Earlier this year, I had a great conversation with Colin Crowley and I’m excited to have him back on the show today to talk about the value of bringing your diverse experience and talents into your work.
Colin is the VP of Customer Experience at Freshly, where he directs a two-hundred-person department across five locations in the United States and beyond. He specializes in building customer service departments from the ground up with a focus on scalability, infrastructure agility, technological innovation, and gold-standard quality and efficiency.
Something you wouldn’t know from Colin’s professional biography is that he’s also a playwright and he brings that experience into his work at Freshly and this aspect left me feeling like I just had to have him back on the show.
In this episode, Colin shares how customer experience really sits at the intersection of arts and operations, the importance of both strategy and empathy for customer experience, his personal experience becoming a playwright, how his self-driven learning and curiosity have played a role in his success, the parallels between producing a play and how the corporate environment should be in order to help people understand where they fit in the corporate vision, and more!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more. I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.
Earlier this spring, I had a really good conversation with Colin Crowley of Freshly. Colin is the VP of customer experience where he directs a two-hundred-person department across five locations in the United States and beyond. And when we were talking about how he helped build the customer service department from the ground up and focused on scalability, infrastructure agility, you know, technological innovation, efficiency, quality, and empathy; in that conversation, I asked him about hiring. And he brought up a really, really interesting point about how helpful it is when people bring their diverse background to the table. It’s possible that you have heard, maybe, before or all your life that you should stay in your lane and not divert out of your realm of expertise.
But Colin is a playwright, and he brings his experience as a playwright to his job at Freshly. And in fact, they probably complement one another, and it’s very, very interesting. I really wanted to have a conversation with Colin about this. And so, I invited him back on the podcast to do an interview that is really focused more on how we do integrate our diverse experience and the arts even with our experience at work.
In this conversation, Colin talks about how customer experience really sits at the intersection of arts and operations, and how important both strategy and empathy are for customer experience. We discuss his personal experience becoming a playwright, and how he really didn’t take the normal track that you most people would take through education and whatnot. He didn’t take that normal track as a playwright or in the corporate world, but how his self-driven learning and his curiosity has really fueled his success.
And in our conversation, he also connects this idea of producing a play and all the players involved and creating that analogy to how it could and should be in a corporate environment with a team, with customer experience, or with a company who needs to have a real clear purpose and vision and be able to help others understand how they fit into that vision.
I am confident that you are going to really enjoy this conversation with Colin Crowley.
Andrea: Colin Crowley, it is great to have you back on the Voice of Influence podcast.
Colin Crowley: Thank you. It’s great to be back.
Andrea: So, the last time you were here, we were talking about your role with Freshly. And in that conversation, [there was] the question of how do you hire people who are going to be able to really succeed in understanding the voice of the customer and understanding the team dynamics that are at play and all that. And you brought up something about bringing in other experiences that you’ve had within your life… That when people have a broad set of experiences, that they’re able to contribute quite a bit.
And so, after our conversation, I thought, “We’ve got to talk again,” because you have had a broad set of experiences, and you have an education and your experience as a playwright. And I think that that could be really illuminating for our audience. So, Colin, would you just tell us how does a guy who’s running the customer experience team at Freshly, how is he also a playwright?
Colin Crowley: Yes, that’s a good question. Although I think the more and more you think of it, the more and more it actually melds together and makes sense, I guess you could say. I’ve been writing for about… probably going on fifteenish years now in a more serious capacity. I was always kind of writing even prior to that, but not something that was necessarily, you know, fit for anyone’s eyes, shall we say. So, it’s been about fifteen years in a serious capacity; definitely long before I entered the customer service world or really entered even the workforce in a specially enthusiastic manner where I was more career-driven and what have you.
I think, there’s a bit of a natural affinity between the arts and customer service because customer service itself – when it comes to relationships with people – really is an art as opposed to a science. Obviously, you can use science to put behind it in terms of helping you be strategic in managing the relationships with customers and just being able to manage people on the phones or in email or in chat or what have you. But at its core, the ability to be able to detect how someone else is feeling, and be able to respond to that, and help to give them what they need aside from what policies and procedures may be, really fits more in the area of the arts.
