audience

Ever watch a group perform and walk away feeling kind of sleazy?  You might even admire their skill, and think they are amazingly talented, and respect that talent, but nonetheless have a negative impression.

So if they are so wonderful, why don't you like them?

Perhaps you've walked away and thought to yourself, "they are amazing, and they know it!"  Well those people have committed Deadly Sin #2, by serving the wrong master - in this case, themselves.

In some sense performance is just like any other kind of job - you have to keep the boss happy!  If you don't know who is buttering your bread, you need to know: it's the audience!  The money they pay for tickets makes everything possible.  Even if they are a non-paying audience, the performance opportunity exists for *some* concrete reason, even if it's just advertising or marketing for some sponsor.  The head-count is all important, and if you're a draw, you're serving your purpose.  And this is not much different in the amateur and semi-pro performance leagues - if nobody comes to see you, you're not a performer, you're just a rehearser.  You might as well be bowling.

If you're wondering whether you are committing this sin, just ask yourself why you do it.  Why do you perform?  There's no need to be embarrassed if the answer comes back as "to feed my ego" or "to prove I can do it" or even "so people will like me."  But it might explain why you're not getting the response you were hoping for.  Somehow people know.  And if the audience doesn't like you, deep down in some level of their thinking, it doesn't matter much how good you are at your chosen craft.  Obstacles will pop up everywhere.

If you're out on stage for a self-centered reason, you can't really do your job.  You will have no choice but to worry more or less constantly about what the audience is thinking of you.  Very likely you will get nervous, if you are at all inclined towards anxiety, especially if (god forbid!) something goes wrong!  Even if everything is going well out there, your attention must be split between the authentic purpose of the art you are creating, and how you think everyone is evaluating that art.  You can never be at your best, in a divided state of mind like that.

So if you're performing for your own glorification, things can not go well for long.  But there are many other wrong masters to choose from!  Performing to make someone else happy - your director, your parents, your teacher, whomever - is perhaps more noble than simple self-aggrandizement, but the audience can still tell it's not all about them, and again the focus of your attention will be split.

Acting is not so interactive as a musical or dance performance, but it's still quite possible to act for self-glorification, or what Stanislavski called exhibitionism.  And he called it "the worst kind of acting" - you can't be true to the purpose of the play if you can't stop saying "look at me" long enough to focus on the scene!  (My 2-year-old says "look at me" constantly, and he's pretty entertaining, but that's another story!)

My advice - to avoid Sin #2, find a reason in your heart to perform in the service of the audience.  Everything good in stage performance ultimately comes from that decision.

Ever see a dancer lose her balance, trying a very difficult move?  How about an actor who loses her way in a long and complicated soliloquy, or a singer who can't quite reach the high notes?  Was it fun for you, other than a kind of car-wreck fascination, or would you prefer they had picked an easier piece?

Performance is not like olympic diving.  There are no points for difficulty.  Imagine if it were otherwise:

Next up is Jenny Jones, the promising young performer from Oklahoma City.  She's been training very hard this past year, and as you can see she's in very good shape, perhaps one of the strongest performers in this year's festival.  Today she will be attempting an a cappella rendition of Igor Stravinsky's "Rite Of Spring", and she'll be doing so without a starting pitch, and with four ritz crackers stuffed under her tongue.  This certainly increases the risk of a disastrous performance, but but it earns her a difficulty multiplier of 1.35 if she can pull it off.  That might be just enough to pull ahead of the French competitor who did so well yesterday in the semi-final round with the underwater violin routine.

As you can see, it's nonsense to consider the difficulty level of the piece.  The "audience" (perhaps we should say "spectators") at a sporting event are interested in the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.  Their emotional experience is going to be in a rather narrow range.  Half the thrill of watching some sports is the chance, however remote, that the competitor will fall and break a leg.  I won't even start a comparison between stage performance and Nascar racing, which should be obvious by now

There's a good reason that the degree of difficulty doesn't matter - audiences don't care about your experience, they care about their own!  I mean honestly, would you rather watch a singing group tackle something above their heads and be awful, or something easier that lets you (and them) relax, enjoy the music, and have your soul benefit from the authentic human message?  I mean, I love to get a thrill from a great performance, but not the thrill of wondering if they're going to make it all the way through without self-destructing.  It's the same for your audiences when you're on stage.  We can learn a lot by considering the audience point of view.

