, by asking Mr. Carter to accept the championship trophy. When Cuban was interviewed by the TV announcer, he couldn’t get the team’s coach, Rick Carlisle, to the mike quick enough. For someone known to love the sound of his own sound bites, this ‘best supporting actor’ role is a new one for Cuban, and he wears it well.

The Miami Heat, by contrast, are a team of individual stories that have not yet found a way to co-create a championship narrative. In the wake of the season, the stories about them will be all about divisiveness, disappointment and unfulfilled promise,  about who was responsible and who should take the fall.  The team’s stories, in other words, will continue to exist independently of one another, without really benefitting the franchise brand.

Your company, your brand, your team, isn’t a single story, it is a narrative composed of all your stories, and your customers’ stories, too. Evolved leaders like Jason Terry and Mark Cuban don’t inflict their story on the organization, but rather, create an environment in which individual stories can flourish in the shared pursuit of the business objectives.

Well-said, Mr. Terry! Well-played, Mavs!

The WAYS? menu consists of 15 game-oriented activities inspired by the rescue.  A half-day WAYS? workshop will be comprised of  eight of these 15 activities, of which the client chooses six; two activities, the first and last, are ‘requirements.’  Our first WAYS? engagement is March 2 in Miami, for 120 executives from a large manufacturing company that is restructuring its processes on a global scale.

Because we had only one day to rehearse in person prior to March 2 (Franklin is currently on a worldwide book tour), we hired a coach, Sevanne Kassarjian, to guide and focus our work in New York.  Two ‘applied improvisers,’ Zohar Adner and James Tossone, along with Heather Soldania, a Masters student at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication who happened to be in NYC last weekend, joined us for part of the day.  Jonathan’s wife, father and three-year-old daughter, Zoey, also sat in for part of the day at the Ripley Grier Rehearsal Stages where we were rehearsing.  Zoey even participated in one of the activities, in which her job was baking cakes in a high-speed oven.

It was a good day.  We made huge strides toward getting the program ready.  Sevanne is terrifically focused.  She relentlessly probed and pondered the experience from every perspective.  Her work demonstrates how an improviser can play many roles in quick sequence, always through the essential truth of one’s character.  During our collaboration, she played the roles of Gentle Encourager, Stern Critic, Logistics Manager, Playful Mom, Erudite Intellectual and Fellow Improviser, to name just a few of the hats she wore.  Through it all, she was always the brilliant individual we now know as Sevanne.

Sevanne’s work is itself a microcosm of why improvisation is an essential skill for managers in a Networked World.  A job title is just that, a title.  Sevanne’s job title last week was ‘Coach.’  That title did not define the many ways in which she supported us.  Simply put, she did what was best for the scene, in each and every moment.  Given the gift of improvisation, so can you and your organization.

Play on!

Sevanne Kassarjian (Jonathan Franklin in b.g.)

Because GameChangers followed and contributed (seven blog posts) to the narrative of the Chilean Miners…because we were curious about how the 33 miners happened to be wearing Oakley sunglasses when they emerged from the mine after their 69-day ordeal…because we made a connection with Jonathan Franklin, the correspondent for The Guardian, who was the only print journalist with complete access to the rescue site in Copiapo, and was responsible for the Oakley connection…because Penguin Press has just published Franklin’s book, 33 Men, the definitive account of the miners’ ordeal…and because a lot of companies are asking him to share his experiences and insights…

We have co-created a new GameChangers program inspired by Franklin’s observations during the 69 days at Copiapo.  The program will be offered in the U.S. and Europe.  We will present it for the first time on March 2, at a Global Leadership Conference sponsored by Diversey, Inc.  We are rehearsing it this Sunday in New York City, when Jonathan Franklin and I will meet for the first time in person.

We cannot stress this enough:  Narratives are the ultimate organizing principle in the networked economy.

Traditional news reporting and the internet made us aware of ‘Los 33.’  Social media–Facebook, Twitter, this blog, etc.–helped us track and participate in their story.  Skype, email and telephone made personal conversations and collaboration between us and Jonathan Franklin possible.  The Applied Improvisation Network helped us extend the program to Europe.  Geo-locating apps–I can’t even tell you what they were– helped us locate and provide directions to our rehearsal studio in NYC.  I used a virtual concierge to book my travel.  And of course personal relationships made things possible that no technology or platform could.

