One possibility is to change the organisational setting of the play, so it could also be set in a public sector organisation such as a local government department. We could really get into some of the sustainability metaphors around “clutter”, “complexity” and the notion of being “legalistic” in the human realm.

A second development is to make more and different use of film, possibly varying the filmed monologue for different venues/organisational settings. We could have a number of different themed monologues exploring different aspects of personal and organisational sustainability. Another exciting possibility is to use live film via an actor offstage, giving a more edgy, raw feel to the film aspect.

I’m also, as a writer, interested in the notion of “sustainable unsustainability”, where people settle into a “groove” of unsustainability, making their personal or organisational decline a slow “routine”,  where the process of change itself becomes something to depend on, predict, and get used to. Here, there’s a very scary and subtle look at this theme, as sustainability becomes a kind of “enemy” to a more secure but kind of comfortable degrading of personal progress, Regression becomes a kind of crutch, sustainability is seen as an attempt to take the crutch away and make us fall. How do we cope with this nowadays as stupor becomes more preferable to the pain of moving forward and letting go od addictions?

Recycled Dreams is not a play that teaches sustainability. It isn’t a play with hidden or overt “messages”. Often people think that such plays do have hidden messages, conveying a hidden agenda. With corporate theatre this is often the case. A client organisation, often a business or public organisation, commissions a theatre or film company to create a production or “corporate video” that delivers a training or communication agenda. The arts organisation essentially serves as a vessel or mouthpiece for the client.

The work of Rational Madness does not sit in this territory. We take the world of work as raw material for our own creative restlessness and response. We explore themes related to organisational life and present them as performance – sometimes short pieces, sometimes places, sometimes using film with our theatre work. But the exploration is not driven by a client. We are not paid to produce a play about X or Y. We take working life as our inspiration, and, in the case of Recycled Dreams, we were very much fascinated by the theme of sustainability.

The writer, Paul Levy, was keen to look at the relationship between “global sustainability”, “business sustainability” and “personal sustainability”.

Global sustainability usually focuses on what we are doing to our planet and the currently espoused (by governments and think tanks) need to manage our planet and our use of its resources, in a more sustainable way. The battles at Kyoto, the discussions of optimism, pessimism and realism abound here, and businesses are being asked and told to play their part as responsible stakeholders in ensuring they make a responsible contribution to the environmental issues in our world. Business are being asked to be “good corporate citizens”.

Business, or organisational sustainability, reflects this global agenda. Business produce waste and pollution and use a range of resources and non-renewable energy to produce their products and services. But here sustainability also seems to mean business survival, from a commercial perspective. Sustainability seems to have broadened as a theme in recent year to include not only good environmental practice, but also mean longer term survival in the “marketplace”. The recent global recession and the collapse of banks have led many leading thinkers and business leaders to question how “sustainable” our current business models and theories really are. New ideas and approaches are being looked for. The recent “Moonshots for Management” is an example.

“To successfully address these problems, executives and experts must first admit that they’ve reached the limits of Management 1.0—the industrial age paradigm built atop the principles of standardization, specialization, hierarchy, control, and primacy of shareholder interests. They must face the fact that tomorrow’s business imperatives lie outside the performance envelope of today’s bureaucracy-infused management practices.

“Second, they must cultivate, rather than repress, their dissatisfaction with the status quo. ” (Harvard Business Review 2009)

Personal sustainability also includes the “green agenda” but encompasses the notion of whether our personal lives are sustainable – whether our jobs really nourish our create instincts, whether office work and working in a call centre for 30 years is harmful to a human being, whether our levels of borrowing are sustainable, our addiction to gadgets and social media. There are optimistic and pessimistic views and forecasts of these issues and developments. Recycled Dreams explores the notion of “wretched contentment” – a kind of superficial happiness that hides a deeper personal unease with one’s own biography, one’s career, one life pattern. We identified this phenomenon in our research for the play. A lot of people are discontented with working life, where they feel no deeper purpose or connection with it. Some people love their work and are fulfilled by it. But many are “wretchedly content”, happy to be well paid, enjoying their work and their free time out of work, but sensing underneath a sense that their life story isn’t quite fulfilling itself, that the biographical thread is lost. This can only be decided and defined by the person concerned. It’s only a badge we can stick on ourselves. Only we sense if, despite material comfort, we have “lost it” deeper down.

What is the relationship between our “personal planet” and Planet Earth as a whole? And how is this played out in organisational and business life? These questions are addressed by the play. The play explores theme through the lives of three individuals who work together in the office of fictional Firefly Media, and who meet regularly at the office photocopier.

