Owning The Stage

You may be familiar already with the Seven Deadly Sins of olde, but in case you are not, they are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.  Yes, even though it reads like a list of what everyone wants to do at Club Med, they are still nasty sins and you should avoid them, or face peril!  Reading through the list, you might have noted one or two that you're not avoiding as well as you used to...

But this blog of mine has nothing to do with sins of that kind.  We're all about performance here, so rather than focus on sins of the biblical sort, we're going to publish a list of the Seven Deadly Sins of Performance - those actions and inactions that when committed, turn what might have been a great performance into something less satisfying for all concerned.

Why seven, you might be asking?  Well, there's no really good reason for that, but when I started putting together a list, they seemed to group into just exactly seven items!  Previously I had also noticed that there were seven major activities involved in performance, namely skill development, wise purpose, artistic insight, planning, rehearsal, preparation and execution a.k.a. actually performing or just "performance."

So apparently the universe organizes itself in sevens - who knew?

In the next few weeks I will put together seven articles, each describing one deadly sin for each major activity listed above.  I'll tell you how you can tell a performer has committed that sin, and why they might have done it, and how to fix it!

I'm excited - I hope you are as well.

I had a request over the holidays to cover the "tune up" - that unique piece of technique for a cappella groups, since they can't rely on instruments to get them into the correct starting key (or to keep them in the right key, but that's a whole 'nuther topic...)

[caption id="attachment_1171" align="alignright" width="288" caption="Note the traditional placement of the boom mic, OUT of the picture!"][/caption]

Well if you believe as I do that the purpose of performance is to give the audience an emotional journey, and that the audience has to suspend disbelief, among other things, in order to be ready for that kind of trip, I think you have to do what you can to remove distractions. David Copperfield doesn't let you see the mirrors before he does a magic trick. If you're shooting a movie and the microphone boom gets into the frame, you do another take - it's not even a question.

So the question becomes, is the pitch-taking a part of the performance, or isn't it? Well, 99% of the time it isn't - it's a purely mechanical thing that the audience doesn't care about, that doesn't add anything to the performance. It only reminds everyone that they're watching people on a stage, dealing with real-life, practical issues like tuning up.

I cringe inwardly (maybe even outwardly... I'm not sure) when a barbershop quartet takes the pitch by blowing a pitch pipe with everyone looking at it, then they all look at each other self-consciously and sing the pitch in unison, and then a tonic chord, and then the first chord of the song, and then they finally look at the audience. I mean honestly, if it's SOOO difficult for a group to get in the same key, am I supposed to expect a great performance? More likely I'm going to sit and worry the whole time that one of them will lose the pitch and they won't be able to recover.

Sometimes comedy quartets, who as I've often said before are at least always aware that their purpose is to entertain rather than to "get it right", will incorporate the pitch-taking in a funny way, and that's all good if it works.

So my advice - learn how to take the pitch with some discretion.

Over the holidays, I had a great chat with Tom Carter, author of Choral Charisma. (Tom is also a recent addition to the Coach Directory.) Basically I've often wondered why coaching is so rare in the choral world, when it's so prevalent in barbershop circles.  The gap seems to be huge - almost every barbershop chorus and quartet gets coaching at least sometimes, and some of them, mostly the best ones, get coaching very frequently, but in all my exposure to choral groups here in Vancouver I have never heard of one of them getting "coached" by anyone besides their own conductor.  I asked Tom for his opinions, because I know he's a sought-after coach in the choral world.

Keep in mind that Mr. Carter is essentially bringing the concepts of method acting to choral singing, so when he thinks of coaching, he's thinking of performance oriented coaching and not technical instruction.  So here are Tom's points, many of which are particularly valuable to those inside the "barbershop bubble" since they represent an objective assessment from an educated and insightful musician that isn't also inside the bubble!

Barbershoppers place a relatively equal value on technical elements and entertaining. Many of the songs are humorous or over-the-top sentimental (involving humor along with the poignancy). Therefore, a quartet singing funny or sentimental songs with minimal expression would fall flat on their, well, faces!

Choral Folks place a much greater emphasis on technical elements, "singing beautifully" being perhaps the major goal. So, because that is the emphasis, a choir can "get away with" singing with NO expression for two hours ... as long as the singing is at a certain technical level.