You could really say customer service sits at the intersection of the arts and operations in a kind of really interesting way. Because in order to have a good customer support organization, you really have to have your eyes on both of those two things. You have to make sure that your agents are empathizing and appropriately understanding customers, and really understanding them almost on an ethereal plane as opposed to a very, you know, a policy-based one. And at the same time, you also have to be careful about certain operational realities in terms of how much money are you giving away and how much money are you spending on people versus technology, versus this, versus that.
So, there’s also a lot of just pure operational strategy that goes into play, and organizations tend to fail if they don’t get that balance right. Or either they focus too much on the efficiency factor at the expense of empathy; or they focus more on empathy, but they don’t have enough strategy to make their operation successful. So, it’s really at that intersection where you get good customer support.
I guess for me, I found the customer support space surprisingly natural when I entered into it, because I didn’t really have any direct experience in customer support management when I entered the space. And I entered it with kind of cold turkey for all practical purposes, but it ended up being a natural affinity because there’s that balance that I understood from my experience writing plays.
I think plays are especially interesting in the world of theater generally because in the world of theater, you have that same sort of balance between art and operations, and for playwrights, especially. So, an example of this would be, you know, in screenwriting, for instance, or novel writing. You tend to have a different circumstance where, in screenwriting, there don’t tend to be realistic boundaries to the stories you can create because Hollywood makes so much money.
So, unless you’re specifically writing for a very small film, which most people aren’t doing – rather, they’re writing for the big game – then you can have as many locations or as many characters or as many what have you as you want because the idea is that if the film does well, it’s going to grow us a lot of money and no one really cares. So, there’s not much operational restriction on what you write, and you can let your imagination go wild.
And in theater, it’s very different because theaters – unless they’re big commercial theaters – theaters don’t tend to have a lot of money, and they have to be very circumspect about how they spend money. So, if you want to get your play produced by a local, regional, etc. theater, then you have to be mindful of how many characters you have, and how many scenes you have, and how many locations you have, and things of that nature because it all factors into how much money the theater is going to have to spend producing your show. And the more money they have to spend producing it, the less likely any theater is going to take it up. So, you have to write with that in mind, with that practicality in mind.
And with novel writing, it’s, of course, very different because there’s a larger audience for novel writing, and you’re writing more in isolation than you are in theater, which is a very collaborational process where you’re writing something which you know is going to be taken by a director or producer, etc., and then by actors and they’re going to interpret in their own way. At the end of the day, it’s going to be a process where a bunch of different people work together to get something to happen.
And it’s not all on you, even though you may have had the initial idea, which is also very much how the world of customer support works. And the world, in general, works where you have to work with different people who have defined boundaries and priorities, and you have to make sure to account for those as you’re going about your business. For reasons like that, there’s actually a lot of interesting affinity between theater specifically and the customer support space.
Andrea: Indeed, so much. I think that describing it as the intersection between arts and operations and being able to apply that too… or at least help us to see how that is the same as theatre and writing for theater, I think that’s a really interesting connection that you’ve made. And I can see how being really good at one and being really good at the other and then how that sort of continues to probably sharpen you as you continue to move forward in both genres.
Colin Crowley: Yeah, I would definitely say that’s true. I mean, it really, really comes down to, I think you could say, priority because when you’re in a situation where you know you have to balance two concepts that are at least seemingly at variance… Because most people when they think of, you know, operations, it’s usually at perhaps at the expense of empathy. Although that’s not always the case, but usually that’s kind of how it stereotypes.
But when you really appreciate the balance and you know that in order to do your job well, you have to get the balance right… it really does make you go through the process of thinking what are the key things that you value when it comes to empathy that are like no-go areas, that are principles by which you will deal with your customers. And you won’t give those up, even operationally if it may be convenient to do so under certain circumstances.
And similarly, what are those key things in operations that you just can’t let fall by the wayside, knowing that – either in the present or in the future – it’s going to end up crippling your ability to simply deliver the service to the customers or be able to respond quickly enough to their requests, even if the agents you have are really trained in empathy and understanding.
So, it definitely makes you – both in the theater world, yes, and also in customer support – think about what you value and what are the no-go areas in each pillar. And that’s definitely an important step to getting that balance right, and not flip-flopping back and forth too much or sacrificing what you perhaps should not be sacrificing.
Andrea: Okay, so one of the things that we do is we help teams and individuals on teams really find their own voice. I’m curious about your experience in finding your own voice both as a playwright and then how that is also impacted your other work.