The play doesn’t use the characters to deliver hidden messages about sustainability. The characters are archetypal – one is a cynic, one is an evangelist, and one sits on the fence. All have issues in their personal lives about “personal sustainability”. Is the fact that many peoples’ personal lives are not very sustainable contributing to global sustainability? If we have lost our way in life, if we don’t value ourselves, or if we simply don’t care, can this lead us to being careless with our Earth? Is the drive towards “One planet”, where were are all global citizens, making us lose our sense of individuality, our valued sense of self? The play asks the questions, and doesn’t give the answers.

By asking such profound, archetypal questions, and by offering archetypal characters, the play can act as a kind of mirror for the audience to sees themselves in. Who do they relate to – Jamie, the cynic, Natalie, the evangelist, or Nick, the one who doesn’t know? How personally sustainable are our own lives? How much do we really care, about ourselves, about our organisations and communities, and even our planet? And does it really matter?

The audience watches the play, and they see a play that is reflecting things back to them, all the way through. And this creates personal reflection after the curtain has fallen. We’ve had a lot of feedback that this play “makes you think”. But it doesn’t tell you what to think. The mirror of the drama just throws out a chance to see yourself in it, to think about sustainability as a theme in your own life. The reflection process is not comfortable because the themes and questions are disquieting. But they are all the more powerful for not being hidden as an agenda of education or persuasion, for not being “loaded with messages”< for not telling you how to be or what to do. Recycled Dreams is a form of organisational theatre that hopefully creates an opportunity to reflect profoundly, to arrive at your own answers and, perhaps, change as a result.

Recycled Dreams Preview

Paul Levy | MySpace Videos

Part of our artistic journey was not just to explore the issues around sustainability but to try to experience it in our performance.

The play uses minimal set (just a photocopier – when there isn’t one on site, we use our own old, recycled one!).

Whenever possible, the paper used in our final scene of the play is gathered from the venues we play in, ideally from their own recycle bins.

We use a recycle bin from the site we perform in, which is part of our set, and a key prop in the last scene.

We can easily make use of trains and sustainable forms of transport when travelling to venues. By performing at an organisation, we can also do several performances in one day.

We require no traditional stage lighting when playing site-specifically, we tend to use lighting that is already native to the on-site venue.

We use a paperless programme, available virtually – this article is posted to the Recycled Dreams paperless library!

We haven’t undertaken this effort in order to be “worthy”. It’s part of the integrity of the performance, and we’re also proud of the high level of sustainability in the play. It gets us “in the zone” of the performance, creates authenticity, and also helps to engage our audience, not only during the production, but also before and afterwards.

It also creates cost sustainability enabling us to use funding and sponsorship to the optimum level and also offer very competitive budgeting.  The focus is on the play, the acting, the writing, the themes explored – but the backdrop is authentic and this authenticity energises both performers and audience.

Apollo gets to speak during Recycled Dreams using a clever bit of filming, played ably by actor, Richard Frankin (who was once in BBC’s Doctor Who and ITV’s Emmerdale in the UK).

On tour, the Apollo mask which is used to bring the photocopier miraculously to life, has been a bit knocked about, so here is a sneak preview of the new Apollo in the making, onto which we project the face of dear Richard!

The first Apollo

The First Apollo (Mounted)

The First Apollo at home on the Photocopier

And now here’s the new Apollo who will be gracing the stage at Pret a Manger and beyond!

Apollo Mark Two!

The new Apollo looks a bit younger because he’s less battered! Technically the projected image of the actor fills the space more roundly and creates a more realistic 3-D feel. Apollo comes to life before our eyes and muses on the nature of originality!

Making the Mask

We used a basic neutral mask as a base and then built the face, loosely around the facial architecture of our actor. I used a simple process of layering using parcel tape with small bits of tape padding to help build and shape the face, which is then mounted onto painting canvas before being mounted finally onto the onstage photocopier. A small, specially designed part, attached to the projector, allows us to focus the film of the actor’s face directly onto the mask. Facial features are exaggerated in order to take the fully projected filmed image across a distance of about 2 metres.

This conference has been running for over ten years bringing together academics and practioners in the field of innovation and technology from all over the world.

Recycled Dreams helped bring a sustainability perspective to the discussions.

