Spirit in Action

Love Your Planet Comedy Night

Improvisational humor is an awesome tool used by The Theater of Public Policy (t2p2.net) to find new ways forward in public discourse. Co-founded by Tane Danger & Brandon Boat in 2011, they've tackled a surprisingly wide variety of issues with their creative and disarming approach, including farm policy, robotics, clean water, and religion. Back on Feb 15th they performed for the Love Your Planet Comedy Night sponsored by Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 15 Jun 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ If you've listened a while to Spirit in Action, you know that Norton Spirit Radio is a serious enterprise with serious goals. Things like peace and justice and care for creation. But you've also hopefully noticed that we don't tend to stay mired in the doom and gloom and the blame game. Inspiration is essential to better outcomes. And humor is one of the most useful paths in getting us to a mode where we can move forward. So I'm delighted to introduce you to a group that uses improvisational humorist theater as a device that brings our communities together to address the big problems. They are called the Theater of Public Policy. And we've got their founder, Tane Danger, here today to share their mission. And we'll also have some clips of the Theater of Public Policy at Work and Play. Over now to Minneapolis, Minnesota to speak with Tane Danger by phone. Tane, I'm really excited about having you here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you, thank you so much for having me. Now, the thing that brought me to you was an event that happened way back February 15th this year. It was something sponsored by Minnesota Power and Light. It was called Love Your Planet Comedy Night. How did you get involved in that? So it's important when it's Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, Minnesota Power and Light itself, I believe. It's a non-existent power company. Because this was an evening that was sponsored by Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light to try and bring folks together to talk about green energy and climate change. And really more than sort of the doom and gloom of a lot of those conversations that often happen about what people can actually do to have an impact in some of this. And what we can do as communities of faith and coming together around some of the things that tie us already in our communities to address what seems like, you know, a huge insurmountable problem. That sounds totally boring. But this was a fun night, I think. That's right, wow, I hope so. Yeah, it could have been a very boring evening. Perhaps anything could be boring if you put your mind to it. But I am the principal of an organization called the Theater of Public Policy. And what we do is we talk to really smart people on the theater of public policy, but then we have this team of really terrific improv performers, so actors who make everything up. Nothing's pre-planned or scripted out ahead of time. So we have a team of improvisers who listen to those really smart conversations and then use it as a jumping off point or inspiration to make long-form improv comedy. So in this case, for the Minnesota Interface Power and Light event, we had Jay Drake Hamilton of Fresh Energy on the stage with us. And I interviewed her for the first 20 minutes about some of those big things that I was talking about with clean energy and how can we combat climate change and whatnot. But then the fun part, in addition to that, I hope that I was a little bit fun. But the really fun part was that there's this team of improvisers who use all of that as a fodder for unscripted improv theater, and they can bring it all to life on stage in really imaginative and theatrical ways. Are you saying that you're hired for this? Is this your livelihood? Well, livelihood might be generous. But yes, this is what we've been doing now for a couple years, actually. So in 2011, my co-founder of the project, Brandon Boat and I, we were both working for nonprofits. I had worked for the state of Minnesota for a time. And we were doing improv comedy as a fun thing. And I had this idea, "Oh, could you do these two things together? Could you talk about the really important work that so many of the nonprofits in our community are doing or the policymakers at the state or what have you are doing or trying to do? And could you do that through the lens of the improv comedy?" Which is, at heart, in my opinion, all about storytelling and crafting imaginative theater. And so we started with that sort of nugget of an idea. And we bounced it around for about six months, talking to lots of really smart folks. And we put it up on stage for the first time in the fall of 2011. And I tell folks, and it's absolutely true, that I didn't know for sure if it would work when we put it on stage in the first place. But I think that it did. You know, we've been doing it now for three years. And it seems to go pretty well. And what happened was, we put it up on stage thinking, "Oh, this is neat. And this is fun. I'm not sure if anybody else would want to come to an improv comedy show all about, you know, green energy or about Texas and spending or what have you." But it turns out, people do. And people started contacting us and asking us to do the show for their events. And that was what happened with Minnesota interface power and light. They knew they wanted to have a big community conversation about these issues, but they didn't want it to be boring or dry. And so they called us up and said, "Could we do a theatre of public policy at T2P2 show about some of these issues on stage?" And we went from there. And so that's kind of how we set a lot of these things up. Again, coming back to "Love Your Planet Comedy Night for Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light." You had J. J. Hamilton of "Fresh Energy" there. I think we should listen to a clip of you interviewing J. And just see how this kind of thing evolves. And then we'll go right to some of your improv that you're doing following up on your interview with her. Sounds great. I mean, with the responses that we took there at the beginning, I'm always curious with guests. Do that surprise you? Is that pretty much what you expected? Does that make you hopeful? Minnesotans get it. I see a lot of climate activists in the audience that