Your Queen is in danger, Spock!

All Nine London Test Posts About RETROSPECTIVE’s UK Premiere 

Obsessed with tests? Yes, but this post offers advice for all performing and presenting artists 

The words test and toast qualify as etymological cousins. Language experts think that the former word meaning originally “a piece of burned brick, clay, or tile” derived from the Latin “tosta, from torreō (‘to burn, parch’).” That means our word ‘torrid’ is in this linguistic clan as well and London reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit as we departed yesterday after the conclusion of our run of RETROSPECTIVE. Torrid! 

The other connection between TEST and TOAST is that after a theatrical experience like the just concluded run of RETROSPECTIVE — as depicted in our nine post series London Test — all participants including this playwright and his goddess of an Executive Producer wife are ‘toast’ as in the colloquial sense of burnt out, frazzled, exhausted. (Bonus phrase reference; the use of ‘toast’ in this way purportedly originates with words mostly written by Harold Ramis and dan Akroyd but spoken by Bill Murray as Venkman in Ghostbusters “as he prepares to fire a laser-type weapon … ‘This chick is toast’.” ) 

Knowing that after such an adventure as RETROSPECTIVE , you’ll be the metaphorical equivalent of a word that originally denoted “A slice or piece of bread browned on both sides by exposure to an open fire, a grill, or other source of radiant heat (formerly often immersed in wine, water, or another beverage)” should prompt theatre makers and other artists to journal about their work while it’s unfolding. Creating performance or presentation involves activity (and often anxiety) on many different levels; the work is multi-faceted. It’s x-dimensional chess and you have to solve for chess just like in high school algebra.

This is not just about theatre; my good friend and sometime cast member, Patrick Smith, just published his first novel The Last Revision. The event extends beyond the writing to the revision, negotiation, promotion, and reflection of all of the material. Talking to him in London when he came to see RETROSPECTIVE provided a rich travelogue of that journey from the book being done to the author never being done. Well, it’s just that Patrick is  not there yet. Waiting to capture the impressions and insights of your creating means you’ll miss a few. (Emily St. John Mandel, one of my favorite contemporary authors, seemed to turn her jottings from the experience of her hit novel Station Eleven into a whole other highly imaginative novel, Sea of Tranquility. So, there’s that possibility too from journaling during the work.)  

Creation of ANY type is perplex. The wonderful Word Origins newsletter reminded me of one way of portraying the process: x-dimensional chess: 

Joe Queenan and I when writing Grudges in 2019-20 took advantage of the pretentiousness of the ‘playing x-dimensional chess’ term to skewer a certain political figure whose cult members claim he’s operating on that level, but as Dr. Spock knew (but NOT Dr. Einstein apparently) chess like creating art tests not just our cognitive intelligence, but also the emotional type along with resilience and adaptability. In writing the nine posts about our LONDON TEST, some elements likely escaped that documentation, but the journaling helped me to understand what this thing called theatre and myself within it is all about 

The nonet of London Tests 

London Test: 74 year-old Bronx Irish Catholic Guy Takes His Play to London contains the links to posts 1-4, which emerged as Substack notes 

London Test # 5: Collaboration, Inspiration, Admiration 

London Test # 6: Rothko knew what Rory knew 

London Test # 7: Claps and Clunks 

London Test # 8: “You’re going to love London audiences” 

London Test # 9: “Time’s up; Pencils down” 

As I start this final post of my London Test Series, it’s 6PM BST or British Summer Time; this year marked the 110th anniversary of what was termed “Another social revolution for conservative England … the adoption of ‘British Summer Time“ This day, May 23 2026, brought a strong sun and very hot temperatures, but the cooler night breezes will carry the voices of our actors completing RETROSPECTIVE’s eight show run at Barons Court Theatre, an event characterized by me as a test. Well, as previously noted, everything can be thought of as a test although the sense of that categorization here was circumscribed as some experience that “by which the existence, quality, or genuineness of anything is or may be determined.” What was RETROSPECTIVE’s quality? Yes, there is that ninety minutes of artistry unfolded by Noah Huntley, Sarah Pearcy, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner, and Benjamin Parsons, superbly directed by Liviu Monsted, brilliantly lit and otherwise designed by Mehran Mortezaei, and hosted by the estimable and generous Leo Bencisa of Barons Court. But the test ending, and a look at the results is best started BEFORE the cast celebration that will occur after the last bows.

What was the construct — the concept or characteristic — this test was measuring?

A few basics

Regular readers of TAPH know that if you want to make a claim about a performance or attribute then the first step is to define what you’re measuring. With RETROSPECTIVE as with any theatrical venture, there wasn’t just one measure. ; let’s start with some obvious measures.

• Could we get audiences to come?
  • We had about fifty percent attendance in the theater. That was below both our goal and our budget, but according to reports from other pub theatres about what they see this season.
• Would we break even?
  • See the above to realize that the answer is as usual, No. But our losses are among the lowest of our ten productions since 2018 and also represent a reversal of a trend of steadily higher per performance expenses since 2023, Our ticket sales were over $5000
• Did the marketing plan work?
  • Not to the degree planned by a wide margin; Facebook and Instagram ads failed to trigger ticket sales despite all the lovely assistance of everyone on the team. Our friends and theirs know that every one of the RETROSPECTIVE cast and crew posted like maniacs throughout this time with great help and marvelous content from the digital wizard, Gifford Elliott and our videographer Louis Catliff. Director Liviu Monsted and our Clint Belinsky, multi-talented Benjamin Parsons were particularly creative. But the ads didn’t register. Cards and flyers were more effective as was the work done by our PR wizard Matthew Parker
• Did everybody on the team get paid?
  • YES! This is a critical element of Knowledge Workings Theater’s mission so extra marks on that front.

Harder parts to measure

But those were not the most significant aspects of the test: this is theatre! Here are the main goals:

• What about the audience reaction?
  • This reel is a good indication that audiences engaged. Only two people left early over eight performances, which is very good for a so-called ‘existential comedy’. (I’ve picked up the calculations here AFTER the last show.) One guy sat next to me and fidgeted all night and I could see another person bored out of their gourd while their partner, rapt with attention, tried to get them to behave. Bet that was an interesting ride home on the Tube. And then there was the woman in a front row side seat on her phone last night… But these were exceptions. Audience members provided enthusiastic and unsolicited feedback for the play and the performers.
• How about critical reaction
  • Very positive especially for the acting and directing. Take a look here:

Check out this about our players…

this is part of the test — to get our team noticed to help their careers, which happened as shown above and here…

Yes, some critics thought the play could be shorter and one called it clunky, but that’s helpful in part because that gets to another critical dimension of the London Test…

Did we learn things to make this or subsequent plays better?

YES! In fact, we will make some cuts before RETROSPECTIVE goes to the printers

But the most important measure is how this all worked spiritually. In plainer terms, did we have fun in London?

ABSOLUTELY! We made theater live, met old friends, made new friends, and reaped the joys of being alive in our art. We put ourselves and our work to the test and thanks to Marjorie Phillips Elliott stayed sane and succeeded. This was not a pass-fail test, but rather a take-home exam, an opportunity to put all we have learned about theatre and life into these moments. If you throw yourself into that opportunity always alert to chances to develop and help others to do the same, there are no wrong answers.

In 1978, fresh off the dissolution of a relationship – Pippa in Retrospective likes the old English word, Eaubruche for the breaking of a marriage – a good friend of mine, Reverend Tom Davis, suggested that a return to acting would restore my spirits. Tom suggested a meeting with Alan Brody, then the Chair of the Skidmore College Theatre Department. The college’s works functioned as a sort of regional theatre offering and although at 26 and heading the Saratoga County Office of Addiction & Substance Intervention Services not a student Alan invited me to audition for the Fall plays.  

That Skidmore having only recently shifted from being an all-women’s college had a dearth of male students certainly helped my chances, and Alan gave me the role of Reverend Anthony Anderson in George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. I got to say lines like “Essie, Essie, saddle my horse!” and my favorite “I’m Anthony Anderson, the man you want” while leaping onto the gallows to save my co-star Jeremiah Alexander. Not too shabby for my first role since Pozzo in Waiting for Godot in a touring production in 1972. 

