Creative Courage

CHAPTER

5

Play with Danger

When the Stakes Are So High That We Just Want to Play It Safe

The future of innovation is no longer in the hands of the scientists, artists or designers working alone in a lab, loft or studio. . . . It is a creative, collective, humanist enterprise that seeks to find new solutions to the problems of our planet and its future.

Lucas Dietrich¹

When caring, safety, and trust are established, we can focus on having constructive emotional responses to our experiences. This is also true for our audiences and the various other people we serve with our work. If we just play it safe with our offerings, we miss the opportunity to create that constructive emotional reaction that will make us memorable and relevant. By playing with danger and limitations, we can tap into the potential to make our work more resonant or important. By playing it safe because we feel that the stakes are too high, we risk our relevance over time. In other words, the stakes are too high to not play with danger and limitations.

I. Raising the Curtain

What’s behind the joy and the enchantment that we can feel when we see someone jump higher and higher on a trampoline? And why is the source of that enchantment common to everything that we consider positive and memorable?

The Sage of the Acrobatic World

One of my favorite stories from my years at Cirque du Soleil comes from one of my favorite people there. Boris Verkhovsky is a sage of the acrobatic and performance world, an astute psychologist ...