datamusicata

This evening I will be doing a house concert in Beverly Hills where I saw my pal, Michael Smith (www.michaelsmithmusic.com) perform about a year ago. The folks doing the house concert have been doing it for years and have it down. And I decided to present an performance that I have been working on; a set that I can actually turn into a one man show. Something to be presented on the stage, night after night.

For most of my life, I have just winged it in terms of what I am going to sing or say on stage, but about a year ago, I started thinking about fine tuning a show, just as I did when I was Steven Wright’s opening act for three years. Just by doing so very many dates, I evolved two shows that I had down.

Every bit of dead wood, everything that didn’t work great I removed and everything that did work I honed to a razor’s edge. It’s the show that got me a standing ovation at the Universal Amphitheatre and most other places we performed, and it came from fine tuning the performance.

So this time, I decided to actually write out everything that I said and look at it, review it and edit it. Just putting it down gave me the insight into re arranging it in a more logical fashion, so that it unfolds for the audience in the most accessible way.

So I have pretty much written the first set now, and tonight I will do all the songs in the order I have placed them. The trick is to do the same show in such a way that everyone believes that it is coming off the top of my head.

This is how the people who saw Robin Williams recognized what a great actor he truly is (www.robinwilliams.com). I did about ten shows with him and I was so nervous to be performing in front of his audience. I felt that they expected so very much from a performer (based upon his incredible live work) that I simply couldn’t deliver for them.

However, he was gracious, complimentary and nurturing; telling me that he heard my CD’s, loved my music and that his audiences were going to love me (which proved to be true). But the point of this is that I saw his show ten times, and here’s what I learned:

He came out and began by talking about anything that might have happened that day and then very soon finessed it into one of his bits; bits that he had already learned and had in his repertoire. (The same as I am doing with this show tonight).

Then he let the evening flow, interacted with the audience and responded to whatever they might yell or what might happen, but he made it look like it was all completely spontaneous...and much of it wasn’t. I recognized the bits from previous evenings, but he was doing them with so much finesse, that they appeared to have occurred to him on the spot.

So the Power People that saw him several times, recognized that he was truly a wonderful actor, because when you can present a honed bit as though it is spontaneous, that’s some wonderful acting going on there, let me tell you.

In any event, I want to evolve my performance to the next level. I want to be able to do this one man show in those one to three thousand seat subscription theatres, because my performances are moving into the world of theatre.

I recognized, the more I performed, that I was taking the audience on a journey that included pathos, humor, tradgedy and triumph, much of it through music and some of it through the monologues that I have evolved.; more theatre than just a concert of presented music. So I am following that insight.

So I’ll keep you posted and we’ll see where this takes me. In the meantime, look at you own performances, your own gifts and see if you are taking advantage of your uniqueness and your talent.

Rather than be another James Taylor or Kool Moe Dee, be the first you. Now there are archetypes that showbiz uses over and over again and you can definitely get mileage and monetary success by emulating or adapting them.

Last night I saw part of a sixties film called The Swingers, starring Ann Margret. She was this enormously sexy, but allegedly innocent beautiful woman who danced and sang. In one minute, I realized that she was the Jessica Simpson of her day, and that the business of show business constantly repackages those same archetypes. You can do that if you want.

I can’t think of any actual artists who did that for long, if at all (notwithstanding their nascency when they were searching for an artistic voice). If your goal is just fame, that’s a way to go.

If you goal is to discover the true artist in you and develop that gift, then you have to do the work of discovering what your gifts are and then honing them.

Live performance in front of an audience is an easy way to find out what you can and cannot bring to the party.