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Why you should make a spectacle out of life with Lear deBessonet | How to Be a Better Human
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- [00:00]
Lear Debessinet
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- [00:28]
Chris Duffy
This is a mini meditation guided by Bombas. Repeat after me. I'm comfy. I'm cozy. I have zero blisters on my toes. Blisters. And that's because I wear Bombus the softest socks, underwear and T shirts that give back. One purchased equals one donated. Now go to bombas.com acast and use code acast for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B-A-S.com acast and use code ACAST at checkout.
- [00:57]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two year contracts, they said, what the are you talking about, you insane Hollywood So to recap, we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront.
- [01:23]
Lear Debessinet
Payment equivalent to $15 per month New customers on first three month plan only Taxes and fees Extra Speed slower above 40GB. Details Foreign.
- [01:37]
Elise Hu
Hey TED Talks Daily listeners, I'm Elise Hu. Today we have an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective handpicked by us for you. The end of the year is often a time to celebrate, but celebrations aren't just for a specific time or place. This week we're sharing an episode of how to Be a Better Human featuring award winning theater director Laerre de Bessenet. She's made a career out of creating spectacles on stage, and in this interview she shares how to find joy and wonder in every day and explains why you should look for ways to create little spectacles in your own life. If you want to hear more great insights as we head into the new year, listen to how to Be a Better Human Wherever you get your podcasts, learn about the TED audio collective@audiocollective.ted.com.
- [02:30]
Ryan Reynolds
You'Re listening to how to Be a Better Human. I'm Your host, Chris Duffy. Something I've been thinking about a lot recently is how time seems to just keep speeding up. The older I get, the more that it seems like months and weeks just rip right on by. One day I look down and it's the middle of the summer and then I look up and it's somehow New Year's Eve. It makes my head spin. But what I've been really trying to think through is how to slow time down. How can I really experience each moment and make sure that I don't just blink and realize that my life is passing me by? For me, there are a few reliable ways to slow time down to make it feel like it is not flying by. One is travel a day in a new place. It feels so much longer than a day at home. It feels so full of memorable, exciting and new things. But I actually don't think that's the most fun way to slow down time. The most fun way to put a mental signpost in a day for me is to make sure that I am a part of some sort of spectacle. Something weird and wild and unexpected. Those are the most fun and the most memorable days. A random parade that you walk past and decide to join in, that is an A plus spectacle. Or a DIY relay race competition that's organized by your friends. That's a spectacle too. Or maybe if you're lucky, you can be part of some sort of community spectacle, whether it is a farmer's market or a musical performance, an art show, a reading at a library or a night of jokes and stories. Today's guest, Lear Debessinet, is a passionate fan of spectacle. She's an award winning theater director who is always looking for new ways to get everyday people out of their regular lives and onto a stage. Here's a clip from Lear's TED Talk.
- [04:06]
Lear Debessinet
In my world, pageantry was not just reserved for Mardi Gras. Every Sunday, a church voice is lifted together, inviting the holy down into daily life. Our church staged epic annual Christmas pageants complete with real smelly sheep. And down the road at LSU football games on Saturdays, the stomp of the roaring crowd led by the marching band and the color guard registered as an official earthquake on the Richter scale. When I was 8 years old. Big surprise, I became a theater director. I did so with the belief that these spectacles were more than just fun, that something profound was happening when our community came together in the realm of the imagination.
- [04:55]
Ryan Reynolds
We are going to be right back with Lear after this break for a spectacular conversation. Don't go Anywhere. And we are back. We're here today with Lear Debessonet talking about spectacle, theater and how to find the extraordinary in your everyday life.
- [05:21]
Lear Debessinet
Hi, I'm Lear Debessinet and I'm a theater director who loves to think about the role of art and community.
- [05:28]
Ryan Reynolds
So something that I often experience when I talk to people is there's this idea that there's this really big hard line between like a professional person who does this and that's the only thing they do to make their money, and someone who is not that, and that the only the true artists are the ones who on their taxes, this is the only thing that they declare income from.
