I spent the weekend at an excellent Steampunk event, where I got to see a number of extraordinary performers. It got me thinking about the importance of how you invest in your own work as a performer.
If you perform feeling self conscious, awkward, silly or afraid of being laughed at, this will show. If you walk onto a stage and treat what you're doing like it's perfectly reasonable, it's amazing what an audience can be persuaded to go along with. Embracing the preposterous to make it your own is a really powerful choice, allowing you to do, embody, or vocalise things that more cautious people simply can't.
This is fundamentally about your relationship with your own material. If you believe that people need what you're doing, then it works very differently from getting out there with material you are suspicious about. People need to laugh, and there's power in being comfortable with inviting the laughter. It's good to invite any and all emotions. People also need to be surprised, unsettled and taken out of their everyday perceptions, and there are many ways of doing that. Sometimes people benefit from the comfort of familiarity, but too much of that just becomes banality.
To be powerful as a bard, you have to be totally invested in whatever you're doing. You have to be willing to take people with you. There's a certain kind of magic that's only available if you're prepared to throw yourself wholeheartedly into whatever you're doing.
I was utterly enchanted by Ash Mandrake's set, he has a lot of youtube content for anyone who is curious, and you can start here for flavour -
No comments:
Post a Comment