truth

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?

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.  :)

If you are hoping to create performances that have deep impact upon your audience, you will want to acquaint yourself with the ideas of Constantin Stanislavski.  Stanislavski's book "An actor prepares" describes his system for acting, and apparently it is still the only complete system for acting that we have.  Consequently it influences the vast majority of what you see in professional theater and in movies today.  Method acting came from it, as explained nicely in this wikipedia page.  But what does that mean?  I mean, method acting is a method for what, exactly?

The purpose of Stanislavski's system is to access the performer's inspiration, and to use that inspiration to create truthful performances.  "To Inspire" a performance literally means to "breathe life" into it.  Stanislavski believed that the way to breathe life into a performance was to engage the performer's subconscious mind.  Because the subconscious is responsible for the details of our actions in our real lives, the actions of the "inspired" performer would also be realistic and believable, resulting in the ultimate goal - a truthful performance, capable of touching an audience deeply.  You can prove this to yourself quite easily - last time you had a conversation with someone, how many of your facial expressions and gestures were the product of your conscious mind?  Almost none, I bet.  The rest was done by your subconscious mind, which is masterfully capable of producing in you realistic and believable behaviors.  Truthful behaviors.  Authentic behaviors.  Just the stuff you want on stage.

In writing his books, Stanislavski was fighting against various forms of the same lousy and untruthful acting we see so much of today in the theater and in the movies.  I'm sure you will recognize all of the following:

• Forced Acting - you rely on inspiration but you don't know how to access it reliably.  Consequently, as Stanislavski puts it, high moments alternate with over-acting.
• The Art of Representation - you create the part in a deeply felt and truthful way and and "get it right" in rehearsal, with a focus on external appearance, then strive to duplicate that correct performance each time, rather than living it afresh each time.  Getting it right in rehearsal requires a lot of skill, and replicating it even more so.  But he argues that the result is not truthful and therefore leaves much to be desired.
• Mechanical Acting - you learn the cliche gestures that represent your character and emotions, like putting the back of your hand to your brow to express tragedy, or spitting on the floor because you are playing a peasant.  Stanislavski refers to this as "a dead mask of non-existent feeling."
• Over-Acting - takes the first general human conventions that come along and uses them without technique, and without refining them for stage.  Like mechanical acting, but without the technique.
• Exploitation of Art - moments when you as the performer are merely using your place on the stage to showcase yourself personally, rather than to play the intended part.

Maybe you've recognized yourself in the list - I know I did!  As usual, learning new things teaches one humility.

So The Method tries to get at something better, more truthful, and more effective than the approaches listed above by engaging the performer's subconscious mind.  The trouble is, you can't get at the subconscious mind without making it conscious, and in doing so you kill it.  The subconscious just can't be dragged into the light for examination without introducing a lot of what you might call "left-brained interference."  So you need an indirect method of engaging the subconscious, and that is what "the method" is really for.

The book itself takes the form of a journal written by our hero Kostya (you might guess here that the original book was in Russian) who is taking a year-long acting class in the Moscow Theater.  In the first chapter, the students are asked to come up with something and put it on stage for a live audience, so that the teacher can get to know their talents better.  It's a pretty funny read, because it reminds me of what most amateur performers actually do when they're first hitting the stage, namely make up an approach more or less at random, and get unpredictable and usually horrible results!  Kostya decides to play Shakespeare's "Othello", and without understanding the play itself, the character, or anything remotely accurate about how a "moor" might have behaved, he paints himself brown and struts about like a savage, flashing his teeth and rolling his eyes.

You have to admit, most amateur performance is pretty bad.  Sometimes it's not much better than watching third-graders, except that the people on stage have lost their cute factor and with it, the audience sympathy.  We could really change the world if we taught everyone just the basics of how to perform, so their first experiences on stage were more likely to be positive.  They might just keep at it long enough to get quite good at it!  And they might attract an audience outside their circle of friends.

In subsequent articles, I will explain all about how the method works, and how you can apply it to create truthful performances.

Got a great question from George Nowik, a ensemble-singing friend of mine, which he posted as a comment to this article. Here's the question:

How does an ensemble who is excited about the latest and greatest masterpiece arrangement get to the point where they can perform said piece without an audience looking for more popcorn and being detached while watching a curiosity rather than watching a performance? you’ve touched on needing to be able to balance the technical and the emotional with the “just get out there and perform it and stop worrying about it”, however what kinds of steps can a group mentality take to achieve that?  Do you find resistance to these concepts in your coaching of groups?  There are obvious barriers that prevent otherwise-well-intentioned machines from being able to achieve that (age, vocal limitations, untrained voices, people uncomfortable with vulnerability, and so on) but what about getting people to step beyond those barriers and release the performance of a difficult chart so that the audience has a great experience rather than a circus act?

Fantastic questions, George!

Your first question boils down to, "what makes a performance engaging."  I don't think the answer is any different for a difficult chart than a simple one.  There are many ways to frame the answer, but my favorite is to take the audience perspective: if they experience real, intense emotions, they will be engaged.  The act of singing is very powerful for people, so singers have a certain advantage here - singing is like a direct line to the audience member's inner self, even more so than instrumental music.  So if you're singing a song and it's authentic and truthful and passionate, it has every chance to be engaging.