Through it all, it was the narrative that guided us.  With a narrative as your guide, the choice of platforms becomes an objective process, a series of consistently logical decisions.  How best to participate in a narrative is an entirely different, and more productive, discussion from how best to deploy a platform.  Choose narrative!

Interestingly (and typically) the mainstream media, beginning with 60 Minutes last Sunday, have focused on the more sensational aspects of the ‘Los 33′ narrative—on the fact that in their darkest hours, when they had no idea if they’d ever be found, a few of the miners began to think about cannibalism, or that since their rescue they’ve been suffering from PTSD (this is news because?…).  In Where Are You Stuck? we focus on the positive aspects of the rescue.  On the heroic qualities of the miners and their rescuers.  Teamwork.  Altriusm.  Sacrifice.  Leadership.  Creativity.

In every crisis there is opportunity.  In every crisis, there is destruction.  For something to be created, something must be destroyed.  Doors open and close in unison.  Shiva is the god of creation AND destruction.  Productive change entails creative destruction.

When the times are a-changin’, getting stuck can become a chronic problem, because individuals and organizations get frozen deciding (or avoiding deciding) how to respond to the changes they are experiencing.  The challenge confronting anyone looking to get ‘unstuck’ is all about focus.  Will your focus be on the creative or the destructive aspects of the change?  Will you see the opportunity, or obsess on the loss?  Will you bang on closed doors or walk through open ones?  Will you cling to the status quo until you realize, perhaps too late, that what worked in the past isn’t necessarily what will work in the future?  Interestingly, this is the challenge facing the Miners today.  Working deep underground isn’t an option any more.  That is a closed door.  What got them out of the mineshaft isn’t the same process that will get them out of the ‘mindshafts’ in which they find themselves trapped today. When context changes, everything changes.  Including the nature of heroism.

What made the Miners heroic in the eyes of the world is still within them, but like anyone else, they will have to change their game to suit their new situation.  This time, unlike the 69 days they spent in the mine, they have a choice.  Choosing to move consistently in the direction of creativity, opportunity and the newly-opened door is a challenge each of them will have to confront in his own way.

Check out the Where Are You Stuck? program, and fill out the response form to let us know how we can best help you.

When I saw that Rich Talarico would be conducting an 8-week class entitled The Way of Improv, I jumped at it.  We had our first class this past week and just as one might expect from a Dasariski player, the coaching was patient, and it was delightful.

Rehearsal space is sacred space, and I’m not going be reporting on these classes, but Rich said something wonderful early in the first class that is worth sharing.  I don’t think he’ll mind, because it is drawn from the commonly-shared language of improvisers.  He said, “We don’t have rules, we have tools.”

That, to me, is a perfect summation of what improvisation is all about.  Of course, there are rules to every game.  In business, there are rules governing every transaction.  What Rich meant is that the art of improvisation itself has no rules.  It has tools.  We put our tools to work to liberate performance.  Rules are just there to give shape and context to the performance.  In terms of improvisation, rules are to tools what the block of wood is to the hammer, what the plaster is to the putty knife.

When you invoke rules to guide your process you are using a block of wood to hit the nail.  You are throwing wet plaster at a crack in the wall.  To solve the problem, bring your toolbox, not your rulebox.

The extraordinary improviser, Paul Vaillancourt, gave me a list of sayings that have been compiled and passed around the improv theater community over the years. The great teachers Mick Napier and Del Close get some of the credit, as do Viola “The Godmother” Spolin and ImprovWorks’ Sue “Pond” Walden, though the exact origins of most of these sayings would be pretty hard to trace. What’s clear to anyone who explores improvisation is that the the meaning behind the sayings originates from the same place that accounts for such profound ideas as jazz, the Dao De Jing, Johnny Appleseed and Pixar Animation.  Here is the fifth in a series

Play against cliches. First, play with the cliches of your business.  You all know what they are.  Name them.  Call them out.  Have some fun with them.   And then go against them.  There is a lot of movement in playing against cliches.  Just doing this one thing can transform your scene into something delightful.

Think of the environment as a six-sided sphere, of which the audience is a part. What a brilliant way to determine your marcomm budget!  It’s 1/6 of your total operating budget.  Done.  Next.

The environment also has an outside and an inside. This is a good way of thinking about how your brand’s environment travels with the communication that represents it in the networked world.  Think of your network as a place.  What is that place like?  Who is walking the halls?  How is it lit?  What kind of art hangs in its offices?  What does it sound like?  All these concepts should be consistent and play off one another in virtual space and in reality. A friendly atmosphere in the office extends to the social graph.  Artfulness will be apparent in reality and in virtual space.  Clutter is as clutter does.  Etc. etc.

