no81
startup
KASE
Mart Kase asks himself a few questions and answers them.
What is the stage production Start-up about?
I don’t exactly know. The stage production does not talk about two things:
It
doesn’t talk about the state and about how the state hassles
businessmen. I don’t like it when Estonia is cursed and criticised. The
future of nations is dark anyway. I don’t want to hassle the defenceless
or wag my finger in close-up in their direction. Quite the contrary.
Estonia is a dream country for starting up a business or for carrying
out studies concerning society, for instance. It makes no difference to
anyone. Liberalism has created opportunities and the mentality does not
impede activity. The state cannot endlessly coddle people to get them to
undertake entrepreneurship. It is sufficient to create opportunities.
Grants are not a privilege.
The stage production does not talk about
the ability to find partners and financiers for ideas. That is the
second stage of ideas and at least as complicated as the first stage.
The theme of how to expand and present one’s business to the world
through the proper channels is very broad. I don’t know anything about
it and I don’t know how to write adequate dramaturgical exaggerations
about it, so it was better to leave it all out. The final result should
be light rather than sombre, more artistic than only social. It should
carry a message.
Why is this theme topical just now?
I’m
extremely fed up with the daily nonsense about “economic recession” and
“depression”. It’s very tiresome. There are times when one must act, not
go into hiding. I do not consider what a couple of successful younger
generation Estonian businessmen have done to be right – they have taken
money out of their companies, reduced their businesses, and gone
travelling around the world for a couple of years, justifying their
course of action with the claim that now is not a favourable or
practical time for doing business. Businessmen must think more broadly
than the comfortable life of the individual. At the same time, I feel
sorry for Oliver Kruuda, who said a couple of months back: “Quite
honestly, I don’t want to deal with anything anymore. There’s no better
time than six o’clock Friday evening, which feels like the beginning of a
month-long vacation for me.”
Author and director Mart Kase
Scenography Kairi Mändla
Actors Gert Raudsep, Kristel Leesmend (guest), Jaak Prints, Bert Raudsep (guest)
And now Asko Seeba asks, and Mart Kase answers:
Interview with the Author
I got pretty curious about how the
masterminds behind the scenes came up to the idea of the show and what
further plans they have. I asked couple of questions from Mr. Mart Kase,
the Writer and Director of the play. Here come the responses.
Q: How did you come up with the idea of the play?
A:
The continuos talks about economic recession and the people’s sour
faces started to get on my nerves. It is rather obvious, that mere
failure-analyzis and whining never helps anybody. You have to flood
everything with positive attitude. So, I realized there is a need for
enthusiastic start, not clamming up.
On the other hand, it is
still a time where people at several old purviews (like media,
advertising, exchanges etc.) experience shrivel. At the same time new
models emerge. Better adopters with open minds are successful in this.
And
what matters most, inventing and fantasizing is always fun – think
about how and what else there could be in life, limitless fantasy. So,
the idea emerged to produce a play that encourages people into vigilance
and action.
One friend suggested a good place for hosting the
show. The other friend recommended that such kind of theatre must be
done in the morning. That’s how we ended up with 8:15 AM.
The
actors are Kristel Leesmend, Jaak Prints, Bert Raudsep and Gert Raudsep.
All the ideas are created by the characters personified by the actors.
They go onto stage and spell out their thoughts they have in their heads
in this specific morning. Each performance is different. Sometimes the
ideas are bright, the other time the necessarily warm contact with the
audience is not achieved.
Q: Can we expect some sequel like “First Sale”, “Pitching for Investors” or something else startupish idyllic?
A:
The topics of “Pitching for Investors”, “Selling Your Ideas to Others”
or things like that would be very good topics. However, it would be much
harder to do than brainstorming ideas. Ideas on their own actually
won’t matter much. Execution of those matters. If we find a suitable
angle or enough information or success stories, then producing a sequel
might become realistic. At the same time, we need to realize we are
professional people of theatre and culture, talking about stuff that we
know very little about, and we can’t take a serious stance that we are
now teaching others.
Q: For how long do you plan to run the show?
A:
We performed 8 times during May and June. It will be performed in 6
mornings during September. I don’t know yet what happens then. We are
dreaming about some tour in small towns of Estonia. Performing the play
in those at 8:15 AM in the morning would be rather punk. At the moment
those thoughts are on hold due to shortage of finances and time. It is
possible that we perform again in Tallinn in Spring 2010. Will see.
