Stephen Davis

I Survived Theatre School

Intro: Is Mercury in retrograde?, thought ideation,
Let Me Run This By You: holding the hope for someone else when you're not feeling it yourself
Interview: Centenary university, Cedar Point, dyslexia, Ed Graczyk, stage combat, John Jenkins, B.K.S. Iyengar yoga, Burn This, movement to music, therapy, improvisation, Sean Gunn, Lee Kirk, Johnna Adams, No End of Blame, Paul Holmquist, Ben Nye, Tisch, Hot l Baltimore, Sharon Gopfert, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Shattered Globe theatre, demons, Susan Bennett, Agamemnon at European Repertory Theatre, Leonard Roberts, vanity, the Wolf Pack Production Company, Zach Helm, Bridget Quebodeaux, Jimmy McDermott, Rob Hess, Hunting Cockroaches, Paul Tei, cancer.
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
1 (8s):
And Jen Bosworth and I'm Gina . We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet?

2 (31s):
Dumb ass. I'm sitting here for 10 minutes. I could have done all of this already. Hi friends. How are you?

1 (39s):
Oh, I don't know. Like I feel today, like just, I'm not feeling it, like, today's like, like shit keeps going wrong this morning. Like the dog woke up too early. Like, what are you doing up at three 15? Nobody likes that. Like go back to bed. So, and then I just, you know, it's interesting. I've seen a lot of people online lately talking about, and one of them was a scientist talking about how mercury in retrograde is not a thing it's like not a real thing and people blame it, but okay, fine. That's fine. But also we need something to blame Stefan. So I feel like blaming more Korea planet in retrograde is the least harmful thing we could do.

1 (1m 25s):
Absolutely. Like, fuck the planet. Like I'm going to blooper Korean record. Right. So anyway, I just really feel like if there is such a thing as we're curing Richard raid, I was feeling it this morning. Just like, like shit is not going, like my husband and I were not communicating right this morning. And like, I just over stupid stuff about him getting a burrito, breakfast burrito, like it doesn't matter. The point is like, I'm not, I just one of those days where I was like, okay, I gotta make sure, like before I came and talked to you, I was like, let me blow this candle out in the other room because it's one of those mornings where like I could see, I'm not going to set myself up for more, for more failure.

1 (2m 5s):
So that's how I feel. I feel like a little bit tired and, and PMSC, but I'm okay. I'm here. That's good.

2 (2m 15s):
That is a gift of being older. That when you can recognize you've just done it enough to be like, Hmm. When I start doing this, then it doesn't go too great for me. So I better do this other thing.

1 (2m 30s):
Right. It goes really badly if I, right. If I blame people instead of mercury in retrograde. And if I don't, don't make things easier on myself. So like today I have remind me, I just have to get off our call at night at eight fifty five, if that's okay. Can we end there not this one, but the next one, anyway, I have a thought, a thought ideation group. I told you how I do do I, did I tell you how to do these thought ideation groups? No, I've never heard of this whatsoever. Well, okay. So there's a company that hires creative thinkers to sort of join these, like those, you know, how you get tagged to do those marketing things and you get paid like, you know, like a focus group, right?

1 (3m 19s):
So we're like moles on the inside of the focus group that are hired to basically make the conversation more lively. Yeah. Wow. So, so, so it's me and a bunch of like, so, okay. It's a, it's a company in Chicago and my friend was like, you know, the, money's not, it's not steady, but it's good money when you do it, would you be interested in doing this thing called thought ideation? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, but okay. So it was a company that, that they put together groups of creatives and then charge companies a lot of money to bring us in.

1 (4m 5s):
And we make some of the money to get their market research going on a certain product or item. And so a lot of times when you have those focus groups, like nobody talks, there's no, you know, average Joe and Betty Schmoe are there for the money. Of course they're not there. You know, th th th their jam is not thinking like that's not anyway. So they hire us to sort of go in and be the, and sometimes it's only create like ideators or whatever we're called. And sometimes we're mixed with the general consumer. And I don't know what that one is, what what's happening today, but you can't be like, oh, I'm special.

1 (4m 46s):
You know what I mean? So you have to sort of blend in, so you can just like performative Performante of performative, but you also have to like, sort of be engaging. It's interesting work. It's also right. As I get older, I'm like, oh, I want to be the people running the, the group. Like whenever I ran these groups, I look at the marketing cause it's the marketing department of whatever product. And I'm like, this, this is a cool job. I just missed my calling as one of these market research. Like people that are probably making more than I'm making, but I'm yet I haven't done that. So, so that's what I'm doing at nine, 9:00 AM on zoom. Now they're all on zoom for, you know, a couple hours, you make a couple hundred bucks.

1 (5m 26s):
Okay. What's the product today. It's the some kind of fitness situation talking about fitness equipment. So the questions for the panel is like, would you be likely to use this? Or like, how could you make this product better? It's usually like, how could this be better? Like what speaks to you? They're really into it's fascinating. Cause they're really into like story to like, what kind of story does this, this product tell? Or like, it's interesting. They're really looking at like ways to make things better are things practical and user-friendly and right.

1 (6m 10s):
And like what feelings do these evokes this candle evoke or whatever the thing is. And, and then there's also like these exercises you do sometimes that are just seemingly unrelated, but somehow tie back into products, whatever.

2 (6m 25s):
So you're just behaving as another person on the panel. You're just, you're answering the same questions as everybody else, but you're your liveliness has meant to be infectiou...