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Expanding on my last post…

Letting go is the first step to expanding your performance skill set. What you are ultimately shooting for is the ability to “be present”.

What the heck does that mean? That means truly listening and responding to your audience in a deep, meaningful way. That means knowing your stuff so well that you can focus on experiencing the moment with your audience rather performing to your audience.

This is not easy, and is particularly difficult when you are starting out; even more so when you’ve been performing full-time for a while.

Why? Let’s tackle the first scenario. When you are breaking in new material, you are present in the moment (at times terrifyingly so), but your attention is focused on the “whats” and “hows”. The emphasis is on the mechanics. Think about when you first learned how to ride a bike. If you are like me, you probably spent all your time thinking about the little details about pedaling, steering, pushing off, balancing, conquering your fears, etc. As you master the smaller skills that build up to actually riding, the details are overwhelming and actually make it harder to ride the bicycle. You try and try again until finally you find yourself coasting down the street. For a moment, you forget all the details and realize, “Hey, I’m actually riding the bike!” The excitement and adrenaline take over and for a few seconds you are actually in the moment of “riding the bike”. That is, until the enormity of what you are doing kicks in and you start focusing not on riding, but on controlling. This is typically the moment when we come crashing to the ground. Over time we learn to let the details go and focus on the bigger picture, which is when it becomes pure pleasure and you can savor the experience.

Once you’ve “mastered” (how I hate that term) the small stuff, you then spend months, years or more enjoying and refining the experience. If you are lucky enough to experience this joy and get paid for it you are a fortunate soul indeed.

Until… it becomes a job, a chore, a task. Just one more thing you need to do in between other things.

This is the most dangerous time, as now your focus can drift from the experience you are in to other concerns: the commute, financial or relationship issues, small annoyances (perhaps how tight your shoes are), where you are going to eat after the show, and other unrelated details. You are at that place where you are just doing another _____________ (fill in the blank: job, task, show, performance, favor, etc.).

Once you begin to drift, you are no longer present, and others can sense it. It has a negative impact on other people’s engagement and can have calamitous effect on the quality of your work.

Sure, you are still providing the same service, but the quality of it has taken a hit.

There are tools that actors and other performers use to remain in the moment, but the most significant are awareness of the issue and a commitment to being present. If you are not present, there is no way you can truly “let go” (at least not in a way that will benefit your work).

I performed last evening for a group of supporters (“Friends”) of a local library last evening. The show was open to the public in a small town of 1,200 people. While two-thirds of the audience were from the town, the other third had traveled up to forty miles round trip to experience the show.

While the expected audience was a mix blend of family audiences (read: adults and children), the reality was a crowd that was predominately comprised of retired (or near-retired) folks and four children under the age of five.

I always travel prepared to perform for different audiences, and most of my material can be performed for any audience with minor adjustments in presentation, style and approach, so I am usually not concerned with demographics.

However…

This performance had been billed as my family show and I believe in delivering what you’ve been asked to bring.

This left me with a bit of a conundrum: do I switch gears and perform the hard-hitting stuff for the mostly adult audience or do I push on and satisfy the young with the visual magic and, at times, sillier physical comedy?

In the end I elected to do both. I decided to “cast my fate to the wind” and just rely on instinct.

As I performed each piece, I threw myself into the experience completely and utterly and let the reactions determine the next piece and style. I don’t honestly remember much of what I said or did and how the pieces varied from my normal, polished presentations, but the reaction of the audience was remarkable. Afterwards, a majority of people felt a need to come up to me and interact with me. This led to several brief discussions on potential, joy, and love (to mention a few topics that came up).

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When I was in college studying music and theatre, I was cast in an original play for four actors. The opening of the play featured approximately 35-40 minutes of dialogue between two of the characters – a young couple – and their interactions while they awaited the arrival of the other couple. This was accompanied by much “beer” drinking, snacking, and exposition. We performed the show thirteen times in fourteen days and, for the most part, I spent my time doing my job: acting as a character in a show.

Except for one performance.

About two-thirds of the way through the run, I remember standing in the wings and watching the preshow lights go dark so that I could enter for the start of the show. The next thing I remember was walking off into the wings.

Immediately one of the other actors walked up to me with excitement in her eyes and said, “Where were you?” I replied that I had no idea what they were talking about and asked what they meant. “You were gone! I mean, your character existed, you were speaking the lines, moving around the stage all like you normally do, but you, the actor, were gone! You were just [the character]!”

Now, I’m not a mystically-minded person, but an experience like that doesn’t come along very often. As a stage actor, you are speaking someone else’s lines, moving where someone else told you to go, wearing someone else’s clothing and you know everything about the story arc of your character. Yet it is only you who breathes life into the character. While you can control every physical mannerism and adopt alternate speech patterns, it is not until you inhabit the character, truly let go and become them that audiences believe you as that character.

How does that apply to magic? Every show I am saying basically the same words, moving the same way and making the same choreographed actions to “effect” the magic in the show. The benefit of doing your own show is that you get to perform the same pieces literally thousands and tens of thousands of times throughout the span of your career. The curse of doing your own show is that you get to perform the same pieces literally thousands and tens of thousands of times throughout the span of your career.

The challenge is to avoid getting bored by your presentations, your movements, the very words you speak. It is too easy to fall into the trap of “phoning in your performance”. Audiences can sense when you are not present and they will respond appropriately. They are also keenly aware when a piece is so polished that it feels canned.

Unfortunately an unavoidable byproduct of performing frequently. Being aware of its potential impact, we can move to counteract the effect.

How do we do this? By letting go…

Once you have rehearsed all the technical and polished the presentational aspects of your work, you hone it further through performance. At some point you work might feel the piece is “finished” and the temptation is to repeat the piece in toto. The work is complete, so it become a component in the show that fills three or five minutes and you can rely on it to produce a response from the audience.

Until it no longer does.

A lot of performers will discard the piece without asking why it is no longer getting the response they are used to. The reason these pieces no longer get the response is because they no longer connect with the audience. It is easy to blame the piece, but the fact is that the performer is no longer connecting with the audience. Just when the piece is reaching the next level, it is discarded. This is a true shame as it is now on the cusp and ready to be truly mined for full effect.

At this point, all the muscle memory is established, all the presentational features are there, but what is missing is the release of all control by the performer. Now is the time to focus, but not on the words or actions, but on the audience.

It is the perfect time to let go of all control of the piece and commit to playing (pleasuring) the audience. Your body and mind know what to do, now you let go of your expectations and experience the piece through the audience. Allow yourself to see and process the individual reactions in the audience. Connect with them through eye contact and allow the material to breathe as you explore pacing, opportunities to share moments with the audience and take risks by free-associating and responding to every chuckle, smile, frown or laugh.

You have worked very hard to get to this point, now is the time to let go and enjoy it for yourself and, in doing so, share the joy and increase the pleasure of your experience. Reactions are more immediate and amplified and you create a true shared experience.

Trust me, audiences will respond, and so will you.