https://wapo.st/3Sct3EL

Cautionary tales abound about the danger of persnickety obsessions with seeing the one thing wrong with an other wise splendid entity. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale The Birth-Mark presented to the Sophomore English Honors class at St. Peter’s Prep in 1966 by Mr. John Casey told of the peril of obsession with trying to remove the one flaw of a beloved beauty. You just might kill it.

And then there’s the stern advice from Jesus about fault-finding:

Why do you take note of the splinter in your brother’s eye but do not notice the wooden plank in your own eye? ⁴ How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while all the time the wooden plank remains in your own? ⁵ You hypocrite! First remove the wooden plank from your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly enough to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:3-5, New Catholic Bible

Jesus makes a good point — as usual. BUT on reading this insightful and very interesting column by Monica Hesse that tells a very uncomfortable truth about SOME of the USA one defect did catch my eye, the one with the plank in it. And I feel a little bad now raising it because fittingly, the author who grew up in Normal Illinois, has a keen vision for spotting the deviations that now define part of our citizenry.

What was the flaw?

The phrase “teaching to standardized tests with shifting goalposts” repeats a common and unfortunate misunderstanding.. The belief allows for even more harmful judgments and should be confronted every time it appears. First, ‘teaching to the test doesn’t work so why would people still be talking about doing it? More perniciously, such myths, which are quintessentially 21st Century American in their vague anti-science cast, aid the overall rejection of educational measurement. If you want to say No Child Left Behind didn’t work or the Obama era follow-up initiatives were ineffective there’s an argument to be made for those sentiments although the reality of what happened is highly complicated. But the teaching to the test (Tx4) bugaboo was wrong from the start.

Did Tx4 happen in many places? Yes. Was it a stressor for teachers? Undoubtedly. Should administrators at each level of governance — federal, state, district, and building — have stoipeed the parctice because of its demonstarted ineffectiveness? YES. Did they? Mostly no.

How do we know that Tx4 didn’t work? That depends upon the circumstance.. In states that employed the cheapest version of tests, the scores might have risen but subsequent National Assessment of Educational Progress showed those results to be fraudulent. In some cases, the ‘teaching’ involved giving the questions ahead of time to students for practice and feedback, which is not so much teaching to the test as cheating to the test. In other cases, the technique simply didn’t work that should, able been np surprise because its already proven and well published inefficacy.

Teaching to the Test

In 1997, long before NCLB was instituted and Tx4 became a watchword for the perceived indignities of educational measurement, Lorrie Shepard gave the 3rd Angoff Lecture at ETS on ‘Measuring Achievement: What Does It Mean to Test for Robust Understanding?’ (Looking up the paper and seeing my friend and former colleague Shilpi Niyogi’s name in the acknowledgements as its editor was a bonus in this little excursion.) Lorrie demonstrated that there were similarities between what the textbooks contained and what the tests then included as questions. The significance of those findings was that the curriculum focused on a narrow set of information that didn’t necessarily advance more critical learning. Here is one of her examples:

“…pages from textbooks from the 1980s make the case that both first-time presentation of content as well as end-of-chapter tests closely resembled skills and formats from standardized tests. For example, because it appeared on standardized tests, second and third graders spent significant amounts of time learning to write out, from numerals to words, the narrative translation of 3,467 rather than doing problems to check on their understanding of what the numeral means (not what it “says”). Not surprisingly, some children who can write out three thousand, four hundred, sixty seven do not have the place understanding to be able to subtract 26 from 3,007.”

That kind of teaching to the test was NOT the teacher’s choice but developed at a remove in conversations between state boards of education and educational publishers. In fact, Lorrie’s paper documents the ‘scandalous’ finding that state reports overestimated progress by students.

This changed, and Lorrie’s call for more ‘performance tasks’ as opposed to multiple choice in these tests was answered by many educational researchers. Why performance tasks?

“(P)erformance tasks are intended to prevent the format effects of multiple-choice tests that have distorted instruction and in turn enabled students to
pretend to know. Open-ended tasks are more challenging and directly reflect desired understandings and applications. Therefore, it is less likely that students
could do these items correctly and still not understand the underlying concepts.”

My late friend and colleague, Bob Mislevy, stimulated significant changes in the shape of assessments with his conception (alongside Russell Almond, Linda Sternberg, Jan Lukas, Malcolm Bauer, David Williamson and others) of Evidence Centered Design of assessments. As Lorrie Shepard noted, tests and the preceding instruction need to be clear about what the intention of the learning is, the construct. That happened with ECD WHERE the unfortunately rare powers that be would approve and pay for it; happily . Bob was a pro-learning guy, not necessarily a pro-testing guy.

Do State Education Officials Read the Research of Their Field?

When NCLB starts in January 2002, the evidence already exists that teaching to the test only works if you are rigging the tests with the textbook ploy above or out and out cheating by distributing the tests beforehand as happened in Atlanta, Georgia. That same year, 24 years before the mention in the WaPo column that got me exercised over its Tx4 canard, Judith Langer on an NPR program — listen at around 22 minutes for the exact testimony — told of her experience in schools that teaching to the test only supplied very short term results.. 24 years ago! But you still hear about teaching to the test.

More damningly, this paper by Craig D. Jerald from twenty years ago pointed to research by Newmann, Bryk, and Nagaoka who “analyzed student test-score gains on the commercially developed, nationally norm-referenced Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) assessment and the state-developed Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP) exams. The results were startling. In classrooms where teachers employed more authentic intellectual instruction, students logged test-score gains on the ITBS that exceeded the national average by 20 percent. However, students who were given few authentic assignments [i.e., taught to the test] gained much less than the national average. A similar pattern emerged when researchers examined results on the IGAP assessments.”