Colin Crowley: Yeah, I think one interesting thing about my experience – both as a playwright and as a customer support leader – is that in both cases, I came into the fields not through traditional routes, I think it’s fair to say. So, in terms of playwriting, that means, you know, I didn’t officially study theater in college or study drama or go through the process of getting a MFA or anything, but rather, I just loved theater. And I more naturally gravitated towards playwriting, and I started to write myself, and I started to read other people’s plays.
And of course, in life, a lot of what you learn is what you absorb through reading, even just your understanding of the English language. So, there’s a lot of reading, and a lot of absorbing, and a lot of trial and error because you try to write this or you try to write that and it doesn’t quite work. But I didn’t have any avenues that you would typically associate with people who’d come up through more established channels, through the educational system, or what have you. And because I’m outside of New York City, and I have a family – so, you know, running here and there – and the job and everything, I’m also not able to be very active participant in theatrical groups, which is a typical avenue that a lot of people use to get their works produced.
So, I came into the theater space from a back door. And the same thing is really true for customer support as well because I didn’t study customer support or have a prior experience before really entering the space a little over ten years ago. And ironically, or perhaps more coincidentally, I ended up being chosen to start at a company as a customer ombudsman – which was what the title was – which basically meant that I would examine the customer support operations and compare them to industry best practices and recommend changes.
And really, one of the main reasons I got that job was because the CEO of the company liked my playwriting background and the fact that I had been involved in helping to produce one of my first work is – a musical. And he liked that experience in operations and also liked that balance with the arts, presuming that would mean I would understand empathy and so forth. So, I kind of entered customer support partially because of the playwriting experience, and went through a similar experience of self-education from there going forward.
So, those two experiences of entering those spaces from backdoors, I think, had been very impactful. It’s definitely helped me to establish my own voice because I developed it with a lot of self-education and observation as opposed to any sort of training, and that definitely helps you to identify things that matter to you or that you notice that may not be the part of someone else’s curriculum. And I’m sure that manifests itself in all sorts of different ways. I think in customer support, one of the ways that manifests itself is because of my playwriting experience, which inherently involves the arts and creativity. So, that fuels a lot of ideas I have.
So, I find the customer support space to be a very creative one when it comes to understanding, like; how do you structure your organization to best meet the needs of the customers and what sort of teams do you have, what responsibilities do they have, areas of concentration, and how do you route customers appropriately so they get the best help. And all that stuff to me is really like one gigantic, creative exercise, almost like in theater where you’re kind of arranging people on a stage and you’re trying to make sure that the audience gets a certain impression of people. And you change that by what they say, and where they go, and how they act. So that’s influenced my creativity in customer support operations, definitely.
Andrea: You mentioned that your learning was self-driven versus really being imposed on you by a program, or what have you, somebody else creating the track for you. You created your own learning track. Have you always been self-driven in that way? Do you learn better that way? What kind of motivated you as you were getting going with both of these things to really learn everything that you needed to learn and make sure that you were getting what you needed?
Colin Crowley: Yeah. I mean, I am someone who does prefer self-learning, and it does work very well for me because I just inherently am curious about things. And prior to the customer support world, I was involved in a think tank space because I actually studied, at first, history and political science, and then national security studies. So, my initial vision was that I was going to enter, like, the think tank world and so forth. And I did briefly before moving from Washington, D.C. up to the New England area.
So, I’ve always enjoyed researching, and understanding, and being able to pick out the salient points from a huge morass of information. So that is something which I’ve always heavily enjoyed. I think that’s one of the reasons why self-learning tends to work very well for me, and that, I would say, in combination with experience. So, that’s how I learned playwriting, and that’s how I learned customer support operations essentially, from starting off from the point of self-research and then complementing that with experience when the time comes.
And also a great resource too, I have to say, is just people. Not necessarily in a control curriculum setting, but just engaging with people and talking with people and understanding people and being able to hear their different challenges and their different triumphs. And that also has been very, very significant, but mainly as something which has tempered the knowledge that I’ve gained from my self-learning and from my own experience.
Andrea: How many plays have you written, plays and everything?
Colin Crowley: Let me see. I have written about twelve straight plays. And straight plays means it’s not a musical – so it’s just a play, play, so to speak. And I’ve written… let’s see, three musicals, and one point, I did, like, a one-act rock opera with someone. I dabbled a little bit in screenwriting, but not as much. So, I only have like one screenplay that’s fit for public company, but I have had some others resting someplace on my computer. But yeah, the core of what I do is really in the straight play area. So, I have twelve plays as it stands now, which I’ve composed over the course of the past really about ten years, I would say, for those.