There is nothing certain at the moment.
Q: How does the public interest look? Tickets are sould out?
A:
Although there has been some sceptics, questioning whether people would
really come into theatre at 8:15 AM, all the tickets to the
performances in Spring were completely sold out. The auditorium is not
big, fitting 100 watchers for each performance. The tickets to the
performances in September came out three days ago and ca one third of
them are already sold out. There is enough interest. We have seen the
positive impact on people who have come to the show in groups together,
before the beginning of their business day.
Here is a also a link
to the blog post where I have collected press critics and blog posts
from watchers. [Asko Seeba: these are in estonian language, but you
could try google translator on it.]
The List of Ideas
Here is
the list of the ideas from previous mornings of the performance, copied
from the play’s web page with the permission by Author, and translated
into english (only couple are left out that are too estonian
cultural-embedded word-plays or I just didn’t figure what they
reasonably might translate into). Lots of the ideas below are of course
pretty funny as they are product of the actors in a playful mood. But
hey, this thing has to be fun in the end! In between the lines you’ll
find some pretty interesting ideas that make sense as well :) , and when
you do, then the goal has been achieved.
The list:
1. Kindergarten kids exchange program
2. Ultrafluid for flowers
3. Teddy bear service
4. Me in another city
5. Animals sports games
6. Beer machines
7. Domestic ghost
8. Honest feedback service
9. Fridge cleaning service
10. Universal battery
11. Spray butter
12. Sneeze eliciting device
13. Pet “public house”
14. Drink buddy rent
15. Party info hotline
16. Rollerblade and motorcycle taxi
17. Chip inside a person, that informs about changes in organism (helps
to obviate cancer, but also simply to know, when it is time to pay a
visit to dentist)