An international audience watched the play which was performed at the end of the first day of an event which explored themes as diverse as “Originality” and “Using Water-Jet to cut Sandwiches”. I’m serious! This was a multi-disciplinary and multi-perspective event bringing together people from different fields, backgrounds and nationalities, all interested in discussing themes such as technology and sustainability. So it was an ideal event to bring a piece of theatre to!

The audiences comprised people from the UK,  Slovenia,  Romania, Poland, Spain, France, Montenegro and Austria.

The response to the play was terrific. We were particularly glad that an audience, for whom the play was not in their first language, engaged with the themes and understood it so well.

There was a lot of discussion afterwards.

We staged the play slightly differently from our usual approach given the international nature of the audience. We focused some extra rehearsals on slowing the piece down so that the language would have time to sink in as the piece progressed. Finding the right balance between “getting it” and “getting bored” was a real challenge and we seemed to pull it off. We also looked at the idiom in the writing and made a few tweaks here and there. But mostly we kept the script intact and we were delighted that even culture-specific language travelled reasonably well.

We also made the clarity more deliberate, especially in the short monologues, allowing the more dramatic dialogue to flow at the usual pace.

This has been a fascinating learning curve in staging drama to an international audience, especially in an organisational theatre context.

The play’s themes seemed to ring bells for many in the audience and also the use of theatre to explore organisational issues was a real eye-opener for some in our audience. There’s talk of a return performance in 2010!

In our home town of Brighton there is a solicitor’s firm whose main office is also home to a public art gallery. The decision was made to create space in their working area (including reception) to allow artists many local) to show their work. You might not be surprised to hear this creates a sense of pride in staff in their working environment and also can foster a more inspired and creative working atmosphere. After a while of course, staff and managers do get used to the art “being there”. However, the regular changing of work on show, the launch events and the meeting of artists brining their work in, creates a buzz that can sometimes be measured in terms of a more positive working atmosphere and higher motivation. Not easy to measure of course. However, directors in the firm believe the benefits to be significant enough to continue to invest in the idea, year on year. Recycled Dreams is an example of theatre-based art. But there are many other forms – visual art, poetry, film, for example,

Business and Organisational culture can be enriched by the presence of art in the workplace. Art creates a reaction in those who look at it – not always favourable! Reaction involves stimulation. When people are stimulated to react, the level of values is often reached. With art in a business this can be experienced as a kind of “buzz”. Where a meeting room is well designed in terms of colour, layout and the presence of art – paintings, sculpture etc., meetings can often be more stimulating as well, more buzzy. Meeting in a bland meeting room tends to dredge up the same old behaviours and responses. Of course if the design of a meeting room or the art on show produces only negative or confused reactions, the meetings may not be as buzzy in the way envisaged! The choice of art, the design of the space is important. It is all a matter of taste and tastes differ in each individual and also each business culture.

In my own view it is good to pilot the art, to do some research and so be prepared to experiment. Also, as in most galleries, the collections are not all permanent. Be prepared to change what is on show and also to commission shows which can be themed in relation to agendas within the organization. For example, if the priority is globalization, some artwork related to a global theme might be appropriate. If we are discussing “people” issues, me might want art that encapsulates themes of emotion, diversity and motivation.

If we simply want to make the place look more cheerful or inspiring, there is so much art available, so many artists in your local area who are probably itching to have their work on view, that you will be spoilt for choice! Enjoy the process, finding some art to show in an organization can be a journey in itself, you may even be able to use the process as a feedback process. For example, a team of managers or staff choose the artwork together and then feedback to each other: “Why did you prefer that one? What does it tell you about yourself and your view of our organization?” Sometimes the process highlights differences in values and beliefs, sometimes it bonds colleagues more closely together who thought they had little in common but discover that, deeper down, they have a shared love of a certain style of art.

So, why not put a creative buzz into your organisation? Take a look at the posters that might have been up for years on your walls? Why not replace them with some new pictures from a local artist that have paint on them that has hardly dried on the canvas? Contact your local art gallery, check the web for a listing of local artists or find your local branch of Arts and Business (http://www.AandB.org.uk)

The show then toured the UK, on site, at photocopiers and customised performance spaces around the offices of Legal and General before arriving home in Brighton for performances at the Three and Ten Theatre. It was described as “entertaining and laughaloud funny” by the Evening Argus.

the show then went up to London and performed at a Sustainability event at London Probation playing to a packed venue and generating much discussion.

The Business In the Community Climate Change Market Place (attended by Prince Charles) at Old Billingsgate in London, played host to two futher performances which has led to a flurry of interest in the show. A range of proposals are now in discussion.