But because of that production, Alan Brody encouraged me to dive back into theatre again allowing me to audit his classes and just generally soaking me in that world through conversation and example. That led me to New York in 1980 and years of studying with Terry Schreiber, acting, playwrighting, directing, and producing. Yes, then there was quite a break to raise with Marjorie the three exquisite children, but the lineage for this London Test of taking our play from its New York run to eight performances May 14-23 at Barons Court Theatre goes back to Alan Brody. 

Alan is now Emeritus at MIT after being Professor of Theater, Head of the Department, Associate Provost for the Arts, and probably a few other jobs. When he heard RETROSPERCTIVE was headed for its UK premiere, he wrote me the line in my title above: “You’re going to love London audiences.” Just as he has with myriad others, Alan opened up the possibilities for me when he brought me back into theater forty-eight years ago. It’s what he does.

He expressed this intention very well when he stepped down as Associate Provost at MIT in 2006 in describing why the arts were important at the most prestigious scientific university in the world:  

“…our students discover new ways of being in the world. They develop a tolerance for ambiguity and learn to honor their dreams. They come to exercise those parts of their bodies and minds they may never have experienced before. They understand the profound difference between solving a problem and illuminating a mystery.” 

The test for me and others who benefitted from Alan’s efforts is to pay it forward; help others to ‘honor their dreams’. That’s a critical part of this London Test: get our younger colleagues (and at 74 everyone on the team is really younger) a chance to show their talents. The reviews help: Jasmine Dorothy Haefner, Benjamin Parsons, and Sarah Pearcy all have rave notices that should not only buttress their confidence (who doesn’t need a little buttress there?) and get them some attention. (Noah Huntley is MUCH younger than he plays as our beleaguered painter, Rory McGrory, but he’s been getting swell reviews for a long time.)  

Why mention that one of our aims as Knowledge Workings Theater company is to promote our splendid colleagues? After all, didn’t Charles Dickens say, “Do all the good you can, and make as little fuss about it as possible“? He did, but the fuss we’re making serves to persuade anyone in London to see these coo kids by attending one of the last three performances, tonight, Friday, May 22^nd, and Saturday, May 23^rd all at 7:30 PM at Barons Court  Theatre just below Curtains Up pub near West Kensington Tube Station. As Alan noted, London audiences are fabulous; we do love them. And we’d like to spread the love around wildly these last three nights. It’s all part of our London Test.  

Louis Catliff, a superb videographer/director/writer filmed our May 15th performance of Retrospective. Take a few secs to watch this clip of something else Louis did for us — the solicitation and recording of comments about the performance from audience members, which everybody now calls Vox Pop, which we then use in promotional materials, etc. Because don’t forget, self promotion is not a bad thing.

It’s pretty good, isn’t it? Very satisfying. And the kind reactions continued through the first night of our second week. Around the same time that vox pop was being filmed, however, our excellent press representative Matthew Parker sent us the link to the first of our reviews; he’s snagged us five already, which is stupendous for a little USA transplant like RETROSPECTIVE. That review was also filled with some positive things, such as calling us “thoroughly lovable” and praising our very deserving wonderful actors, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner and Benjamin Parsons. But in the subtitle of the review itself our script caught an adjective that you can’t spin: clunky. (OED says the word is often associated with ungainly shoes; footwear plays no prominent part in RETROSPECTIVE.)

Why am I bothering to tell you about this undesired adjective? Because the purpose of this series, and indeed of the entire enterprise of TESTING A PERSONAL HISTORY, is not just to celebrate triumphs or offer interesting memories. The purpose is to continue a conversation that might lead to continuing education for all of us via reading about these experiences. The review provided an apt moment for such learning.

How do we survive the downsides of our imposed trials or, in the case of writing and co-producing a play like RETROSPECTIVE, self-initiated trials, weather the “testing or putting to the proof the fitness, truth, strength, or other quality of anything” when the results is not what was planned? Some other (and, I hope, much younger) enterprising Playwright/Producer might comfort and counsel themselves with the realization that things balance out with the right attitude, with realizing that mostly stuff balances out. 

Our balancing has on one side the wonderful reaction of audiences throughout the first 4 performances along with the thrill of watching our actors and team dazzle. And the other side holds this review, which as I noted has some nice things to say, such as calling our production “thoroughly lovable.” I don’t think I’ve been called thoroughly lovable since my mother’s been gone. In fact, now that I think of it, did my mother or anyone else ever call me thoroughly lovable? 

I’m using that phrase ‘balances out’ because as a devoted fan of Martin Short. I listened to his recent interview in which he addressed the aftermath of the tragedy of his daughter’s recent suicide. That event is the worst that can happen to a parent. It puts everything that’s happening to me in perspective.  Martin said that he can go back to 2010 when he lost his wife to cancer. Devastating again. And yet he had to go on. So, to do that he began think of life as a sort of balancing out; there are good things and very bad things. The ledger might not always come even, but we need to remember our blessings instead of just our woes, terrible in Martin’s case as they are.  

The harsh circumstances of Martin Short’s calamity remind us of what real setbacks are in life. But even on our diminished scale, we need to keep in mind how unlikely we are to have all of the good things in any venture. So, a review suggesting that the script for RETROSPECTIVE (tix available at this link) is overstuffed in perspective is not that big a deal. And since we invited (begged for) critics to attend a performance, then we needed to be prepared that some of what emerges might not be desired. That’s show business.

Monday night, with our play dark, we went to see the play Grace Pervades by David Hare and its powerful performances by Ralph Fiennes & Miranda Raison. Fiennes is playing the famous 19th century actor manager Sir Henry Irving who is credited with turning theater into a very potent force in both the UK and America. In one scene, Irving is reading a less than positive review and bemoans the fact that such publicity could interfere with his attempt to keep his theatre, The Lyceum alive. But he does not let the criticism stop or even daunt him; he keeps on keeping on. Irving pretty much died on stage doing what he loved, what be believed was critical for the world: creating art from the tragedies. Fiennes as Irving embodies that indomitable will to create what he believes needs to exist. One line in the play serves to defend his partiality to doing tragedy over and over: “Irving: Did you know that in Shakespeare there are seventeen ‘no’s to every one ‘yes’?… All his power is in the negative.“

We are not in Irving’s position; we don’t presume to put ourselves in parallel to such a genius and pioneer. We’re not even going to compare ourselves to Gary Oldman who is in a sold out production of Krapp’s Last Tape., but had to deal one morning with these reviews as selected by Fergus Morgan in his blog The Crush Bar: 

“Others, though, are left underwhelmed, with WhatsOnStage’s Sarah Crompton finding him neither “as moving or as desperate” as previous Krapps and The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish also opining that he fails to “match the elegiac greatness” of Harold Pinter’s performance in 2006.” 

Are they kidding? This is GARY OLDMAN. And why is someone comparing him to Harold Pinter’s performance? This isn’t Mixed Martial Arts for Actors. Given Gary’s career, I’m betting that he is able to see how things balance out: sold-out houses applauding versus someone flushing out ‘previous Krapps’? (Yes, I did do that there.) 

This part of our London Test requires that balancing. There’s no time to curl up in a fetal position because someone called writing that matters a great deal to you clunky. I stick to what I have learned so far in theatre. And one of the most important lessons was the advice of David Mamet that the audience teaches the playwright. Note what stirs or stymies them. Could there be changes to the script going forward? The answer to that is always. But it would be foolish to rob myself, (And potentially through dark moods and looks, the rest of the team,) of the joy and satisfaction that we have felt because of the enthusiastic genuine reactions from the audience. Stick with what you know, but be open to new ideas. Paul Saffo’s timeless advice to “have strong opinions, weakly held.” Turn to advice for friends for how to go forward. Focus on what’s next. That’s how you pass this test. 

I wrote about the criticality of collaboration in the SubStack version of this stream of semi-consciousness. No need to repeat all that here, but this will keep the chain of posts about the London Test of bringing our play RETROSPECTIVE to the UK at Barons Court Theatre

London Test #1: Taking RETROSPECTIVE to the Pub

Finally in Barons Court Theatre with our magnificent cast and director. Why is this a test? Well, as previously noted, everything can be thought of as a test; “That by which the existence, quality, or genuineness of anything is or may be determined” as a definition certainly works for a UK premiere of an existential comedy Dr. Johnson may get closer to the reality of production when his dictionary set a test as a ‘means of trial’.

But I like tests, always did, and I love what Noah Huntley, Sarah Pearcy, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner, and Benjamin Parsons superbly directed by Liviu Monsted.