I've known some of you for 15 years, five years, five months, five weeks. People know that Minnesota action is moving this nation and that we can do this. And I'm going to give you the five things. [applause] Can I just say? I mean, it's very nice to play to the crowd. Like, I could do it. Is anybody here from Minnesota, right? [laughter] It just seems east. But anyway, it's your show here. [laughter] All right, the five things everyone needs to know. And then we can talk about the really interesting stuff. How to get it done. Global warming is real. We're causing it. It's serious. Climate scientists agree. And there are lots of reasons for hope moving forward. [applause] It seems like you've done this before, but you're not just making this up. Like some of us. So I am curious. [laughter] So I am their writing. They're writing. I know you have five things. Now we've got like five different things we can do. [laughter] There's a lot of goals out there, right? Like I have a goal that I am going to be able to bench press 45 pounds this year. [laughter] But it may or may not happen. I don't know. And it just seems like goals are sort of ephemeral. How do we actually, who's making this accountable? What are the actual policy things that make this so that it's more than just sure? It's easy to set up a goal. What do we do about it? You're absolutely right, Tane. And Tane, with an audience of a thousand people, if you want to try to bench press right now, I'm sure we can get the facilities ready for you. But while you're thinking about this challenge, we know we're a nation of laws. So a goal is where you want to start. And sometimes a goal is the first step you have to take in our legislature to get people comfortable with it. And that's what we did. I said we're number four in wind energy. We started out working on that policy. Jean Wojnies will remember this back in 1999. There were many fits and starts. And we finally passed the policy with the 91% of legislators in 2007. [applause] So we're going to bring Jay back on stage in the second half of the show to answer your questions. But for now, she and I are going to disappear. And what we're going to do is turn it over to the theater of public policy who are going to take everything that we just talked about and bring it to life through completely unscripted theaters. I'm so glad to be here in Minnesota. I'm really ashamed. I'm Kansas. No, you haven't seen here, Kansas. Oh, thank you. We're not quite as good as you. Oh, Kansas, we're not. But you're not in Kansas anymore. That's true. Gosh, it's beautiful here. Yeah. Look at all these people. There must be a thousand of them. In Kansas, we'd say 350, but wow. That's what I liked about you, Minnesota. You're so enthusiastic and optimistic. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We have our bags of rabbit meat here. Oh. Hey, Tom. How you doing, Jay? Good. You know, we've got all the solar panels on top of the buildings. We've got one on every single south-facing building. There goes Tommy's big wheel. Look at that. It's being powered right there by a solar power. I can't see anything anymore. The reflection is just too bright. Yeah. You'll get used to that. That happens. But think about how much of the environment you're saving. All the carbon reduction. Who needs to see? You're thinking in a short-sighted myopic way. But we don't have winter anymore. The sun hits the mirrors and it hits the snow and it melts. And it's great. I don't have to use any salt. I just have to wait until noon. Excuse me, I have beans. [laughter] What you were listening to there was a little bit of teen danger. Interviewing Jay Drake Hamilton. This was back on February 15th, 2014. Love Your Planet Comedy Night. It was sponsored by Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. And Jay Drake Hamilton is -- she's a science policy director for fresh energy. And then you heard a little bit of improv that the troop that was gathered that night. Do you happen to remember back on February 15th, who the troop was for that night, teen? Yeah, I believe the troop that evening was Jim Robinson, Joshua Will, Carminell Halloran, Brandon Boats, Dennis Curly with the piano. And I believe maybe Maggie Soto's was there as well. That was on an environmental theme. Our environmental concerns are particular importance to you, the theater of public policy. Or is that just -- I mean, you could have been interviewing about how to cut wood. Yes, and yes, I would say. I would say absolutely. We care a lot about environmental issues. A lot of our tests are -- our test is very diverse in both, you know, demographics and socioeconomic status, but then also in age. But one of the things I think that really tie a lot of folks together across those, you know, traditional boundaries in some ways are environmental issues, because it's something that we all care about to some degree, because, you know, if we don't and there's not a whole lot left for us to care about. That said, you know, the theater of public policy, we do shows on just about anything you can imagine from, obviously, environmental issues to education reform to taxes and spending to open data laws. And I think that one of the really fun things about the show is that we're taking what might otherwise be a dry or boring subject and putting it through this filter of storytelling and theater that bring it to life in different ways. So we can take something like a farm bill and talk about it in terms of stories and what that means for individual people or communities or imagine the long-term effects of one policy or another in a creative way. So that's what people, you know, we get folks who come to us and say, oh, we want you to do a show, but we're worried that, you know, this particular -- this tax bill is too boring. And I say, as long as there's a story attached to this, as long as we can talk about the way that this actually might affect people or has affected people or communities, then we can craft improv out of that because at the heart of any kind of storytelling are those tales of connecting with people and communities. You know, I read somewhere on your website, or maybe I heard it via one of the videos you have there, that maybe you've even done training around how to use Excel spreadsheets. Is that true? Well, we have done a lot of trainings. I'm trying to think about if we've done one specifically