To compound the problem, if you know what you're attempting is too difficult, you're going to telegraph that to the audience with your own body language.  They'll get the cue even before you start.  Once everyone is in that state of mind, it will not be easy to recover.

On our sort of stage, you need to match the difficulty level of your material to your current skill level.  Here's a rule of thumb - if it doesn't work in rehearsal, it's certainly not going to work in a high-pressure scenario either.  In fact, sometimes it will be too difficult for performance even if it works every time in rehearsal!  If you want to test a piece, try rehearsing the performance, making it as realistic as possible, and just notice what goes through your mind.  Do you run a constant monologue of technical worries?  Then try putting something simpler in front of the people.

Trying harder doesn't work - it will get in your way.  Your left brain, the analytical part, can't handle all the many bits of control and feedback that would be required to make a great performance.  And if you are wasting all your brain power on handling technical challenges, you have less left over for the important stuff, like being in the scene, and/or being in communion with the audience.  I say "an/or" because actors are 99% concerned with their objective towards the other actors, and musicians should probably be focused 50-90% on the audience communication side.  Either way, you can't do it well if you're distracted by a performance piece that's too difficult for you.

Learn to accept your current level of skill, whatever it is.  Nobody needs you to be a virtuoso right away.  And once you've accepted it, make wise choices!

You must admit, there's nothing more important to a stage performance than the audience.  As the old joke goes, "thanks for coming folks - it wouldn't be much fun without you!"  Better yet, "it's great to be here everyone!  I just hope we get finished before you do!"

The first thing to accept about the audience is that they didn't have to come and see you.  They had other choices - they could have gone to a different show, or gone bowling, or just stayed at home and read a book.  And by coming to the show, if you're an amateur they are paying for your hobby - if you're a professional, they are paying your rent!  So first and foremost, they deserve your gratitude.  They have given up their money and their precious time, as well as their attention and energy.  Thank them from the bottom of your heart, every way you can.

Besides thanking them, you owe it to them to put on the best show you can manage.  So show up well prepared, and pour your heart and soul into it.  Don't hold back to protect your ego - if you do that, you've failed before you even started.  Nobody on either side of the deal gains anything from a half-hearted effort.

Remember that generally speaking, they don't care if you make a mistake.  If you forget some lyrics or hit a few wrong notes, forgive yourself instantly and get your attention back on the audience.  If it was a big enough mistake that they noticed, let them know you're forgiving yourself - let them in on the joke with a wink.  It's an opportunity to let them know you are human, and that you're a big enough person not to beat yourself up.  Allowing yourself to be fallible also makes you more likable.  So don't sweat it.

During the performance, remember that what the audience wants more than anything else is to be let into your world, and to be lavished with your attention for a little while.  They want a sense of connection with you.  They want you to take them to a safe place where they can crack the hard shell off their heart for a while and really feel something - the thrill of excitement, the glow of finding love, and the anguish of losing it.

After the performance, thank them again.  Bask in their applause, and accept it with humility.  Smile at people.  Shake hands.  Sign autographs.

That's the important stuff.  Fame and fortune and all that is good in the world of performance flow from that simple truth.

Kari brought this snippet of an article about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis to my attention today:

Martin and Lewis' official debut together occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24, 1946, and they were not well received. The owner, Skinny D'Amato, warned them that if they did not come up with a better act for their second show later that night, they would be fired. Huddling together in the alley behind the club, Lewis and Martin agreed to "go for broke", to throw out the pre-scripted gags and to improvise. Dean sang and Jerry came out dressed as a busboy, dropping plates and making a shambles of both Martin's performance and the club's sense of decorum. They did slapstick, reeled off old vaudeville jokes, and did whatever else popped into their heads at the moment. This time, the audience doubled over in laughter. This success led to a series of well-paying engagements on the Eastern seaboard, culminating in a triumphant run at New York's Copacabana. Patrons were convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while he was trying to sing, and ultimately the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much fun as possible. The secret, both said, is that they essentially ignored the audience and played to one another.