- [05:52]
Lear Debessinet
Let us dismantle that idea right now. Absolutely. I am here to officially dismantle that notion that there is some separation between, quote, professional and quote, amateur. I mean, the thing I want to start by saying is that the word amateur, which is used of course, not just about the arts, it can be in other things, but it's often used about the arts. And the root of that word, amo is love. Right. It's a person who loves to do something. And actually professional artists in that sense are amateurs as well. Right. Because fundamentally, on some level, being an artist is about the love of humanity. It's about the love of the human experience. Whether we're representing a painter that's like, this is what a tree in a stream looks like to a human. Interesting. Versus, you know, working on something like directing a play with 200 people, which is what I often do. And I think to me, the art that happens with a child drawing on a sidewalk or on their parents walls when that person isn't looking, that art is not different to me than what we do on Broadway, than what happens in multimillion dollar films. It's all art and it's all human.
- [07:10]
Ryan Reynolds
So how do you think that people get this idea in their heads that like, I couldn't do art because I'm not a capital A artist?
- [07:17]
Lear Debessinet
Yeah. Well, I think one thing I noticed that I find really interesting is that even though there's an ongoing debate about what the role of arts should be in schools, and of course, a lot of sadness about the fact that many schools don't have arts curriculum offered, but I would say most people do believe that children should have access to the arts and that children do, whether structured or just somebody in their own living room making music with a baby, we understand that kids deserve this and need this and it's just part of their development. And to me, the real distortion is the idea that at some point, I don't know if it's when you turn 18, but the idea that at some point, you don't deserve that anymore. Now there's not that time for that for you. And I don't want to be dismissive at any point in this conversation. Even though I love to talk about the joy of the arts, I don't want to be dismissive of the fact that life is hard. Life is really hard for all of us. There are going to be seasons of grief. There are going to be seasons of loss and of sickness and of all sorts of those other things. And part of what I want try to advocate for in my work is that basically the arts can walk with you through all of those different spaces. It's not just something to do when you're happy, though. Who doesn't want to have a little dance party when you're happy? But I think, you know, we saw during the pandemic how many people said that listening to music was part of getting through that time for them or returning to a favorite book, a favorite painting. And I think that because being human is overwhelming, right? We have all these experiences and emotions, and we have to process those. And one of the things that causes us pain is when we feel alone in those feelings, right? When we feel that the universe is uniquely set up to destroy us or to make things hard for us, that is something that creates not only loneliness, but also anger and just the whole host of negative emotions. And one of the things that art does is it reminds us that we're not alone in that experience. You know, you hear somebody singing a song about a broken heart, about being betrayed by their lover, and you realize if you yourself are going through a terrible breakup, that you are actually not the only person that has known those feelings, that, in fact, millions of other people have known those feelings across time. And there is something about that, about not being alone in our feelings that I think shores up the soul and gives us strength to face what we need to face.
- [10:11]
Ryan Reynolds
You know, something that I relate to and that I love about you is you are such a word person. Right? Like, you love the etymology of words. You love to dive into the meaning. Even in the just brief time we've been talking in this interview, you've already, like, pulled out, like, the actual, like, root meaning of amateur. Exactly. But then also, like, I just. I hear in the. In your head, you using the word human because you're on a podcast that's about, like, better human. Like, that's just how your brain works. And I want to talk about a word that I've heard you use when you're talking about your own work and that you used in your talk, which is this word spectacle. Speaking of that, let's actually listen to a clip from your talk.
- [10:51]
Lear Debessinet
Pageantry and spectacle are, in fact, ancient, universal aspects of human experience. Going back as far as we can trace the presence of humans on this planet, religious ritual and celebration or carnival provided our ancestors much needed joy and the unique kind of group bonding necessary for facing their daily challenge of survival. The question is, what do these spectacles mean in our day, when the interconnectedness of our survival is less immediately visible and technology offers the constant opportunity for isolation?
- [11:31]
Ryan Reynolds
I think people often think of what you do as theater, but you also talk a lot about how what your goal is is to create spectacle. So tell me about spectacle, what that means to you and why that resonates.
