COACHING THE COACHES
PART 11
by Jon Rappoport
Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport
In the summer of 2011, I started the Magic Theater. It is a way to make imagination manifest in improvised dialogues between two people.
They take roles, and they speak to each from those roles. And then, after a time, they switch (reverse) roles and continue the conversation—which can go anywhere.
The precursor of this sort of theater is, most directly, Psychodrama, the brilliant invention of Jacob Levy Moreno.
I sometimes use Magic Theater dialogues in my consulting work.
The range of possible roles is unlimited. Any person, archetype, object, thing, process can be a role. Most importantly, a role that doesn’t exist can be a role. For example, “the gold phantom who owns a drug store on Mars”—who is talking to “the ant who runs the universe.”
Yes, yes, yes, it’s absurd. It’s absurd by the standards of ordinary reality. But if you think ordinary reality is an authoritative yardstick, you should think again. And again.
What happens when a person speaks from a role that “couldn’t possibly exist?” He relies completely on his imagination. He uses it. He lives in it for a short time.
And gradually, his own sense of reality changes and expands. His own experience of his imagination deepens.
Much earlier in this series, I remarked that innovators go outside the system they’re in and bring back new ideas and inventions. Innovators aren’t tied to a system. They can enter them and exit them.
Well, in the Magic Theater, you’re exiting and re-entering ordinary reality and ordinary status quo and ordinary categories of perception. Experientially. Not just intellectually.
You can play Magic Theater in fairly basic terms. A person is having a big problem with his boss at work. Okay, let’s do dialogue. I’ll play your boss, and you play you. Then after that conversation: now you play your boss and I’ll play you. Some interesting things can happen.
On a much more expanded level, we go to roles like “the manager of Galaxy 32-B” talking to “an ambitious shoe salesman.”
Imagination in action.
Having done these dialogues, I can say that one effect is: they tend to dissolve problems by placing them in a far different perspective. Either the problem doesn’t seem so important, or a new workable solution suddenly pops up out of nowhere.
In daily life, we tend to gear perception so that it covers a “standardized” view of people, places, and things. We’re happy with that. We operate within that framework. All is well until we run into a problem, an obstruction, a block—and then the gears don’t mesh comfortably anymore. As time passes, the gears become more clogged, and we develop new problems, and we don’t solve all of them.
But we continue to work within the context of the way we perceive both reality and our lives. Inside that framework, we keep trying to come up with solutions. And, in the process, we lose track of what we really want. We lose track of the direction we would really like to pursue.
In the Magic Theater, we experience using our imaginations in ways we’ve never used them before. As a result, our standardized perception changes. We’re no longer exclusively operating inside that old context. We’re freer.
We can then surpass those problems, and we can see where we most profoundly want to go in life.
Here is a very simple example. I worked with a woman who was a dedicated political reformer. For years, in her work, she had been chewing on a particular problem she couldn’t resolve. Other people had tried to solve the same problem, and they had failed, too. She knew all the strategies, all the approaches, all the angles. She was at a standstill.
So we did a dialogue. I played her, and she played “the person who already came up with the brilliant solution.”
So ridiculously simple, it seemed stupid.
It was very slow going for a half-hour, as we spoke from our roles to each other. Then, the energy began to flow as she really got into her part. In the next hour, she spoke from “the top of the mountain,” with great authority, as if she really had solved the problem—without mentioning how she had done it.
When we stopped, she felt much better, although she hadn’t come up with a concrete plan. Or a vague plan. Or any plan.
A week later, we spoke. She said, “I suddenly figured out a whole new way to approach this thing, instead of beating my head against the same wall.”
A few months later, she called to tell me she’d achieved a significant victory. In a subsequent note, she described her achievement: “It was as if I’d been trying to turn a corner on a street with a tremendous wind blowing right at me. So I went into a building, took an elevator up to the roof, called in a big helicopter, and we flew to the right destination. That’s how it felt. A detour. Instead of steps 1,2,3,4, it was 1,6,7,4. I don’t know why I didn’t see that before. I guess I was locked in. Then I wasn’t anymore. I was in a different space.”
A change of perception brought on by imagination.
The Magic Theater is part of an overall philosophy of imagination. Instead of viewing life and the universe as simply “sitting there,” we view them as an infinite number of potential roles we can play and speak from, in dialogue.
The old Tibetan magicians had exercises in which they would merge with elements in Nature: tree, flower, cloud, river, creature. Well, this is taking that approach from a different angle. You actually play the role of these elements and creatures.
Here’s another example. Working with an executive who was dealing with a company that was falling apart, I tried many roles. He and I played “perfect CEO,” “awful CEO,” “new deep-pockets investor,” “bankruptcy judge,” “brilliant planner.”
These dialogues loosened things up a bit, but no real breakthroughs occurred. So I went much farther out. We played “a talking river of gold under the earth,” “phony CEO of a solar system,” “Fort Knox,” “paranormal magician,” “android following directions.”
What in the world could these roles have to do with his failing company? The roles are absurd. They make no sense. They’re ridiculous. They have no basis in reality. Etc., etc.
But after a few sessions, this man said, “You know, at first, it was like pulling teeth. I felt like an idiot playing these parts. But when I got into it, I felt better. Lighter. And now I’m taking a step back and seeing my company with a lot more clarity. I don’t know why, but I am.”
Over the course of the next month or two, he experienced new ideas popping up all over the place. He started to approach the company with real imagination. Taking nothing for granted. His old categories of locked-in perception were fading away.
He ended up reorganizing the company from the ground up. He put it on a whole new basis. It didn’t look like the old company at all.
That’s how he saved it.
He told me that, a result of our sessions, he had gained new courage, along with greater imagination.
All because he and I did something completely and utterly absurd.
Jon Rappoport
A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.