Andrea: So, where do you find time, do you feel like, to do this other work, to write plays?
Colin Crowley: Honestly, for me, I’m able to write in smaller, short spurts, which I guess works well because that’s usually all I have. So, I’m definitely not someone who could sit down at a desk and write all day long, like some people do. I think it would bore me, and I think I would lack inspiration if I had to do that. So, I write in short spurts, and my short spurts typically come from my commute into the office because Freshly, where I work, is headquartered in New York City, and I live in southwest Connecticut. So, I have about seventy-five-minute train ride into and out of the city every day so that ends up being my time to be able to sit down and do some writing. And then every now and then, I’ll grab some time at night after the kids are put to bed and things like that.
Andrea: What a great way to use your commute.
Colin Crowley: I know. It ends up being very, very productive. But yeah, it’s good for chill time, basically.
Andrea: When you’re writing a play, do you already know the ending? Do you sketch out the whole picture before you begin, or do you start at the beginning or in the middle someplace and just start writing and let it take shape from a more organic kind of like, “I think this would be fun,” or “This might be interesting.” How does that work for you?
Colin Crowley: Yeah, I definitely know the ending. I think that’s probably true of most playwrights, mainly because plays are shorter than something like a novel as an example where I could understand that method working. But in the course of a play, it’s a shorter work, and you really need to know where you’re going in order to get there because you don’t have a lot of time to meander. And you have to be more strategic about getting to the point because there’s a very finite time limit on it. So for that reason, I think it’s very difficult to write a play and not know the ending.
So, I’ve always written plays knowing what the ending is, although I’m not necessarily someone… It can vary, but I’m not necessarily someone who sketches out scene by scene by scene ahead of time, which some people do. And sometimes I do that, sometimes I don’t, depending on how I feel about the subject matter. But one thing that is common is, yes, I pretty much have an idea how it begins, and I would always know how it ends. And then I would have some ideas of how I’m going to get there just to keep the directional focus on it.
Andrea: So with your political science and national security studies background, I was looking through your plays. It looks like there’s a lot of political kind of subject matter. What would you say your plays are about?
Colin Crowley: They’re really about a lot of different things. I would say that I don’t really have a lot of really any real political plays, but I do use history a lot.
Andrea: Okay, history. There you go.
Colin Crowley: But I’m actually not the biggest fan of political plays. But I use history as a prism for a lot of my plays, and I’ve always loved history. So, that probably informs, I’d say, at least half of my work and even the other half will have in it… Even if not in historical incident or event, it may take place in a different historical time period, so some history is brought in that way. But I try to be eclectic in what I write so I’m not repeating the same story over and over again. And I try very consciously not to repeat the same story.
So, typically, I’ve even kind of set myself some goals where, “Oh, I need to write this type of play,” or “I need to write that type of play,” just to make sure I’m not repeating things. So, I’ve written tragedies. I’ve written a pure farce. I’ve written a comedy-drama/tragic comedy. I’ve written musicals. I’ve written a satirical play. So, I always try to keep it different, and again very mindfully so, so I’m not writing the same sort of thing.
Andrea: And why is that so important to you?
Colin Crowley: Well, I think that it’s important to challenge myself because I don’t want to get into a rut where I am writing the same thing over and over again, where that just inherently has a certain lack of creativity. Because it’s almost like you’re rehashing old ideas or it’s almost like you take a big puzzle, and you just rearrange the pieces, I guess is one way to describe it, as opposed to building a new puzzle. And it’s just not as rewarding for me personally doing that. So, I don’t feel as much of a sense of accomplishment or joy writing a play if I’m conscious that, “Mhmm, I’ve kind of written this before.” Although, the single exception may be if I’m writing it again and the prior play, I’m very aware has a lot of faults, and I think I need to try it again. So, in that context, I would say it’s acceptable. But other than that, it just isn’t as rewarding or fulfilling to rehash the same types of stuff and have the same types of characters.
Andrea: Well, between that and your desire for self-driven learning and your ability to excel in that, I can see how you really enjoy exploring things that are new and mastering something new.
