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Spotting Fakers
Since I started writing this blog, I’ve spent an awful lot of time thinking about authentic performance. What is it? How does it work? Is it necessary, or can you get away without it? My mind churns on these questions almost constantly. So when I get a chance to watch a whole bunch of performers in a short period of time, I always learn something interesting.
This past week I was at the International Convention of the Barbershop Harmony Society in Anaheim, California. When I wasn’t at Disneyland with my kids or performing on stage myself, I was watching the competitions. The fifty best barbershop quartets in the world were invited to compete, and I probably saw thirty quartets sing at least two songs each. After a while I noticed some patterns.
For example, random movement is really starting to bother me, and almost every quartet on the stage had some of this going on. No doubt you’ve seen it yourself – repetitive facial expressions and gestures, extraneous movements… you have to ask yourself, where did that hand move come from? Why does that guy’s smile always look the same?
The answer of course is that they’re not really thinking about the story. They’re executing a combination of unconscious performance habits and canned, planned moves. Watch for it and you’ll notice it everywhere. It will drive you crazy! As a human being, you are an exquisite machine for spotting a lie, and that means anything that doesn’t quite fit – anything incongruous – like when someone says “I’m fine” with a voice that says “I’m angry” or sings the words “I love you” with a vocal quality that comes straight out of a domestic squabble.
This is not rocket science! So it surprises me that audiences are so accepting of performances that are faked. Maybe they just don’t know what they’re missing! I figure if people start demanding more, performers will follow. So start watching for fakers, and be honest with them.
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At my quartet rehearsal tonight, we spent some time watching the webcast. Driving home, I commented about the authenticity of Crossroads performances. Even when an individual had a little tiddly, it was always done in service of the song. I contrasted that with other quartets, where the tiddly was a way of showing off. It seemed clear to me that Crossroads was in the song, in the message, in a way that is rare and beautiful.
I'm not as bothered by the "extraneous" movements as I am by moves that just don't seem natural. Many people "speak with their hands" and make gestures that don't literally "mean" anything, so movement for movement's sake is fairly common. I'm not affected by it the way I am the "ummm", because that is actually replacing saying something useful, while the extraneous movement is not necessarily keeping the message from coming through. I suppose I see how some could find it distracting.
It may affect different audience members differently because of learning styles...auditory, visual, etc. I have no science for that...just a thought at this late hour.
Keep up the good work!
Sean
Happens in choruses, too. What's actually happening is we in the audience are naturally programmed to look for patterns and once we find one (or more) we have a hard time letting it go. For example...end of phrase, breath, body resets, hands come up and go back down...happens as many times as there are breaths in a song. Hmmmm...I catch on to the pattern after about the 3rd time and then that's what I watch. These patterns are visual "umms"...much like a speaker who uses verbal fillers drives his/her audience crazy once they've identified the pattern, reset-breath-hands performers in barbershop performances become distracting once the audience figures out the visual pattern. Unfortunately, once the pattern is discerned we don't pay attention to the message...just the pattern.
More about this later...
Gary Plaag
I cannot STAND seeing a quartet doing the up and down circular waving of the arms and hands! And I can't avoid looking at it other than to not watch the quartet. It's like Chinese water torture to me!
What furthers the problem, I believe is that everyone sees this over and over and it then becomes second nature to those that have seen it and it spreads like a virus.
I've never seen performers anywhere else in the world do this. Just barbershoppers.
We can't blame the audiences for liking what they like because they are unaware. They are still our audience! Do we need to educate the audiences how to watch better?
I agree there are lots of those "ummms" Gary speaks of, and I also notice the nervous patterns in singers, or any performer, speaker, friend I'm talking with. I'm not sure it always makes them less genuine. If they are like that all of the time, isn't that "genuine"? But of course, how would we know that?
When you watch even the best of the BHS you still realize we are such neophytes when it comes to truly connecting with our message and our audiences. The obvious advantage in a BHS contest is performers being surrounded by people who are moved and stirred by good barbershop chords, and there is still certainly a good amount of that going on, so it's hard to deny someone there emotional excitement, because we're distracted by our ability to notice these "umms" and programmed performances.
I'm with you, I just think we should be less frustrated with the audiences for enjoying the performances.
Ritchie Lavene
Presentation Judge, BHS