How story focus changes rehearsals

Had some great conversations last week at Harmony University about how adoption a story-centric performance philosophy would change rehearsals.  Some surprising conclusions!  Read on.

The first thing to realize is that having a well-understood story makes everything more efficient.  Yes it might take some time to generate the story (especially if you do it democratically - see below) but you save way more time than you spend.  Let's say it takes half an hour of group time to work out the four elements of a story to support a song.  That's a good chunk of a 3 hour rehearsal, to be sure.  But how much time do you waste giving people technical instructions over and over again?  Without the story, all those dynamic and nuance instructions are random and they go in one ear, out the other. 

Even worse is the risk of introducting a song that nobody likes, which eventually erodes morale and ultimately the song gets dropped.  Wow what a painful waste of time!  And if it was a contest song, even more so because you'll wind up behind the eight ball.  If people understand the truthful, human element of the song, it's hard for them to not like it.  Truth is, after all, beyond judgement!  When people don't like a song, it's because of their pre-existing associations and biases.  When you attach a strong story to the song, you can supercede those associations.

Realtime spent more time talking about our songs than we did rehearsing them, in the run up to our International victory in 2005.  Why?  Because clarity about the story made everything better - the performance got more powerful, the singers got more unified, even the technique improved as we got our left-brains out of the way.  And these are laws of nature, so they will work for everyone, not just Realtime!

What's the best way to create a story?  Well the answer is probably different for every group, but I'd lean towards a democratic approach.  If you create your stories in an ivory tower, you are taking a big risk that your singers will never commit to it.  Involve them in the brainstorming, and you'll get the buy-in you need, and you'll inevitably get a better story too!  Seems to be a common pattern in nature - release a little bit of control, and everything goes more smoothly.

There's an efficiency impact there too.  If everyone is involved in creating and fleshing out the story, the burden of communication is much lower.  I'd rather give up a bit of control than spend 10 minutes explaining the story again *every* time that song gets rehearsed.

Finally having a story makes it really obvious that you need to rehearse performance, separate from technique.  Here's a great exercise: lay out the (democratically created) story, and then ask three people to tell a story of their own that ties into it.  You won't believe what you find out about the singers in your group!  And everyone will have a more vivid and personal attachment to the story as a result.

Got any ideas of your own?  Please comment!