on how to use Excel, but I will say that in general, we do a lot of trainings because I think that improv, and obviously I'm a little biased here, but I think that improv is just a good life skill for anybody to have. I teach improv on a regular basis at a theater in Minneapolis called Huge Theater, and people often say, oh, you know, improv terrifies me. I say, oh, you do improv all the time. You do improv every moment of your life more or less because you don't have a script in front of you normally. I think the world would be a better place if we approached more things through this lens of creativity and imagination. So, T2, P2, in addition to being called up by different organizations or companies that say, oh, we want to do a show about this issue. Also, they called up by those places and they say, oh, we want to have a brainstorming session around this new project that we're doing, or we want to get our team to be more creative and collaborative. The whole basis of improv is that we're building something together on stage that no one person could build by themselves, that it's a team of performers who are walking up on stage with nothing, and by the time they read, they've crafted this long, intricate, tapestry of stories that lead together and are something that they can share with an audience. And those same skills that improvisers use to do that on stage are extremely valuable for any collaborative team. And so, it's something that we are very happy and get a lot of joy out of sharing through workshops and classes and things like that through different organizations. There is a page on your website where you list a lot of the people you've done programs with or for. For instance, the Confucius Institute, University of Minnesota, what did you do for Confucius Institute that wasn't politically insensitive? Well, we actually, we had the director of the Confucius Institute on the show to talk specifically about what, you know, is often short handed as ping pong diplomacy. The way that sports have been used over the last several decades to strengthen relationships between the West and the East between particularly the United States and China originally, you know, through the Olympics and whatnot. And this was right around when everyone was getting ready, I believe, for the 2012 Olympics, I believe, is when we had her on the show. We talked to her about, you know, what does sport allow us to do that can build ties that we can't necessarily, or it's harder to do through traditional diplomacy. And that's a big sort of public policy question, but then it's also sort of just a human question of how do we relate to people from different cultures? And how do we talk across some of these boundaries that we have? And can sport or in our case, you know, theater and art do that in ways that just talking about it maybe is a little bit more sci-fi. Here's a little bit of a story to add to your connection to the ping-pong diplomacy, as you called it. In 1977, I hitchhiked from Wisconsin down to Texas over to California, while going through Los Angeles area. I got a ride hitchhiking with this guy who told me that back in, I think it was 1972, the first team that went and played ping-pong with China was our first connection. Right. He was the coach of the team. Wow. And then we got a ride with him hitchhiking. So that's like a handshake or two away from anybody, aren't we? Yeah. That's wild. And I mean, it's one of the things that we love about the show. People say, "Oh, well, who would possibly be interested in, you know, coming to a theater or coming to a cafe and watching a show about U.S.-China diplomacy?" And then what happens is we do it and we get all these wonderful stories, like yours, out of an audience of all these people who actually have some connection to it. And who are interested? I really believe strongly that we should think the most. We should be very generous with our audiences in thinking that they probably know a lot more than, you know, we often give them credit for. And that's one of the philosophies behind the theater public policies that we're not, you know, playing to the lowest common denominator. We're really believed that our audience probably has quite a bit of connection to some of these things. And it's at least a deep thinking audience who's willing to question and be curious about things. And we don't need to dumb it down to them. We don't need to make it simplistic or silly, but we can actually have serious discussions about those so many things. And at the same time, you know, have some smart comedy and fun that, you know, hopefully helps illuminate it in different ways. And so what did you do for the Global Robotics Innovation Park? How are they part of the theater of public policy? So that's a different funny one that you asked about because that was a very unique show that we did. We've only done this twice now. So this is not maybe what most folks should expect if they come to a theater public policy show. But we did a show on April Fool's Day of 2012, again, I believe, where we had Nina Fox of the robotics innovation consortium come on the show. And because it was April Fool's Day, and we pretended this though, the robots had already taken over the planet. So the Terminator scenario had already taken place and that we were all the underlings of robot overlords. And so we were talking about the public policy implications of what it meant now that robots had the vote and they always loaded in extremely high numbers because they're very efficient. And the ways that, you know, we as humans had to interact now with our robot overlords. And so I assume you explored what the future might be. We did. Again, not necessarily your typical. Usually we talk to someone talking about a real public policy issue and not one that, you know, might be set in a thousand years from now. But that was very fun. And I will say to Mrs. Fox's credit, she actually, because she is the head of the robotics innovation consortium, she actually had a lot of actual information about that robots are already capable of doing. And, you know, we might think a lot of this stuff is far in the future. And hopefully the idea that robot overlords are going to rule our lives is a little bit in the future, at least. But, you know, we talk about artificial intelligence and the way that robots can learn and what they are going to be able