Getting beyond Novice - performance is a conversation

Most often the life of a novice performer is all about learning the ropes - getting comfortable with the culture and expectations around their chosen mode of performance, and acquiring and mastering the technical skills that are necessary to do what they do.  Singers learn how to breathe, actors learn how to memorize lines and project, dancers learn how to balance, and so forth.  That's all necessary stuff, and fine as far as it goes.

The trouble comes in making the transition beyond novice.  It's not enough to get up on the stage and exhibit your skills.  I bet you have seen people who get up on stage and just look arrogant.  I know I've seen that many times.  I bet I've even *been* that in the past!  I worked hard to learn the skills of ensemble singing, and remember I wanted to show people how well I had learned!  But if your goal is to impress people with your skills, the best you can do is inspire admiration.  Never love.  Often jealousy.  We can do better.

In order to truly get beyond "novice" status and survive the transition, you need to add something to your attention - the audience!  All those people, sitting out there beyond the footlights.  Why did they come?  What do they want?  What can you do, to give them the best chance to walk away satisfied?

It helps a lot to understand that performance is not really a one-way communication from you to them, even though it seems to be so at first glance.  It's more like a conversation.  Sometimes it's easy to see the nature of the conversation, and sometimes it's hard.  In a small, intimate venue when you can look at your audience and see the expression on everyone's face, read everyone's body language and such, it's pretty easy to see their part of the back-and-forth.  In a big, impersonal 80,000 seat stadium, you have to look for other things: cheering, booing, applause, and the waving of cigarette lighters for example!  (In these non-smoking times, people wave their cell phones - I laughed out loud the first time I saw it!)

On yet another level, there is the raw energy that comes back from a mass of people with their attention focused on you.  I can't explain it in terms of physics, but I can feel it.  Even if they are totally silent, an audience feels completely different than an empty space.  And after performing, it's easy to rank any audience on an energy scale from "uninspired" to "accepting" to "thrilled" to "on fire!"

So once you understand that performance is a two-way street, what do you do?

Have the conversation!  When you walk out on stage as a singer or musician, listen to the people who have come to see you.  Feel the energy they are sending you.  Learn how to send it back to them, and make each person feel like they have come close to you.  Learn to project intimacy into a huge space, and make everyone there feel special, basking in your glow.  That will get you somewhere.

I can't (yet) teach you how to do all this wonderful stuff, but simply being aware of audience energy and playing with it, you'll learn a lot.  And trial-and-error might be the most natural way for you to develop your own stage chops.