Big Ideas

I live in the United States of Me, a nation populated almost entirely by people I’ve friended, people I follow, and people who follow me. I live in the United States of Me, and you (most of you) live in the United States of You. We belong to and participate in social networks running on algorithms designed to ensure that we only encounter the ideas and images we’ve (often subconsciously) asked to encounter. And with every single “like” and “favorite” we tweak those algorithms, too, making them even more effective at giving us just what we want. Like rats pawing madly at levers to release food, we click and re-tweet to create endorphins in our own brains. In our own virtual countries, we listen to self-curated radio stations on headphones designed to make sure nobody else listens in. We recline on our own couches programming Netflix queues and DVRs so that precisely the stories we know we’re going to love will be ready for us, right on demand, a

Last week, I got laid off. I’d been working at Threespot, part-time, for more than 11 years—which is quite a long tenure these days—when the company somewhat abruptly let a dozen of us go. Many of us had similar skill sets, and a change of direction meant that we’d all suddenly become, in essence, unaffordable luxuries: great people for the wrong kinds of projects. It wasn’t a personal decision, it was a personnel decision, and I completely understand it… even though it came as a bit of a surprise. I loved my time at Threespot. I did work I will forever be proud of. I helped the Peace Corps recruit more Volunteers for service overseas… and we won a few Webby Awards and nominations in the process. I helped the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs completely re-imagine its entire interactive presence. I helped the National Academies teach the world about energy. I led a project that oriented millions of Americans to the worl

For some time now, without realizing it, I’ve been relying on what seems to be a very effective method for organizing, rabble-rousing, and raising awareness that I feel like I really ought to share with the wider world. I’ve been—hold onto your hats—making lists. World-shaking, I know. But listen: it really has been making a difference. A huge difference. I’m not sure I can articulate why that is… but I thought that perhaps if I laid out a few of the lists I’ve created (or, in some cases, crowd-sourced), you might be persuaded to give it a chance yourself. (Yes: I’m making a list about lists. Sue me.) DC-Area Playwrights This collection of the playwrights working in the DC metropolitan area was my first foray into list-making… and it’s led to some rather large-scale changes for a lot of people. It started with a simple request here on my blog: Send me, I asked, the names of any playwrights you know in DC. I seeded the list with the 40 or

I don’t know if I know a single artist who doesn’t believe, deep-down, that that the work we do has the potential to transform lives. The way we usually interpret that platitude, though, is that we expect our work to transform the lives of the people who engage with it. But we sometimes forget how WE ourselves are transformed by making art. Wrestling with creating something mammoth and important and real, with expressing our vision for the world, requires us to become different, to become new, to give ourselves over to something undiscovered and unpredictable. And we become, I believe, better people for having made art. Shouldn’t everyone have that experience? Perhaps not at the professional level, but at some level? Wouldn’t human culture be richer if everyone had a regular chance to participate in art-making? I think the answer to that question is a fairly obvious YES. But because of the difficult economic and social realities of the lives so many people lead,

This is the third entry in a continuing series of guest posts. Our contributor is Heather Morrow, a Canadian playwright I’ve become acquainted with via Twitter. Heather has some fierce personal insights about gender and opportunity that I’m very happy to share. You can follow her on Twitter @theatrejunkiehm. ———————————————– I’m a playwright, but I have a couple of story lines in my head that want to be movies. One idea is about a novice (female) director who accidentally becomes famous for another reason and acquires an agent (who’s a woman, too). The heroine wants to parlay her new-found fame into directing work, and her agent bluntly tells her: “Is your name Kathryn Bigelow? No? Then you’re never going to direct a film, honey. There can only be one woman director working at a time. Unless you’re Sofia Coppola, and you know who her dad is.” My brain came up with that. As soon a