authenticity

Some people seem to have more charisma than others.  You know the type – they walk into a room and everyone watches them.  The whole geometry of the room will adjust to make that charismatic person the focus of attention.  And those people, often, are the ones who have a gift for stage performance.  It’s easier for them to command attention, and they have a natural charm that gives them a big boost in developing rapport with an audience.

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.

Got a great question from a performer a while back, and I'd like to share my reply with everyone.  If you have a question, I'll be happy to do the same for you!  Anyway here we go:

One of your posts suggest that people try NOT to give it that extra 10% on stage because you might make it worse. It you want to give 110% give it first in practice then duplicate that on stage; don't surprise the rest of the quartet with something they haven't heard before. We went on stage with that goal; to bring our best on stage, no more, no less. In spite of that the energy of performing did something positive. This is obviously one of those Zen issues with contradictory goals. There is clearly a right and a wrong way to use performance energy and tension. Used wrong it can lead to over singing or breaking the unity of the group. Used right it can be great, but what does that mean?

There's something odd about competitive art.  You don't see competitive watercolor painting or competitive clay scupture weekends (as far as I know!) but often you see competitive singing - there are lots of festivals where choirs, choruses and ensembles are judged, and a winner is chosen.

In barbershop, for example, one of the central activities is the contest.  Many quartets and choruses go to incredible lengths, expending a huge percentage of their time and energy to put two songs onto the contest stage several times a year.  The barbershop organization does its part by supplying judging category descriptions, highly trained and selected judges, medals, plaques and trophies for the winners, etc.  It's a lot of work!

I can understand how one might assign a score to a performance based on its technical elements.  A judge can estimate how often a group is in tune, or how well the arrangement follows the barbershop rules.  Sweet Adeline judges in the Showmanship category probably find it pretty easy to determine if everyone was wearing a matching outfit.  Judges can even take a blind stab at the level of artistry and impact in a performance, although I feel they're getting on thin ice with that kind of thing.

But what strikes me is that all the truly human aspects of a performance, the authentic, personal truths underneath the music that infuse it with meaning, are completely beyond judgment.  How can we say that one person's joy warrants an 80 where another person's joy is only a 65?  What's the best way to measure real anguish?  How can we assign a meaningful number to excitement, or pain, or love?  It just doesn't make any sense.  We can't.

So when groups refuse to play the technical game, strange and wonderful things happen.  Emotional things happen.  In circumstances like that, judges tend to forget themselves just like any other audience member - they get carried away, and only remember after the fact, when the applause has died down, that they were supposed to reduce the performance to a number between 1 and 100.

And that, i believe, should be the goal.  Put enough real life up on stage that everyong forgets to monitor the technique for a while.  It will do them good.

I've been coached a thousand times on my singing and performing by (I would guess) more than a hundred different coaches, and thinking back, I'm surprised how often they have tried to represent their approach as the "right" approach - as if they could lay out on a platter the one true vocal approach, the best possible interpretation plan, etc. If I've learned no other wisdom in the past twenty years, it is that there is no right or wrong in performance. There are only choices and consequences, sometimes difficult to predict! You only have to watch two great performers to realize that each one has their own approach.

If only performance were so simple that all you had to do was learn the correct way!

For example, in working with a group of four voices, the best skill of a coach is to imagine the way they might blend together into a flexible and expressive whole, rather than to make them sound like some kind of "ideal model" of a vocal group. Every actor should be the best actor they can be, doing the kind of work that they do, and not a copy of Sir Lawrence Olivier. That should be pretty obvious! Yet how may actors spend their brief, depressing careers trying to be someone else?

I think when coaches represent their suggestion as the "right" way, they are confusing the need for consistency with the need to target an ideal model. Any audience member who is paying attention can tell if something changes in a way that seems "not on purpose." If you go for a high note, and the tone suddenly becomes strained, everyone will cringe. But (believe it or not) if it was strained the whole time and that seemed "on purpose", the audience would soon come to accept that vocal tone. [I mean, to a point. If you sound like a chicken, you sound like a chicken. But I stand by my statement.]