Colin Crowley: That’s true, yeah. And I think that’s another connection with the customer support space too because we’re definitely living in a very fast-changing world, especially with technology. And that’s been a key theme, like at Freshly that we focus on in customer support is trying to stay ahead of the technology curve, which can be kind of tricky to do because it curves so quickly. But definitely, always being ahead and thinking what’s next and focusing on opening up new frontiers is a common theme in both – the playwriting aspect for me, but also in the customer support aspect. And really, I trying to push boundaries where you can to keep things fresh.
Andrea: On your website, you described theatre as being sort of democratic. And I thought this was really interesting, and I want to just quote from what you said on your website; “Not everyone can be in a movie, even a small budget movie, but anyone can audition for a local play and be on the stage.” What does this mean to you and to the world for a theater?
Colin Crowley: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s definitely an interesting truism and it’s interesting because big commercial theaters, unfortunately, have almost frozen out a lot of theatergoers, because it’s just so expensive to see a show now. So that’s really unfortunate that a lot of people can’t have the experience of those big theaters. But really, where a lot of the rising energy in theater is in our local theaters and community theaters, and there’s a lot that goes on in those local and regional theaters that’s really interesting and really gives a lot of opportunities for people to participate in it.
And that’s what I find sort of really uniquely attractive about theatre. I guess it comes back to the collaboration aspect I mentioned before – about how like in the business world and theater, you have people who have to work together. And it’s also different from screenwriting in that theater people have very defined roles. So, the playwright controls the word and you can’t change a single comma, and the director controls this, and the actors control that. And it’s much more defined than it is in screenwriting whereas a writer, you sell your script so you lose all your rights to it, and you really don’t have any say on anything. But in theater roles are very defined and that’s more like what it is in the business world, so to speak.
So that’s kind of another interesting analogy there. But theater is so collaborative where, you know, even though people stereotype it as “acting on the stage”, the fact is there’s so many talents that are needed in theater. And you really appreciate that when you’re involved in theatrical experiences, when you think of all the people you need for set design – so, you’re bringing in carpentry, for instance – and then you have people with lighting design, and you have sound design, and you have the stage manager. And you have so many different people with so many different skill sets working on one show that it really provides us so much opportunities for so many different people of different skills.
And I think sometimes people forget that when, again, they just focus on the actors on the stage or the person who’s writing the words. But when you look at how collaborational it is, and the fact that it’s so much collaboration across people with those different skill sets, it’s almost an interesting microcosm of the universe. But bottom line, it provides so many opportunities for people to get together and work on a project on a very local level. And I find that really interesting about theatre, and hopefully, something that we’ll see more about in theater. But it is a challenge, unfortunately, for theaters to get enough community participation. And hopefully, that’s something that won’t wane over time.
Andrea: What I love about that is in what I have seen in theater is that whoever’s working on the show, people from the lighting to stage crew to the person who is the lead of the play, they all seem to have the same amount of ownership that they take in the whole production. Like, they feel so much a part of it and so proud of their production in the end, and that is inspiring to me. And they all have to also respect one another. You, as the playwright, have to respect the fact that the person who’s doing the lighting could ruin everything. And you know, the way that everything plays together like that is fascinating to me, and then to think of a company and a team like this, that it doesn’t matter what role you play. It’s going to be intricate and important, and we all have to respect each one, and we’ve all taken ownership in the end product. I think that’s really inspiring.
Colin Crowley: Yeah, I think that that’s a great point. And certainly another great analogy to the business world, and it makes me think of how, like, even when I’m writing something,
I have to be conscious of how it works in the real world as opposed to how it looks on the page. So, like, if you’re writing a speech for a character to recite, as an example, there’s a difference between what looks good on the page, and what reads well, and what sounds well. Because when it comes to the speech being spoken, you have to pay attention to things like, you know, “Are the words easy for the actor to say,” and “When spoken, do the words have the right cadence that allows the actor to do something with it,” and things that don’t come across if you’re on a page.
And if you really want a successful experience in a show, you have to be willing to change things based on feedback from the actors. So the actors say, “You know, it’s kind of hard for me to get this out or say this with this phrasing,” or “The phrasing seems awkward,” because again, whole different world from on the page and on the stage. Then it’s part of the process working with the actor to say, “Okay, look, so let’s change that so it works for you.” And it really speaks to how there’s collaboration even on very, very small things like that.