- [11:42]
Lear Debessinet
Yeah. Well, the piece of my background that I think must be stated when I'm talking about the use of spectacle is that I'm from Louisiana. I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and for me, the presence of things like Mardi Gras and football games and church, that was baked into daily life and all three of those things brought me such awe, awe, awe. You know, they're all things that involve something so much larger than yourself. Right. A moment of spectacle. It, you know, often involves engaging many of the senses at once, right? Where you're seeing something beautiful, you know, you're hearing a marching band, you're smelling hot dogs. Your. Your own body is engaged in jumping up and down, screaming, and you're seeing the pageantry of, you know, the LSU Tiger Band march around in different formations. For me, as an artist, those formative experiences, none of which are really about sitting down, they all have aspects of participation, which I think is, like, super key. Right. You're not just a spectator, you are also a participant in all of those things, even though there are moments that you are essentially sitting, watching, listening, and they're also all intergenerational. And I think because of that, I've been really interested in the ways that the human need for spectacle goes back to ancient times. You know, I think we can see now, even in places in this country where there are politicians on record being like, the arts are silly. We shouldn't be paying for this. Like, are they paying for fireworks on the 4th of July? Yes, they are, because spectacle matters. Right. We need the opportunity to come together and experience beauty and awe.
- [13:42]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah. And so it leads into your Work with Public Works, but also with one Nation, one project. So I'd like to talk about each of those. In order for people who aren't familiar. Can you just give us the brief rundown on what Public Works is?
- [13:54]
Lear Debessinet
Yeah. So Public Works is a program that I founded at the Public Theater in New York that then has since spread nationally and internationally. And in a sense, even more so than it being just a program. It's actually a bigger sort of idea about a way that theater can operate. And the most visible expression of Public Works that happened from the time that I started it in 2012 is we would do an annual 200 person musical production at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. And these productions would bring together community members from all over New York and also something like five Broadway stars, plus specialty groups that we called cameo groups that were things like marching bands and gospel choirs and flamenco dancers and capoeiristas and taiko drummers, all of these New Yorkers that had special artistic skills and passions. And weaving all of those people together into a big old story, a big old fable, really.
- [14:58]
Ryan Reynolds
And what does it take, like, logistically, what does it take to put together a big community theater project? How many auditions, how many people do you try to get to end up with 200 people?
- [15:07]
Lear Debessinet
Oh, my, yes. Well, we think of the scheduling as being at an Olympic level, just like the pure calendaring of these things, right? Scheduled within an inch of their lives. I feel like also something these sort of forces that are always present in art, which is both the sort of the presence of, if you will, the Apollonian and Dionysian, right? That you need some structure, some organization, and then you need also a spirit of chaos, and you need those two things to sort of meet. There is no better example to me of the meeting of order and chaos than like a public work show, right? Because the amount of pre planning and structure needed to make that successful and needing to make that happy is really extensive because the work was so relational. And part of the idea was to build relationship with community that extended beyond any one show. So every year there would be a series of community auditions that would happen out at the community partner locations. And then I got sort of feel like I was always a scout, right? In that I would be like taking the train through the Bronx and I would. And like, somebody would step onto my subway car and sing a cappella and I'd be like, hey, what are you up to in August? You know, because getting to be responsive to the city, I cannot even tell you the Number of incredible people that ultimately I sort of recruited for these. Like, there's a Central park bubble artist that you may have noticed. There's a man who, like, just stands in Central park, like, creating these enormous bubbles. And, like, he performed in the Tempest. He was, like, on. On top of Prospero's tower in the Tempest, blowing bubbles in the end, you.
- [16:47]
Ryan Reynolds
Know, I love that. That's so cool. We gotta take a quick, brief detour here to say so. I grew up in New York City, and I was obsessed for at least three or four years of my childhood with this street performer who performed at the South Street Seaport. And her name was the Squirrel Lady. And what she would do, her act was she would stand on an upturned, like. Like, mail crate, right? So she just had a little stage. And then if you gave her a dollar, she would take a sleeve of saltine crackers, and she would just destroy. Eat them like a little squirrel, like, just, like, making, like, spraying saltine crackers everywhere. And I was like, that person is Michelangelo. That is my Da Vinci. I was like, that is the greatest genius of our time. And I would beg, constantly beg, like, can I have a dollar? And can we please go see the Squirrel Lady? And to this day, I still think it's one of the most incredible pieces of art I've ever seen.