Surmounting the usual challenges of theatre, bringing a text to life in a way that engages audiences in a world with endless omnipresent entertainment, would be a worthy trial, but we’re taking a play from Off- Broadway to the vibrant insanely talented London theatre scene. How to effectively attract those audiences? We’ll share what we’re learning in Part 2 of this series tomorrow. Opening night is Thursday May 14. In London? Message me for a discount code to use at the ticket link

London Test # 2: Getting Technical

Two days before opening, theatremakers will take any feather or star falling their way from the sky as a good omen, serendipity, and/or consolation from the divine. Why consolation? Because any affirmation from the universe soothes the mind considering needed ticket sales, a planned transit strike during RETROSPECTIVE’s second week at Barons Court Theatre. What was today’s welcome encounter? An essay by aeon.co/users/felix-fli…ia theoretical physicist and senior lecturer in physics at Bristol University in the UK. He is the author of profilebooks.com/work/t… (2023).

What does physics have to do with our existential comedy? Or with theatre in general? Consider Dr. Flicker’s definition and explanation of EMERGENT:

“A phenomenon is emergent if it is built from parts but cannot be reduced to them without losing some key aspect of the description. One of the pioneers of quantum matter, Philip Anderson, conceived of the subject with an update to Aristotle’s adage: the whole is not only more than the sum of its parts – it can also be fundamentally different from it. Take ice, for example. Ice has emergent properties not present in any of its constituent water molecules. It is cold, say. Cold is not a property an individual molecule can possess. Ice is also rigid: push one edge of an ice cube and the other edge moves. This is neither a property of individual molecules nor of their sum, since those same molecules can also form liquid water, which does not possess such rigidity. Ice is purely emergent.”

Theater is emergent and as slippery as ice. It is built from parts– text, actors, director, lighting, sound, set, costumes, place — but it cannot be reduced to them without losing some key aspect of the description. Today is tech for RETROSPECTIVE. Adding the elements of sound and light — going cue to cue — demonstrates that a play is a collection of parts that evoke a sum greater than those exquisite parts, a totality taking an audience somewhere significant. Ariadne Mnouchkine got at this emergence in the avowal that when she considers theatre she hates the word production “It’s a ceremony, a ritual… You should go out of the theatre stronger and more human than when you went in.” That’s the London test: make theatre live; make theatre emergent, a ceremony that will make the audience go out of the theatre stronger and yet also lighter for their laughter, renewed for their contemplation. Now if we could only get Felix Flicker to one of our performances starting May 14th. Tix at link in bio

#Londontheatre

Post #3: This IS a Dress Rehearsal

A colleague in the 90s sported a pillow in his office that stated boldly, “THIS IS NOT A DRESS REHEARSAL”. The notion seemed to be that we should embrace the moment rather than think of our present circumstances as mere preparation for some more consequential defining ‘light-bulb’ moment. Very Ram Dass, Be here now’ sentiment. Production of a play makes that concentration both necessary and difficult; the focus needs to be on what is before you whether setting a sound cue or re-blocking an actor’s cross, but the mind also tilts toward figuring out where to pass out flyers for the show this evening and whether to launch ANOTHER Facebook ad. (Yes, in theatre, the self-promotion is always with you: tjelliott.substack.com/… ) And then there’s the real dress rehearsal happening today. The test is to follow the Beatles take on Ram Dass: We need to Be Here, There, and Everywhere. That’s part of the London Test

Post #4: What happens on Opening Day?

The first use of the phrase ‘Opening Night’ dates to 1814, but the citation that appeals to me just six hours before RETROSPECTIVE opens at the Barons Court Theatre in London is from J.B. Priestley: “I don’t care if a man’s been fifty years in the business, there’s the same old thrill comes back. Opening night—all of a doodah!” All of a doodah indeed. That’s the way for the start or launch of any of the projects that matter most to us, isn’t it? Viewing this process as a test inspired a series of ponderings (which I hope aren’t ponderous) on what it takes to make something that didn’t exist previously AND get people to experience it.
The links to the first four of these observations are listed

Walking on the street recently where I live in Princeton New Jersey, John P., a former high school teacher of my son approached me with the greeting of “Hello, influencer!” At 74 years old,’ influencer’ is an appellation neither expected nor desired; although it is preferable to ‘Hello, boomer!‘ This funny, kind, and really good teacher alluded in that choice of words to the undeniable fact that ever since 2018 my posts are frequently up on social media and occasionally going viral as was the case with a piece from our YouTube channel making it onto the Jimmy Kimmel show and garnering 170,000 views. (Our standalone report on the dangers of Portland got 3500 views; not too shabby for a little theater company like ours.) John was acknowledging that the work currently done with Knowledge Workings Theater involves self-promotion, fervent (frenetic? frenzied? too frequent?) endeavoring to influence the public to attend our performances. He said ‘influencer‘ with a smile; like I said, John is a nice guy.

However, I don’t want to be an influencer. My current occupation is playwright and that work along with other writing should occupy my time when I’m not hanging out with my girlfriend/wife of 46 years or having fun with my kids, grandkids, other family, and friends. The dilemma for writers ― especially playwrights ― is that creating the text, as slippery and arduous a path to traverse as that process demands, does not suffice. The work is metaphorically at base camp on the climb to the peak of Mount Everest. Congratulations on not killing yourself on the Khumbu Glacier but you have a loooonnnggg way to go

Two figures in my theatrical pantheon explain this reality very well. Harold Clurman, in his book On Directing put it straightforwardly: “The play does not exist in the theater as a written text until it has been absorbed in the process of  production. Drama is  ‘translated’ or transformed into the person of the actor – ‘the body of the art of the theater’, as Stark Young put it.” The late great Tom Stoppard managed to be even pithier on this point: “We attempt to be coherent tellers of tales…. Plays are events rather than texts. They’re written to happen, not to be read” Plays have to go up somewhere in order to become plays.

The critic Hilton Als details that process of shaping appropriately as an intricate chain of collaboration: “feelings and thoughts … are put forth, first, in a primary text, which the actor interprets—an interpretation that the director supports or edits, in an attempt to help build, in a made-up world, [into] an atmosphere of verisimilitude”. There is another dimension of the process of production, however, beyond what’s listed above: finding a space, assembling resources, and, most importantly, attracting an audience. Clurman, Stoppard, and Als all assume that the translation, happening, building they describe will take place in front of people. In 2026, that’s a hefty assumption.

Even if a playwright strikes the good fortune of a theater company wanting to produce their play, that artist still must assume some of the responsibilities of getting people into the seats. Being accepted by an established company or festival with mailing lists, members, marketing staff, and other advantages — a definite GOOD occasion — may not seem to require self-promotion, but any playwright having had that luck will tell you that getting their work produced involves getting themselves promoted from A to Z, from the submission of the original script to the podcast interview before opening night.

“The whole act of writing is intensely private, and it can’t be accompanied by self-promotion. I think interviews contaminate the necessary privacy a writer needs. That sounds almost priggish, but for me it’s the truth.”
Brian Friel

If, as is increasingly common, due to factors such as the closure of many theaters during COVID and changes in the entertainment appetites of the public, the playwright must turn to self-producing, as Gifford Elliott and I explored in 13 Ways of Looking at Self-Producing. In that mode, writers — like it or not, admitting or denying, tight-lipped or screaming — are also turning to self-promotion. (Like this cool interview in London Pub Theatre magazine)

And, there it is, the hyphenate freighted with connotations of attributes ranging from pride to vanity, boastfulness to ostentatiousness, even to that much overused and misused epithet, narcissism. Of course, not everyone views that noun as harshly as Edmund Hall, our 17th century friend at the top of this post, who according to the Oxford English Dictionary was the first person to trot out the term. That he did so in his writing about what the Antichrist will look and act like when that sucker shows up is unfortunate for all subsequent self-promoters.

(It is a coincidence that there’s been a lot of talk about the Antichrist lately but nobody seems to have connected it to self-promotion like Edmund Hall in 1653. Just saying. And Edmund Hall was a Puritan theologian, so he probably didn’t like theater anyway whether the playwrights were self-promoting or not. But I digress and, BTW, according to Merriam Webster, this same Edmund Hall was the first person to use in writing the phrase ‘but I digress.’ Don’t say this post wasn’t a learning experience.)

