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 Rockstars, Reggie Dawson here. Welcome back to the show and thanks for tuning in to the Being On Stage podcast. Listen, if you haven't done so already, could you go into iTunes and leave a 5-star rating and a comment on this podcast? It just helps other people find the show a little bit easier, a little bit faster. So listen, if it's cool, I'm just going to go ahead and dive right into what we're talking about today. I went and saw a performance a few weeks back and it was at a club atmosphere. So you know, it was dark inside. Spotlights and stage lights and everything going. And what happened when this performer came out on stage, they kind of appeared a little lost and a little unsure of what direction to go and where to move on stage. What I noticed was this performer just didn't really know where the audience was. And it's partially due to the spotlight. You know, a lot of times when you're performing, if you have the lights in your face, it makes it really difficult to see where your audience is. And you know, I got some, I got a little trick that I used to do. I'll tell you here in a few minutes. Every time you step on stage, you know, your adrenaline is going. And if you combine that with your nerves and then add on top of that a spotlight, you can have a couple of different scenarios happen when you go to perform for the audience. One, like in the case of the performer I saw, you know, the light was so blinding that she really didn't know where the audience was. So what she did was she just slowly gravitated towards the front, downstage, and she, she was real smart about it. She didn't go directly downstage center. She went a little bit off to the right a little bit just to make sure it wasn't so obvious. But being another entertainer myself and actually performing in that same venue with that same spotlight, I can kind of recognize what she was doing and what she was trying to do is get close enough to where she could see the silhouette or the outline of the audience. So she kind of knew where people were. What ended up happening is her focus was a lot on that section of the audience where she could see the most outlines or the most people. And she moved around the stage a little bit, but she kept going back to that section or she'd back up a little bit and perform just for that section. And unfortunately, this really alienates the rest of the audience. So with or without the spotlight, your intuition. You know, with those nerves and adrenaline going, your intuition is going to put you in front of where the most people are. That's just where you're naturally going to go. But again, alienates the rest of your audience. A lot of times when you're nervous, too, if you have friends in the audience, you'll gravitate to where your friends are and you'll perform for them. I've seen this a lot of times that like open mic nights or talent nights or talent shows is they'll, you know, the entertainer will perform for the audience as a whole. But the focus you can tell is on one. One particular section or one particular group of people. And there's a couple of ways to get around this, because when you put everything together, it's very easy to miss the opportunity to connect with the rest of your audience. And so I put together a little list of like five or six things that you can do when one of these situations happen to you. So just to review and listen, let me let me back way up. My name is Reggie Dawson. I'm a stage performance coach. I love everything about being on stage. And. My passion in life is to help other performers increase their confidence and turn their audience into their fans. And that's what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about how you connect with that audience to start that process of turning them into your fans at the club. I used to perform at there was long set of black curtains that would go across the back of the stage and behind those curtains. There was about a five foot space between the dressing room and the stage and in that space is where we would go to smoke our cigarettes because I. I used to be a smoker. It's where we would go to to meet up with people like if we need to have conversations with people in the crowd, they meet us in this little no man's land type of space. It's also where the entrance to the manager's office and the DJ booth was. So a lot of stuff went on in this little space. One of the coolest parts about this particular venue and then this particular space at one side and I want to say like stage left, actually, right by where the curtain met the wall. There was a mirror and if you parted the curtain just right away from the wall, you could hide yourself behind the curtain and use that mirror to see where the audience was. And I used to use this so that I knew where I needed to go when I got out on stage because I'm coming out of a curtain, you know, I don't I don't know what's out there. And immediately, as soon as I hit that stage, boom, spotlight right in my face. So if you have anything reflective or if you're able to part a curtain a little bit, you can kind of get a. Gauge of where your audience is at, so you know where you can go and where you should focus on once that spotlight hits you. Another cool tactic that I've used to kind of gauge where people are is I found a reason to to step out right before the show. And I don't really like doing it that way because I'm a I'm an outfit person and so I don't like to expose the outfit before I'm on stage. But in certain situations, that's the way I had to do it. And in some situations at other venues, I wasn't behind a curtain. So I actually had to enter through the crowd or enter from another another direction. But regardless what type of venue you're at, if you can get a peek at kind of where the crowd's at before you go on, it gives you a good gauge of where you can place yourself for the most impact. Listen, a couple episodes back, we talked about planning your show and blocking, and it's really important to plan and block your show. But you also need to be able to make, you know, spur of the moment decisions and changes if you notice. That maybe your audience is more on the left than the right. I've had a performance in which I choreographed everything to be like center and kind of to the right. And my audience was very heavy on the left. And it just it made it a little awkward. So I did my best to flip it. So another tactic and last tactic is, you know, have a spy or another performer that goes on before you kind of tell you where people are at. I've used this technique once or twice, and that's just when I just absolutely cannot. Get to the point of seeing