Fringe Festival: When cynicism carries sting of truth

It’s like satirical white-collar Dilbert has come to Vancouver’s Fringe Festival.

The creator of the play, Leash Your Potential: A Practical Guide to Corporate Survival, probes the world of work and business with a jaundiced and brilliant eye.

Ryan Gunther, who worked for 15 high-level years in the IT business, is kind of like a stand-up Dilbert, the business office comic strip. He’s dry, almost seems shy and he’s very dark.

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Ryan Gunther does an ingenious take on using and abusing email to get ahead.

This is the promo for his show:

“Drawing on 15+ years of experience at a Fortune 500 company, Ryan will teach you how to succeed in a modern corporate bureaucracy, where outdated notions like talent, competence, and hard work are irrelevant. Topics will include: appearing busy, email obfuscation, ass-covering, and avoiding blame.”

Of course Gunther exaggerates for comic effect (The Vancouver Sun/Province workplace, for instance, is not so bad, and in online journalism there is certainly a place for “metrics”). But Gunther definitely offers some hard truths through exceedingly clever humour.

This is not really an official review of Gunther’s show at the Fringe. It’s just a quick blog recommendation from a person who happened to be invited by friends to the event Sunday evening at Studio 1398. (Gunther has another performance tonight at 5 p.m., plus more shows on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. See poster below.)

Some friends who saw Leash Your Potential with me had worked in B.C.’s public health system; they groaned in painful recognition about Gunther’s insights into the workings of bosses in seriously dysfunctional workplaces.

It all makes me wonder if there is any corporate leader who would be brave, or foolish, enough to invite Gunther to perform at a company conference. It would be a riot. It could cause a riot. Guess it’s not likely to happen.

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Ryan Gunther [PNG Merlin Archive]

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Clik here to view.