expression

• We humans are authentically expressive. When we speak, thoughts begin a neurochemical reaction in our brains, leading to facial, physical, and vocal muscles expressing those thoughts and their related feelings. Invite a bunch of people to a party, aim a hidden camera at each one of them and follow them through the night, and you will see amazingly authentic facial expressions, body language, and speech -- all of it connected to the thoughts and feelings of these individuals. And all of it happening without the speakers controlling it, presenting it, or emoting it. Were Steven Spielberg to see the footage, he would be impressed with each and every person there -- their "acting" would be so real, so genuine, so authentic; their facial expressions, movements, and voices so congruent.
• We act truthfully under imaginary circumstances. When we use our imaginations to create thoughts, our psychobiological process is virtually identical to that of our truthful selves. The face, body, and voice react just as truthfully to imaginary circumstances. If one of the partiers shares details of a fantasy vacation, their expressions would be just as vibrant as if they were describing an actual vacation from which they just returned. No need to pretend, manipulate the face to fit the words, or go over-the-top with excitement. Authenticity happens, even when we're using our imagination.
• Our audiences connect as we do. Human beings can mentally model the events going on in other people's minds, leading to "emotional contagion." This means that our audience members will think and feel things similar to what we're thinking and feeling. In addition, we humans read faces, bodies, and voices -- beginning this ability during infancy and refining it to an art by the time we're adults. Therefore, audiences know when there is an authentic connection between the words being sung, and the truthful expression of those words. And they know when we're faking it. We humans are great BS detectors!
• So, to summarize, in our truthful and unmanipulative moment-to-moment lives, human beings have thoughts which lead to automatic and unbidden expressions. We may smile, grin, shout with joy, tear up with sadness, or glower with anger -- these are all authentic expressions directly connected to what we're thinking, and we embody such expressions on a daily basis. As we do so, we affect those in our presence as they affect us.

One of the most valued traits in a performer is expressiveness, defined in the dictionary as the ability to effectively convey a thought or a feeling.  So why do some people seem to be more expressive than others?  Why is it that some people can "own the stage" and engage an audience right away, while others leave you daydreaming about your drive home.

The first thing to realize is that "expressive" is a label, and labels are dangerous.  You can't be expressive in the same way you can be short or tall or black or white - it's not a physical trait.  If you believe you're not expressive, it's most likely because you got that impression from some previous life experience - on the stage or off - and you turned that one-time evaluation into a label that you attached to yourself.  That's the danger of labels!  They make solid reality out of ephemeral things.  So if you think you're not expressive, the good news is you're wrong.  The bad news is, you may have wasted a lot of time not doing things you would love to do, like getting on the stage if that is your dream.

Still hanging on to the label?  Believe me, you can be expressive under the right circumstances.  How expressive are you when someone cuts you off in traffic so that you fear for your life?  I bet you don't have any trouble "effectively conveying a feeling" while you're telling that careless driver exactly what you think of him and his cell phone!

It's a recurring pattern - we lose our usual human skills as soon as we get into a performance situation.  So the question is, how can you make sure you bring every bit of human expressive capability that you have to the stage, and use it when you need it most?

Obstacle number one may be stage fright.  It's hard to get into a performance when you're in the vicious circle of performance anxiety.  Perhaps a previous, terrified stage experience is where you got your "not expressive" label in the first place!  Fortunately, there are lots of ways to get over your nerves - you can start here.

Obstacle number two is that you need to know what you're trying to express, and to know that, you have to understand your music, scene, presentation or what have you.  If you're just up there reciting empty words or notes, it will be apparent to the audience immediately.  And you can't just dress up empty notes or words with the hollow characteristics of other people's expressiveness - following the composers dynamic markings, for example, doesn't fool anyone into thinking you're being authentic.  Neither do the "tricks" of powerpoint-type presentations self-assemble into an effective sales presentation.  And of course, the actor's job does not end when they have memorized their lines - far from it.  You need to understand the humanity beneath the words, and the interplay between the players.  Then your own humanity will direct your expression well.

Obstacle number three, once you know what you're trying to express, is that you need to be able to put yourself into that scene so completely that you start reacting emotionally to what is happening.  That means learning how to focus your attention on things in the scene, rather the elements of your reality that will try to distract you - the audience, the lights, your sore leg.  The track of your visualization through the piece or the scene needs to be vivid enough to hold your interest.

That's not the end of the story, but it's a good start!

Step number one, and you can take this to the bank - you are an expressive person!