What bothers me the most about having to self-promote the work that our actors, director, designers, etcetera put together for that Stoppardian ‘event”, a real play, is not the effort. Grabbing the attention of people involves creativity; it may take time away from other activities like writing, but the challenge keeps the mind sharp. The strongest discomfort arises from the fact that the people closest to you receive the greatest amount of promotion. We are constantly flogging our projects to them even though the flogging in this case does not involve a cat of nine tails, but rather as the dictionary notes the kind that is “(t)o sell or offer for sale, originally illicitly.” But even without the lash, our brand of flogging can be painful for both parties, the flogger and those ‘flogees’ even if that’s what we have to do.

And yet, to paraphrase the old U.S. Navy saying, the self-promotion will continue until ticket sales improve. As Scott Perry once noted (improbably in a screed against those against polyamory), we “live in a world choked with ideas, where anything that rises to your consideration has necessarily won a Darwinian battle among hyper-specialized memetic replicators competing for your attention.” Yes, it’s a war out there and the emails, reels, flyers, endless Instagram posts, and Substack notes are the flares we send up to try to draw allies — you, and you, and you over there hiding in the corner — to the front line be it a basement, an attic, or a 99 seat theater with signs warning about rodents. We need you as allies wherever it is we where we have taken a stand to mount our theatrical event. This means that rather than apologizing for this endless set of intrusions playwrights (and other artists) should state their apologia, their defense of these actions as a matter of self-belief rather than self-promotion. Bolster the conviction that whatever this play has to say is worth advancing.

Such a belief is akin to what the late poet Stephen Dunn described As his own revelation:

“I think one of my early motivations for writing was that other people’s versions of experience didn’t gel with my own. It was a gesture toward sanity to try to get the world right for myself. I’ve since learned that if you get it right for yourself, it often has resonance for others.”

Our putting the play out there and, therefore, necessarily putting ourselves out there is part of a ‘gesture toward sanity’, a rebuke to doubts and distrust about ourself. Agnes de Mille once described a meeting that she had with Martha Graham during a bout of inconfidence in her own “scale of values”:

Martha said to me, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. … You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others

In a similar tone, one hundred five  years ago, the critic Alice Brown wrote in the North American Review of the now mostly forgotten American poet, Louise Imogen Guiney that a writer “must be either quickened by an unquenchable self-belief or warmed at the fire of men’s responsive sympathy to write at all.” Kudos and congratulations to those lucky enough to be warmed at the fire, but for the rest of us we need to make sure that nothing and no one — including ourselves — quenches that self-belief that what we have should exist and since it is theater there must be an audience period

So, for those who thought this essay would provide a surrender to the discomfort of both the transmitter (me) and the recipients of our promotions for plays including our current offering, RETROSPECTIVE, take a deep breath and blow that disappointment away. Then go ahead and click for some tix available at this link for one of the eight shows of RETROSPECTIVE May 14-23 at Barons Court Theatre in London. Or send this to someone that you know in the London area, for God’s sake. And, yes, this self-promoting but no, I am NOT the anti-Christ. How would I find the time?

And for any of my colleagues suffering similar temporary doubts about championing their own work, my advice is stop worrying about what others think of your courage and conscientiousness and creativity as you self-produce. You’re sacrificing so much to give this work to the world with no guarantee of any return. The carpers and complainers might more accurately deem your efforts selfless. And if they still sneer, then I offer the advice my late brother Mike Elliott often intoned, “F**k them if they can’t take a joke!”

Sometimes the words of others frame our sentiments of appreciation. Here are five quotations that came to mind when thinking of a great teacher, Terry Schreiber.

There is more understanding required in the teaching of’ others than in being taught

Montaigne

I joined the Terry Schreiber Studio in 1980 and was able to stay in that marvelous community then meeting in a basement off of Washington Square Park until 1982. Two years doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but Terry and Jill Andre who were my teachers from the beginning and then through my elevation to his Master Class gave me wonderful lessons that have stayed with me to this day. Older than many of the other students in the first grouping at twenty-eight, my experience in the outside world allowed me to notice the extraordinary sensitivity and command of Terry. He took each of us on a journey. He was a powerful teacher while also being a gentle guide.

“You cannot teach a man anything: you can only help him to find it within himself.”
Galileo

Who am I to argue with the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science., but I think Terry did both: giving specific skills and techniques that he helped us to master while simultaneously leading us to a clearer understanding of how we might make theater live. The word education is rooted in a sense of leading the student to a new way of interpreting the world. Every class was that sort of an education; both in what each of us experienced with Terry when it was our turn to’ go up’ but also in watching how he worked with our classmates, which turned out to be a bonus class in stage direction.

“Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a friend of love.”
‐Antoine De Saint‐Exupery, Author of The Little Prince

The media tributes to Terry note facts that are worthy of that praise: one of the originating producers of the Off-Off Broadway movement, an adherent and developer of the solid approaches of Uta Hagen and Michael Howard, a three-time director on Broadway with one of those plays a Tony nominee, a teacher to a roster of actors including Oscar winners. But I think that all of the many people who passed through the studio would attest to another sublime accomplishment, which I would compare to Saint Exupery’s, “shared taste for the sea”. Terry gave all of us a shared taste for an authentic artistic life, one which valued collaboration, creativity, and purpose. He helped so many look past the inevitable rejections in auditions and the inescapable drudgery of straight jobs to that artistic life in which we all had the privilege to participate, that shared taste to create in our minds and hearts.

“We must teach ourselves to walk on air against our better judgment.”
Seamus Heaney

Every time an actor gets up in any class they take a risk. But when Terry had you up — as long as you had done your work, which was a non negotiable requirement —— he was going to patiently, carefully, teach us to walk on air even when our judgment was telling us maybe we should just beg off to the restroom. In song and movement and memory, Terry extracted from us abilities and performance that we didn’t know we had. And once they were there, he counseled us not to let them retreat.

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Henry Adams

My own adventures after leaving the Studio included a turn to playwrighting and producing, and then three decades infusing what Terry taught me into other enterprises. In those lost years, producing, directing, and performing among casts of thousands in a mélange of corporate telenovelas and tragic, comic, melodramatic, and absurd organizational performance art (in other words, straight jobs), kept my children fed and clothed and my wife sane — most of the time, on both counts. Happily, later life allowed me to return as an OOB playwright and the lessons that Terry imparted to me are woven into whatever I’m able to create. His influence never stopped.

My son, Gifford Elliott, in 2010 was preparing for auditions to acting school, and he wanted to obtain some private coaching. I contacted TSS and they recommended a wonderful advisor, Bob Verlacque. My son ended up getting a bunch of admission offers and then an acting degree from Cal Arts.

But on the day that I was accompanying Gifford to meet Bob for the first time we both rode up in the old freight elevator to where the studio was located in Chelsea. The gate opened and there was Terry standing just a few feet away. We had not seen each other in almost 30 years. He pointed at me and said, “I know you. You were my student.” Pretty impressive given that most of my hair was gone and what was left had long since stopped being brown. I nodded and reintroduced myself. Smiling that wizardly smile, he asked me if I was still in the business. And I replied, “Terry, every day, every day. I’m use what you taught me every day. The stage may look like a corporate conference room, a factory floor, or an executive office, but what I learned from you and others at this studio has served me so very very well and I’m glad you’re here so that I get to thank you.” The smile grew wider. And then I left forever blessed by the serendipity of being able to express my gratitude to Terry.

I’m sorry that I never got to see Terry again, but like many others who might not have been able to stay strictly within the world of theater our thankfulness for who he was and what he imparted can be seen in the successes that we enjoyed because of having known him. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. The influence of Terry Schreiber and his studio will flow on for a long, long time. And so we wish to the man: Flights of angels, Terry, flights of angels.

Everything Donald Trump is doing in the United States reminds us that we cannot rely as much as we did in the past on self-restraint embedded in what Alexis de Tocqueville called moeurs—convention, custom and good manners. Yet if some of the threats are new, the ideas and institutions are familiar, and the task of standing up for them in dark times is one that liberals have often faced before.

Timothy Garton Ash

Ambition is a seed of authority. No one gains and then keeps authority without some ambition to do so. Whether occurring early or late, seeking influence that will be theirs to wield, a ‘strong desire to achieve something’ is an ambition for authority. There are manifold levels of authority across different spheres.

• Individual: the security guard requiring ID for the millionth time to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordering missile strikes
• Institutional: the prom committee picking the theme for this year’s formal to the Catholic Church issuing encyclicals shutting down any chance of women being ordained.

