The Interview with the Writer and the Director of “Startup”, a Theatrical Play by Estonian Theatre NO99

I recently found that the estonian theatre NO99 has produced a theatrical play titled “Startup”. As appropriate to any decent startup, the entire setup of the show looks rather cool and innovative. Below are some author’s thoughts I was curious to know about, and the listing of the business ideas the professional actors have came up during the improvizational on-stage brainstorming performance.

The concept and setup of the play is rather cool. According to the web page of the play Startup, (hic!) you can order the wake-up call from the theatre, the performed starts 8:15 in the mornings, and it lasts for 1 hour and 20 minutes. There are four characters on stage, who are looking for a new bright idea each morning.

With the permission from the Author of the play, the outcome listing of all the ideas from previous mornings is copied from the play’s web page and translated into english below (scroll to the end of the page). Feel free to comment, which of those ideas you recognize have been implemented somewhere? I think I have heard somebody has implemented the “God’s phone hot-line” and the “district of the elderly” somewhere before. Can you add your cool ideas to this list, that you think somebody should make happen?

Interview with the Author

I got pretty curious about how the masterminds behind the scenes came up to the idea of the show and what further plans they have. I asked couple of questions from Mr. Mart Kase, the Writer and Director of the play. Here come the responses.

Q: How did you come up with the idea of the play?

A: The continuos talks about economic recession and the people’s sour faces started to get on my nerves. It is rather obvious, that mere failure-analyzis and whining never helps anybody. You have to flood everything with positive attitude. So, I realized there is a need for enthusiastic start, not clamming up.

On the other hand, it is still a time where people at several old purviews (like media, advertising, exchanges etc.) experience shrivel. At the same time new models emerge. Better adopters with open minds are successful in this.

And what matters most, inventing and fantasizing is always fun – think about how and what else there could be in life, limitless fantasy. So, the idea emerged to produce a play that encourages people into vigilance and action.

One friend suggested a good place for hosting the show. The other friend recommended that such kind of theatre must be done in the morning. That’s how we ended up with 8:15 AM.

The actors are Kristel Leesmend, Jaak Prints, Bert Raudsep and Gert Raudsep. All the ideas are created by the characters personified by the actors. They go onto stage and spell out their thoughts they have in their heads in this specific morning. Each performance is different. Sometimes the ideas are bright, the other time the necessarily warm contact with the audience is not achieved.

Q: Can we expect some sequel like “First Sale”, “Pitching for Investors” or something else startupish idyllic?

A: The topics of “Pitching for Investors”, “Selling Your Ideas to Others” or things like that would be very good topics. However, it would be much harder to do than brainstorming ideas. Ideas on their own actually won’t matter much. Execution of those matters. If we find a suitable angle or enough information or success stories, then producing a sequel might become realistic. At the same time, we need to realize we are professional people of theatre and culture, talking about stuff that we know very little about, and we can’t take a serious stance that we are now teaching others.

Q: For how long do you plan to run the show?

A: We performed 8 times during May and June. It will be performed in 6 mornings during September. I don’t know yet what happens then. We are dreaming about some tour in small towns of Estonia. Performing the play in those at 8:15 AM in the morning would be rather punk. At the moment those thoughts are on hold due to shortage of finances and time. It is possible that we perform again in Tallinn in Spring 2010. Will see. There is nothing certain at the moment.

Q: How does the public interest look? Tickets are sould out?

A: Although there has been some sceptics, questioning whether people would really come into theatre at 8:15 AM, all the tickets to the performances in Spring were completely sold out. The auditorium is not big, fitting 100 watchers for each performance. The tickets to the performances in September came out three days ago and ca one third of them are already sold out. There is enough interest. We have seen the positive impact on people who have come to the show in groups together, before the beginning of their business day.

Here is a also a link to the blog post where I have collected press critics and blog posts from watchers. [Asko Seeba: these are in estonian language, but you could try google translator on it.]

The List of Ideas

Here is the list of the ideas from previous mornings of the performance, copied from the play’s web page with the permission by Author, and translated into english (only couple are left out that are too estonian cultural-embedded word-plays or I just didn’t figure what they reasonably might translate into). Lots of the ideas below are of course pretty funny as they are product of the actors in a playful mood. But hey, this thing has to be fun in the end! In between the lines you’ll find some pretty interesting ideas that make sense as well , and when you do, then the goal has been achieved.

The list:

So, what do you think? Did you find your next venture from here? Or do you propose your own additions to this list? Do you know about any of those above implemented somewhere? Add your comment on this below.

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Tags: Bert Raudsep, business, business idea, estonia, Gert Raudsep, Jaak Prints, Kristel Leesmend, Mart Kase, NO99, startup, theatre

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