- [17:42]
Lear Debessinet
This is now a new obsession of mine. And my question is, like, is she available? Because I would like her to be in my next production.
- [17:48]
Ryan Reynolds
My belief is that she retired to some mansion funded by her squirrel performance. But I haven't seen her in literally a decade, so I don't know. But if she was in a production, I would fly anywhere in the world for that ticket. I would certainly go anyway. There is no limit to the types of performers you can find in New York City, but also, more broadly, to your point, like, in the world, anywhere, there are people who have these, like, little unusual, strange things that would be perfect for spectacle.
- [18:19]
Lear Debessinet
Yes. And my dream is to sort of walk through life noticing those things, and then to ask a person to do, like, whatever that thing is to do, like, exactly that in the production and to somehow create the conditions within the story where that whatever that person is doing makes sense in a storytelling way. That was my dream.
- [18:45]
Ryan Reynolds
We will be right back in just a moment. And we are back. Today we are talking about art, spectacle and theater with Lear Debessonet. So I have two questions about public works, and the first is for the people who are performing, and then the second one is about you. So the first one is, how does participating in something like Public Works when you don't think about yourself as an artist, when this isn't your primary identity, how does that change someone's view of the world and of themselves? How have you seen that change?
- [19:31]
Lear Debessinet
What I notice when a person who has previously not self identified as an artist steps inside one of these productions, even if there's trepidation upfront or a sense of like, I don't know about this, like, am I going to be asked to do anything embarrassing? Pretty quickly I feel like people are like, oh, I'm great at this. Like there, there is a sense of I did have within me everything I need to do this. And I think that so often again, people have been shut down earlier on, right? We've been told that this is not for us. Or again, just that like we don't have time to do this, you know, when at the very the Beta Public Works production that I did in San Diego, which was a 200 person production of the Odyssey, for that production with the Penelope's Suitor characters, my idea was to recruit men in uniform in San Diego to beat that. And that could be any uniform. I know, Chris, that you specifically can imagine how funny, like what that could mean. Right? But it also.
- [20:35]
Ryan Reynolds
So many incredible uniforms, instantly, that's a perfect fit already. Yes.
- [20:40]
Lear Debessinet
But you know somebody who's like, yeah, I'm a firefighter, but now suddenly I'm performing in a production of the Odyssey.
- [20:48]
Ryan Reynolds
And I'm standing next to like the mascot for the NFL football team and I'm standing next to the person dressed in the in n outfit. Totally from the drive in.
- [20:55]
Lear Debessinet
Totally, totally. By the way, you can't even know how many times I was rejected by the San Diego Chicken.
- [21:01]
Ryan Reynolds
I mean, this is not how we title episodes, but I would love for this episode to be tit. You can't even know how many times I was rejected by the San Diego Chicken with learned of essay. Okay. And then so second part of this question is how does this change things for you doing this kinds of work? Because something that you said of like you're always looking around, you're always casting to me, I find that that is for me personally the part of being a writer and a comedian that is the most satisfying and sometimes the hardest to communicate is that what it does for me is less about performance and more that every day I walk around and I am seeing there's an incentive for me to see things that make me laugh. So rather than just like dismissing the weirdness of the world. I'm like, wait a second, I better look a little more closely because that looks strange. And it's such a great way to go through the world for me. I love that.
- [21:58]
Lear Debessinet
Absolutely. And I feel like I have a permanent license to appreciate people and just to notice whatever they're doing and to be like, that's rad. I love it. So it is a way of looking at the world and of just permanent fun. A lens of fun and appreciation.
- [22:15]
Ryan Reynolds
How can someone who's listening give themselves that lens or that license?