In other words, if you taught to the test in the way critics interpret that phrase, your kids did WORSE.

Given my role as Chief Learning Officer, accusations of bias regarding my views about educational measurement merit attention. I worked almost two decades for what was AT THE TIME the largest and most prestigious testing organization in the world. That must make me an apologist for the tests produced there, right? Where you stand depends upon where you sit is a worthwhile aphorism. But it does not describe me in this case because my own views of ‘No tests but for learning‘ were NOT shared by many of my colleagues especially those who were so-called ‘business facing’. After all, the current contracts for testing then produced important revenue and with a quarterly results focused leadership messing with revenue was anathema . Why? Another quote, this one from Upton Sinclair, explains their views — and many things that go on in corporations:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

It is true that even Sinclair’s wife found him to be “a man with every gift except humor and silence” but his quote above well describes in part the reality in which ETS never developed the systems that would have consigned the poor tests and the useless teaching to the test methods to the dumpster of educational practices. Maybe that’s why the teaching to the test misclaim irks me so much. While people were putting about such nonsense ETS and the nation were missing an opportunity to change the entire educational landscape through Cognitively Based Assessment of, by, and for Learning or CBAL Instead of futzing about the current tests, every stakeholder should have demanded the scrapping of the summative system, the one where certain grades devote a week to the old style of tests, to an adaptive formative system woven into actual instruction. I didn’t have anything to do with dreaming up this system, my friend and brilliant researcher Randy Elliot Bennett led that effort. But when Randy and others like Ida Lawrence first exposed the idea in a crowded hotel meeting room, I wanted to be part of getting this plan into the world. After all, that was part of my job, a ;part at which I mostly failed.

During my nineteen years at ETS, an effective strategy for taking the unique and consequential research on these matters effectively into the marketplace never materialized. In this 2017 paper here, I wrote about how the layers of conservative attitudes in an older ‘Operate and Maintain’ organization like ETS constituted a kind of gravity that made it difficult to put new products into orbit.

But my paper now reads as seriously flawed because a) it’s too optimistic about how ETS will escape gravity and b) my role in the failure to make that happen receives no notice. And that’s why a comment like the one Monica Hesse made about the supposed USA reality of ‘teaching to standardized tests with shifting goalposts‘ galled me so much that for the day I abandoned work on another project to compose this rant. I very much agree with Hesse on the other things she wrote of in her column about our country where “The American Dream comes down to OnlyFans, dodgeball and reality TV .” The mess she illustrates is connected to all of this:

“A teacher is paid $37,000, a scholarship is $125,000, a college tuition is a gazillion dollars, the cost of living is too much. Wherever you live, it’s too much, but this is America so you must find a way to monkey-bar your way to solvency and/or pull yourself up by your own boobstrap.“

The paragraph gets at the issues of inequality and opportunity that have gotten worse in the last fifty years. As Paul Krugman noted recently: “Between 1979 and 2000, the share of total income going to labor as opposed to capital was basically unchanged. But while the typical worker’s income, adjusted for inflation, barely increased over that period, the average real labor income of the highest earning 1 percent, such as top executives, nearly tripled..”.

At the end of her thought-provoking and soul-disturbing essay with stories of teachers turning to Only fans and dodgeball teams being decided by political affiliation, Hesse asks and answers a question that many of us have pondered this summer of the 250th anniversary of the Republic: “Where has life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness gotten us in 2026? Heaven only knows, but on television it’s gotten us to some very weird places.” It’s not just on television. The inequality Krugman documents above has gotten us to a place where it is more difficult than ever to get a man (and/or a woman but definitely more a man) to understand something like this impending societal disaster, when his/her salary plus bonus, stock options, network membership, fear of exclusion form the oligarchy, etc. depend on not understanding it. It’s gotten us to a place where the very health of our country is endangered.

What does​ educational testing have to do with all of this?​ Education could make a difference in reversing this decline. (Even staunch Republicans like former Senator Ben Sasse calls for a return to teaching coivics.) Not the kind of difference that will change everything. That’s a ridiculous and naive supposition, but testing for learning could make a difference in this situation.  How? The comprehending of the way in which the world really works makes us all more sensitive to the way in which we are being worked over.

I understand those that doubt any statement justifying assessments even on like CBAL. Testing is vilified and in some cases that judgment is deserved especially in States that have perverted the standards and gone cheap on methods and assessment. If you take a look at the states that have done that, you’ll also see a connection to either inaction or actions against their own interests among citizens of all generations there. Is that a harsh correlation? Yes. If you think that making ends meet by putting your wife on Only Fans is a good idea (read the Hesse column to understand what this means) then what I’m suggesting here won’t make any sense to you. 

There is​ another way. If testing is connected to learning as it should be, and the learning is focused on those constructs that most matter to having a productive life in a functioning Republic, then creating an overall methodology where the assessment is of, by, and for learning makes a difference. Learning will be more effective in that it will be more ​actionable​, Able to be acted upon or put into practice​. 

Is that kind of learning going to bring down ​Only ​Fans or stop what ​Hesse describes as even the politicization of dodge-ball? ​(Have you no shame, sir?) Certainly not. But it could make a difference in tilting more of the citizenry to askin​g questions as to what are they getting out of all of this? How is the current circumstance serving them? What will the continued decline of the Republic happening in concert with the increase of inequality affect their children or anyone else they care about in the Next Generation? Those goal posts are not shifting. And the test is still ongoing from all of us although I have​ the sense ​that time is running out.

Oh, and here’s what CBAL looks like for writing

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.