Speaker 1Shut up and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, MC, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you.
Speaker 2Hey, rock stars. Welcome back to the Being On Stage podcast. My name is Reggie Dawson. I'm your host, and thank you for tuning in, whether it's your first time or your 37th time. I appreciate you tuning in to the Being On Stage podcast. I started reading this sample of a book that I got on Amazon, you know, because that lets you sample some books on Kindle. So I get like a chapter of a book, see if I like it. I'm actually going to buy this book. It's called Art and Fear, The Perils and Rewards of Art Making. It's kind of interesting. I didn't think it was going to be interesting because I thought it was geared more towards like painting and drawing and sculpting and more of the visual arts, not as much performing art. But I found that a lot of the stuff already in the one chapter of the sample that I got really hooked me. So let me let me just give you a piece of what we're going to dive into. OK, this is a quote from this book. If art is made by ordinary people, then you'd have to allow that the ideal artist would be an ordinary person, too. With the whole usual mixed bag of traits that real human beings possess. Man, I'm going to break that down for you. But before I do, have you hooked up with me on social media? Have you joined our free Facebook group? Go to beingonstage.com slash group. It is absolutely free. I'm in there after every podcast, sometimes before and after every podcast. Adding tools and tips for you and every other performer that's in there. A lot of great people in there, networking and everything like that. Head on over to beingonstage.com slash group. It will get you in the free Facebook group. I mean, you can also search us on Facebook. It's called the being on stage group. Come join in. We'd love to have you. Also, you can follow me on Instagram at being on stage. And lastly, have you gone to our website and put your email in to subscribe to the Rockstar Lounge? If you haven't, you are really, really missing out. I give extra tips, extra tools after probably every other to every third podcast. Just last week, I sent out a piece of my trackbook. I sent out a piece of my training program that I'm in the middle of creating to help with facial expressions. So sign up and listen. You get little pieces of my training program I'm creating here and there. It's going to be amazing. Sneak peeks and all that good stuff. So back to this ordinary people being artists thing. I'm going to read that quote again. If art is made by ordinary people, which this book is basically saying that, you know, you have to be an ordinary person to be an artist. So if art's made by ordinary people, then you have to allow that the ideal artist. So the ideal artist, the one that you see in your head would also be an ordinary person with the whole usual mixed bag of human traits that real human beings possess. So real traits like, you know, the experiences and the passions and the dreams and the fears and the everything that makes up an ordinary human being. That's your ideal artist. Because another thing that's in this book that I found interesting. I'm so into this right now. Like I'm going to buy this book and probably read the whole thing. Tonight, in large measure, becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive. This basically is saying that you have permission to be yourself in order to be a successful artist. You have to be yourself in order to be a successful artist because your art is a portrayal of you. And this is the same thing when you hop on stage, when you become a performing artist. And it doesn't matter what you do. You heard the intro. I list off a whole bunch of different. But it doesn't matter what you do. Even if you want to be on stage, you have no idea what you're going to do. I believe in you because you're just like me. And we're artists. We're performing artists. We're going to get out there on that stage and we're going to give a piece of ourselves. I say it all the time. Leave a legacy on stage. And what that means is leave a piece of yourself. I spoke last episode about communication and how you need to communicate with the people that you're working with. But a big portion of communication. Is communicating with your audience. And yes, you know, past episode again. Facial expressions. Great way to communicate emotion to your audience. Another way to communicate to your audience is be yourself. Show them what your personality is like. You see it on social media all the time. Nowadays. Like the hottest thing right now for celebrities to do is to share photos and videos and little blurbs about their personal life. What's really going on with them. So, you know, you'll see like Miley Cyrus. Take a video of her puppy or something and like I'm just I'm not saying Miley Cyrus posted a video of her puppy. I'm just using it as an example, but you see these celebrities that will post, you know videos of things that they're actually doing. Like I saw a video of this belly dancers that I follow. She was at like the celebration for the Russians football team, but I'm an American. So we call it soccer but football team you see celebrities do it all the time and even on stage, you know, they share pieces of themselves the ones. If they're if you're a nerd be a nerd if you're a goof be a goof if you're really whatever you are, whatever if you have no label then go out there and just be yourself. You have to be able to be yourself on stage. I've talked about authenticity and that is one of the most important pieces of performing is being able to be authentic with your audience. My goal here is to be authentic with you. I share pieces of my past and pieces of what's going on in my life because of that authenticity factor. I remember when I really first started looking to perform. I really like I didn't think I could do it. I'm I didn't see myself as a performer. I didn't see myself as an artist. I didn't really didn't see myself as anything when it came to performing. I saw it as like pipe dream something that I could never have because I'm not a good singer. I'm not a good dancer and part of the reason I'm not a good singer or dancer truthfully. It's because I just didn't put in the work. But what I did find was that I really wanted to perform and it took me. A long time to find out how I can perform without singing or dancing or when you think about people performing on stage most of the people envision a singer a dancer or someone playing an instrument people don't envision what I did you don't envision you know burlesque was drag but performed as a guy like straight drag the point is I wanted to be a performer and it took me a long time to find out where I kind of fit and once I found my spot I made it for myself. I made it work for myself and I threw myself into it and it engulfed me and I was allowed to be myself in my art because I wasn't a good dancer and so I use it on stage and I'd be goofy and I'd be a little silly and I wasn't a good singer so the times that I didn't have a microphone I'd make jokes and you know sing badly on purpose now I'm moving on to even conquering more fears is one of my biggest fears has always been my own voice and now I'm podcasting and I'm working on becoming an MC. This is how you mold yourself into your career by just being who you are and in doing your art and in putting yourself into your performance you're going to see yourself start start to evolve and start to become this even better even more amazing artist that you don't you can't even imagine right now because you're stuck but you have to get unstuck you have to put yourself out there and you have to realize that you are just like the person that you are. You idolize the person that you look up to the most if you're a singer you're just like Beyonce you're just like Usher you're just like Madonna you're a normal ordinary person and these celebrities these people that you look up to they're the same as you the only thing that makes them special is they put in the work and they put themselves into their art and they saw that if they wanted this and this is something that they wanted that they were going to have to work at it and they were going to have to push themselves. And they were going to have to break through barriers that are scary putting yourself out there on stage putting yourself out there period is a scary thought but recognizing the fact that just because you are an ordinary person doesn't mean you can't do something extraordinary when you get on stage just by being yourself if this is something that you're interested in this is something that you really want to do and you really want to get yourself out there on stage and you're stuck by this fear this fear. Of putting yourself out there this fear of judgment and the fear of people what people are going to say or think or do go to my website put in your email address you're going to get a free copy of my e-book confidence on stage it's my gift to you to help you overcome the fear that I struggled with no artist should be afraid to display their art including performers because we are we're artists we mean we may not paint the Sistine Chapel and we may not. sculpt these amazing monuments but we put our soul into our performance and we share ourselves with the audience which is something no one else does is all the other art that you see the artist isn't present when the audience views it for performers our audiences right there in it with us keep on.
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