You don’t have to try to be funny, laughter will happen just by being human.  Being human is funny enough. A common misconception we battle all the time at GameChangers is that improvisation is all about being funny.  So not true!  Improvisation is about communication, learning, and transformation.  It is only by a quirk of genetic fate—Viola Spolin’s son, Paul Sills, brought all the games Viola had conceived with him when he and Bernie Sahlins co-founded Second City—that we in the U.S. associate improvisation so strongly with comedy.  Comedy is just a sliver of the output improvisation is capabl of generating.   It’s like saying all ice cream Praline Pecan.  Taint so.

Playful, direct, co-developed ideas, informations, and dreams will always be far hipper than one person’s alone. This is just a basic human algorithm.  The best ideas of eight people will always be better than the best ideas of one person.  Spare us your genius, and bring us something else.  Your work ethic.  Your brain.  Your smile.  Your song.  Your sense of smell.  Your experience.  But spare us your genius.  Because, you know…our stuff will always be far hipper than yours alone ; )

People get lucky in all sorts of ways.  I’ve always been lucky with teachers.  My teachers, it always seemed to me, performed at a high level.   They inspired me.  How?  They had great energy, and enjoyed what they were teaching.  Their senses of humor were intact.   They connected the gifts they gave us to a larger world, they cracked open doors that many of my friends and I eventually walked through.

I recite the names of my K-12 teachers to myself, like a person might go over the names of relatives in a family tree or a litany of saints to invoke a certain kind of contentment about one’s path:

Lena Bonifer (my grandma), Sister Francille, Evangeline McDaniel, Henrietta Allen, Sister Augusta, Henrietta ‘Sparrow’ Spink, Ken Dudine, Emil Dischinger, Dimp Stenftenagel, LINDA ROHLEDER (especially Linda Rohleder!), Sister Aloysius, Barry Bird, Gene Keusch, Vincent Arvin, BILL BASSLER (especially Bill Bassler!), Hershel Zehr (”I can solve the time zone issue.”), Del Steinhart (”This is how a brick wall moves during an earthquake.”), Cabby O’Neill (’We don’t live in a democracy, we live in a representative republic!’), Pete Gill, Dave Leuking, Ray Minton, Jerry Brewer, Jack ‘Bulldog’ Leas, Don Hayes, Mary Ann Hayes (favorite historical character:  Eleanor of Aquitaine, wtf??!!), Mel Menke, Ed Schultheis, Rex May, Ray Cox, Ed Haller, Don Gamble, Paul East, Aloysius Mathias Alonzo Curabin Schuler–and can’t forget our school bus driver for eight years, Harold Diddleburger (Bus #3 Ruled!)  I have funny stories and loving memories of you all, God bless you wherever you are!

About the CAPITALIZED:

Linda Rohleder, my sixth grade teacher, wanted great things for us.  She was always bringing up and getting us involved in learning that had to do with the Astronauts, Vietnam, the Optimist Club Speech Contest, the County Spelling Bee, Fast Food, Fashion, Charles Dickens, Indiana State University and a hundred other ideas about the world that cracked doors.  Never mind the finger, she did not permit her students to even give one another a thumbs-down gesture.  Rumor was that she and Don the Bookmobile Driver had a thing going on.

Bill Bassler was my high school Latin teacher for three years.  He showed me how there’s life in everything if you know where to look, even in a supposedly dead thing like the language of ancient Rome.  When he was guiding us through The Aneid or Julius Caesar, a Coca Cola ad written in Latin, or a Roman kid calling out to his buddy to come play, (“Yo, Publius, what are you doing?!”), you were there, living it right along with him.

My lucky streak continues to this day, with my teachers in improvisation, music and the various languages of new media.  Jason Pardo, Aaron Krebs, Sarah Gee, Lonnie ‘Meganut’ Marshall, Craig Cackowski, VIRGINIA KUHN (especially Virginia Kuhn!) and a dozen others have given gifts I’ll be a lifetime repaying.   I’d rather have the good fortune of knowing and studying with these people than win a hundred lotteries.

I was thrilled to find this photo online, taken last year, of some of my high school teachers. From left: Bill Bassler; Aloysius Mathias Alonzo Curabin Schuler and his wife, Rosina; Mary Ann Hayes behind the ribbons; Don Hayes; Del Steinhart