(Notice that possessing the authority doesn’t mean the decisions taken are correct; the prom committee definitely regretted their choice of Carrie as last year’s theme.)

While scope of authority obviously varies greatly, the ambition has a commonality (as noted in our first entry in this trilogy) “to evoke voluntary compliance or assent, on grounds distinct from coercive power or rational conviction.” Compliance or assent from whom to what? That depends upon the type of authority. In Garton-Ash’s quote above, the assent desired was to those de Tocqueville moeurs, to what he perceived as USA culture. In 1835’s Democracy in America, he expanded generously upon the connotations of that French word, moeurs:

• “the whole moral and intellectual state of a people”
• “habits of the heart”
• “the various notions that men possess”
• “the diverse opinions that are current among them”
• “the whole range of ideas that shape habits of mind”

The authority of culture — “the customs, practices, or behaviour typical of a particular social group or sphere of activity” — shapes our behavior and thinking automatically, invisibly. Paradoxically, Garton Ash’s use of the word ‘self-restraint’ suggests that the authority is both around us and within us. ; Evidence of its presence might be manifested by comments like “that is/isn’t the way we do things around here” that can occur in our self-talk or in conversation with others. This particular variety of authority also popped up in literature like James Fenimore Cooper’s Last Of The Mohicans series, sermons from a variety of peculiarly American religious sects, and newspaper broadsides celebrating these ‘habits of the heart’.

Of course, there were dissenters and diverters from this authority;  Slaveholders and abolitionists obviously disagreed on who Could be the property of another, but they shared commonalities included a strong attachment to the US’s brand of organized religion, the notion of America as God’s chosen land, and with notable exceptions for the first group and often the second, the golden rule. But what the French aristocrat — his full name was Comte Alexis-Henri-Charles-Maurice Clérel de Tocqueville — noticed was how powerful a particular belief about how things should be was already engrained within us as a nation. This is not something that could be said of the United States of America today. We are as the phrase has it ‘all over the place’. As previously discussed, one of the ways that fragmentation shows up is in our problems with authority.

For those who still require examples of our problems with authority consider these examples:

• A wacky California sheriff seizing ballot materials in defiance of state officials
• A USA Supreme Court that will likely reduce voting options despite the overwhelming majority of Americans wanting them and no evidence of serious problems associated with what was’ the way we do things around here for a long time through many elections
• A basely obsequious Republican congress seeking to take that movement of disenfranchisement even further
• A scurry of Democrats always asking for money and never answering what they did with it—$1.5 billion spent and you couldn’t get Kamala Harris elected?!?— while generally failing to even slow the degradation of our Republic because their ambitions don’t point in that direction
• A senseless war of which few approve in which again the least advantaged humans bear the brunt of deprivation and destruction

We cannot agree on who has the “Power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.” Our disputes on “moral, legal, or political supremacy” are profound. Those phrases and quotes are the very definition of authority. Our current situation provides ample evidence every day of our problems with authority. How would they diminish when the distrust of institutions that are supposed to be ‘of, by, and for the people‘ is accompanied by refusals of almost all comers to find ways in which citizens might rectify the perceived defects? For example, the previous US Congress passed fewer than 210 bills in its two years, compared to an average of over 389 in the preceding 32 years.

Consider again de Tocqueville and Garton Ash, the ‘moeurs—convention, custom and good manners’, the self-restraint, the commonality. Gone. The last time we had a failure to resolve our problems with authority a civil war resulted. Today a large segment of Americans slides from one side to the other every four years breeding governments that never solve the polarization and its deleterious effects upon our democracy.

Let me pass the baton to Kyla Scanlon to further elucidate our problems with authority:

Example A: “Confusion and nihilism are products, not symptoms, of this regressive world. The people selling “agency” benefit from a world where nobody trusts institutions, because distrust is the market condition that makes their product necessary.”

Example B: “The general lack of rules combined with the inability to take back control despite it being promised is the extraction part of a belief market. The gap between what participation promises (free yourself) and what it delivers (enormous losses and even less freedom than before).” [Emphasis added]

Example C: “Uber ushered in the era of rule-breaking that everyone else seems to be following. Just do what you want and pay the fine later. Rule-following becomes a signal of weakness or naivety rather than integrity.”

Ruing that condition, our collective problems with authority, my ambition became writing about this disastrous dissolution. Where did MY authority to do so come from, my”power derived from or conferred by another; the right to act in a specified way, delegated from one person or organization to another; official permission?” SubStack and the InterWeb: anyone can write about anything

But doubts did emerge on this journey into our national rejection and dismantling of institutional authority. The first part published here and here of investigating whatever happened to the centripetal authority that held the Republic together was the easier task. What had disappeared in our country is a common sense of right and wrong, a centripetal authority. Who could deny that assertion? The antonym of ‘commonalities’ is ‘differences’ and we are swathed with differences.

Proposing ideas for how we deal with our collective problems with authority stymied me. The first step to any solution would be that we admit that this loss of a common sense of right and wrong, of fair play, of honoring precedent, and respecting our fellows are all signs of our UNITED problems with authority but the only commonality amongst all of our riven groups is the belief that their enemies are the problem. That makes for a seemingly barricaded path to any possible change

Consider that above metaphor of a centripetal force of beliefs of the mind and habits of the heart about what was right and wrong that kept us enough together as a nation.

“Centripetal force (from Latin centrum ‘center’ and petere ‘to seek’^[1]) is the force that makes a body follow a curved path. . Isaac Newton coined the term,^[2] describing it as “a force by which bodies are drawn or impelled, or in any way tend, towards a point as to a centre” The citizens are the bodies; the Republic is the center. What happens when the force either goes out of existence completely or separates into smaller weakened entities? (Yeats’ declaration that “the centre cannot hold” proves again that sometimes poets are prophets.) If the force dissipates, the body goes flying. For our purposes, due to our problems with authority, the force shrinks and splinters and the American experiment is close to hurtling through the void like a drunk from the Tilt-A-Whirl who disdained the seatbelt.

Initially documenting that disintegration of authority in the first two parts of the trilogy gave me hope that all the finale required was to follow Richard Sennett and “imagine new forms of authority in society, to create after we have negated.” But Sennett writing in 1980 mainly prophesied the problem not the solution. Even then, he correctly sussed how the brakes of authority were going. He cannily foretold conditions currently in play on both sides:

Contemplate this description and compare to today’s behaviors : “There is a bravado way of losing one’s fear of authority. It is flat denial, simple insult.” Using the speech of nihilist Bazarov from Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, which he considers “not only evil but bad psychology” as an example, Sennett paints a scene and method evident today: “The fear of the authorities Bazarov preaches involves pushing them outside making them totally external figures who excite nothing of one’s own feelings—save disgust.”

January 6, anyone? But also eruptions on the left have sometimes met this description.

Who would have guessed that the America that de Tocqueville and others praised would start to resemble the world that a rude sarcastic nihilist character in a Russian novel desired? But isn’t this rejection of all authority but our own a kind of nihilism that the philosopher and scientist Michael Polanyi also predicted?

Looking to what others have suggested as solutions didn’t satisfy me. A facile remedy proposed to this diagnosis by some is a return to religious authority. We all know how that’s worked out previously and I say that as an Irish Catholic with great respect for the role of spirituality in our lives and the recognition that religions telling people what to do has frequently proved dangerously flawed.

Those proponents of a solution of the government just reinforcing the Madisonian notion of the people as the authority fail to recognize the kinks in it as Sennett notes

“To say that the people are the source of all authority tells very little psychologically about how authority is made how, out of the acts of discussion and mutual decision making, some people are asked to be the protectors of others or forbidden to become their lords. A law can state this will occur but what makes it humanly possible? The tolerance—indeed the necessity—of periodic disorder which the Enlightenment Democrats envisioned is no longer entertained in law or practice.”

Written in 1980, true today. The notion that the people are the source of all authority is now broken, and by our actions it seems that our ambition is not to be constituted but to punish the other, to keep them from exercising their authority.

Progressives also do not endorse popular foundations for authority; they disdain majorities that fail to accept a mandatory reshaping of society in the name of identity and anti-racism and socialism. Sennett would argue that relying on the central government to sway opinions and actions to serve the interest of all was a bad idea, a tendency that would lead the way to despotism, to abuses of authority that would bleed over into coercion. Oops! Did that happen?

