What's interesting about books that take place in the future even twenty years in the future is that many of them are black or white: It's either a utopia or it's misery. The real truth is that there's going to be both things in any future just like there is now.
Performers are so vulnerable. They're frightened of humiliation sure their work will be crap. I try to make an environment where it's warm where it's OK to fail - a kind of home I suppose.