WAKA · In Nature We Believewaka.gaiaeducation.org/collection/open-stage/
Open Stage
The evening nobody plans and everybody remembers
Move a group from participants to contributors, and let people be seen for something other than their professional competence.
- Duration
- 90 min–3 hours
- Group size
- 8–40 people
- Setting
- either
- Energy
- lively
- Materials
- A fire or a warm roomA sign-up sheetWhatever people brought
By Wednesday, a group has learned what everyone does for a living. This is how they learn who everyone is.
How it runs
- Put up the sheet on day one, not on the night. Time slots, five to ten minutes each. Anyone may write their name and a title.
- A participant curates, not a facilitator. Their whole job is to keep the order and to introduce people warmly.
- The rule of the offer: anything you want to give. A song from your grandmother. A card trick. Explaining your PhD in five minutes. A poem in a language nobody here speaks. Teaching a dance badly.
- The two rules of the audience: you stay for the whole thing, and nobody films without asking.
- Finish with something everyone can do together — a round song, a circle dance — so the evening ends as a group and not as an audience.
Facilitator notes
- Facilitators go early in the running order and offer something they are not good at. This is the single highest-leverage act of the week; the whole evening’s permission level is set by it.
- Do not fill gaps in the sheet by pressuring people. Silence on the sheet on Monday, four names on Tuesday, full by Thursday is the normal shape.
- Protect the following morning. Start late.