And definitely, also, to your point how it’s also a great analogy because everyone really does have to work together to have a common passion. Because if you have, like, one actor who has sort of low energy and clearly isn’t engaged, then you see the ripple effects that that has on other people because they all depend on each other for that common energy, especially when you’re actually on the stage doing the show.
And that’s another great analogy to the business world with teams where you really need people not only respecting each other, but also all in and invested and obviously invested, I would say. Otherwise, you can have an energy gap that impacts everyone.
Andrea: So, it seems like it would be pretty important that people who are in leadership are able to kind of help define what the production really is. “What is the product, not just the product of the company, but what is the overarching kind of thing that we are producing for the world? What’s the difference that we make here,” and that sort of thing so that everybody can get a sense of how they play into the big picture and can be a part of it like that.
Colin Crowley: Yeah. And in that regard, I would say that when you look at the role of the director in a theatrical production, that’s really a great analogy in the business world to a good manager. Because, you know, they have their eyes on everything. So, they have their eyes on the actors and what the actors say, what the set looks like, and the lighting, and the sound. And whereas, they’re not the individual master of anything. They’re the ones who have to put everything together into some sort of coherent whole and work with everyone.
And when you look at how directors work with actors, at least the good directors… The bad ones tell actors what to do, which is like how a bad manager just tells someone what they’re doing wrong or tells them how they should do something. Whereas you notice good directors go through almost a process of extended self-discovery with actors. So, when an actor is trying to understand a role, they tend to help them understand the role through questions as opposed to dictating to them. So they’ll ask questions about a character’s motivation or how a character’s feeling at a certain time, or even give them questions outside of the purview of the play. “So does this character have relatives someplace,” or what have you.
So, it’s just kind of an interesting process and very much like what it takes to be a good manager, where you have to be able to work with people, and that you get the best out of people through questioning them and encouraging them to understand their place in the team. And through that, you bring out the best that they can be, all while having to keep your eyes in all these other areas to make sure that the lighting is fine, the sound is good, and the set looks great, knowing that if one of those pieces fails, that it can impact the entire picture. And having to care about all those other things – the lighting, the sound, etc. – by working, again, with independent people who are the masters in their respective space and collaborating on what a common vision looks like.
Andrea: And with acting, there’s so much of a release of one’s, like, just humanity that for a director to come on board and to tell someone how to be or what to do exactly and be exacting in that, it makes it very difficult for that actor to be able to really release the humanity and then truly connect with the audience. And so, again, just the idea that anybody that’s working on a team is human. And when we are able to release kind of the humanity of ourselves and be able to connect in a human way within the structure – like you were talking about – of operations, then it feels like a release. It feels beautiful. It feels like art like you were talking about at the beginning.
Colin Crowley: Yes, definitely that’s very true. And I would say definitely analogous to the kind of the high you get as a customer support person when you really fulfill, I guess you could say, the pinnacle of your calling, which is when you’re helping someone in need – especially someone who’s in a really tough spot – and how grateful they are for your assistance. And you really feel some purpose in what you do, and it helps you to see what your place is and why you’re there to help people, and bringing out those moments and encouraging them are definitely key.
Andrea: Is that kind of what drives you in your role with Freshly?
Colin Crowley: Yeah. I’d say what’s great about Freshly is… you know, you can work for other companies where you have a useful product that people find a degree of satisfaction in, like shoes or something. But it’s really kind of a different plane when you have product – meals, readymade meals – that you know is so directly impactful to someone else’s life. And when you hear stories from customers about how much they depend on our meals to fit their lifestyle, to help them eat more healthy, or you know, someone’s sending meals to their elderly parents because they can’t cook for themselves. So, it just really brings it home when you’re dealing with a product that’s very, very personal to people’s very livelihood.
And that just naturally fuels a drive in customer support when you hear these cases of customers who really need help. [It] really helps to kind of center you as to what your purpose is in the organization in the way that I find is more profound than other companies I’ve worked at, where it’s a little bit harder to define where that purpose is and to be able to frame it as impactfully as we can in our specific circumstances.
And of course, it’s never more true than in this current time now when we’re dealing with COVID-19, and so many people are hunkering down and need meals delivered to their door. So that’s just going to double down for us even more.
