The River

Last week I attended a play-reading at American Players Theater in Spring Green, WI. Their Winter Words performances are few in number, but held in the small theater these evening events feel like super-secret meetings of an artistic Justice League—heartfelt, dazzling, and sincere. The readings are simply staged and completely engaging, as they are followed by talkbalks with the audience, cast, and director. They are a wonderful and rare experience.

This episode featured a small cast and the director Robert Ramirez presenting The River Bride, a graceful and gorgeous play by Marisela Treviño Orta. As just a reading—no set, costumes, or larger theater magic—the words and story were in the spotlight, all achingly beautiful, devastating, yet hopeful. I’m not sure if I care to ever see this play staged, as this reading by these actors has taken up residence in my mind and promises to stay for a very long time.

Driving back through the night along dark country roads, the carload of theater-goers analyzed the play. Some agreed with the director, that the main focus of the fable was the failure to seize the day and act upon dreams and desires. I was convinced that the selfishness and greed of one character drove the story, impacting all the other characters. But I have changed my mind. I see now that the heart of the drama is indeed a failure of nerve, of effort, of voice, and specifically, how such hesitation clears a damaging path for the overly ambitious.

And here is where I relate a beautiful, poetic play to a business book.

In my workplace, we have a new boss who brings contemporary management tools and techniques into a museum setting. Every day is refreshing, yet also challenging. Just one example: the staff has read and discussed a few chapters of Kim Scott’s Silicon Valley new hope rah rah manifesto, Radical Candor. Reading a management book in no way approaches the joyful aesthetic experience of hearing Treviño Orta’s play read aloud, but these texts have an important commonality: they both consider what happens when individuals seize too much, too often; the damage and destruction that result from an imbalance of power when aggression is not checked consistently—and, most importantly, the mediating potential for persistent assertiveness.

Is it wrong to hold onto the heartache that is at the center of The River Bride, to utilize a fictional loss as a spur to action, at work? To transform Helena and her hesitation into a warning about professional silence and complicity? Can poetry be combined with the dictates of management? Carpe diem? “Care personally, challenge directly” is Scott’s mantra to transform relationships, and thus the workplace. And I am beginning to see some truth there. Balancing personal ambitions with candid feedback and daily responsibilities is challenging, but actually made easier if you care about what you are doing.

A fable set in the Amazon informs activities in a midwestern office. This is the reason I work with visual art, why I see plays and movies, read poetry, and yes, even business management books: to better understand life, its conflicts, complexities, and incongruities. To drive for hours through the dark night, talking about language and people and meaning and motivation, then discover new angles on these same issues in the bright light of the workplace, the experience of the play is extended, the words sing again and again. This is on my mind as I prepare for a truly exciting professional development experience. I see that my office is on the edge of a river, filled with the calls of the birds and the clicking of the dolphins, home to much noisy, productive, difficult, and promising work.