to do for humans or in place of humans. And that that's already happening very quickly. So are you willing to go on record, Tane, that you do not feel threatened, that robots are going to take over improv comedy? Oh, of improv comedy. That's a very interesting question. I am not confident that they want. I mean, I kind of think that once you can train a robot to be creative and imaginative, which I think at some point will probably be able to do, then I don't see why they couldn't do improv. It's hopefully a ways off. I've really tried to set my career up. It's hopefully one of the last things that robots will take over. So, you know, eventually we'll have robot doctors and we'll probably have robot lawyers, but hopefully robot improv comedian is way down the list of things that will program robots to take over. So I'll be employed for at least a few more years. Now, this work you're doing is theater. You are on stage. You are performing. And so I guess it's usual to have stage names. Tane, danger, is that real? And then, you know, your partner, Brandon Boat. I mean, are these stage names? Or did your parents really pass that on to you? No, they are not stage names. They are very real names. Brandon comes from a long line of boats out of Pella, Iowa. I believe that if you go to Central College in Pella, Iowa, you'll probably find a building or two with the name Boat on it. And then my family, the dangers, that's my dad's family. And I had a grandma danger and I have an uncle danger and an aunt danger. And tane is just tane is the Hawaiian God of the forest. It's probably hard to tell of the radio, but I am, you know, not a terrifically Hawaiian person. In fact, I do not have, I don't take any Hawaiian ancestry whatsoever. But I always, you know, my parents read the book of Hawaii when they were in college. And I think that they were sort of hippies up until the point that they named me and then they quit. They quit being hippies after that point. So I got to maintain danger. And then, and then I had to spend the rest of my life trying to live up to it. So Hawaiian God. So have you done any improv around that, I'm assuming? No, I haven't. That's a great idea. There is an improv community in Hawaii that I would love. Maybe I could get out there and do a show with them. As you might imagine, almost every improviser in Minnesota would love to go and do some improv in Hawaii, particularly in January and February. So it's a stiff competition. But maybe I can use the name thing as my end. So one of the things I also noted on your website, tane, was that it refers to the fact that you're not part of the 10% on either end of the political spectrum, that you're somewhere in that 80% in the middle. Does that mean you aren't willing to be hired by the 10%? You know, if the tea party or maybe the radicals who want to burn the system down, if they hire you to do an event, would you do it for them? Well, it's a good question. I mean, I think we would potentially do it, but we would have very -- we really set shows up to be an open conversation, right, and we -- as long as folks are willing to let us have an open conversation and ask good questions and leave it open to an audience that might ask questions that are off-script, right, or improvisers after all, then I think that we would be open to that. We've had some folks on the show who are very, very liberal and some who are very, very conservative. But the one thing that we prep them all for ahead of time is that they're in some ways turning over the prepared remarks to a team of improvisers who's going to explore it and bring it to life through improv comedy. And our improvisers' job is not to make fun or belittle any particular point of view. They're not there to just take cheap shots at something. They really want to use humor as sort of a flashlight to look at the different avenues or things that a particular policy or a political position might entail for people or communities. At the same time, while our job is not to make fun or belittle any particular person or point of view, it's also not necessarily to hold up one particular point of view or political philosophy as the end all be all. I mean, I think that it's pretty safe to say that there's plenty of room for fun to be had on both sides and that there are things that, you know, if you could put in whole audience of extreme party people or extreme liberal folks on sodium pentatol, but they would admit that there's, you know, some things here that are funny. So we probably would, but, you know, we very much keep it open and I try and ask good questions to the people that we have on the show to try and get them to actually talk about some of these things in an honest way so that they're getting beyond sort of just their traditional talking points and we're actually speaking to the things that would interest a general audience. And I want to remind listeners, I'm talking to Kane Danger. He is part of what's called the Theater of Public Policy. Their website is t2p2.net. On Twitter, you'll find them at t2_p2. I got in contact with him because I saw what they did back on February 15th, "Love Your Planet Comedy Night for Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light." There's a link on my site that'll show you a digest of that evening, about an hour long digest. And let's play another clip now from that evening. Dr. Robinson, this is a pretty comprehensive report on climate change. It sure is. You wrote it last night. You double checked all your facts. I went on Wikipedia. All right. Let me ask you something. Sure. Are you sure about those facts? Well, yeah, Wikipedia never lies. Well, can we present this to the public and say these are facts? Does 2 and 2 equal 4? Um, it has to- You don't seem very sure of your report, Dr. Robinson. Gosh, you're getting inside my head. Stop it. Just because it's cold outside, does that mean there's global warming? Just because the seas are rising. Does that mean we should be afraid? You're a Republican. I am. I've heard about you people. There aren't many of them in academia, but I've met one once. He was a TA and we got a D. Are you sure about that? Gah! You people are sneaky. I'm trained to see both sides and to keep a blind eye and not have confirmation bias. Are you sure about? Baaah! You know what? I stand by this report. Pretty much. Let me ask you something. What's that? What would