It's great to have a window into the past, to see how two iconic performers pulled success out of the jaws of failure by changing their plan!  The article doesn't say what their original, uninspiring act was like, but it's easy to see why the new plan would be so entertaining.  It paints a picture of a very playful and un-self-conscious duo, creating an atmosphere that violated the usual assumptions and boundaries of stage performance at a club like the 500 club.  It was new and different, and it woke people up!

One of the most interesting things to me is that they "essentially ignored the audience."  As Stanislavski would say, they set their focus of attention on each other.  It can be very powerful to paint a scene for the audience to observe, instead of engaging in a direct conversation with them.  In today's world, TV has trained people to be very adept passive observers.  Sometimes they can even be uncomfortable if you look at them too long from the stage!  That's a sad comment about our times (in my humble opinion) but you may as well accept the fact, and make use of it.

The new and improved Martin and Lewis act also had the hallmarks of improvisation and play.  They relied on their instincts and basically did whatever they thought of in the moment!  That kind of plan really lets you listen to the audience and engage in a back-and-forth conversation.  So in spite of what I said earlier, the "passive observers" are providing half of the conversation just by their reactions and their energy.  Can you imagine Martin and Lewis trying to pre-record their new act without an audience?  Impossible.

One of the most important and liberating things to realize about audiences is that they don't have magical powers.  This is good news for performers who worry about making "mistakes" because it means the audience won't necessarily be able to tell!  You'll know, because you know your plan, but they haven't a clue what you planned.  They're seeing everything with fresh eyes.

But you've been around the block a few times - you have seen performers make mistakes.  And chances are you don't have magical powers either, so how did you know?  Well either the mistake was so huge and egregious that nobody could miss it (like the dancer fell into the pit, or the ensemble got confused and stopped singing), or they told you!  Yes, even though it seems like a bad idea, they told you.  They told you with their body language as they cringed or gave an uncomfortable glance to one of their stage-mates.

Audiences get most of their emotional reaction cues from the people on stage.  When you are up on stage, they are watching you intently, and as you know, we humans are wired up with some very sophisticated and effective senses for detecting emotions.  They're very good at noticing if something doesn't seem to be "on purpose."

Livingston Taylor in his book "Stage Performance" talks about how audiences love it when the performer makes a mistake and then accepts it with humor.  Handled in that way, it's just another thing that develops rapport between the audience and you.  Perfection sets up a boundary around you.  Humanness and humor invites them into your world, and makes them comfortable.

Most likely, you've seen lots of performers make "mistakes" that you never noticed, because they declined to let you know.  They didn't freak out when it happened, but rather accepted it.  They gave everything "on-purpose-ness."

I remember attending a Q&A session with the amazing a cappella group The Real Group when I was in Scandinavia a few years ago.  Someone asked them, "how is it that you never make mistakes?"  Their response was that they do make lots of mistakes, and that in fact the various "mistakes" are what gives each performance its unique texture.  That's a fantastic way to frame it - just notice what happens and accept it, without getting emotionally involved.

Steve Armstrong, the director of another wonderful vocal ensemble, The Northern Lights from Toronto, Canada, used to help his singers get over their perfectionism by insisting that each person make one mistake in every performance!  That reframed it for them, very quickly.  Somehow when you're trying to make a mistake, it's not so easy to do!  There's a lesson in there about how much of a psychological game it all is - a topic for another day.

People who do improvisational performance don't worry about mistakes.  It doesn't make sense to worry about mistakes when there's no plan to compare it to!

But remember, the audience doesn't know your plan.  Why not give everything you do the spirit of improvisation and play?  Would that not be extremely liberating?  Instead of worrying about being right, why not focus on being in the moment?  Striving for correctness is like shooting for mediocre - you'll get there every time.  That is, even if you succeed at your goal, you'll be leaving the audience flat because your focus is on something they don't care about, namely whether your performance matched the plan they've never seen.

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.