If you're listening to a whole bunch of barbershop quartets in a row, and quartet number 6 is only half as loud as quartet number 5, you notice it, and then 5 seconds later it doesn't matter any more. Your mind has reset itself to the new decibel level. A watercolor may not be as vivid as oil, but once you've realized you're looking at a watercolor it won't bother you. It's quality that matters in expression, not quantity.

From "inside" the bubble of an art form, it might seem like there is a right way. Every serious cellist probably knows the name of the best cellist in the world (I'm no cellist, but would that b Yo Yo Ma??) and they probably know how they play. And a good many of them might believe that if they could only copy that "ideal model" of a cello style, they would be just as great.

But that can never be authentic and from-the-heart. Even if you succeeded and replicated that fantastic performance exactly, the audience would have witnessed you trying hard to execute your memorized plan. That's "lukewarm applause" territory, for sure.

Do you think Yo Yo Ma does it the same way every time? No matter how he does it, it's right.

What's the message here, you might be wondering? Figure out who you are, and be yourself on-purpose, as truly and with as much passion as you can!

I got an interesting email from a reader the other day, and I bet that her thoughts will resonate with a lot of people who follow Owning The Stage.  She is a musical director in a choral group.  Here's an excerpt:

My problem is with 'the plan'.  Surely no-one sets out to do a lousy plan? I'm soooooooo scared of doing the wrong thing. I've analyzed our new songs to death and I feel really strongly that the way forward is NOT to copy someone else's performance to the letter.. but it's really hard to know what to do!!  Our marks in contest last year had us teetering on the edge of an entirely different level- so i know it's more crucial than ever. I feel like a complete novice and I'm supposed to be one of the ones in the know! it's almost as though the more i read, the more nervous i get...

There's no question about it - when you sit down and try to make a whole plan appear from nothing but your own intuition, it's a daunting task.  How do you make all those decisions about how to approach a song?  How can you be sure it's going to work?

As I've written previously, there are some sure-fire ways to screw up a plan, like trying to create one without creating a story first, or trying to create one that's fully-formed and rigid right out of your head, or even plain stealing copying someone else's work!  But here's the good news - if you avoid these pitfalls, pretty much anything you come up with will be good.

Yes, you heard correctly - it's hard to go wrong!  Why?  Because you are a human being and a musician, therefore you have access to a lifetime of experience with this world that gives you insight about the human condition, and you know good music, so once you know what you want to say to your listeners (a.k.a. your "story" for the piece) you will be able to make good choices.  And for heaven's sake, it's ART!  It's entirely subjective!  The value in art is in the mind of the beholder, and if you're making good musical choices and not getting in the way, the art will work its magic.

So here's the recipe, if you're worried about doing a lousy job:

1. Establish a great and truthful story that supports the piece.  For this, you need little other than your humanity.  If you get stuck, get together with a few friends and talk about it.  Good things will emerge.  It never fails, because stories are what humans do!
2. With that story in mind, look at the piece.  See how it fits with the story.  Try it out in your head a few times.  Note the inflection points in the story, and how they fit with the music.  Paint the moods arising from the story, with a broad brush, onto the form and phrasing, as well as the choreography.  Don't get it too perfect (see 3, below).
3. Try it out, and see what works, just a few times.  If you're in a group, engage the group in the story to make sure it's vivid and clear.  See what they do with it.  Refine your plan organically, and it can only improve.
4. When the plan comes together, and you have the feeling that it's good and right, you can start to rehearse it for real.  But remember, it will never be "done" - only the pace of change will slow down as the group finds the groove.  Every performance is unique - be open to new ideas.

Most of all, don't worry too much.  If the plan comes from a place of truth within you, it can not be an awful plan.

It may be easy to make a real bad plan, but it's hard to make a real plan bad.  :)

• 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.