it take for you to lose this little report here? And I don't want you to recycle it. I don't want you to give it to kids to make a paper mache balloon motor or anything. I want you to go outside and burn that on top of a piece of coal. I'll do it if I can have summers off in another TA. That was the theater of public policy. You find a link to the full program on my site from that evening of their performance February 15th of this past year. Love your planet comedy night. This is spirit in action. And my guest is Tane Danger. NortonSpiritRadio.org is where you'll find our programs on the web. You can see almost nine years of our programs for free listening and download. You can see comments and links and connections further information about our guest. We also have frequently bonus excerpts from these interviews that you'll see on the site that you won't get via this broadcast. Also, there's a place to post comments and we love two-way communications, so please keep up your side of the conversation by posting when you visit our site. Also, there's a place to leave donations. We live by your grace. And I'm going to get a lot thinner if you don't make donations, so please contribute by clicking on the donate button. But even more than that, I want to encourage you to support your community radio stations who carry these programs. They're providing invaluable slice of news and of music that you get just nowhere else on the American landscape. So start out by supporting them. Again, Tane Danger is here today. The theater of public policy, T2, P2.net. You'll find links to all kinds of things. They've done videos, other information about them. Tane, I wanted to explore a little bit more. I feel like in a lot of ways, your mission is very close to mind. I do deal with very controversial issues, and I do it in a supportive tone as opposed to a critical tone. Often on the landscape, there's a lot of very angry people, as you say, from either the 10% or either end of the political spectrum. Humor has a way, and particularly more gentle humor as opposed to the biting and salting humor has a way of allowing people to think about things that they otherwise couldn't think about. There are some people, though, who have almost no sense of humor. My favorite, how many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb joke, is one that I saw in a book. On one page, it had the question, "How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" And on the next page, you see a woman with her arms crossed, saying, "I don't think that's funny." That strikes me as indicative of a certain segment of the population, usually part of the 10% on either end, who are so serious about their concerns that they don't find any room for humor. Do you run into those people? Have you gotten the tomatoes thrown at you or anything yet? Oh, sure. We have not gotten tomatoes thrown. I think the price of tomatoes is too high. But we absolutely do run into that point of view that there are some things that are too serious, or potentially anything is too serious, depending on who you're talking to, to make it very funny. And there are some issues, I think, that are probably very challenging for most folks and justifiably so to find any humor. I mean, what I think we're both talking about here are folks who take any issue, and it's this concept that almost anything is too serious, or it's this life and death situation or perspective towards any particular fight. And I think that it's one of the things, you know, if I'll get up on a soapbox very briefly here, is wrong with politics right now, is that, you know, every single fight that our political folks have is, you know, this is the be-all end-all of every political fight that we've ever been working towards. And every election is, like, the most important election, because if we don't pick this one particular thing right now, then, you know, all is lost forever. And if that's your mindset, then there's very little room to negotiate or compromise or have any middle ground that you can come to, because if you find a middle ground, then you've already said, basically, that you're going to die. It's not what we're about, and it's not -- it doesn't sound like what your show's about. And we absolutely want to use humor in the way that you talked about, to be this bridge, to be a way that we can sort of bring people together across particular spectrums and things that they talk about that might be very challenging. And I think that humor is very good for that, especially, as you said, there's different kinds of humor. I often oversimplify it into two camps. Humor one is, as you sort of suggested, the jabby pokey humor, if it's all about picking somebody out or cutting them down. But the kind of humor that the theater of public policy really focuses on is this tape-place setting humor, or the table-setting humor, which is saying, you know, there's things about this that are just sort of -- that we can all come together around, and we can all look at this problem from perhaps different perspectives, but we can all agree that this is a problem and see the things that are funny about this. One of my favorite examples of this was we did a show down in Rochester, Minnesota. It was around the time that Minnesota was debating putting a ban on gay marriage into the state constitution, and there were a lot of very strong feelings about that, and we were told ahead of time that, you know, a lot of this audience that we're going to go was going to be a conservative audience. It was a conservative community, and they were probably not going to be very interested in hearing the pro gay marriage point of view or what have you. We knew that, and we went into it, but then we had a particular part of the improv comedy where there were two of our performers doing what really amounts to a pretty tricomic scene, which is just, you know, a couple getting ready to go to a party, and one wants to lead, and the other has all kinds of reasons to run back into the house, and they're not ready to go yet, and they have to grab something else, and it's really not exactly the most innovative humor, but the only catch was that it was two guys instead of, you know, a man and a woman, and the audience was in stitches over this. They were laughing hysterically because they could very much see themselves in that situation, and I think that that's one of the