- [22:23]
Lear Debessinet
Such a good question. Well, one of the things that we get to do as artists, and again, I mean that in terms of like, you sit down right now and draw a sketch with pencil on your pad, and you're an artist in that moment. An artist has a point of view always. Right? Meaning that you're looking through goggles, you're watching. And we all have the agency to not just be essentially a character in somebody else's story, but actually to have a point of view. Right. And to notice things. If you just think about the word wonder, both in the sense of I experience wonder when I look at something magical, but also to wonder, to have curiosity about things. And I think part of what's spectacular about the fact that every single human is endowed with creativity, is endowed with the ability to be an artist, means that we all have the license to go through life noticing things that are worth making art about, that are worth representing in art, and it changes the way you look at things.
- [23:36]
Ryan Reynolds
You know, you've talked about how you. You put on a lot of these 200 person events. Sometimes they're a little smaller, sometimes they're bigger. That is also, you know, for people who are thinking like, well, I'm not a director, I'm not an actor, I'm not involved in this stuff. The thing that is kind of like that, that many people will go to in their lives is it's almost the same scale as like a medium to large wedding. Right. And a wedding is a spectacle as well.
- [23:58]
Lear Debessinet
Yeah, for sure. Oh, my goodness. Of course. A huge, huge spectacle. Even a very calm wedding. Still, the ritual of it is spectacle. And ritual and spectacle have a lot to do with one another. And those early influences I named, like Mardi Gras and church and football games. Those all have a lot of ritual built into them. And I, I think we desperately crave ritual. I think also even the experience of throwing a dinner party, right. Having people over to dinner is a bit of a spectacle and something that we could probably all Identify with. You know, another thing that I've noticed in the creative process that I want to bring up, Chris, is just the presence of despair as part of every single creative process in a way that I find really interesting and hilarious. Yeah. And I sort of had noticed this for myself, just as an individual, but it wasn't till I was sort of walking with, like, large groups of people through this on a repeated bas that I became. It was, in fact, so consistent that I really became able to notice it, which is that, you know, the creative process functions like a U, the U shape, which is that, you know, usually at the start of a process, you're on a bit of a high, right. Even if you're sort of nervous or whatever. But there is a sense of like, this is going to be so great. You know, I can. I can see it. I can imagine what it's going to be and how fabulous. I'm excited. And then as you go along the process, you're essentially making. Making a descent into whatever the lowest point of the U is, which is a point of real despair, which is like, this is a waste of time. I am completely embarrassing myself. I'm going to fail publicly. This is nothing like what I had envisioned. And I want to stop. And that part of the creative process, it's important to say, is always there, and you have to work through that. And as you do, the you starts climbing up and up and up. And by the end, when you finish, you're back on that high, an even greater high, really, than the one you started in, because you have this sort of full blossoming, the project being realized. Oftentimes, you know, no matter how much you feared it was going to be terrible, your fear was often wrong. I think that isn't talked about often enough now. People know things like, yeah, van Gogh cut off his ear. What's that about? Right. There is some, I think, big picture perspective that, you know, rock stars and like, certain famous artists were like, angsty people that dealt with some really dark emotions. But it's like, that is true even about doing art on a very amateur level, right? You start trying and then you start, like, not feeling good about what you're doing, and you gotta push through that to get to the other side of it. And I think for me, one of the things that's so transformative about particularly theater and spectacle, in which you're taking that journey with a whole group of people, is just how. How connected to others you feel when you find yourself in that pit of that despair together. And then Together, you climb out of it.
- [27:12]
Ryan Reynolds
Wow. I cannot tell you how much that resonates with me and also how much I needed to hear that for myself. I'm sure that listeners will also benefit from that, because that despair moment in every project that I've ever done and just, you know, big picture, like, right now, I'm. I'm working on a. I'm writing a book, and it's my first book that I've ever written. And I cannot tell you how, like, it went from, like, this is the most exciting thing. Oh, my gosh. I'm gonna have this whole new thing, and people are gonna read my book, and I'm gonna get to write other books. And then it's gonna be amazing to now having handed in a full draft and being like, this is gonna be bad, and I'm gonna be humiliated. And everyone is gonna say, why did you do this thing? And I'm gonna say, why did I do this thing? And it's too late to back out. But, oh, no, I have done something real. I've really gotten myself into a horrible pit. Why have I brought myself to this pit?
- [28:07]
Lear Debessinet
You're in the. You, Chris, you're in the bottom of the U. Yeah.
