Lessons on leadership and character from Shakespeare and one of his greatest admirers
E-Book, Englisch, 270 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-648-74889-2
Verlag: Pantera Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Around the globe people have been crying out for "Leadership": demanding it, begging for it. From the farcical spectacle of short-lived Australian prime ministers shoving each other through the revolving door to scandalous failures of governance in Australia's financial institutions and the moral abyss in church leadership, to the mess of Brexit and the chaotic unpredictability of the Trump administration, and now the greatest leadership challenge since World War II: Covid-19. Stable, reliable, sensible leadership has been in short supply.
We often resort to the word 'Shakespearean' to explain our dramatic times. And indeed, we can learn a lot from Shakespeare about leadership – good and bad. The world's greatest analyst of human behaviour and motivation; a man well acquainted with crises of leadership in tumultuous times; a man whose dry wit, bottomless empathy enabled him to encapsulate countless valuable life lessons that still ring with relevance today.
As someone who has spent a good deal of the last seventy-something years studying, performing and directing Shakespeare's plays, John Bell has absorbed quite a few valuable lessons in life, character and leadership from the bard, and then put these to good use running two successful theatre companies.
Some Achieve Greatness contains invaluable lessons on leadership, drawn from John Bell's extensive relationship with Shakespeare and his own experience as a cultural leader, illustrated with an irreverent and contemporary set of cartoons by Cathy Wilcox.
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INTRODUCTION Leadership is not a person or a position. It is a process and a complex moral relationship that ought to be based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion and a shared vision of the good. Joanne B. Ciulla For the last twenty years or more the cry on everybody’s lips has been ‘Leadership!’ Around the globe people have been yelling about it, demanding it, begging for it. From the farcical spectacle of short-lived Australian prime ministers shoving each other through the revolving door, scandalous failures of governance in Australia’s financial institutions and the Australian Defence Force, and the moral abyss in church leadership, to the mess of Brexit and the after-effects of the chaotic Trump administration, stable, reliable, sensible leadership has been in short supply. Then in early 2020 the world faced its greatest leadership challenge since World War II: COVID-19 hit the planet Earth like a meteor and, before we could blink, had become a pandemic. World leaders reacted in ways that would define each of them, some surprisingly, some not. Most European heads of state reacted strongly but too slowly. The most inept leaders like Trump and Brazil’s Bolsonaro went straight to their default positions of denial, cover-up and misinformation, with catastrophic outcomes for their populations and economies. China, the supposed source of the virus, struck a posture of outraged innocence. Amazingly, Australia, whose politics over the last couple of decades has been defined by ugly and juvenile infighting, responded in a way that could serve as a model to the rest of the world. Prime Minister Scott Morrison proclaimed a pandemic way ahead of the World Health Organization and we saw a novel and extremely welcome bipartisan response across the Commonwealth. State premiers handled the lockdown, social distancing, self-isolation and a gradual easing of restrictions firmly, each according to local conditions. Expert advice from the medical fraternity was sought, accepted and acted on. The public was kept well informed as to what was happening and why. And they responded, for the most part, with generosity and a sense of pride in their social cohesion. New Zealand, strongly led by Jacinda Ardern, was similarly successful. As I write this, in late 2020, the pandemic is far from over and every country, including Australia, is on the alert for further waves of infection. But so far the whole episode has proved to be a reassuring example of what decisive, sensible and inclusive leadership can achieve, not only at the top, but all the way down the line. You don’t have to be a prime minister to be a leader. You might be a local fire chief, school principal or manager at a McDonald’s outlet. Reaching for hyperbole to describe seismic events, the media often resort to the word ‘Shakespearean’. And indeed we can learn a lot from William Shakespeare (1564–1616) about leadership – good and bad. Besides being a genius whose mind could encompass great vistas of the imagination, he had an acute sense of historical perspective and an uncanny psychological intuition that enabled him to look deep into people’s innermost beings and to do it with wit, empathy and a complete lack of sentimentality. His career as an actor and dramatist meant he spent every waking moment observing and analysing people’s behaviour and rendering it on a public stage before a critical, discriminating and highly sophisticated audience. As head of the theatrical troupe favoured by Queen Elizabeth and King James, he spent a lot of time close to the seat of power, with an opportunity to observe all the facets of leadership that determined the day-to-day government of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. It