The play then headlined the Critical Incident, a major arts and business event in the Brighton Festival Fringe in May 2009. According to Belina Raffy from the Applied Improvisation Network:

“Just wanted to say how inspirational we found your play ‘Recycled Dreams’. It captures so many crucial, REAL dynamics in organisations that typical sustainability movements kick up. Fantastic!!! I’m telling lots of people about it. Fingers crossed – even more organisations will run it in-house.”

The show was a sell-out.

Having now performed nearly fifty times, Rational Madness are now in discussions with a firm of solicitors for a possible on-site tour, as well as discussions with EDF Energy and several other large organisations for on-site performances. The next ports of call for Recycled Dreams are an internation conference in Slovenia, the MIT2009 conference in Fiesa on September 28th 2009, before moving on to showing at the Technology Park in Ljubljana. Then, in November, there will be  performances during their Sustainability Week in November 2009 for Pret-A-Manger.

And the company is delighted to announce it has been shortlisted for the prestigious Arts & Business People Development Award at the 2009 Arts & Business Awards to take place in November at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Do contact us for information about booking this popular piece of organisational theatre.

Visit the main Recycled Dreams web site here.

Natalie (reading): “The Sustainability Strategy 2008-2018” That’s far from pointless.

Jamie: You haven’t read it. Page upon page of  bullshit and hypocrisy. A call from the top to recycle and reuse, to reduce and rethink, all written by a guy who drives a Mercedes on company budget and has a four-wheel gas-guzzler as a second family car.

Do you think companies having sustainability strategies is a pointless exercise?

What’s the best way for a company to be sustainable?

Jamie: Sustainability starts at home you know. You have to get a life first, before you go about worrying about life on earth.

How personally sustainable is your own personal life outside work? Are you spending more than you have? Are you fulfilled in life?

Natalie: This company is big enough to make a big impact on green issues. …

Jamie: Not in this company. They’ve created too much cynicism.

Natalie: Just because you’re full of negativity doesn’t mean everyone else here is.

Are you cynical about your company’s attempts to be green?

Is it okay to be negative about management initiatives?

Jamie: Most people who work here are under thirty-five. If you want to reach generation Y, you’ve got a challenge on your hands. The secret of reaching generation Y isn’t giving them Death by PowerPoint and cheesy documents to read.

What’s the best way of getting a message about sustainability across to staff?

Generation Y are the computer-savvy, social-networking generation who like to find things out of themselves. What’s the best way of the organisation being sustainable in your own personal view?

Jamie: This is the age where no one has the right to tell anyone anything. Telling people stuff, unless they agree with it already, annoys them. It irritates them.  And a good thing too if you ask me. The Queen has been replaced by the King of Personal Space.

Do you find company briefings and new initiatives an invasion of your work space?

What happens when your own personal values clash with those of the company you work for, or with work colleagues or managers?

Jamie: The reason no one cares about your little planet earth anymore is because there are six billion more important planets to worry about. Six billion personal ones. Six billion and ten, six billion and twenty, six billion and thirty…

Natalie: A lot of people care about the planet.

Jamie: I hope you’ll say that to all your fellow British Holiday makers as the onboard toilets flush over the Mediterranean Sea on your thirty quid charter flight to Kos.

A lot of people “talk the green talk” but haven’t really changed their behaviours much. Are you one of them? How important is it to walk your talk?

Jamie: The reason people are cynical about this company’s attempts to go green are because we’ve been told. That’s the first disastrous step. And the second is that it isn’t OUR planet our great leaders are talking about. It’s theirs.

Whose agenda is the sustainability agenda? Everyone’s? The managers’? The shareholders’? The staffs’? The customers’? Does it matter?

Being more sustainable might make more money for shareholders. Is that a good or a bad thing for the organisation? Is it a good enough reason to not support company wide sustainability issues?

Natalie: This isn’t just about the shit we are pumping in the sea, this is about US. This isn’t just about ozone layers, this is about the amount of paper we are using each day

Do we often see the “environment” as something “out there”, separate from us? What negative impact does your daily work have on the planet? Your use of paper? Your travel? Your use of energy? The waste your produce personally at home and at work?

Jamie:  Four wheel drives? We’re told we have to become leaner, meaner and greener and they’re all driving Porsches and Mercedes series 5s.

Is there one ruler for managers and one rule for staff at the organisation or is everyone pulling together? Is a smart car an inappropriate car for driving to meet clients?