- [28:10]
Ryan Reynolds
And, like, it's. It's interesting. Cause I kind of know on my own, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it won't feel like that once I'm done. But, like, hearing you say it, I'm like, but you feel like that too? How is that possible?
- [28:21]
Lear Debessinet
Oh, hugely. Every time. I mean, this is. What's so crazy is that I think as a younger artist, I kept feeling like, ah. But I'm sure, like, when I have more experience or if I have some external successes, some affirmations of my work, I'm sure I won't feel that way. And I feel it every single time. And I watch whole companies of artists feel it every single time. And that is true of Broadway actors, and it is true of, you know, grandmothers that are participating in a play for the first time. It is true of everybody. And I think what's powerful is to not stop at the bottom of the U. Right? To. At that moment of despair, to not give up. And I think one of the functions that we as humans play for each other is to not give up on life, to not give up when things get hard.
- [29:19]
Ryan Reynolds
Wow. Wow.
- [29:20]
Lear Debessinet
Yeah.
- [29:21]
Ryan Reynolds
I mean, that is. That's a profound human truth, for sure, about life. I also want to talk about one nation, one project. This is a public arts event that premiered in 18 cities across the United States on this one day, July 27th. So can you tell us about that?
- [29:37]
Lear Debessinet
Yeah, absolutely. So it was really a campaign. The campaign was arts for everybody. And the sort of organization that we created was called One Nation, One Project. We had this really unique combination of, in 18 cities and towns across the U.S. rural places, big cities, a combination of local artists with their municipality. So with like the local mayor's office and with a community health center, those three parts of the city came together. And together they worked to build this public art project. And they all premiered on July 27th. And it was both this awesome expression of uniquely local beauty, joy. Things that happened in each place were so distinct and couldn't have happened anywhere else. And also there was this bigger kind of quilt made by the fact that they all did it in one day that allowed to really pan back and take a look at the role that the arts can play in communities. And specifically the way that participating in the arts affects people's physical and mental health.
- [30:48]
Ryan Reynolds
And you often in your work, like measured success, not just in terms of people involved or tickets sold, right, like, how does it affect physical and mental health? Or you had a linguistic anthropologist track the impact of public work. So talk to me about that of like how you think about the results or the effects of the work you do, because it's different than many people think of these things.
- [31:08]
Lear Debessinet
Well, this was, you know, this is not something I set out with at the beginning. It's something that happened organically, which was as I was making these projects, I started to notice, particularly in the community based work, that we would work together over the course of whatever it was, months or years, we would do this amazing show. And then after the show, there were all these other beautiful things that would happen afterwards. These effects that included everything from senior citizens being like, I used to not be able to walk without this mobility device and now I don't need that device anymore. Or I recovered from this sickness or this surgery more quickly than I would have, or, you know, kids doing better in school. All of these things that were very concrete things that happen in people's life that they attributed to participating in an artistic process. And it was happening so consistently that I became really curious about it and been curious of, like, is there a body of research to support this? Which, in fact, there was. You know, the World Health organization has pulled 3,000 studies to look at this phenomenon of the connection between arts and health. And so on my own projects we started, yes, Public Works had a linguistic anthropologist tracing the impact of the work over many Years with arts for everybody. We had a whole team of scientific researchers from the University of Florida. And I think there's still a lot more research to be done. But what has started to come out to me was so surprising. And yet also I was like, this actually does make sense because we all know that there is a mind body connection. Some of the arts are literally physical exercise. Right. Like, it's not surprising that dancing might have some physical effects. But it's not just dancing. Right? Right. It's singing in a choir. It's things that, you know, you have to wonder, why would that affect somebody's health and what does that tell us about being a person? And I think once I started studying that, which was probably, I guess, 12 years ago or so, that I really intently started working with professional researchers to document these effects. Now it's made me feel some sort of obligation to, like, now that we know this, we gotta share this information with people. And if we really knew that, wouldn't we advocate for more people to have access to the arts in a regular way? And wouldn't we advocate for arts to not just be something that wealthy people in a couple of coastal cities have access to? But wouldn't we argue that every single community in this country deserves arts resources for everybody that lives there?
