1 00:00:00,920 --> 00:00:04,160 Speaker 1: David had a pretty good He was working in a 2 00:00:04,160 --> 00:00:08,520 Speaker 1: great university. His students loved him, his peers loved him. 3 00:00:08,920 --> 00:00:11,719 Speaker 1: He had plenty of friends who loved him, and then 4 00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:16,400 Speaker 1: he became a successful playwright. Life couldn't get any better 5 00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:21,200 Speaker 1: except reaching the dizzying heights David reached in the theater 6 00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:25,040 Speaker 1: world didn't come cheap. For most of his life, he 7 00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:28,880 Speaker 1: was like anyone else. You might have the occasional tiff 8 00:00:28,960 --> 00:00:32,520 Speaker 1: with a coworker or acquaintance, but generally you're well liked 9 00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:36,200 Speaker 1: by the people you care about. And all of a sudden, 10 00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:42,839 Speaker 1: hordes of strangers started to hate David Williamson. Already a 11 00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:46,600 Speaker 1: self conscious man, the idea of people making a living 12 00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:50,520 Speaker 1: by tearing apart his every thought was almost debilitating for David. 13 00:00:51,360 --> 00:00:54,840 Speaker 1: So how did he learn to train his focus onto 14 00:00:54,880 --> 00:01:03,000 Speaker 1: the audience rather than the critics. My name is doctor 15 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:06,520 Speaker 1: Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of 16 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:10,839 Speaker 1: behavioral science consultancy Inventium, And this is how I work, 17 00:01:11,160 --> 00:01:13,959 Speaker 1: a show about how to help you do your best work. 18 00:01:14,920 --> 00:01:17,560 Speaker 1: On Today is my favorite Tip episode. We go back 19 00:01:17,560 --> 00:01:19,440 Speaker 1: to an interview from the past and I pick out 20 00:01:19,520 --> 00:01:22,880 Speaker 1: my favorite tip from that interview In today's show, I 21 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:26,600 Speaker 1: speak with playwrights David Williamson, and I wanted to know, 22 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:29,959 Speaker 1: on the very first preview night of a show, when 23 00:01:29,959 --> 00:01:33,360 Speaker 1: there's a packed house with people watching his words being 24 00:01:33,400 --> 00:01:37,000 Speaker 1: spoken for the first time, what sorts of things he 25 00:01:37,040 --> 00:01:39,800 Speaker 1: looks for in his audience to see what he might 26 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:41,000 Speaker 1: need to change. 27 00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:45,840 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm looking for involvement. I'm hoping the audience is 28 00:01:45,880 --> 00:01:49,640 Speaker 2: absorbed in the story. I hope it's relating to their lives, 29 00:01:50,240 --> 00:01:55,760 Speaker 2: because the thing I used to love was writing plays 30 00:01:55,760 --> 00:02:00,400 Speaker 2: that impinged on the sorts of lives or reflective sorts 31 00:02:00,440 --> 00:02:04,360 Speaker 2: of lives that those people were having. Now I've often 32 00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:07,320 Speaker 2: been criticized because my players are about the Anglo Celtic 33 00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:11,239 Speaker 2: middle class, and there are only one segment of our society. 34 00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:13,440 Speaker 2: But it's a segment I know, and there's a lot 35 00:02:13,480 --> 00:02:15,799 Speaker 2: of us, and we should be and we should be 36 00:02:15,880 --> 00:02:20,520 Speaker 2: allowed to have our own stories. And the proliferation of 37 00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:24,720 Speaker 2: writing from other groups in society has been very welcome. 