A note from Victoria...

During the years that I was at Stanford University, there was a course titled “Physics for Poets". It was a class offered at many universities – at least some version of this concept. Being an English Literature major with a focus in Poetry, I always thought it would be fun to offer the opposite class: “Poetry for Physicists." My business is an extension of that concept.

When I first arrived in the business community after many years in the performing arts, I wondered in what world I had landed. Terms and acronyms such as ROI, RFP and P&L or concepts such as prospecting, business models and Risk vs. Reward were foreign. I had belonged to a world where our focus was on imagery and emotion, intention and dilemma, set up and punch, character and conflict, suspense and surprise, lighting and sets, rhythm and tone, and the importance of first and final moments. While the performing arts included contracts, box office sales, insurance, and agency commissions, it was in these areas only that I thought business and the arts overlapped. In short, within the fiscal domain.

At cocktail parties and gatherings, I felt “civilians" (as artists like to call non-artists) were a different breed and in turn, “civilians" and particularly business-minded individuals often treated me – being an artist – as someone who belonged to a slightly different species, as if I were some kind of tropical bird. At various functions, a salesman wagging a cocktail in one hand might call to his buddy, "Joe, come over here. This is Virginia...I mean Veronica. Uh, Victoria. She's an actress."

I’d then field questions such as, "Have you been in anything I'd recognize?" or "Golly, how do you memorize all those lines?" They would then tell me about their niece, nephew, daughter or cousin who wanted to be in theatre or who had a bit part in a recent film.

The conversation would jolt and sputter along and eventually, I'd excuse myself for a drink. From the types of questions they asked, I could tell they had no concept of what actually went into acting, film, and the performing arts. Learning lines? That's the least of it. Then again, in my eyes, their world was limited to quotas and graphs, profits and losses, excel spreadsheets and stock market indexes.

I began to learn that like all limited understanding and dare I say, prejudice, this is in large part a matter of education and exposure, of knowing an industry or culture more deeply. And as I entered the corporate arena for work, I began to see that my perspective of their world was as limited as theirs of mine. No doubt, people outside the performing arts have only a cursory knowledge of the intricacies of the craft and the depths of the psychology and emotion involved.

But this limited view went both ways...

As I started to spend more time in the business community, I started to recognize more and more similarities between the performing arts and the corporate world, not simply in the domain of finance, but more significantly (and perhaps more interestingly), in the domain of the creative, subtle, components that drive and affect human communication. I began to see that performing arts principles, which I'd studied and practiced for 20 years, held great potential for addressing challenges and finding solutions in this seemingly separate world.

I began to cross pollinate and experiment, testing out performing arts principles within the business community, seeing if I could offer insights, ideas, solutions and distinctions to help corporations, sales teams, managers, communications directors, advisors and consultants advance their goals from a new angle, along the way engaging their creativity, learning about theatre, comedy, film, and movement....and having a bit more fun.

And thus my business was born.

In retrospect, it’s evident that performing arts are a perfect resource for teaching and transferring communication skills, because theater and comedy at their core they are about the human condition, human interaction and human connection--what motivates people, what makes people act, react, retreat, move forward, harness their courage, lie down in submission, or stumble forth with fear--vulnerable, uncertain, and with heart in hand.

The performing arts are about human beings and their struggles, predicaments, dilemmas and triumphs. In essence, the performing arts are about humanity. And the tools and techniques that help artists advance in their craft are those that help business people and entrepreneurs when they are practicing their business at its highest form.

We do ourselves a great disservice when we believe that the only opportunities for growth and learning in our chosen industry arise from within that industry. In truth, other disciplines hold the seeds and secrets that have the potential to move us forward on own path towards excellence.

Whether you run a company, an office, a department, a team, a store, or a home, my Through Line is to help you communicate, connect, and come; to offer you insights and ideas, incite you to engage your own brilliant innate creativity, and lead you to greater wealth (in the full sense of that word) along the way. It’s never too late to reach in and what’s inside you and put it out into the world.

Victoria Labalme

NYC