18. Pet (animal/bird) in freedom (freepet)
19. Shit-scythe
20. Audiobackgrounds for reading books
21. 5 AM discotheque
22. Funeral bus
23. Ones boat
24. Hairdresser-GP-dentist-physiotherapist
25. Carrier pigeon (a human)
26. Grandma’s yarn (knitwear store or something)
27. Order yourself a poet/sportsman/actor
28. Public transportation for smokers
29. Carreer advisory in kindergartens
30. Wifi-rabbit – where is a rabbit, there is a wifi
31. Cinema hall, as in art’s hall
32. Soap opera for language inepts – TV-format, international, watchers can have a healthy laugh
33. Houses with cabriolet roofs
34. Home doughnut machine
35. Gods phone hot-line
36. Magnet for plastics
37. Self-renewing newspaper
38. Universal washing aid (like soap, but for everything: dishes, hands, laundry, surfaces)
39. Talking traffic lights
40. Virtual jogging on city streets
41. At the door of laundry house
42. Police-locker
43. Toilet voices
44. Tooth-paste in the tube of liquid soap
45. Disdrict of the elderly (billions-project)
46. Lessons aid (center of the private teachers)
47. Mosquito decoys (they come to the party and keep mosquitoes at them, i.e. they take the fire)
48. Tourist day
49. Sandbeach in the middle of the downtown
50. Day as an animal
51. Phantom bus (no windows, you can deal with your stuff in the bus)
52. Santa Claus is coming, presents already in the bag (store, catalogue)
53. Edible icecream stick
54. Dog stays puppy
55. Portable dumbbell
56. Meetings flashback machine
57. Moving trees
58. Furniture store “Nostalgy” – the groomed soviet furniture
59. Pan-bathtub
60. Motorized knife
61. Journal for deads
62. Water-melon sized apples
63. Batteryhause
64. House on the tree
65. Artificial sun
66. Saucer that never gets dirty
67. Doghouse for cats
68. Bridge over the town
69. Self-braking road
70. Mood stickers
71. Heel brake
72. Beer that won’t make you fat
73. “Pumps” – gives a “pumps” if somebody says an abusive word
74. Intelligent pillow, blanket
75. Bacteria that eat plastic
76. Segway type of stairways
77. Jazz-radio
78. Mind-powered switch
79. Colour-bomb
80. 2-eye TV
81. Cartoon-camera
82. Pills with which you have a flashback of a beautiful moment
83. Paper that neither burn nor get dirty
84. Pills “poo won’t stink”
85. Human tail accessory
86. Dream camera
87. Spray of the smell of a fresh bread
88. Dogs boots
89. Underground house
90. Warms that live in pipes and eat hair
91. Helmet-heardresser
92. New universal plug
93. Quitarola, i.e. mechanical quitar
94. Deodorants “sawdust” and “fresh lawn”
95. Estonian hat
96. Books writing machine
97. Fundamental-eco
98. Wide-applicable balloon for one person
99. Bird-antenna
100. Taste-converter (cabbage – candy)
101. Suicide hole (lava in the bottom)
102. 1 cm sized cat
103. Museum of old houses
104. Creme that makes you bald – “radioctiv”
105. Chewing gum that won’t lose its taste, lasts for 5 h
106. Car doors that close without any audible noise
107. Computer game “Estonian independece war” on-line version
108. Robotic “third hand”
109. Teddy bears with the shape of blackbeetle, louse, bloodsucker, tink, bedbug, ebola etc.
110. White-board, black chalk for those who want something different
111. Slipper straps that let sun through etc.
112. Car that changes colours
113. Retirement home for elderly mules
114. Silent booth on the street
115. Radiator in the post and in the sofa
116. Universal stop (15-minutes pause, once a week)
117. Universal ball (basket-, foot-, hand-, volley-)
118. Tingler
119. Permanent life
120. Glasses with which you see the presence of a person and how passionate she/he is about life
121. Scissors for cutting strips
122. Long-awaited dog-skis
123. Non-narrative TV
124. Institute of making up and reusing languages
125. Self-sharpening knife
126. Intensive sleep-pills (6 h equals 15 minutes)
127. Toaster that adds butter to the bread
128. Bite-counter
129. Design-barn
130. Robot-body
131. Hidden telly – feels like book-shelf, turn it around and it is a telly
132. Rabbit- and bear-shaped light-switches
133. Chair with invisible wheels (weels, ball-bearings, invisible, better mobility)
134. Half-shorter and half-cheaper cigarettes
135. 360 degrees photocamera
136. Solar-battery powered fridge to the no-electricity countryside
137. Coffee-cup with wifi
138. Cat-dog
139. Sadness pill
140. One-second buttoner
141. There is an imaginary friend in the ear
142. Tree grows into earth
143. Coffee-cup with built-in sifter for coffee grinding
144. School for learning how to become estonian
145. Candle kit “Estonia” (blue, black, white)
146. Food that absorbs via skin
147. Invisible tape
148. Firefighting seagull
149. Drinking cubicle for the lonly
150. Bees on the roof of the towerhouse
151. Talking flower-pot
152. Hay-clock (clock in the middle of a field, air-passangers see it)
153. Babybike (bike + cart, mother can ride freely)
154. Boxy water-melon, L-shaped water-melon, U-shaped water-melon
155. Post-catalogue / web page for mapping good locations of mushrooms
and berries (montly fee ca 25 estonian kroons) + information on
locations of fly-mushroom (more expensive, 180 kroons)
156. Rotten egg detector
157. Breeded city-doves who eat only dog poo
158. Construction service (Pisa tower, Eiffel tower, White House)
159. Hootch machine in throat (fifter-like) – water, juice, lemonade go in and hootch comes out
160. Ethical beep
161. Animals hatching from seeds
162. Chocolate burger
163. Trash to the outer space
164. Dog pizza
165. Auxiliary seagull (hatches orphaned eggs)
166. Babies drowsing platform
167. Dress that changes colour
168. Shoelaces binding device
169. Extension of the hand’s touch sensitivity
170. Pillow with on-demand dreams
171. Rolling cactus
172. Cat with a turn signal
173. Walking spring
174. Invisible pleasure boat
175. Ready-made makeup
176. Polite traffic signs
177. Washing machine for small creatures
178. Direct link with the nature
179. Climate shade
180. Blinker on the top of the head of a person, showing that the person is in a hurry
181. Mr. Wolf – man who knows everything, from whom you can ask everything
182. Lie detector development
183. Charger of battery of human
184. Stop any production
185. Secret research group on rain-forest matters
186. Ego-solvent
187. Alarm of routine
188. Hearing aid of concience
189. Dust alarm
190. Animal money
So,
what do you think? Did you find your next venture from here? Or do you
propose your own additions to this list? Do you know about any of those
above implemented somewhere? Add your comment on this below.