38 00:02:25,560 --> 00:02:27,919 Speaker 2: But that's what I know, and that's what I do. 39 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:32,600 Speaker 2: And when I heard that audience, usually fairly middle class 40 00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:36,480 Speaker 2: and Anglo Celtic reacting to it and saying wow, I 41 00:02:36,560 --> 00:02:39,640 Speaker 2: know someone like that. I really know someone like that, 42 00:02:39,840 --> 00:02:44,359 Speaker 2: and I've seen that happen. You can see them when 43 00:02:44,400 --> 00:02:50,080 Speaker 2: you can sense them saying that. That's when it's deeply satisfying. 44 00:02:50,639 --> 00:02:54,280 Speaker 1: And would you talk to audience members during interval or 45 00:02:54,520 --> 00:02:55,160 Speaker 1: at the end. 46 00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:59,919 Speaker 2: No, I'd be terrified. I'd leave Kristin. She'd do it. 47 00:03:00,080 --> 00:03:05,639 Speaker 2: Survey from the women's lou and shit, hear the buzz 48 00:03:05,680 --> 00:03:09,680 Speaker 2: in there and come back. I'm terribly self conscious on 49 00:03:11,720 --> 00:03:18,440 Speaker 2: when I'm in an audience. I'm often accused of laughing 50 00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:21,960 Speaker 2: at my own work. They look at me like, oh, 51 00:03:22,040 --> 00:03:26,200 Speaker 2: I's laughing at its own work. Well, I'm usually laughing 52 00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:29,799 Speaker 2: at the creativity that clever actors have brought to my lines, 53 00:03:30,040 --> 00:03:33,720 Speaker 2: rather than celebrating my lines. But it's hard to tell 54 00:03:33,760 --> 00:03:38,920 Speaker 2: them that. No, I'm terribly self conscious. There was a 55 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:41,120 Speaker 2: time when I couldn't go to opening nights. I'd have 56 00:03:41,120 --> 00:03:44,160 Speaker 2: to send Kristin off and get a report back. It's 57 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:45,920 Speaker 2: very tense, very tense. 58 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:50,840 Speaker 1: Now. I imagine when reviews start coming out, that is an 59 00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:54,360 Speaker 1: interesting time. I'd love to know. How how do you 60 00:03:54,440 --> 00:03:57,800 Speaker 1: deal with bad reviews, negative reviews. 61 00:03:58,640 --> 00:04:01,640 Speaker 2: Well, earlier in the career I didn't deal very well 62 00:04:01,720 --> 00:04:07,160 Speaker 2: at all. The first law of criticism I learned, much 63 00:04:07,200 --> 00:04:10,800 Speaker 2: to my chagrin, was that the strength of the audience 64 00:04:10,920 --> 00:04:15,600 Speaker 2: reaction bears no relation to the critics evaluation of the play. 65 00:04:16,120 --> 00:04:20,200 Speaker 2: In fact, sometimes it works in reverse. I remember one 66 00:04:20,240 --> 00:04:27,120 Speaker 2: critic writing, I sat with a black cloud above me 67 00:04:27,960 --> 00:04:35,440 Speaker 2: as people fell about around me, laughing, as if this 68 00:04:35,480 --> 00:04:38,400 Speaker 2: is a terrible crime that I'd written something that people 69 00:04:38,440 --> 00:04:42,840 Speaker 2: were enjoying. But a lot of theater critics think that 70 00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:45,880 Speaker 2: theater is an arena of suffering that you've got to 71 00:04:45,880 --> 00:04:50,040 Speaker 2: be if you're Anglo Celtic middle class, you've got to 72 00:04:50,080 --> 00:04:54,080 Speaker 2: be whipped and told your horrible species that are doing 73 00:04:54,160 --> 00:04:57,719 Speaker 2: terrible things to the planet and other people, and you've 74 00:04:57,720 --> 00:04:59,480 Speaker 2: got to be told how bad you are. You're not 75 00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:03,599 Speaker 2: allowed al off and enjoy the theater. It's a place 76 00:05:03,640 --> 00:05:08,760 Speaker 2: of torture, according to some critics. But no, so I didn't. 77 00:05:10,400 --> 00:05:14,000 Speaker 2: I particularly reacted badly when I knew I'd written a 78 00:05:14,080 --> 00:05:17,839 Speaker 2: hit and got no recognition for it whatsoever. In fact, 79 00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:23,520 Speaker 2: got slammed for it, being told I was commercial, and 80 00:05:23,720 --> 00:05:29,760 Speaker 2: I knew that my players were players of substance. Sure, 81 00:05:29,800 --> 00:05:33,800 Speaker 2: they are entertaining unless you make a play entertaining. On 82 00:05:33,839 --> 00:05:36,920 Speaker 2: