What Comes After

This is what follows a two-hour operetta. The show takes you from resentment to grief. What to do next is also important. The talkback covers that too. Ten minutes.

It is the same frame every time, which is the point: a presenter can know in advance exactly what their people will be sent home with, rather than hoping. What follows is it, in full — set out in five parts below, and then word for word.

01 · The Starting Point

Sadness is a doorway, not an end

Grief is better than resentment, and that is a starting point for what a future can hold in many positive ways. The question is what comes after the success of being sad as opposed to angry.

02 · The Two Precursors

Building anything has two precursors

Be believable — to yourself first, and then you will be believable to others. Not to convince anybody of anything, not to trick yourself, not to make excuses for yourself. And to not blame — not yourself, not others. If you are someone who blames, you cannot build. If you are someone who is not believable to yourself, you cannot build. Any building process requires those two very, very basic things.

03 · The Precondition

But neither can be attained without satisfaction first

All of that is good and well and can be agreed with, and it is entirely useless information without prior satisfaction. The reason people blame is that they are filling in for not being satisfied. Satisfaction is the first goal, not the last.

04 · Where Satisfaction Comes From

And satisfaction comes from learning, for its own sake

It does not have to be a spiritual practice. It can be any practice, anything you learn — crochet, model-building, anything at all — but it has to be for its own sake, something you actually like, not something you want to capitalise on. Get better at it because you like doing it. That is the cornerstone, and it is a lifelong process.

05 · Why the Show Comes First

None of which is available while you are resentful

Which is where the show comes back in. The only way out of being resentful is to grieve, which is what the whole piece is about. There are phases to that, which is another discussion; I’ve got a printout of all that stuff, how that works, and a person can work with a therapist and go through the steps of how you get past it. And there are timelines, and there’s reasonable achievements, levels of achievement where you can reasonably say you can attack another stage.

Word for Word

The talkback, as it was spoken

Transcribed from the recording of 25 October 2026 — unedited, in Paul’s own words and his own order. The five parts above are the same thing set out for a presenter reading quickly.

Paper Gun · The Talkback · 25 October 2026 · 3 min 47 s

For those in the business who want to know what the talkback includes — the concept of the whole thing, about how grief is better than resentment, is a starting point for what a future can hold in many positive ways. That’s what the whole musical did. We can cover that in a literary sense in a second, but the first thing to do is maybe talk about what comes after the success of being sad as opposed to angry, or being sad as opposed to resentful.

Why is that the goal? It’s a starting point, because afterwards you can then focus on something really, really escalatory, which is a remarkable thing, and it goes as follows.

There are two things that lead to one thing. Being able to build something is precursored by two things. You have to be believable — but believable to yourself, then you’ll be believable to others. It’s not to convince anybody of anything, it’s not to trick yourself, and not to make excuses for yourself. So hold that in your head for a second: eg being believable to yourself is not making excuses.

Not blaming — not blaming yourself or blaming others — is another thing that, as a precursor, of the two precursors of being able to build. If you’re someone who blames, you can’t build. And if you’re someone who is not believable to yourself, you can’t build. Any building process requires those two very, very basic things.

Now, that’s all good and well, and can be understood and agreed with. But it’s entirely useless information and not able to be employed without prior satisfaction.

What does that mean? The reason people blame is because they’re filling in for not being satisfied. It helps them to feel better because they’re not satisfied — they’ll blame. Because they’re not satisfied, they’ll blame themselves. Because they’re not satisfied, they’ll kid themselves on. And so they won’t be believable to themselves.

So really, before you can look at the two B’s — don’t blame, and be believable to yourself — which will allow you to build, it’s impossible without satisfaction. Satisfaction is the first goal.

What does it mean, satisfaction? Real satisfaction doesn’t have to be a spiritual practice. It can be any practice, anything you learn. Learning is actually the key. It’s the secret. A secret to not just survive — it’s a secret to all things. You build from it, because if you can learn how to crochet, build models, learn anything — but it has to be for its own sake. It has to be something you really are interested in, that you like, not something you want to capitalize on. There can be a byproduct that we are talking about, that you capitalize on because of, but “it” has to be for the sake of itself, something you like to do.

If there’s something you really like to do, get better at it, learn about it — and just because you like to do it is the reason to get better at it. That will bring satisfaction. Boom, you’ve got your cornerstone of satisfaction in your life. It’s a lifelong process of learning, and something you’ll always be learning about for its own sake, just for its own sake, whatever that is.

That entire big package, all of the above cannot be done if you’re resentful. And the only way out of being resentful is to grieve, which is what the whole show is about. And there are phases to that, which, again, that’s another discussion; I’ve got a printout of all that stuff, how that works, and a person can work with a therapist and go through the steps of how you get past it. And there are timelines, and there’s reasonable achievements, levels of achievement where you can reasonably say you can attack another stage.

That’s the talkback. Should be about 10 minutes, 15 minutes at most.

For Presenters

What this means for your room

The show does the feeling. This gives people somewhere to put it.

People leave a performance moved and with nowhere to take it. Fifteen minutes later they leave with something to do on Monday. That is usually the part that makes the evening programmable rather than just bookable.

In clinical and therapeutic settings it runs longer, and it is co-held

Twenty to thirty minutes with a clinical partner, reflective rather than confessional, with the facilitator guiding depth. The frame above still opens it. See the full care frame →

The transcript is on this page, in advance

Nothing about the close is a surprise. If you want to brief a clinical partner, or simply decide whether it suits your room, read it word for word → before you book.