In working with performers over the past many years, I've noticed something interesting.  Some sessions are purely technical in nature, where I find myself teaching skills or fine-tuning simple execution issues, but the real "breakthrough" events don't follow that pattern.

I don't want to name any names here, because I respect the privacy of everyone I coach, but I'll give you an example of how it goes.  I'm working with a singer, trying to get them to open up and be expressive.  Their hands seem to be glued to their sides for some reason.  No matter what I try, I can't get them to relax their shoulders and use their hands in a natural looking way.  Finally I say, "what would happen if you allowed your hands to be expressive?"  And they reply, "I can't move my hands - I've been told it makes me look like a dork."

Oh dear.

The breakthrough this person needs is to help them realize that they don't look like a dork when they use their hands, and in fact they (like most people) use their hands quite naturally all the time, with the strange exception of during performance.  The same kind of pattern applies to nearly every pathological habit I find in performers - they're always doing it for a reason!  The biggest problems are not usually not a matter of skill, except that it has required an awful lot of skill to maintain the weird performance behavior over the years.  It's a problem of mistaken beliefs, and the problem can't be fixed without taking care of the underlying mistaken belief.

That's why it tends to turn into therapy.  Therapy in this realm is when you change your beliefs.

One really common example is that a person has trouble being expressive.  They don't show passion, because they are terrified of being that vulnerable, and taking that much of a risk.  What they often don't understand is that they have so much to gain, and the risks are so small if not completely imagined, that in reality the choice is very simple.  Be expressive!  Take the risk!

The wonderful thing too is that getting over this kind of belief obstacle does a lot more than result in a better performance.  It tends to change the person deeply, and improve their whole life.  Performance skills, of course, are often the same skills you need to run the rest of your life.

I've often heard coaches and directors tell performers to "get it past the footlights."  At the time, I felt that I understood the comment, but now I'm not so sure.  And I'm willing to bet that most of the time, cajoling someone to "get it past the footlights" is either a knee-jerk reaction to a lack of performance energy, or it's said purely out of habit.

People often confuse metaphor for fact, so let's start with a reality check.  (I'm going to have to "go all physics on you" a bit here, revealing my scientific past.)  Nothing is "going past the footlights" except light bouncing off you, and sound waves coming out of you.  You can't do anything to change that unless you have a magic wand, or you are willing to throw something.  It doesn't matter how much "intensity" you are bringing to the job.  "Energy" does not move from you to the audience, regardless of what you may have been told, except as noted above.  You're stuck on the stage.

The hardest thing to wrap your mind around is that most of the energy in a performance is created *by the audience*, not by the performers!  To answer the age-old question, if a tree falls in the forest, it doesn't make a sound.  The real action is in the minds of the people watching, as the images and sounds resonate with their life experience, dredge up their real memories, ricochet off of their real life concerns and troubles.

I remember a performance of Sondheim's wonderful play "Assassins".  In one scene a character sings "When you've got a gun, everyone pays attention" and in the middle of that line the music stops and he pans the gun across the audience at the audience.  Everyone reacted by pulling back into their seat - it was *very* effective.  But not because he shot us, because of what our *minds* were doing, after years of conditioning, staring at the barrel of a pistol.

At best, "get it past the footlights" is a reaction to a lack of expression, which means one of the following:

The person doesn't have the skills

I don't believe that charisma is genetic, but it does take practice to learn how to be expressive.  Some people have grown up naturally expressive, and they have an easier time learning to perform.  Some just need to "calibrate" their expressions to the stage - the subtleties that work over coffee might not be picked up by people 200 feet away, in the back row. But this is the least likely problem in my opinion, because people who can't express well just don't gravitate to the performer role.

There is an impediment

This is when the person can express under normal circumstances, but they are failing now.  Stage fright is a great example (see my earlier series for remedies).  Sickness is another - it's hard to perform with a nasty cold or a fever.  (Not impossible, in my experience, but certainly no fun either.)  No brainer - remove the impediment.

There's nothing to express!

In the vast majority of cases, I believe that the problem is that the performer doesn't know what they're supposed to be expressing.  They are going through the motions at a "technical" level, because there's nothing behind it.  This is more common with musicians, dancers and singers, because most actors just assume that they have to act, and get really uncomfortable if they don't know what they are acting about.  So just like actors need an objective, and a "rudimentary understanding of the play" as Mamet says, so do all performers if they are expected to be expressive.

I long for the day when the normal reaction to a demand for more commitment is "more commitment to what?"

So the big problem isn't getting it across the footlights.  The big problem is understanding what it is in the first place!