Service and Theatre: Shared Mortality
I heard a re-broadcast of an interview with Robert Prosky who passed away last week at the age of 78. Prosky was well-known character actor, both on stage and screen and is probably best recognized by TV viewers for his on-going role in "Hill Street Blues." What he said in the the last minute of the interview from 1998 struck me as a great metaphor for the service experience…
Prosky said, "There is also a joy in a stage production - there is a unique event that’s built each evening between the audience and the actor. It’s not just the actor - it’s built together and it’s unique to that event. Joe Chaikin , who writes on theatre said that, ‘One of the beauties of theatre is the shared mortality in the space.’ And that’s why it’s precious - it’s because it lasts an instant. And that’s the essence of the actor’s work - to create the moment; the now. And the now only exists for an instant."
Just as a stage actor and the audience co-exist in the moment to create a live theatre experience that is unique to that particular evening, so does the service provider and the customer. Whether it is a transaction from human-to-human at a ticket counter, or human-to-machine at an ATM, or team-to-team on a year-long project - each are creating their own unique "now" or series of "nows." Even though the "script" might be the same night after night, each performance is actually quite different on subtle levels made so by both the actor(s) and the audience.
In the theatre of your business, is your audience engaged?
Tags: Prosky, Shared Mortality, Theatre
