Quick and dirty scenemaking

Keeping everything in mind at once about performance can be tough!  There are so many things to consider when you're working up an authentic performance that it can be daunting, and frankly pretty time-consuming as well.  The practicalities of having to get your product to the people quickly mean that you may need to practice ruthless prioritization, and do only the most important things.

So if you live in the real world, as I do, you'll like this.  Here are (in my humble opinion) the most important things.  Really, these are the four basic things you need to understand before a performance can be made authentic and real.  There are many, many other things to consider, but if you have these four you are getting eighty percent of the bang for just twenty percent of the buck.

The four things are: who are you, who are you talking to, what do you want, and what happens.

Who are you?

This is pretty self-explanatory.  Are you yourself?  Are you an old man?  Are you the Queen of England?  Are you a golden retriever?  It makes a big difference!  Every aspect of your performance comes from your assumed identity.

You might want to try on a few personas, to see which one feels right, or creates the most compelling scene.

Sometimes of course, you are you!  This may be the easiest kind of scene to play, or it might not.  Some people have a much easier time being someone else.

Who are you talking to?

Once you know who you are, you have to figure out who you are talking to.  You haven't got a chance of coaxing your subconscious communication skills into action without a clear "other" in the scene.  The image of the other is the biggest part of the vision - still or movie - that you'll be holding in your head as you perform.

What is your objective?

Once you have an identity for your self and the other, the next thing to figure out is what you're trying to accomplish.  Are you convincing them to go out with you, or to go away?  Are you trying to explain your innermost feelings?  Are you trying to extort money?  You need to know this.

What happens?

Since the typical attention span is pretty short, you've got about 20 or 30 seconds before something has to change in your scene and therefore in your performance before people start to wander off.  Not only them, but you as well!  You have to keep your own attention, to stay in the scene and crowd out technical thinking and things that induce stage-fright.

Perhaps not by coincidence, the form of a typical song divides it into chunks of about 20-30 seconds in length!  How convenient!  So make sure each major musical section has its own idea.

The great thing about this approach is that it's very quick.  When coaching, I can get this much information out of a group in just a few minutes, and we're well on the way to an authentic performance.  At the very least, it gets everyone on the same page!