things that comedy and humor can do, hopefully, that might be harder to do. If we had just gone in there and said, we're going to talk to you about why same-sex marriage is exactly the same as any other kind of marriage, which we wouldn't do because it's not really our job anyway, but if we had gone in and done that, we probably either wouldn't have had an audience or they would have sat with their arms crossed and sort of unhappy, or they would have shelled out the money for those tomatoes. Yeah, there you go, but the fact that we did it through comedy and humor, and there was this scene that people could see and kind of relate to, allowed them to approach this very difficult issue in a very different way, and I don't know, I mean, I don't have, we didn't do a survey after the show to see if folks literally changed how they were going to vote on that particular issue, but if we can get folks to think about a different perspective or appreciate a different point of view from where they were when they first came in, I think that that's pretty good, and we're pretty happy with the idea that folks can think about things in a different way, and we can use comedy and theater as a bridge to do that. You've been brought in, the theater public policy has been brought in, as part of campaigns, so there's a mayoral campaign or other campaigns. All of a sudden you put the candidates there and you bring the theater public policy, what's been the result? Actually, with most of the campaigns, I think all of them, we've set those up on our own. I don't think we've ever been brought in by a campaign to do a particular show for that candidate, but the mayoral campaign won here, we did the Minneapolis mayoral campaign, which was fantastic, because there were 30-some odd candidate forums or debates that happened in that race, but a lot of them were repetitive or the same type of conversation, and it was, you know, we're going to ask a question, and each of the candidates will get two minutes to provide their response, and we'll go down the locking, and then we'll ask a follow-up question, which is good, you need some of those in order to get the general ideas out there, but what we set our forum up is as a conversation. Folks may or may not have heard that Minneapolis had more than 30 mayoral candidates in this last election. There were eight leading candidates, I believe, and then we had six of them on our show. I set it up very much as just a conversation, and I remember the very first question I threw out. I just threw out a general question about, you know, make the sales pitch for Minneapolis if you're the mayor. You know, what does Minneapolis look like in two years after you've been mayor, and all of the candidates sat there silently, and one of them finally said, well, who do you want to answer first? And I said, no, this is a conversation. Whoever wants to answer first should just get up and say something. You all want to be mayor, right, so somebody takes some leadership here, and it really threw them all for a loop for a few minutes. They took them a little while to sort of get in the swing of just having to answer questions that way, and then I would just ask a follow-up when there was something somebody said that was interesting. For example, one of the candidates said if she were elected mayor, she would do everything that she could to fight for the best deal for Minneapolis, and I just jumped in there and I said, well, wouldn't it be weird if you said anything else? Like, that doesn't really tell us, right? Nobody's going to get up and say, if I'm elected mayor, I will fight for the worst deal for me, or the most mediocre deal for the city of Minneapolis. And she's like, wow, I've been saying that line at every debate, and no one's really called that out before. So we had that very open conversation, and then what's needed is that the improvisers bring it back on stage, and they took over, and they did improv comedy scenes that were inspired by the conversation that the candidates had had, and what they projected, what they saw as the future of Minneapolis are the major issues. Both in that case and in several other cases, we've had both, obviously, the audience has a really good time because they're seeing the manifestation of these conversations come to life through theater, but the actual folks who are speaking, in this case, the candidates, get their ideas reflected back to them, right? They get the things that they have been talking about to life on stage, and so they can see it, and they can say, oh, when I was talking about enhanced bus lines as an alternative to street cars, this is how at least this section of this group of improvisers heard it, and this is what makes them think about, which I've had several folks who've been on the show tell me, it's really valuable. You don't always get that, you know, normally here in Minnesota, we just say, oh, yeah, that's good, or if we don't like it, we say, oh, that was a very interesting thing that you said, but in this case, you're actually getting folks to grapple with the issues in real time and sort of play with them in a way that doesn't happen in a lot of other form. Well, let me ask you a tough one, given that the theater of public policy didn't originate until about three years ago, you didn't have to deal with this, but if you had been maybe 10 years earlier, can you imagine if you were on John Stewart's "The Daily Show" or one of those kind of things, and okay, 911 happens. Do you go on stage the next day, or is that one of those cases where I guess there's no room for humor? It's very hard when, I mean, with 911 immediately after, I'm guessing we wouldn't go on stage immediately after. That is a while ago, and I was supposed to tell you anything. I was only in high school at that time, school then, and so I wasn't thinking about the ethics of comedy and performance, necessarily, in light of a national tragedy. I mean, looking back, I think, you know, just trying to remember how open that wound was both, you know, literally and metaphorically, and sort of the sensitivity that was happening. I'm not sure exactly if we would get up on stage and do exactly what we do. I think, though, that a lot of times we maybe don't necessarily give ourselves enough credit for the things that we can find comedy and humor in. So, one of my favorite examples is we did a show around school