Some reading my connecting a quote of Sennett to our current leadership partisan, but check if the feeling reading these words written over forty years ago is eerie to you: “One of the most repressive beliefs a tyrant can arouse is that everything he does is clear and distinct. Look, what I do is straightforward, it all fits together, nothing is hidden. In other words, how can you resist me?” Sennett attached Hitler and Mussolini to this description: “The Fuhrer and the Duce were embodiments of what it is to be a strong person rather than a competent director of the legal order of government. A person can be simple, clear, and strong all at once, as a big bureaucracy cannot be. By appealing to the virtues of simplicity, authoritarian leaders attempt to wreck or abandon the ordinary machinery of government so that they can rule through force of personality alone.” What particularly disturbs about this description coming out of the past is that the adherents of the current government likely might agree with this characterization. Maybe they read these parts of Sennett too and made them a blueprint for their administration.

Appropriately for someone who would prove to be so prophetic himself, Sennett ends his book Authority by referencing Dostoyevsky. Strange? Not if you realize that the Russian novelist foresaw how the revolutionaries would behave when and if they came to power. He understood the conundrum of authority and freedom. Sennett uses Dostoyevsky’s tale of The Grand Inquisitor contained within the novel the Brothers Karamazov to depict our quandary. Very briefly: this story within the story is how Christ comes back to Seville, Spain during the time of the 16th Century inquisition, performs a few miracles, and gets arrested by the Grand Inquisitor who then berates him for offering mankind an impossible combination:

“The grand inquisitor accuses Christ of having offered the people a vision of authority and freedom combined. It was inhuman of Christ to do so, because the people cannot bear the burden of this combination.”

Ironically, we’ve ended up in a situation perpendicular to what Dostoyevsky portrayed. If as Sennett has it, “Something incontestable and certain, something which brings people together: this is the bond of authority”, in the America of 2026 everything is contestable by one group or another that ensuing division and feebleness constitutes our problems with authority.

What could alter our Tilt-a-Whirl country flying into the void? Sennett resorts to something Dostoyevsky remarks elsewhere: “The only answer to a mystery is another mystery.” We must imagine a response outside the terms currently offered. Such is the response of the Christ in Dostoyevsky’s parable, but you’ll have to read that on your own. Sennett argues that, “Whether or not the logic of repression is finally rejected depends upon how dissonant and how pertinent the response can be, like a painter being a whole new landscape by changing the position of his easel.” Sennett offers a paradox: freedom and authority must coexist, but how?

We will have to draw up some a kind of…

Hail Mary Plays for Our Society

Looking around the various spheres of communication from SubStack/ Medium/Patreon/Threads/RSS/Etc to Journals to Institutional Publications, there are other people who see these problems with authority and have imagined and devised approaches that are worth considering. Here are a few of them:

Ambition is a seed of authority:
Examine our ambition in this matter

Is our ambition here to solve with others more problems with authority? To restore some commonalities — like fairness, committee, honesty, kindness — that will serve as a useful foundation for civic life? Or is our ambition to have things the way we think they should be, to see our party triumph and our foes trampled? If it’s the latter, our problems with authority will continue. The numbers of people on both sides guarantee turmoil unless we turn to each other. There is no fantasy of unanimity but there must be a concentration on concord. Ambition is a seed of authority. A vengeful divisive ambition will yield a faulty ill-fated authority.

Release our illusions about the other guys

The U.S. was the only country in a worldwide survey to say most fellow citizens are bad people  That’s a place we can start to forge a new source of authority: bonds with our fellow Americans. Most of our fellow citizens who disagree with us politically are NOT bad people. Stop engaging with the polarizers and seek out common ground where feasible.

This is what Braver Angels have been trying to do and the authority we need now has to come from new groups of people who will look to what they can agree upon instead of what separates them. Erica Etelson  provides solid insights on ‘What can grow from common ground?’ Erica also presents strategies to combat authoritarianism in which she cites Susan Stokes on Depolarization  who “warns that autocrats feed off polarization, and she encourages depolarization efforts that can help restore the electorate’s faith in the democratic norms and institutions autocrats routinely disparage. (Stanford’s Strengthening Democracy initiative is an excellent source for creative, evidence-based depolarization strategies). That said, Stokes notes that polarization and institutional distrust tend to be higher in countries with high levels of economic inequality so, perhaps, the depolarization remedy cannot take effect without first addressing the economic drivers.” 

This will be difficult but necessary. The toughest issues in this approach are around abortion and gender identity. I do not pretend to have answers to those fights.

Think Venn diagram not Spectrum of Beliefs

As Etelson indicates above, we are not as citizens all at some mark on a line according to our beliefs and political affiliation. Surveys show a significant number of Americans are NON-ideological. Stop thinking right and left and instead build on new ideas. This group, similarity hub, echoes Etelson and allows us to think of convocations where ordinary citizens would dictate areas of agreement on a common basic culture, those widely accepted ‘mouers’ of Tocqueville about how we treat each other, how we trust in institutions, how we play fair. (HT to James Coan who offered additional resources to consider: common ground survey aggregator Americans Agree (americans-agree.org) and Voice of the People online public consultation surveys that show overlaps (vop.org/common-ground)

Treat morality as cooperation, and, therefore, find ways to cooperate with those in the middle 

Cooperation is the action or practice of working together, or with another or others, towards the same end, purpose, or effect. We have to find some purposes that matter to all of us, to exhibit a willingness to be of assistance as a start to that conversation. Out of these efforts, a sense of how people should be with one alter will create a new source of authority, a sort of equivalent to de Tocqueville’s moeurs, which will also accommodate degrees of autonomy.

This paper specifically focuses on leveraging the theory of Morality as Cooperation “which provides an increasingly supported conceptualization of morality within a cooperative framework. In essence, MAC posits that humans are social beings who have developed a variety of solutions to recurrent cooperative problems. These solutions are manifest in the form of instincts, intuitions, and institutions, which drive cooperative behavior and serve as criteria for evaluating others’ actions. MAC refers to this collection of cooperative solutions as “morality” and – drawing on game theory – has identified (at least) seven distinct types of cooperation, which give rise to (at least) seven domains of morality.” I found this hopeful sign. Now we just have to do it.  

Deal with the difference between authority and coercion 

Pollster Elliott Morris is kind of a realist optimist. “Being seen as tough is an advantage in a politics where voters want parties to deliver for them no matter what, but it’s likely not worth being called cruel and elitist. In our poll, Democrats lead the Republicans on the U.S. House generic ballot by 10 percentage points among registered voters. At least in the short term, that’s a worthwhile trade. 

But the Democrats’ weakness problem stands out as a particularly strong signal of intra-party dissatisfaction. When we look at how each party’s own identifiers rate their own party, the weakness gap for the Democrats really jumps out. Just 53% of Democrats call their party tough, compared to 80% of Republicans. And 31% of Democrats say their own party is weak — almost three times the 13% of Republicans who say the same about theirs. ” We must press elected officials in every possible way to reassert the authority of their institution without falling into the embrace of coercion.

Shake off our learned helplessness regarding authority 

Andrew Sullivan reminded me of that description in talking about what he correctly forecast as the then impending war with Iran. He called it “a learned helplessness in the polity”, a collapse of self-efficacy, a tendency to no longer believe in any ability to change things in the political world. Sullivan thought that could change by external events, by the corporate powers, lobbyists, and government pieces that sought this war going too far: “My bet is that if the administration goes to war with no Congressional vote or public debate, that learned helplessness will curdle into something angrier.” We are seeing how that bet played out in the near-term in the No Kings Protests this Saturday, March 28th. BUT… we have to move beyond protests that gather like-minded people only. March to actions that will make a difference around those areas of commonality.

An intriguing example of moving beyond — and Indivisible is doing this as well is Democracy2076 . This organization only formed in 2025 also noticed our collective problems with authority. They documented “a 25-year decline in public trust in institutions and optimism about the next generation’s future.” And God bless their optimism they sense that “We have an opportunity—with substantial and coordinated cross-sector interventions—to shape the next political realignment to ensure pro-democracy tenets are at its core.”

Back to Richard Sennett

As noted above, to state the identification of some certain solution for our problems with authority is beyond my ken and confidence. I can’t. I could fake it or suggest something that would prove to be illusory, but spending all of this time examining the dissolution of the former repositories of central authority in American society made me cautious about such tomfoolery.

