IMPACT

IMPACT of the Arts

Episode Summary

Carrie Kaufman talks to Sarah O'Connell of Eat More Art and Matt Elwell of Comedy Sportz about how art can lead us through this crisis.

Episode Notes

This is IMPACT. A daily look at how we are coping with the coronavirus in Nevada. I’m Carrie Kaufman.

I spent the first half of my adult life doing, watching and writing about theatre.

But I really spent those decades of the 90’s and aughts writing about life.

PerformInk, which was the newspaper I started back when the first Bush was ending his presidency, covered politics, race, sexual and workplace harassment. We wrote about economic development. And leadership. And being a working parent. And global policies and issues.

Because arts is a lens that refracts and makes sense of the entire world. It is our common language. It is our shared experience.

These are the things I’ve learned from theatre:

  1. To be in the moment. To always be authentic and present.
  2. To be emotionally available. If you bottle yourself up and follow outside rules, rather than inside intuition, you will not be a good leader. You simply won’t see the people you’re trying to lead. You may not even see yourself.
  3. To listen. Truly listen. Not just with your ears, but with your whole being.
  4. To take risks. I just started a radio show on two days notice. I am a gay, single mother who reoriented her career halfway through her life.
  5. To say Yes… AND. That’s one of the main tenets of improv. You come into a given situation, you find agreement, then you add something to help it move forward.

Theatre has taught me how to live. It’s made me a good journalist and interviewer and manager. It’s made me a halfway decent teacher. It’s made me a damn good mother.

We’re going to talk today about how arts are influencing us in this time of lockdown and fear. And how we can take the lessons that arts have to teach us to see our way through to more meaningful experiences on the other side.

I’m joined today, as I am going to be every Friday, by Sarah O’Connell. Sarah is the artistic director of Asylum Theatre, and former associate director at American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. She is also a fierce arts advocate and leader, and has stepped up to bring the performance community in Las Vegas together, most notably through her website, Eat More Art Vegas, and her monthly Arts Table gatherings.

Matt Elwell is an old friend from my Chicago Theatre days. He’s Executive Director of CSz Worldwide and a speaker and consultant in Applied Improvisation. CSz Worldwide produces ComedySportz. In addition to his exec duties, Matt has been a performer in ComedySportz for 20 years.

I met both of these people because I interviewed them. And I was like, “Yeah, I have to keep these people.”