bullying with the President of the Noka Hennepin Education, Minnesota, and both asked us before the show, and since then, how do you find comedy and the fact that, you know, kids were bullying each other and the fact that, you know, there were actually kids who killed themselves over this, and I very quickly would say that's not funny, right? There's nothing funny about that happening to kids or whatnot, but where there is comedy and where we found things to talk about more fun is that everyone can look at this, everyone can look at the issue of bullying and say, this is a problem, and yet the adults can't figure it out, and the adults who are supposed to be making things better for kids or addressing these issues end up bullying each other in almost exactly parallel ways that the kids in the particular issues end up bullying each other, and they end up name-calling, and they end up basically having, you know, schoolyard fights around the idea of trying to help kids get over schoolyard fights. So there's often a place for comedy around things where everybody can agree, this is a serious issue, and yet the policy or the ways that we make the politics of a particular thing so difficult or so divisive that nobody can ever do anything about it, that there's comedy there, there's something there that we can all look at and say, this is absurd to some degree, that we can't fix this. Do you have to study for each of these events? I, as the host and the usual host, sometimes my co-founder branded both serves as hosts, but when either here or I are hosting and doing the interview, we'll do some background and research and we'll look into things, and we try and give the cast some background information as well, at least to the point where if we're doing a show, say, about invasive species and silver carp that are coming up to Mississippi that the cast doesn't say, oh, what's the problem with silver carp? Are there not enough of them? Aren't they delicious? Shouldn't we be eating them? So they at least know what sort of the general premise is. That said, actually, we don't want the cast to be so immersed in a particular issue and into the nuance of it that they get way ahead of the audience. So we don't want the cast to be making particular scenes or being inspired by things that are then lost on a general audience. For example, I've mentioned we did actually a couple shows now about the farm bill, and after one of those shows, I had a gentleman come up to me and say, oh, that was great, but you didn't talk about the fact that a bushel of corn goes for this this year, but then the price is adjusted based on these inflationary numbers in this state based on this. And I said, no, we didn't talk about that because basically by talking about that in some ways in a general setting like this, you're staying to 90% of the audience. This conversation is not for you. That you need to have a doctoral education in farm policy if you want to even be part of this. And as I said before, we really want this show to be something where anybody could walk in off the street and get something out of it. And again, we don't necessarily dumb it down or play to the lowest common denominator, but there's ways to have these conversations where you can peel back some of the layers of the onion and say, yes, I know there's all these rhetoric and there's these fine points about this, but what is this really about? Like, what are we trying to do or what are we not trying to do with a particular policy? And how does this actually affect people? And I think often we do use those minutiae points of it, you know, oh, if we're going to address school bullying, for example, we're going to make a task force and are there going to be 60 on the task force or 12 people on the task force? And who will get to appoint those people? We use those things as a way to not actually deal with the bigger issues. Yeah, and I'm glad you've got the lighter way to do this. Now, you mentioned, I think it's in a clip that I saw in your site, that this is not really dedicated to policy wonks. Policy wonks, they can talk endlessly on their own and committee meetings, but you mentioned it's more like for policy newbies, that the policy wonks can have their thing, the policy newbies. Maybe this is more fresh air and water and such flowing through. You've been doing this for three years, so evidently people do welcome you back. I mean, it's not a one-time visit and you're lost. No, absolutely. Every single guest that we've ever had on the show has told me that they had a great experience and that they loved it and that they would be thrilled to come back. And several of them have come back multiple times. We have audiences that come back time and time again. What we find often in that sort of policy wonks versus policy newbies thing, which is one of the, this is one of my favorite things about the show, is that somebody might hear about a show that we're doing based around the issue that they're super passionate about, right? Somebody maybe who came to the show that we did with Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light about climate change and they're very active and interested in environmental issues, so they came to that particular show and then they saw what we do, the format, with talking to a smart person and bringing it to life through improv, and they love that format, right? And they love the fact that, oh, they get some really important information, but then we have fun with it and there's some comedy to it and it's entertaining. And it's actually a fun Thursday night to have something like that happen. And so then they come back when we do another show as part of our regular season and maybe they come to a show that we do about transportation policy or about education or what have you. And it might, in that second show that they come to, might not be the thing that they're most passionate about, but they have tested it in the thing that they are very engaged with and found that they really enjoy it. And so they come back and then hopefully they learn something about an issue that they might not have paid attention to otherwise. And so it's one of the things that we really like about our audience, and I think I said probably in that same clip that you saw, that we really try and make the show fun and acceptable and, you know, educational and engaging for anybody who is