Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
Years ago a friend of mine gave me a Charles Atlas t-shirt sort of like the one in the picture that accompanies the post. On my shirt there were two great contrasting lines.
“Me as a wimp”
and
“Me as a God”
Each of which was accompanied by a picture of Charles Atlas in two completely different states of muscular development. I always loved this shirt and was sad when it eventually died, but this is taking me a long way away from what I was intending to talk about…
I heard once that the secret of genius is knowing one’s strengths and limitations. By doing things with in certain parameters, your chances of creating amazing work increases dramatically over a more random shot-gun approach.
Knowing who you are on stage why and audience responds to you and what strengths you bring to a performance will increase your chances of successfully deciding what demographic you should target not to mention your chances of success when you hit the stage.
If, for example, you’ve got a show that absolutely kills in a street/festival environment, but doesn’t seem to translate all that well to indoor venues, then think seriously about whether pursuing theatre gigs is really in your best interests.
I was working in the Piazza of the STAR Princess and the GOLDEN Princess back in June and what I was asked to do was basically a mini street show for passengers in the informal setting of the ship’s atrium. Because of my year’s of experience working on the street and working in festival environments, this was second nature to me and I thoroughly enjoyed the shows and the reaction I got from the passengers. By contrast, I’ve heard from various performers who’ve also performed in the Piazza that this is their least favorite venue to work on ships. It’s not that they aren’t good performers, they just lack the performance vocabulary to really know how to make shows in this space work.
Ships are actually a fun venue for me to be playing in because I get the opportunity to perform in a variety of venues. Everything from the Piazza to the cabaret venue to the main theatre. Each venue offers a different set of challenges and opportunities and I love throwing myself at all of them as the opportunity to grow exists when ever I put myself in a new situation. Regardless of the actual venue though I always try to walk on stage with an awareness of my strengths as a performer and capitalize on what I can do for an audience in any given situation.
Taking the time to understand why the audience responds to your performance is critical. Maybe its your breath taking technique, perhaps it’s your impeccable comedic timing, perhaps it’s something as simple as your likability, the charisma you have when you walk out on stage. By all means try to stretch and expand what you’re capable of, but try not to loose sight of what your strengths really are.