was a dangerous time for any artist to be openly critical of the hierarchy, but the public theatre earned its popularity by being risky. Shakespeare’s plays may be regarded at one level as fables about leadership, often set in a distant location (ancient Rome, Egypt or medieval England) to escape censorship. It is ironic that this male-centric world should be so identified with one of history’s most famous leaders – Elizabeth I, Gloriana (1533–1603). Her leadership attributes were formidable: equipped with a brilliant intellect, a sharp wit, a thorough and multi-lingual education, charm, guile, ambition, a talent for diplomacy and strategic thinking, and a toughness that could be ruthless but could also show moderation, she dominated the era through sheer force of will and the determination to stay in charge. She was never going to submit to a man whom she must swear to honour and obey. Her title ‘the Virgin Queen’ was her declaration of independence. One of her great displays of leadership was her handling of the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada of 1588. Warned by her counsellors that she should take refuge in London, she rode instead to Tilbury and addressed her troops: I am come amongst you … to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too! Surely Shakespeare must have drawn a lot of inspiration from this remarkable woman. He performed for her often as the leading actor and playwright of her personal theatre troupe, the Queen’s Men. Her free and audacious spirit may be detected in his characters like Portia and Cleopatra. It is notable that in Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Histories we move in a world where the rules are set by men, and women have to accommodate themselves as best they can. It is in his Comedies where women come into their own, show up men’s faults, run rings around them in terms of wit and strategy, and often teach them valuable life lessons. Shakespeare, as a young man and a young writer, strove to give women a voice – because he believed it would make the theatre more dynamic and because he had a natural sense of justice and sympathy for all those who were marginalised, persecuted and discriminated against. Inevitably, though, this book deals mainly with male protagonists. Shakespeare lived in a world dominated by men. Its statesmen, soldiers, explorers, educationalists and lawmakers were men. Some remarkable women devoted themselves to intellectual pursuits and the arts, but, unless they bore the privilege of class, they were actively discouraged or at best ignored. * * * I fell in love with Shakespeare in high school, thanks to the enthusiasm of two fine English teachers and an urge to act: I just wanted to get on stage and say those wonderful words. But I was an unlikely performer – a shy loner with a crippling stutter. I was determined to beat the stutter and little by little I did, through sheer perseverance and many stumbles. I spent much of my four years at Sydney University acting in student productions. Upon graduating I joined Sydney’s Old Tote Company in 1963 where I played Hamlet at the age of twenty-two. The following year I played Henry V in a circus tent for the Adelaide Festival. Then I thought: ‘I’ve peaked … and I’ve never had an acting lesson. Where do I go from here?’ Luckily I was given a scholarship by the British Council that took me to England. I joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and that’s where I learned my craft: working day and night for five years with the best of the best. Coming back to Australia in 1970 I was fired with the idea of creating new Australian plays and staging the classics with an Australian perspective – making them our own. My first company was the Nimrod, which I co-founded with Ken Horler and Richard Wherrett, and ran, along with several different partners, for the next fourteen years. We started small, in an old disused stable in Nimrod Street, Kings Cross. It’s still there, only now it’s called the Stables Theatre, home to the Griffin Theatre Company. Back in 1970 it was a dump, full of junk and old cars. But we took a lease, scrubbed it out and passed the hat around among our mates to raise enough money to put a show on. Ken, a barrister and an old mate from university days, and his wife Lilian drove the fundraising and jumped the legal hurdles. We opened for business in December 1970, but after our first show the city council closed us down. We had only one toilet for 120 people and there was no fire escape – just a sign over an upstairs window saying: ‘In case of fire, jump.’ So we set about putting in more toilets and a proper fire exit, passed the hat around a few more times and reopened a month later. Our repertoire was new Australian plays and innovative productions of the classics, especially Shakespeare. The team was mean and lean. We had a sense of camaraderie, of all mucking in together. We were all equally responsible for every decision that had to be made, be it artistic, financial or strategic. Within three years we had outgrown the Stables, so we acquired a larger venue in Belvoir Street, Surry Hills. It was the old Fountain Tomato Sauce and Cerebos Salt factory. It’s now the Belvoir Street Theatre. We renovated it and enlarged our repertoire, our audiences and our staff. And now the trouble began. We tried to run the company on democratic lines, seeking ideas and input from everyone in the organisation. This had worked well when we were a small outfit. But now we had become large and successful, and...
