How to get intimate

Quite often I get questions from blog readers in email, and sometimes they seems like good fodder for blog posts. I figure if I answer in a post, everyone can benefit. Here's what one fellow asked:

I’d like to know how to get to the level of intimacy with the audience to be able to make myself vulnerable to them.  To me that is where the connection is.  I am willing to go there, I just don’t know where “there” is.

Very good question!  It's also great to see that this reader realizes there's something he doesn't understand, and that he's willing to learn.  We would all do better to cultivate "beginner mind" so we can keep on learning!

So how do we develop intimacy with an audience?  First of all, what's intimacy?

The Wikipedia definition of intimacy is a bit complex, but in a nutshell emotional intimacy involved breaking down the barriers between yourself and someone else, so that you are willing to disclose "previously hidden thoughts and feelings."  Telling someone your secret dreams and thoughts, and listening to theirs, forms the foundation of an intimate relationship.

Of course, in the every-day world, this can take months or years, and as a performer if you're shooting for intimacy you don't have that kind of time.  Also even if you achieve intimacy with an audience, you probably can't say you have a relationship.  (Even if some of them might think you do, and then come up to you after the show and talk to you like a long-lost close friend even though you have never seen them before... but I digress.)

So for a performer, just what does intimacy mean?  I'll take a stab at it.  Achieving intimacy with an audience means that at least one person in the audience feels that they got something honest from you.  For at least a little while, they feel that they have a connection with you, based on that honest communication.  It might not be a real relationship, but at some level it *reminds them* of one, and they come to associate your face, your voice, your presence with an emotional state of closeness.

Do you agree?  I think that makes sense.

So how do we get there?  First and foremost, you have to understand your material at a human level.  You can't convey anything if you've got nothing to convey.  Secondly I believe that because of the super-developed human bullsh*t radar, your best and perhaps your only chance to have them believe you're being honest is to actually be honest.  I don't think you can fake it, or if that is possible, it's much harder than just being honest.

This is where it gets hard.  Being honest at an emotional level means that you're going to feel vulnerable.  You're not *really* vulnerable, of course.  Nothing bad is going to happen to you because you told someone else how you really feel.  Quite the opposite.  But most of us get stuck to some degree in the kindergarten mentality that says we must keep our feelings to ourselves, or someone in our peer group will taunt and make fun of us.  It's true - kids can be cruel.  Five is a hard age.  But growing beyond that level, emotionally, is a prerequisite if you're going to be honest and not get massive stage fright about it.

If you're having trouble being intimate with audiences (or your spouse for that matter) because you're afraid to open the kimono and tell them the truth, you're not alone.  When you were five and the other kids made fun of you for having a pink lunchbox, you might have thought you would die, but you didn't.  As I told my five-year-old yesterday, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."  You've got nothing *real* at risk, by being honest on stage.  And if you're putting up a facade, you have very little to gain from the experience.

So how do you do it?  You already know how.  Some part of you might have been inventing reasons why you can't be honest on stage.  Tell that part of you to shut up for a while, and try it!