Jamie: Do you think this is what I dreamed of doing when I was a child?

(to Natalie): The reason you’re so interested in global sustainability is, for you, our ailing planet is a far more manageable lump of a problem than the unfathomable wasteland of a universe that is your own personal life.

Are you happy in life or at work? Do you sometimes get involved in other peoples’ lives or even causes, as a way of not focusing on your own life?

Apollo: Be original. Get back your essence, before it was polluted with cliché and copy. Crisp, new, white paper; untainted, clean and ready, unwritten or printed upon, where all is possible, a canvas for your originality…. I am one of a kind. No one holds the store of words that I do. Yes, I am unique.  How unique are you?

How unique are you and does it matter to you?

Jamie: People are sleeping their lives away.

Nick: . Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that constantly trying to “wake people up” day in, day out is its own repetition and routine? It’s just another form of your so called “sleep”.

Is the organisation in initiative overload? Are you tired of change after change? Is there a danger that the sustainability drive in a company just gets lost among a whole load of other iniatives going on?

Nick: All I am saying is a lot of people look to you for an example. If you spoke a bit more positively about what Nat is trying to do on the ground, people would listen. I know you’re not stupid. Why NOT do our bit for the planet. I couldn’t give a toss about shareholders. But I do give a toss about what we’re doing to the world.

Are you in a position to positively influence change in your department, area of work or even the whole company? Are you keeping your head down rather than get involved in change? Are there people around you looking to YOU to take a lead or be an example?

Nick:  Sometimes you don’t do things for reasons. Sometimes you just do them. Why should I not use a bit less paper? Actually I feel better for it. There.. There’s a reason! Woohoo! I feel better for it.

Must there always be a deep reason for doing something? Even if you don’t have strong feelings about sustainability, if there is a rational case, is that enough grounds to do something positive?

Is the sustainability agenda just a lot of hot air and unnecessary panic?

Nick: Look James, every time this company launches a new initiative you are the first to diss it; you come out of your corner cynical fists flying claiming its all hidden motives and hypocrisy; but I don’t see YOU walking your talk. You claim to be the ultimate cynic but actually you’re one of the best team leaders in the section AND you’re popular. I bet THAT pisses you off.

Is it fashionable to be cynical in your organisation? Is your status in your job partly achieved by being negative or cynical? Is cynicism your preferred style at work? What is the impact of cynicism on colleagues, on people your report to, or who report to you?

Natalie: In my view, indifference is a crime worse than murder.

Nick: What makes you say that?

Natalie: If you have disagreement, even conflict, at least it shows people care. You either need something to go with, or something to go against. But when people just can’t be assed, you’re in trouble.

Is conflict necessary to get people active? How do you arouse people out of indifference without conflict? Are there forms of positive thinking and presenting that arent irritating or cheesy?

Jamie: Do you know, if we all teleconferenced even half of the meetings we drive to, we’d travel in total about ninety thousand miles less per year.

How many miles to you travel in a week? Are there more environmentally friendly ways you could travel? Could you cut down on travel or even eliminate it using technology or smarter working?

Nick: Jamie the Mouth is always right. Which makes all of his statements cancel themselves out. Jamie, is a man full of content, but then again, so are recycle and rubbish bins.

Is there a difference between being right and doing the right thing? There are a lot of statistics about the environment that are disputed – but is there still a need ti be a bit greener anyway, or is that just being subjective and reactive?

Jamie: I cancelled ALL my meetings for this week. Four are now teleconferences, and three only really needed a well written email.

Are there any meetings you could replace with a teleconference or a well written email?

Nick: I can see. You’ve done something for the planet. It can’t last. Your sustainability will be unsustainable.

How do you ensure that sustainability doesn’t fizzle out? How do you make sustainability sustainable?

Nick: Since we put out recycling bins in every office, paper usage has trebled. People stop caring. They know it will be recycled so they get over generous.

How careful are you with paper use? Do you over-print or over-copy?

Nick: They wouldn’t be so indifferent if it suddenly all rained down on their heads. All the waste, all the refuse. All the rubbish.

Jamie: Most people are so wretchedly content, they wouldn’t even feel it.

Nick: That’s what it would take. Another flood. The world needs another flood.

Do you think the world is heading for environmental disaster? Is it to late to do anything? Even if it is true, should we still act locally and personally? Or is it all hogwash and overreaction or too late, so pointless?

Do you think companies are just about making money, or do they have an environmental responsibility?

Visit the main Recycled Dreams site here.