the surface, you won't get an audience, there's no sense 83 00:05:37,040 --> 00:05:41,359 Speaker 2: doing it. But at other levels they were making fairly 84 00:05:41,839 --> 00:05:45,240 Speaker 2: often fairly acute observations about the patterns of our social 85 00:05:45,279 --> 00:05:51,440 Speaker 2: behavior that were often quite intricate. And I knew my 86 00:05:51,560 --> 00:05:57,360 Speaker 2: work wasn't meretricious. It was actually something of substance and 87 00:05:57,400 --> 00:06:02,000 Speaker 2: so to be because people were in enjoying it. To 88 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:05,159 Speaker 2: be told it was worthless was a hard pill to swallow. 89 00:06:05,640 --> 00:06:12,760 Speaker 2: But then again, the human psyche is somehow structured to 90 00:06:12,800 --> 00:06:17,920 Speaker 2: concentrate ferociously on all the negative and set aside the positive. 91 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:20,000 Speaker 2: And there are a lot of positive things being said 92 00:06:20,040 --> 00:06:24,120 Speaker 2: about me, But the human ego, being as it is, 93 00:06:24,160 --> 00:06:26,200 Speaker 2: you tend to think, well, of course that's right, Yes, 94 00:06:26,240 --> 00:06:30,279 Speaker 2: of course I'm brilliant, But what's this bastard calling me? 95 00:06:31,160 --> 00:06:36,240 Speaker 2: So you obsess about the bad stuff and forget the 96 00:06:36,279 --> 00:06:39,200 Speaker 2: good stuff. And it reminded me of Dostoevski, that one 97 00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:43,760 Speaker 2: of the greatest novelists ever, who had his life blighted 98 00:06:43,880 --> 00:06:49,400 Speaker 2: by one persistent, awful critic in the Ukraine that kept 99 00:06:49,480 --> 00:06:53,440 Speaker 2: giving him a rough time and it evirtually ruined his life. 100 00:06:53,520 --> 00:06:56,560 Speaker 2: So I was a bit like that. But I got 101 00:06:56,600 --> 00:07:02,960 Speaker 2: better but start. When I became prominent, it was a 102 00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:07,480 Speaker 2: psychic shock because until that stage I was a lecturer 103 00:07:07,480 --> 00:07:11,440 Speaker 2: and a tershie institution where students like me, the staff 104 00:07:11,600 --> 00:07:17,920 Speaker 2: like me, my friends seem to like me. I was affable, 105 00:07:18,120 --> 00:07:20,720 Speaker 2: nobody hated me. And then suddenly you have become prominent 106 00:07:21,240 --> 00:07:24,600 Speaker 2: and you realize the arts is the most ferociously competitive 107 00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:27,400 Speaker 2: field on the face of the earth. Everyone wants to 108 00:07:27,440 --> 00:07:29,920 Speaker 2: be a writer or an artist or something like that. 109 00:07:30,360 --> 00:07:33,200 Speaker 2: So if you succeed, the ones that haven't succeeded have 110 00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:34,600 Speaker 2: really got it in for you. 111 00:07:35,680 --> 00:07:39,600 Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed my chat with David, and if 112 00:07:39,640 --> 00:07:42,560 Speaker 1: you want to listen to the full interview, you can 113 00:07:42,680 --> 00:07:46,240 Speaker 1: click on a link to the episode in the show notes. 114 00:07:46,840 --> 00:07:48,840 Speaker 1: If you're looking for more tips to improve the way 115 00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:51,640 Speaker 1: that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that 116 00:07:51,680 --> 00:07:54,360 Speaker 1: contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me 117 00:07:54,440 --> 00:07:57,800 Speaker 1: work better, which range from interesting research finding, street of 118 00:07:57,880 --> 00:08:00,680 Speaker 1: gadgets and software that I'm loving. You can sign up 119 00:08:00,680 --> 00:08:03,920 Speaker 1: for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how I Work 120 00:08:03,960 --> 00:08:07,840 Speaker 1: dot Co. How I Work is produced by Inventium with 121 00:08:07,920 --> 00:08:10,800 Speaker 1: production support from dead Set Studios, and thank you to 122 00:08:10,840 --> 00:08:13,600 Speaker 1: Martin Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode 123 00:08:13,640 --> 00:08:16,360 Speaker 1: and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise. 124 00:08:16,960 --> 00:08:17,760 Speaker 1: See you next time.