curious, right? As long as people are curious, if they're not curious at all, they probably will not have a good time. Or, you know, for those friends that you have that say, oh, why would we, why are we talking about this? Oh, boring. I just want to watch reality television or what have you. Well, maybe they would actually, I don't know, maybe they would like it. I don't want to, I don't want to rule any audience member out. They would, they would, I'm sure, I'm voting for it. Yeah, you should bring them and then we'll figure out how much they like it or not. Absolutely. Well, you know, there is one of those topics that you're never supposed to talk about in polite community. So I want to ask you, for your personal religious spiritual background, maybe your perspective. I mean, did you grow up as part of the Church of Improv Comedy or how did that go? Actually, you're named after Hawaiian God. I suppose that's was the religion you grew up in. So could I have your background and could I have any comments you have about bringing improv comedy to areas of religion or spirituality? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I am named after Hawaiian God, but my family, they do not follow any Hawaiian theology. My father is actually a Lutheran minister in the ELCA Lutheran minister down in South Florida. And so I grew up a preacher's kid and know my Lutheranism pretty well. So that's probably how I most closely identify historically. But then I've also been over the last 10 years or so since I was in college, I was very interested in Buddhism and particularly mindfulness meditation and some of those kinds of things on a personal level. But more to your question generally about improv and theology, I think that there's tons of great stuff there. And I think that there's all kinds of ways that you can bring theology and religion to life in really interesting ways through storytelling and theater, right? There's a great tradition of that. There's a wonderful history. Theater of Public Policy, or T2P2, it was actually brought in by the Minneapolis ELCA Synod for their Synod convention just earlier this year in the spring of 2014 to listen to some of the things that folks were talking about at the Synod convention and putting it up on stage and reflecting it back at the audience, the things that we were hearing. Because as you sort of alluded to, there's a lot of difficult conversations that communities of faith have and need to have around what is one's individual relationship with their spiritual community. What is that spiritual community's relationship with a larger community or their neighborhood or their state or what have you? And using, as we keep saying, humor and theater as a way to talk about some of these things lets people sort of let their guard down a little bit and open up to talking about things that maybe they would be less comfortable talking about in just a straight-up conversation or open them up to thinking about different ways of doing things. And so we were -- and I mean personally, as the son of a Lutheran minister, I was very delighted and honored to get to bring the work that we do to the Minneapolis ELCA Synod convention because I think that Lutherans are very good at laughing at themselves but maybe not always so good at having difficult conversations. So hopefully we were able to use a little bit of that capacity to have some fun that Lutherans are pretty good at and use that as a way to get people to have some of those trickier conversations. And that's really the whole mission of what we do in general. The T2P2 is all about getting people to talk and think about things that they might not otherwise and actually have a good time doing it and if we can do that in a public policy form or a political form, we absolutely can do it in a religious or spiritual form. It sounds like a man after my own heart. Actually, I was in debate and forensics when I was in high school and college and in college particularly I did something called "After Dinner Speaking" and one of my speeches one year was specifically about the Catholicism I was raised with. I was talking about the funny parts of it from the inside and people loved it. It was great and I wasn't trying to bash Catholicism. I was just seeing it with this fresh eye and of course that makes all of us more easy in a room when we're talking about the elephant in the middle of the room. So it really is a helpful way. I'm so thankful for the gift that you bring to public discourse. It's called "discourse" is a little bit off-putting but when you get the humor into a room along with serious topics, I think that there's opening to the future that happens that otherwise is door firmly closed. So I really appreciate the work of the theater of public policy listeners. Remember to go to t2p2.net and you can follow him on Twitter at t2_p2. We've been speaking with Tane Danger who's one of the founders along with Brandon Boat of the Theater of Public Policy. Again, great work, great insight and I see a great future ahead for you. Thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you Mark. I really appreciate the chance to talk with you all and I hope to see you or some of your listeners at a show sometime soon. And I think I'll take you out for today's Spirit in Action with one more clip from back on February 15th. It was an event sponsored by Minnesota in Faith, Power and Light. Love your planet comedy night and here's a little bit of the improv done by the Theater of Public Policy. We'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. Cole, what? You must leave but I am wind and I will be the wind beneath your wings. I imagine it will be lonely in my shadow. You've always been a pain in the ass, sorry. But now it's time for you to go all the way. Give another shot one, a chance, I stumble. Why is everybody picking on me? Don't you remember? I helped you during the last century. The locomotive, the power plant and all the others too. I helped everyone out there, even you. You had your chance and we're so grateful. But we want to be able to breathe and drink and eat and see the top of a mountain where an eagle can land. And if you stick around, you're going to bring us down. And Bette Midler will have to sing another song and that's not good. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. To support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)