Along with/because of all the above, the audience expectations are very different for the two genres, allowing inexpressive choirs to flourish, but demanding that Barbershop groups entertain and engage. As far as I'm concerned, a chorus shouldn't bore us ... though too many of them do, and far too often!

Barbershop quartets sing without a conductor, thereby making the relationship with the audience more immediate and compelling. (And as far as Barbershop choruses are concerned, their focus on expression is a by-product of the overall Barbershop culture's focus.)

Choral Folks are conditioned and educated to be conductor-centric. Most training in most grad schools reinforces the notion that "it's all about the conductor." What is learned (among other things)? Body language, facial expressions, movement, posture ... but I'm talking about the conductor's, not the singers'!! Bottom line becomes the notion that it's the conductor's role to engage the singers, rather than it being the singers' role to engage the audience.

Some excellent points, I think you will agree!

One thing I would add is that inside the barbershop cult bubble there are many different kinds of coaches, and while some of them do focus on performance, I would say even more focus on technical elements of singing and presentation.

Also I think it's important to note that most barbershop chorus directors, unless I'm very much mistaken, are paid just like their choral counterparts.  And yet the better the chorus, the more coaching they tend to get!  Or maybe it's the other way around - the ones who are willing to go beyond the talents of their own musical director and pay for outside expertise are the ones that get better faster.

The barbershop community has, over the past few decades, incorporated much from other performance art forms, bettering the barbershop art form with an awful lot of vocal production expertise, choreography expertise, and whole new musical genres.  The next big thing, I believe, is a real understanding of what it takes to be authentic, and ways of getting there.  This happens to be the confluence of acting and singing, and it's also exactly what Mr. Carter is doing, and what he has in his book.

But whatever is out there to make barbershop better, in my humble opinion it's going to happen ten times faster than it would in the choral world because of the barbershop culture of coaching.  Next to the contest system, nothing has a bigger impact on the barbershop craft than the willingness to get the best advice they can, anywhere they can get it.

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!

I told myself I would not try to write any blog entries during the holiday season.  The plan was to kick back and reflect on the first few months of Owning The Stage, what turned out to be interesting and what didn't, and thereby to come up with a plan for 2009.  However, The Economist published a really interesting article on one of my pet topics, namely the purpose of music in Society, and I had to bring it to your attention, dear reader, and add a comment or two.

If you have fifteen minutes, you should probably read the whole article, but if you're busy let me give you the whirlwind tour.

Music is really important for humans.  You can tell because it's very time consuming and expensive for Society to produce and consume it as much as we do.  But what purpose does it serve?  There are three competing theories.

Theory number one goes like this: music gives the performer a better chance to reproduce, so generation by generation that advantage breeds more musical people.  I like this theory, even if it's a bit self-serving to do so!  I live in two circles, a musical and performance one, and a computer science one, and I have certainly noticed that the people who know me as a performer respond to me quite differently.  When Realtime is singing somewhere, we all get attention from the opposite sex.  We're all quite married, of course, but the attention doesn't go unnoticed!  It's just not the same when I attend a computer-related conference.  And not just because everyone there is male.

Theory number two is that music serves to bind together groups, and creates a survival advantage in that way.  I think we can all corroborate that one too - if you're a musician, I would bet dimes to dollars that you have a clique built up around the style of music that you sing or play.  Imagine the power of that force in prehistoric times to keep the tribe together, and determine who was in, and who was out.  Makes sense.

Number three I don't much care for.  It states that our ability to comprehend and perform music is an accident - we evolved those mental capacities for other reasons.  Stephen Pinker says basically this: A brain devoted to turning sound into meaning is tickled by an oversupply of tone, melody and rhythm. Singing is auditory masturbation to satisfy this craving. Playing musical instruments is auditory pornography.

However, perhaps they are all partly right.  As the article suggets, perhaps we evolved the musical capacity for other reasons, but then put them to good evolutionary use, for reproduction and survival.  I can buy that.

Of more importance to the performer is the following:

What all of these hypotheses have in common is the ability of music to manipulate the emotions, and this is the most mysterious part of all. That some sounds lead to sadness and others to joy is the nub of all three hypotheses. The singing lover is not merely demonstrating his prowess; he also seeks to change his beloved’s emotions.