Got a great question from George Nowik, a ensemble-singing friend of mine, which he posted as a comment to this article. Here's the question:

How does an ensemble who is excited about the latest and greatest masterpiece arrangement get to the point where they can perform said piece without an audience looking for more popcorn and being detached while watching a curiosity rather than watching a performance? you’ve touched on needing to be able to balance the technical and the emotional with the “just get out there and perform it and stop worrying about it”, however what kinds of steps can a group mentality take to achieve that?  Do you find resistance to these concepts in your coaching of groups?  There are obvious barriers that prevent otherwise-well-intentioned machines from being able to achieve that (age, vocal limitations, untrained voices, people uncomfortable with vulnerability, and so on) but what about getting people to step beyond those barriers and release the performance of a difficult chart so that the audience has a great experience rather than a circus act?

Fantastic questions, George!

Your first question boils down to, "what makes a performance engaging."  I don't think the answer is any different for a difficult chart than a simple one.  There are many ways to frame the answer, but my favorite is to take the audience perspective: if they experience real, intense emotions, they will be engaged.  The act of singing is very powerful for people, so singers have a certain advantage here - singing is like a direct line to the audience member's inner self, even more so than instrumental music.  So if you're singing a song and it's authentic and truthful and passionate, it has every chance to be engaging.

Of course there are lots of things that can get in the way.  For example, most audience members will cringe and lose the plot if you sing out of tune, or if your synchronization is bad, or if you do anything that doesn't appear to be "on purpose" - so you do have to execute everything correctly, and that's naturally harder with a more difficult chart.  But unless you're a total singing geek (like... uh.. you and me) the game is to get your technique to a high enough level so that it's not a distraction.  The technique is not an end in itself for 99% of the audience members in the world, as long as it's not a distraction.  So the "obvious barriers" you list above may be smaller issues than they seem to be at first.  After all, common sense tells us that you only have two choices here: pick songs you can execute well enough at your current level of skill, or pick harder songs and work on your skills.  (Specifics are beyond the scope of this blog post - that's coaching territory.)

Having said that, I've had twenty years of enjoyment just getting better at singing, improving my skills, and tackling some monster charts!  That would be fun for me even if nobody ever saw the result.  And for most people, performance is a hobby, not a career, so how much they enjoy themselves is pretty important!  But I'm at a point where I enjoy myself more when the audience goes away thrilled.

Now to the mental steps.  Once you've decided that there's more to performance than executing all the technical elements correctly, you've already won half the mental battle.  That realization opens up all sorts of questions, like what is the song/scene/piece about at a deeper level, what can it offer to the audience emotionally, etc.  It's very unlikely that your performance will be truthful and authentic if you don't know what you're singing about, or you appear not to care!

Developing a great performance plan

Try this.  Pick a song.  Read the lyrics.  Listen to the music.  Try to discern three things about that song that might be engaging (or even helpful) to people.  This may not be obvious, because it's creative - it's your interpretation!  Write them down.  Even if you go no further, your performance will have more depth.  The next challenge is to create a presentation that highlights one, two or all three of the "truths" you have discovered.  Ask yourself some of these questions:

• Who are the players in the scene?
• What is the relationship between the players?  Where is the love?
• What is the urgency of need, in the relationships?
• Who are you, in the scene?  Are you always the same person?
• How do the scene and the relationships change, as the song progresses?  (If nothing changes, you need a new song or a new plan or both.)

If you do that, you'll be in the top 1% of all singing ensembles in terms of your service to the audience, and believe me, you will be rewarded.

Getting out of your own way

Do I find resistance when I coach this philosophy to people?  Absolutely!  Everyone is doing what they are doing because of what they believe, and beliefs have inertia.  One of my favorite quotes sums it up nicely:

"It's often not enough for one to simply be exposed to the truth, because the brain will actually fight to defend its attachment to cherished falsehoods."

The people who have the easiest time making the necessary changes are the ones who don't have a substantial ego attachment to their beliefs.  People who are new at the singing game (or any game really) don't feel bad if they don't know something, so they have a huge advantage - they learn quickly.  People who are able to maintain that state of "beginner mind" long term also learn quickly, and keep learning quickly!  Those are the ones who really take over the world.

I hope that was helpful George!  If you want to drill down further on something, just comment below.

Cheers - Tom