Of course there are lots of things that can get in the way.  For example, most audience members will cringe and lose the plot if you sing out of tune, or if your synchronization is bad, or if you do anything that doesn't appear to be "on purpose" - so you do have to execute everything correctly, and that's naturally harder with a more difficult chart.  But unless you're a total singing geek (like... uh.. you and me) the game is to get your technique to a high enough level so that it's not a distraction.  The technique is not an end in itself for 99% of the audience members in the world, as long as it's not a distraction.  So the "obvious barriers" you list above may be smaller issues than they seem to be at first.  After all, common sense tells us that you only have two choices here: pick songs you can execute well enough at your current level of skill, or pick harder songs and work on your skills.  (Specifics are beyond the scope of this blog post - that's coaching territory.)

Having said that, I've had twenty years of enjoyment just getting better at singing, improving my skills, and tackling some monster charts!  That would be fun for me even if nobody ever saw the result.  And for most people, performance is a hobby, not a career, so how much they enjoy themselves is pretty important!  But I'm at a point where I enjoy myself more when the audience goes away thrilled.

Now to the mental steps.  Once you've decided that there's more to performance than executing all the technical elements correctly, you've already won half the mental battle.  That realization opens up all sorts of questions, like what is the song/scene/piece about at a deeper level, what can it offer to the audience emotionally, etc.  It's very unlikely that your performance will be truthful and authentic if you don't know what you're singing about, or you appear not to care!

Developing a great performance plan

Try this.  Pick a song.  Read the lyrics.  Listen to the music.  Try to discern three things about that song that might be engaging (or even helpful) to people.  This may not be obvious, because it's creative - it's your interpretation!  Write them down.  Even if you go no further, your performance will have more depth.  The next challenge is to create a presentation that highlights one, two or all three of the "truths" you have discovered.  Ask yourself some of these questions:

• Who are the players in the scene?
• What is the relationship between the players?  Where is the love?
• What is the urgency of need, in the relationships?
• Who are you, in the scene?  Are you always the same person?
• How do the scene and the relationships change, as the song progresses?  (If nothing changes, you need a new song or a new plan or both.)

If you do that, you'll be in the top 1% of all singing ensembles in terms of your service to the audience, and believe me, you will be rewarded.

Getting out of your own way

Do I find resistance when I coach this philosophy to people?  Absolutely!  Everyone is doing what they are doing because of what they believe, and beliefs have inertia.  One of my favorite quotes sums it up nicely:

"It's often not enough for one to simply be exposed to the truth, because the brain will actually fight to defend its attachment to cherished falsehoods."

The people who have the easiest time making the necessary changes are the ones who don't have a substantial ego attachment to their beliefs.  People who are new at the singing game (or any game really) don't feel bad if they don't know something, so they have a huge advantage - they learn quickly.  People who are able to maintain that state of "beginner mind" long term also learn quickly, and keep learning quickly!  Those are the ones who really take over the world.

I hope that was helpful George!  If you want to drill down further on something, just comment below.

Cheers - Tom

There are a lot of things that go into great performances, but there's one thing at the root of it all.  If a performance has something in it that touches people at the level of their human nature, consciously or unconsciously, it is fulfilling its purpose in our society.  It is teaching us individually about life and about some aspect of our social or natural environment, and it is making us smarter as a species.  Nothing is more important, especially with the monumental challenges we face in today's world.

That key ingredient is truth.

I'm not talking about sincerity.  Of course sincerity is important in a performer, because people can spot a fake instinctively.  Nothing will shut down your speech or your musical piece faster than a lack of sincerity.  But of course it's not enough to be sincere.  I can stand up and tell you that my eyes are blue (which is true) and that would be totally sincere, but it also wouldn't be doing much for you.  And a lunatic can be sincere about any crazy thing he believes is true, like trickle-down economics for example.  Don't get me started.

We're also not talking about accuracy.  A physicist can stand up and tell you that the acceleration of gravity is 9.81 meters per second per second, and be pretty darned accurate.  It would even be teaching your something factual about the universe!  But unless you are doing a physics problem, it's not going to improve your quality of life much.  Truth is deeper than facts.

Truth is the critical part of the performance ecosystem.  Truth inspires the composer and moves through the performer to the audience.  The audience knows it is truth because they are in touch with the same source of truth that inspired the composer in the first place.  Great art reveals what we knew was there all along, even though we could not see it.

People react in some powerful ways when they see truth in a performance.  Sometimes they choke up, or tear up, or cry.  Sometimes they cheer and applaud.  Sometimes they sit silently, as it sinks in, not wanting the moment to end.  Often, they laugh, because finding the truth can be intensely funny.  Humor may be humanity's way of dealing with truth.  I'm not talking about Laurel and Hardy slapstick, or gimmicks or surprises, but the kind of humor that comes from awareness of our situation.  The kind of humor that should be in every scene of a play.  As Michael Shurtleff says in Audition:

Humor is not jokes.  It is that attitude towards being alive without which you would long ago have jumped off the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.  ... When we say about a life situation, "And it's not funny, either," we are attempting to inject humor into a situation that lacks it.  We try in life to put humor everywhere; if we didn't, we couldn't bear to live.

That's the kind of humor that should be in every performance.  That's what people really need.

The truth we seek is the "cosmic truth" - something that speaks to our greater human nature, helps us understand our place in the world, and how to get along in it.  A performance that reveals that kind of truth can be truly inspiring, and life changing.