Instead, we have to get serious about the difficulties posed by the dispersion of forms of authority that served us not perfectly but serviceably: The Judiciary, Journalism, Universities (and the science and other learning explored there), Medicine, even Government. We are still recovering from the cynical, idiotic statement (actually a borrowing from others) of Ronald Reagan that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ” Tell that to a hurricane victim. Tell that to someone who managed to use their GI Bill Funding to gain an education and change their life. Tell that to someone who got mortgage assistance from the Feds. Tell that anyone who benefits from government services on any level.

But those things can’t happen without some kind of authority that helps to organize these responses and programs. And that requires a greater commonality within our polity. The government needs to become again one of our sources of authority, but one that we can challenge in constructive ways. 

The answer to our problems with authority begins with us. Righting of this ship requires finding the greatest number of people who can agree on the truth as a product of an ongoing rigorous dialogue and not something left untested. Close behind as a condition for rediscovering authority is return to a celebration of those who are good to their fellow citizens without any ulterior motive other than wanting to be good.  

Don’t believe me? Doubt my authority to say so? Let’s take that up in the comments.  

Authority itself is inherently an act of imagination

Richard Sennett

By definition, an assumption is a belief or concept taken for granted. Testing assumptions generally only happens when circumstances contradict that which we have presupposed as rules and realities of life. Or we want to make sure that our current plans under those assumptions won’t lead to disaster. Maybe we’re already there on that second scenario.

Part I of this three-part series recounted how the prolification of disorder, a spectacle impossible to ignore in our plugged-in world, provided a challenge to ideas about authority held for a long time, maybe my whole 74 years. The form in which authority exists today is locally erratically adequate, broadly good-for-nothing, and dependably bad for almost everyone. Disagree? Please educate me as to how authority is satisfying the “the attainment of ends“, which all of its observers and theoreticians posed as “the dominant
criterion of the validity of authority.” Besides not meeting that basic requirement, authority in our USA today is vicious, impaired, faulty, flawed, blemished, defective, bad; corrupt, impure, and debased.

That felt good.

Being against all authority would be a stupid move. One need not be a fanboy of authority to acknowledge its value, even needfulness, in a functional society. The question with authority always is the 5Ws : who, what, where, when, and why. Watching the 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg last night, authority figures significantly: when is that power justified? What frameworks allow it to be fairly dispensed? What role do the people have in assuring that larger potencies — government, corporations, religions — neither amass reckless levels of power nor deprive others of their rightful authority. The back and forth between the Nazi judges on trial and Allied judges trying them reinforced what my initiator for this series, Richard Sennett, says about Authority : it is the relationship between the powerful and the weak. When it runs properly — legitimately — not everyone will be happy but most people can be safer, calmer, even happier.

My particular upbringing often produced skepticism about the bruited legitimacy of authority: we were taught to debate claims of authority, not just question them. This rendered the six Elliott children an affront to the nuns teaching us and a torment to friends unwilling to look things up at the library before offering any opinion. In other words, we were consistently annoying. Plus ca change… Yet within those doubts and complaints a belief abided that some types of authority would prove useful and reliable. The Elliotts were bandits, border baddies, reivers, but not actual anarchists; we talked a good game but growing up baptized our children, paid our taxes, and watched the news if only for the release of yelling at the screen.

Being Irish Catholic, the authority of the Church and indeed other religious institutions from Protestantism to Judaism held sway early, but by adolescence that confidence crumbled. That didn’t stop me from being Catholic, but it did make me question the authority claimed by those at the top. And this happened long before the revelations of horrific abuse and disgusting coverups. The combination of reading history widely and living it suspiciously will topple many a tenet even without scandals that prove how bad people claiming power really can be behind closed doors. Something about absolute power corrupting. But still I held out for some core of authority that stood untouched and would sustain individuals and communities if worse came to worse. Luckily for me, Catholic Leaders like Poep Francis and now Pope Leo turned the church back in a direction toward what Christ articulated, but there’s a long way to go. Elsewhere that’s not been the case with authority: Things fall apart; the center cannot hold

When the most horrible depredations — January 6th, murders of civilian by ICE, cynical maneuvering and even crimes by those granted the public trust in both parties, sex trafficking for the wealthiest and best-connected, again in both parties, devastation of our Earthly resources — happened in our secular society,  it turned out that the core of our governmental, commercial, and journalistic systems had disintegrated, corroded by self-interest and double dealing. Authority was either missing, misused, or outright murdered. Confidence soured and decayed that some righteous and effective authority might appear to straighten out these messes. We have BIG problems with all realms of authority in our society.

I did not always feel this way. Assumptions about the authority of the United States governing system under our constitution were actually buttressed by Nixon’s 1974 resignation after Senate Watergate hearings and newspaper investigations. The result (despite Ford’s ill-advised pardon of the guy who was “not a crook“) seemed to confirm that both our political institutions and perhaps our most important social institution—journalism, the 4th estate—could exert accountability when needed. The Ronald Reagan years (Iran Contra, Savings and Loan Scandal , HUD Scandal , EPA Scandal, Wedtech Scandal , Operation Ill Wind) loosened and then educed a long erosion of that trust. It wasn’t just the way in which governmental bodies failed again and again whether through Bill Clinton’s misdeeds (he should have resigned) and George W Bush’s mistakes (he should have stuck to painting in Texas), but a realization that the media constituted a politics of its own if you consider politics at its most basic as the pursuit of interests. When the interest becomes financial survival, the NYT as an example decided with their famous innovation report that they “know what their audience wants and they know how to deliver“, but that strategy tilts towards SEO articles and clickbait and away from authority in the sense of “The fact or state of possessing credible information; power to inspire belief in the truth of something.” The internet’s inherent feedback loops fostered by algorithms are just as likely to find the crowd’s choices wacky as wise Authority loses a cornerstone when the press stops doing its job.

2016 due its revelations of the nature of a large swathe of my fellow citizens willing to vote for an illegitimate personality provided the moment when several assumptions about authority collapsed completely for me. I lived. 2020 provided a respite, what seemed like a course correction, but the margins of reassurance were slim. The behavior of individuals occupying functions of authority, however, worsened the undermining of my beliefs about where and how authority worked in this Republic. The clusterflock since then — Microsoft Word dictation doesn’t like me saying anything profane so we’ll go with that word, but you know what I mean—generated the final landslide of confidence in our systems. Only a cloud of dust remains.

Not every kind of authority is beneficial, but suffering through no kind of legitimate ultimate authority fosters disorder under which none but the wealthiest with their security forces and private islands may prosper. All that remains of my assumptions about authority is a bewilderment that they lasted so long and so wrong accompanied by a shame-faced Weltschmerz in finding out that Richard Sennett explained a great deal of the inevitable and dangerous erosion of Authority in his 1980 book of that name.

What appealed to me in that book during this assault by the wantonness of the executive branch,  the weakness of the legislature and Supreme Court, and the wooziness of the news media was its careful analysis of how the current situation was already foretold IN 1980. We have been lurching toward this moment since the 19th Century! Sennet’s guide to the subject was a welcome complement to my rereading a piece first encountered in the 1970s: Leonard Krieger’s magisterial entry on authority in the Dictionary of the History of ideas . I needed authorities on authority for as Anatole Broyard, the influential book critic of the New York Times, wrote in a reassessment of Sennett’s book three years after its publication, “Authority is a subject on which most Americans consider themselves philosophers. No other people talk so insistently about the nature and the limits of authority as it applies to various social groups.” Discussion doesn’t equal understanding and may in this instance allow us to kid ourselves about our understanding of, relationship to, and problems with authority.

What are those problems? As already mentioned, those repositories of authority upon which we relied have gone wobbly. A Supreme Court that says a president can’t be tried for crimes? A sitting president (looking at you, my dear Joe B) who lacks the savvy or humility to know he should have been a one-term wonder? A current president whose only talents are the manufacture of distractions and the obfuscation of truths? Legislatures that cannot legislate yet collapse before lobbyists? Elected representatives who make important promises repeatedly and then just as regularly fail to keep them? Public figures who employ weasel-worded excuses instead of honesty, fund-raising instead of raising standards? Corporations that have corrupted their own standards and embraced a strategy of what Cory Doctorow pithily calls enshittification? (Had to type that one myself; no way Microsoft dictation can handle that term.) Media that bows to censorship or just pumps out what its readers crave as confirmation of their own biases? They are our problems because we allowed them to happen. Again, the old Walt Kelly wisdom is pertinent: we have met the enemy and they is us. Sennett wrote that “Authority is a matter of giving power a meaning.” What exactly is the meaning of our own authority right now if we have both given so much of it away AND the people wielding authority are either incompetent or evil or both?

