Authenticity With Your Audience

Do you find yourself in the audience sometimes, watching a group or a speaker, and suddenly realize that you haven't attended to anything they've said or performed? How many times have you, as an audience member, read the entire show program from front to back, surreptitiously thumbing the page over as the performer carries on?  I know that I have found myself in this position many times, surprisingly even when the performance is actually pretty good!  So why am I compelled to read the program instead of attend to the show?

Let's flip the situation the other way around now - how many times have you been to a performance where time seemed to stop, and you found yourself wishing that it would never end, and trying to absorb every minute of the performance, and milk every emotion you experience for all you are worth?  I know - it isn't too frequent, but I bet most of us can pinpoint at least one show we attended where we were fully immersed, and our experience transcended the music, speech or show we observed.  Thinking back, those experiences were also the ones which were met with thunderous applause, and often times standing ovations.  Why???

To me, there is one critical piece which can make or break a performance, which not many groups have mastered - authenticity from the moment you walk onto the stage.  It's almost like when I first see a performer as an audience member, I am immediately ready for them to tell me what to think - should I be nervous for them?  Excited for them?  I determine this by 'reading' their body and facial postures: are they positive, comfortable, excited, nervous, not totally present?  What are they relaying to me?  My first reactions are very strong (as are most of ours!), and those first few moment of observing someone perform I spend sizing up the situation and them.  If they are nervous, I spend the rest of the performance being nervous with them, hoping they won't mess up (for both their sake and my own!).

Now, lots of groups work on just this - the power of the first impression.  But here's my point - they work on how they want to appear.  They decide that they want to look confident, so they walk out with a swagger, tell some joke, or make some grandious move which is intended to 'bring the audience in', but ends up being inauthentic, because it isn't coming from an honest emotion - it's just a show.  As an audience member I admit that I certainly feel more comfortable than with the nervous group, but there is some small part inside of me that closes down, and feels a tiny bit manipulated by them - a small part of me suspects that they are not being authentic to what they are truly feeling (nerves, fatigue or other), and I spend a good portion of the next few minutes trying to suss out what they are really experiencing.

That's because they've gone about it the wrong way!  All this time they have spent working on how they want to appear, they could have been spending on how they wanted to feel in response to the story they are telling, the character they are becoming, or even the role they are playing with the audience.  Before going on stage, they should be setting a story with us - if they are singers, this may entail acknowledging the audience as a group and allowing themselves to feel a positive, true emotion in response to the welcome, but it could also be feeling the emotion of the particular story they are telling and they could jump right into their performance (see fourth wall discussions for more on this).

I most enjoy performers who seem to truly feel gratitude toward the audience - not an attitude of 'oh, we're so lucky to be here, thank you so much!', but more of an appreciation of 'we've been on stages like this before, and we still love it each time as much as the time before!  We're thrilled to be here - thanks!'  These groups do seem to be more 'real' than other groups.  They come out with honest confidence - they truly believe that you will enjoy what they do (and most often, I am more likely to do so because they believe it!), and they seem eager to share their experience with me as an audience member.  I feel like a team player in their performance.   I get this message from them subconsciously from tiny cues they inadvertantly give me (for more info on this, I recommend the concept of 'thin-slicing', coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Blink), and the 'stage is set' (pardon the pun) for a great performance.

The importance of this step can't be underestimated - when you are truly connected (authentically, not just 'acting' the part), you immediately set up a trusting rapport with the audience, allowing you to move yourself emotionally while performing to them (without fear) and allowing them to be moved as well as you tell your story.  My next post will address the actual performance, and how we can move our audience to that emotional brink and push them over without going out of control ourselves.