Finding Inspiration

One of the things that excites me about futures studies is the way it gets people to think outside of the box. The very act of creating scenarios forces your imagination to kick in and you start to see new ways of looking at the world.

There are, however, many pathways to this feeling. Art can often inspire us to change our thinking. Travel is another way, when we are nudged out of our comfort zones and forced to confront the challenges of another culture.

The MFE is interesting to me because fundamentally its an exercise in getting people to think outside of the box and to get them to use the information they already know in a new and collaborative way.

I’ve been thinking lately about things I’ve experienced this semester that have helped me see things in a new way and made a small list below. I’d be interested in hearing about what inspires you!

Sleep No More

I heard about Sleep No More for a long time but nobody was very specific in explaining what it was. When I saw it for myself this winter, I was blown away. It is one of the most innovative theater performances I’ve ever experienced.

In a normal show, you sit in the audience and you watch people on a raised platform act out a scene. There might be some breaking down of the fourth wall, but largely, you are passive, they are active.

Sleep No More is a very active experience. You are let loose in a dark maze of beautifully decorated rooms where a number of scenes play out at different times and different places. You choose where you go – there is no program and no guide. You can wander the corridors, sit down, chase after actors in scenes, whatever you like.

By letting the audience member take on this incredibly active role, the play succeeds in pushing what it means to be a theater audience and the interaction between the audience, the performers, and the set.

Games

I’ve hosted a couple of game nights since I’ve been back in DC and interestingly, I’ve only been playing new games. I’ve played the Game of Thrones board game and Battlestar Galactica – both of which are strategy games. GoT the game is a lot like Diplomacy, you try to take over the country by making small calculated moves against opponents in neighboring states. BG is a cooperative game in which all of the players work towards a common goal but one of the players is a secret traitor, sabotaging the group’s mission.

Learning new games is very inspirational for me. One, because I hope to make my own game someday, and two, it’s a new set of rules that you have to learn in order to operate in the world of the game. When you play a game you are familiar with, like Monopoly or Uno, you know the rules so well, you just focus on playing. With new games, learning the intricacies of the rules is part of the fun. It’s a whole new complex system.

 Fantasy Worlds (Westeros)

I admit I haven’t read the books, but I really love the Game of Thrones tv show. Some of my more sophisticated friends dismiss it because it is a fantasy series. This is a mistake. GoT features well developed characters, many of them female, and a very complicated plot. It is one of the few shows that I watch, then call my friends to analyze the episode just so I can fully digest it.

It is a show about politics, and the personal relationships that surround the iron throne, the seat of power in the fictional country Westeros. I feel at times that I think more about the politics of Westeros than I do the politics of the US. It is useful for me to think about the complexities of that plot and how effective the storytelling is on GoT.

Dirt Candy

Ever since I became a vegetarian/pescetarian 10 years ago, I’ve received a lot of comments from friends and family about my eating habits. One of the most common is that I must really hate food if I am a vegetarian because a true gourmand would be willing to eat everything. I totally disagree on this point.

In addition to moral reasons, I am a vegetarian because I truly love the flavor of vegetables. Any random person can cook a beef patty or some bacon and have them taste delicious. It is far more challenging to pull out different flavors from vegetables. Most meat-eaters can’t imagine a meal centered around vegetables being mouthwateringly delicious.

Well, I discovered a restaurant that might convert some of these folks. It’s a tiny place called Dirt Candy in New York where the chef insists that the focus of the restaurant is vegetables, not vegetarianism. She centers each dish around one vegetable – such as onions. It sounds strange, but the food is incredible. It changed my mind about the way one could serve vegetable dishes.

Trivia questions

I’ve hosted trivia since I’ve been back but more often these days I MC trivia. This entails coordinating with the host (person changes each week) and helping them develop trivia questions that highlight their interests but are general enough for the crowd to enjoy.

Editing trivia is actually quite hard. People find it very difficult to take their specialized knowledge and make it more general. For example, someone might want to do an entire round of questions on the show Miami Vice. There will be people in the audience who have never heard of the show. I work with the host to come up with questions relevant to the theme that people who have know knowledge of the show can participate. For example some of the questions can be about Miami Vice, but some should be about knowledge of some of the actors or the city of Miami more generally.

Trivia helps me think about how to ask the right questions. Questions that people get pleasure out of hearing whether they know the right answer or not. If they don’t know the answer they should feel like they learned something. This means not bombarding people with facts, but asking them to draw associations based on clues and themes. I continue to work on getting better.