Andrea: When you are writing plays, do you have any kind of message? Do you feel like that you’re trying to accomplish some sort of transformation that you desire for the audience? Or what motivates you in actually writing aside from what we already know – which is just exploring the new and discovering and you know, you’re self-learning and all that?
Colin Crowley: It kind of depends on the nature of the play. So, there are some plays I’ve written that very consciously were written just to be fun. So, like, I’ve written a farce that’s been pretty successful. So, some plays, there’s no intended grave meaning behind them, which in of itself is a good thing because I think that there’s a lot of seriousness and a lot of problems in the world, so sometimes it’s fine to take a break.
But for other plays, most typically, I’m motivated to explore a certain theme that rings true to me. And that’s typically what inspires me; either that or great characters. So, it’s usually one of those two things where I like to use plays to explore a certain theme. And not necessarily even reach a conclusion about it but just explore it. Or I like to use plays as a way to do a character study, and I guess, through that kind of mine certain commonalities in the human experience.
One example is a play I recently had done out in the Los Angeles area late last year. It uses a historical framing device, and it’s about Warren G. Harding, who ultimately became one of our presidents, of course, and his nomination process. But the play, even though it has that historical backdrop, etc., it’s really about fate. And it’s really about the open question as to whether there is such a thing as fate. And if so, what is that? Is that God? Is that something else, and into what extent does fate control our lives? Or is what we deem faithful just a result of our own human flaws when we kind of self-limit ourselves by our inadequacies?
So, that’s an example of a play that I’ve more consciously wrote because I was interested in that idea as channeled through this story, and the play is geared towards exploring that issue.
Another play I’ve had some success with about the author Dorothy Parker, and the noted wit. I was inspired to write just because I was intrigued by this balance she had in her life between this public persona where she was associated with a very witty literary set of people in 1920s New York, where everything was fun and games, and there wasn’t much seriousness about it. And then at home, she had issues in her first marriage with her husband who had come back from the First World War with what we now know as PTSD and was involved in drugs, and alcohol, and so forth. And just that juxtaposition of this public persona which was artificially jovial when contrasted with what was going on in her home life and how she managed that. So that was more of like a character study example that inspired me to write that particular play.
Andrea: Okay, so I know that you’re a whole being. You’re a whole person. You have a family with children, and you work at a company, and then you’re a playwright. And I’m curious, to kind of help us wrap this whole conversation up, if you were to get to the end of your life and look back and just be really pleased with how things worked out or what happened or what you accomplished, what do you think you will have accomplished by then?
Colin Crowley: Oh, that’s a good question. Well, I think, interestingly, I would look at it in regards to those pillars that you mentioned because I kind of compartmentalize my life into those pillars pretty neatly. When it comes to work, so wanting to do well in my career, and be able to make a difference for people through that. And then you have the artistic pillar with wanting to do well in my plays. And then you have the family pillar about wanting to be a good father.
If I would look back on my life, I would say that my ideal situation would be first and foremost to have been a great father and raise great children who are able to contribute to their families and the world in the most productive way possible. So, just knowing that I gave them all the tools that they needed. And I would like to feel, in the playwriting world, that… Success can be transitory in theater, but at least I’d like to be able to feel that I’d got out everything I wanted to say for all practical purposes and that there is at least some degree of exposure to that. But just getting everything out would make me feel fulfilled.
And in the career space, I would say I would like to be able to know that I had created organizations that had still lasted, like the customer support organization at Freshly. And importantly, on the people aspect, know that I provided a lot of opportunities to people who came up through that organization to go and do other great things with their lives.
Andrea: Colin, thank you so much for this really fascinating conversation. It’s been rich, and really fun.
Colin Crowley: Oh, thank you. Yes, it’s been a great pleasure!
Andrea: And Colin if anybody’s interested in seeing your plays or using your play at their theater or connecting with you in some way, would you like to share anything about yourself for that?
Colin Crowley: Yeah. I’m afraid I don’t have anything coming up right now because, unfortunately, COVID-19 has kind of shut down a lot of the theater world for now. But yeah, I have a website, which is colinspeercrowley.com. So, you can go there, and I have a list of my plays and contact information as well. So yeah, if anyone would like to get in touch to ask questions about my plays or anything else, then they’re more than welcome to do so.
Andrea: Awesome! All right, thanks, Colin. Thanks for being a “Voice of Influence” for our listeners.
Colin Crowley: My pleasure. Thank you!