Once we understand more clearly the way that music functions in the brain to create emotions in the listener, the performing arts will no doubt be able to exploit that information to create more impactful performances.  But for the time being, we'll just have to stick with what works, and learn more by trial and error!

Hi Everyone,

It's been a really interesting few months since Owning The Stage got started.  We've published more than 70 articles!  We have started a coach directory that is proving to be extremely popular as more and more people discover the resource, and it will be even more important as virtual coaching gets more and more popular over the coming months.  Virtual coaching is an exciting development whose time has come!  It will change everything about how people and groups get the expert guidance they need, and we at Owning The Stage are proud to be in the vanguard of that movement!

I'm not planning (at this point) to do much until January, but I certainly hope to hit the ground running with new, useful and inspiring articles that help performers of all stripes meet their potential.  What direction will the articles take in the new year?  I have no idea!  But I'm sure that given the right conditions, inspiration will strike.  My reading list stretches out many months, thanks to the capacity of the Vancouver Public Library.

I will also take direction from you, the readers and members of this blog.  If there's something you want to see in the future, just let me know.  I do take requests.

One thing I'm quite sure of is that the Coach Directory is going to grow a lot, and will need to be automated.  Right now I expect I'll implement that functionality as a plugin for Wordpress, but beyond that I have done no design.  The more coaches and reviews I have to manually cut-and-paste, the more motivated I get about automation.  Suggestions welcome.

I'm also planning to take the articles written so far and use them as the core of a book, for those people who would rather read the Owning The Stage articles in a logical order, in paper form.  Any suggestions about the content, format or name of the book are very welcome.

So Merry Christmas everyone, happy holidays, and may 2009 be an exciting and successful year for you and your loved ones!

Cheers,
Tom and Kari Metzger
Owning The Stage

I realize people don't come to this blog for self-help information, but I will tell you that I've been trying lately to be "present in the moment" as Eckhart Tolle puts it in The Power Of Now. In the moment, nothing is lacking.  The mind is quiet.  When I succeed at being present in the moment, I have an amazing sense of well-being, calmness and clarity.  I think it's the same thing that Bhuddist monks achieve in meditation, or very nearly so.

Anyway what I've realized is that performances are always "in the now."  When you're up on stage, if you're doing your job well, there is no past and there is no future.  Your brain is taken up with *right now* for the duration of the performance, and following the well-established truth that the audience will be thinking about whatever is on your mind, they will also be present in the moment.  As I've said before in this blog, perhaps that's why we humans love to witness performances, to be entertained - it takes our minds off our awkward pasts and scary futures for a while.

I feel it's that shared presence in the now that creates all the performance energy that we play with.  If we or the audience get distracted by thoughts of the past ("I screwed this up last time...") or thoughts of the future ("geez I hope I play this next passage right for once"), the energy goes away.  The performer blanks out, and the audience loses interest.

In fact it may be impossible to maintain an intimate sense of relationship without a shared sense of the present moment.  That's what people are talking about, when they suggest that you "really listen" to your partner.  Be there, in the moment, and don't allow your mind and your ego to distract you with self-talk.

Possibly, the ability to be in the moment and in relationship with a roomfull of people goes by another name: Charisma!

Being in the moment, it would be nearly impossible to experience stage fright.  If there's no past and no future in your focus of attention, what is there to be nervous about?  Of course it's the same off the stage - you can't be anxious if you're focused on the moment.

Try right now to get into the present moment.  Close your eyes and wait intently for the next thought to come, like a cat waiting to pounce on a passing mouse.

OK try it now.  I will wait.

Most people are amazed how long it takes for that first thought to come up.  Your being present in the moment put you into the now, and shut down your "egoic mind" briefly.  The trick is getting into that present state for longer periods of time.

Artists will be intrigued as well to find that creativity always springs from somewhere deep within you - a part of you that is only present in the moment, and is generally obscured by thoughts of the past and the future.  I tried this out a few days ago.  While falling asleep, I focused myself intently on the present moment.  After I came up with solutions for a half-dozen problems that had been on my mind, I had to get up and write them down.  If I was that productive every day, I would be on top of the world!