One of our problems with authority as evidenced now in every public space is how childish in many ways the SOP is: in choice, we must move within the circumscription of our corporate masters, in social relations, we are reduced to one side denouncing the absence of some power and the other denouncing its perceived presence when we are not sidetracked to games, circuses, and reality TV. Repeat endlessly without making a difference, without authority.

Sennet’s quoting forty-six years ago of Sigmund Freud sounds very 2026 to me:

the masses who are always in danger of regressing back to earlier phases, where they are at once ravenous for the comforts of a stronger person and in a rage against the very strength they desire.

• Sennett notes that “This reinfantilization of the masses is what Freud believed he was seeing in Europe in the 1930s when he came to write his last works.”
• That comment sounded chillingly familiar to others made this past year. One need not be a Freudian—I’m not — to appreciate the perception that the masses, which means all of us, are to various degrees, ‘re-infantilized‘ by and within the current culture.

Hang on. Don’t click out of here just yet. Deep breath. I know, who wants to admit that to some extent the way we do things, the environment and systems of our time, have infantilized them? The term rankles; no one wants to be called an infant, a baby, but infantilization conveys the way in which adults are condescended to, belittled, indulged, and patronized by the powers that be whether medical, government, finance, and/or especially corporations. They ply a sneaky authority akin to what Charles Perrow called second-order and third-order controls, not direct commands but steering and controlling by programs and routines, by means of assumptions and definitions that are taken for granted within the community. There are those damn assumptions again.

That doesn’t mean that such control happens without dissent, defiance, or resistance when their authority is seen as illegitimate, as ‘You’re not the boss of me‘. Sennett put it this way, “The dilemma of authority in our time, the peculiar fear it inspires, is that we feel attracted to strong figures we do not believe to be legitimate…. what is peculiar to our times is that the formerly legitimate powers in the dominant institutions inspire a strong sense of illegitimacy among those subject to them. However, these powers also translate into images of human strength: of authorities who are assured, judge as superiors, exert moral discipline, and inspire fear. These authorities draw others into their orbit, like unwilling moths to a flame. Authority without the legitimacy, society held together by its very disaffection” He goes on to admit that this configuration is an inversion of what authority was thought to be for philosophers like Max Weber who felt that authority at its core must be thought to be legitimate.

Sennet tracks this transition of societal authority in the USA back to the paternalism of the 19th century in which the boss became ‘the father’ and the authority of other institutions correspondingly waned. He pegs Adam Smith as a influential voice who by endorsing “the market idea… vanishes the authority of persons”; the buyer of things is in charge. While this view ignores other aspects of Smith’s thought that championed sympathy and charity, Sennett nails the way in which our problems with authority started with us giving it away, or more accurately exchanging one version, whether church or monarchy or family, for another—the market. Those at the mercy of the market, which was most people except for some experts — doctors, engineers, scientists, etc. —  who could call their own tune. (Even that’s a diminishing pool in 2026.) The nostalgic power of the individual flaunted in advertisements and popular entertainment is a myth for most if it was ever true.

Wealthy entrepreneurs took to the top then and have managed to stay there along with governmental figures who in many cases were not business figures but aristocracy. Being on top didn’t translate to appreciation as Sennett notes:

“The authorities promised protection or aid, but often did not make good on the promises. And from this gap arose the essential feature of modern authority lack authority: figures of strength arousing feelings of dependence, fear and awe —  yet the pervasive feeling that there was something false and illegitimate about the result. The personal strength of the authorities was accepted, the value of their strength to others doubted. Here the split between authority and legitimacy began.”

A recent visit to the Poster House museum in Manhattan for an exhibit of Italian propaganda art provided a telling quote from Mussolini: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” The merger happened in the USA as well but with corporate becoming senior partner. We have finally flipped Vilfredo Pareto’s distinction in The Mind and Society,  between “a governing, political elite” on top and “a non-governing, non-political elite” below them in the authority hierarchy (Yes, that Pareto.) As Leonard Krieger noted in that entry on authority, Pareto assumed the rulers in the context of its authority over the nonelite, would constitute “the higher stratum of society, …their superior capacities were epitomized into what was suitable for “keeping them in power” and “exercising the functions of government” and what kept them “willing enough to use force” Who can claim that government enjoys that status today or that those in the highest positions are elite in the sense of “a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society“? Pareto claimed that“History is a graveyard of aristocracies”, and the aristocracy that held authority is now sinking to six feet under.

We can mock those corporations and the governmental bodies now beholden to them, but even that action is part of the dynamic Sennett described:

“In modern society we have become adept at building bonds of rejection with authorities. These bonds permit us to depend on those when we fear, or to use the real to imagine the ideal. The trouble is that these bonds also permit the authorities to use us: they can exercise control of a very basic sort over those who seem on the surface to be rebelling.” One of our problems with authority is the way in which we kid ourselves about how even in its splintered form we are not manipulated by these other forces.

 Sennett saw this illusion when he wrote that, “The rebound in modern society has been that people feel ashamed about being weak. They use the tools of negation [disobedient dependence, printing a positive, ideal image of authority from the negative which exists, holding a fantasy about the disappearance of authority] to ward off these feelings of shame, and to defend themselves against the impact of strong people who seem malign. The subjects defend themselves by declaring the illegitimacy of the masters.” But a declaration without action lasts as long and is as significant as a passing breeze. Instead, we must fix our own ideas of authority. We need to investigate what we are doing or not doing that contributes to this situation. Yes, I know we are mere individuals, but that’s where this change has to start.

Sennett almost 50 years ago painted a picture of this difficult frustrating relationship with authority that is still clearly recognizable today:

Our problem is a problem within the domain of being free, and it is a real problem. The dominant forms of authority in our lives are destructive; They lack nurturance, nurturance—the love which sustains others—is a basic human need, as basic as eating or sex. Compassion, trust, reassurance are qualities it would be absurd to associate with these figures of authority in the adult world. And yet we are free, free to accuse our masters that these qualities are missing. The difficulty is that the very act of rejecting them builds bonds with them. Bonds based on fear of their strength, or the desire to glimpse some image of strength through defining their failings, attempts to rest from an unsatisfying set of images something which will satisfy that basic need for authority…. Surely a person with any sense would resent being in the hands of these elusive or deceiving authorities. But the trap of rejecting them is more than a matter of hoping finally to get them to care period no one person, no matter how well meaning as a personality, can ever give nurturance to another person as though it were a commodity. Nor do you earn care as though earning interest on an investment. But the illusion protects itself. The person who is unsatisfied, unhappy imagines that if only there were some one different in control then the unhappiness would end, one would feel respected by being noticed.

So, what do we do? Does Sennett offer any help or hope?  Can we reimagine authority in a better manner? That’s the question and maybe an answer of Part III, our final segment of this series about Testing the Assumptions About Our Problems with Authority and I hope you’ll join me for that in about a week’s time.

Notes

1. I saw the inside of journalistic slipperiness during my ‘straight job’ years as a management consultant when Fox News newly born on Sixth Avenue in New York City hired me to establish a performance management system. (Such a system BTW is an instance of authority and only as good as the process by which criteria are created and evidence then judged. In other words, most of them suck. And I was an authority on them obviously because Fox News hired me to make one.) Everybody was very nice during the years of working there despite the obviousness of my different political persuasion; liberal might as well be tattooed on my face. The slant on their side was evident especially because my time there coincided the Monica Lewinsky scandals and the 2000 presidential election. Scheduled to speak to the entire manager group in Manhattan on the day that Al Gore conceded the election allowed me to hear Roger Ailes powerfully provide marching orders for how the coverage was to unfold. “Gore is a bad guy” was his core message.
2. Even before that time having been a guest on other news programs, awareness existed that journalistic enterprises often started out with a preconceived idea of how the story should ‘taste’ and look and then proceeded to find the ingredients required for that recipe. And severe erosion happened with that authority source when the media infiltrated the public discourse frequently with stories that because of my own or others’ firsthand knowledge we knew to be biased, distorted, or outright false.