- [33:49]
Ryan Reynolds
Absolutely. Thinking about those changes and those measurable effects, is there one person whose story sticks out in your head who's kind of was transformed or in one of your projects that you've seen?
- [34:01]
Lear Debessinet
There is. I did a 50 person production of Don Quixote at a homeless shelter in Philadelphia that I worked on for about two years in the lead up to it. And we had some people in the company, people who were dealing with being homeless, who had other health issues. And there was a man in the company who was struggling with a host of health complications, including really severe AIDS complications. And he was very, very thin and just a little bit fragile. About two weeks into the process, he'd been there every day, so enthusiastic, so deeply loving the participation. And then one day he didn't show up. And we checked in with, with everybody and none of his caseworkers, no one had seen him. And they started looking for him and he couldn't find him. And we were so worried and grieved and continued to sort of wonder what had happened to him and what could be done. But another couple of weeks go by and we're opening the show and I get a call that he's been found. He had been found unconscious on the street, but has been nursed Back to health and is in the hospital and actually is about to be released. And I receive a call that he's basically coming straight to my rehearsal because he's hoping that he can still perform in the show that night. Now, at this point, he's missed a couple of weeks of rehearsal, which means we've built a lot of show that he hasn't been there while we've been doing that. But he showed up. Now, at this point, we had actually just started performances, and he showed up and he said, I'm ready. I'm ready to perform. And I said, well, you know, tonight, why don't we do this? We're gonna have a little seat for you right here in the front row so you can watch, you can watch the show once you can see what's changed since you were here. When the parts come up that, you know, when those dances come up, you can just stand right up in your chair, you can groove along. And then tomorrow we'll hold a special rehearsal and we'll put you into the show so you can perform. And that night, as I was watching, he had remembered everything. He was watching keenly through the first part. And then the sections would come, the songs that he remember. He would stand up, he would groove in place, he would dance. And the next day we held this special rehearsal and we put him into the show. And he went on that next night and he continued to perform. It was a three week run. He performed the rest of the run. He was there every night performing in this show. I don't even know that his doctors would have advised that happening. But, you know, for him, he was like, this is what made me want to get out of that hospital bed. I wanted to stay alive so I could be in this show, so that I can do this. Plus, people were counting on me. And he knew that there was a moment in the dance, for example, that he had a featured moment. And he knew that if he wasn't there, there was gonna be a big hole in the center of the dance. He wanted it to be complete. There are these moments like that that for me, as a director, are so humbling just to watch the courage, the strength of another person. This was 2009, and he's still alive now, so. So I'm in awe.
- [37:19]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, that's beautiful. And I think the idea of, like, having people who rely on you and having something that you're fighting for, those are such important things. Thank you so much for being here. It's been so amazing talking to you and such a pleasure and I really thank you for making the time.
- [37:35]
Lear Debessinet
Thank you Chris. You're so awesome. What a joy.
- [37:42]
Ryan Reynolds
That is it it for this episode of how to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Lear Debessinet. I am your host Chris Duffy and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at Chris Duffy comedy.com How to be a Better Human is put together by a team that will one day altogether erupt out of a podcast Shaped Cake. On the TED side we've got Daniela Ballorezzo, Banban Chang, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Lainey Lott, Antonia Ley, and Joseph de Bruyne. This episode was fact checked by Julia Dickerson and Matthew Mateus Salas who believed the most spectacular thing of all is the truth. On the PRX side, you could search high and low and you'd never find a team of artists performing at a higher level than Morgan Flannery nor Gill, Pedro, Rafael Rosado, Maggie Goreville, Patrick Grant and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course thanks to you for listening to this show and making it possible for this to be a spectacle out in the world. Because without you, the only spectacle would be me alone in my basement talking to no if you're listening on Apple, please leave us a five star rating and review and share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. Word of mouth is the number one way that we get out to new listeners so it really, really does make a difference. Please, please, please do that. We will be back next week with even more how to Be a Better Human. Until then, thank you so much for listening and take care.
- [39:12]
Chris Duffy
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- [39:50]
Lear Debessinet
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day.
- [40:04]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [40:20]
Chris Duffy
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