the curtain. I've had someone come backstage and say, listen, there's a large group of people over to the right. There's a couple of small groups of people to the left. And in the center is kind of like no man's land. So I would focus on the left on the right and kind of just go through the center. So any of these tactics to find out where your audience is at is going to be helpful. Getting into some things you can do once you're on stage to make sure that you're connecting with all of your audience. Another mistake people make is they immediately go to the front to the people in the front. And I've seen this all the way from amateur performers all the way to, you know, multi-platinum recording artists. They immediately focus on the people out front. And listen, the people in the front, yeah, they paid the most money to be there. They're the most engaged. That's great. But that's not your entire audience. You have nine zones of your audience. And that center front, that's zone number one. But then you've got two and three on either side of that. Four, five, and six behind them. And seven, eight, and nine way in the back. You have to look and interact with all nine of those zones during your performance. A great way to do that is to move back from downstage. Move towards the more center line of the stage. It makes yourself a little bit bigger to help you communicate with those people in the back. I know it's weird that you back off a little bit to talk to the people that are further away. But it's not necessarily backing off. It's just removing yourself. It's just removing yourself from the people in the front so that you can project your connection to the people in the back. The other thing is, you know, focusing on that center group or even to the left or the right. You've got to get across the whole line. Left, right, center. Front to the back to the middle. As I'm going through this, it's probably going through your head. How in the world am I going to be able to connect with all these people? And that brings me to my fourth thing. Don't be afraid to leave the stage. There's no rule that says you have to stay on that stage while you're performing. Now, if you're restricted by wires or if you're restricted by choreography or I did enter a contest once where you were not allowed to leave the stage. Otherwise, you'd be disqualified. So unless you're restricted by something like that, leave the stage. Go out into the crowd. When you interact with one part of the crowd, like in the middle, like go behind the people up front and get in that middle section. The people in back will start to feel that pull to come and see what's going on. They'll start to feel that pull to see what you're all about. And that's the last thing is interacting with them. Don't be afraid and don't be shy. You know, these people are here for a reason. These people are here to see a show, interact with them, show them a good time. It's OK to say, hey, how are you doing? You look really nice tonight. It's OK to say these things to people. It's OK to you know, maybe you're singing a love ballad and it's OK to hold someone's hand. And really connect with them, make them feel like they're a part of the show. That's the biggest thing you can do to your audience is make them feel good. Make someone or a group of someones feel like they're a part of your show. And granted, that group of people may be your focus, but everyone in the audience will feel it. So I want to back up because I know I said two different things here. I said focus on this group of people and interact with them. But then earlier I said don't focus on one group of people. So I want to differentiate and I just realized that I sound like a hypocrite saying those two different things. So let me differentiate. When you are performing and when you are, I guess, showcasing and making your small, you know, your more general broad connections, you don't want to focus solely on one side or one group of people the entire time. But if you are doing a small piece of your performance and you are focusing on that small group or that individual, that's different. But then you immediately, you do retreat from them and go to another section. You don't stay there the entire time. And so that's the difference. The difference is the length of time and the amount of time and the performance that you're spending on one section of your audience or on one group or one interaction. If you're spending your entire performance interacting with the same group of people, you're losing the majority of your audience. Think about that. Even if it's your friends. So maybe you have a group of ten friends that came to see you and you want to show them a good time. That's great. But what about the rest of the people? Maybe they didn't come to see you. But you're losing an opportunity to win them over. And that's how you start turning your audience into fans. You have to win them over. And how do you win them over? You show them a connection and make yourself relatable. They need someone that they can relate to if they're going to become a fan. That's why all these artists have fan armies and all this stuff is because their fans relate to them in some way. Your audience has to be able to relate to you. And if you're not making a connection, you're not relatable. And the best way to do that is to show them a connection. And the best way to make the connection is get to all the audience zones. Hit zone one, zone four, zone nine. And I'm not going to give you some diagram on Instagram, although I did that a couple episodes back. It went really well. If you want some good stage techniques, check out Instagram at being on stage. I did post some stuff about how to use the stage and certain movement patterns you can use to engage your audience. But you also need to make sure that you hit those audience zones in the back. And again, I'm not going to share this on Instagram. To be honest with you, but I'm not planning on sharing this on Instagram. You got to make sure that you engage all of your audience. They came to see you. They want a good show. They want a good time. They want to be connected with. They want to be interacted with. That's why they're there. That's why people go to live performances is to interact and make a connection with a performer. And that's you. That's your job. Keep on rocking that stage. I'm actually building a training program. To help you on stage, build that connection with your audience, harness those nerves, increase your confidence and land more gigs and monetize your performing. So if you're interested in checking that out, head to being on stage dot com, put in your name and email. You'll get a free copy of the book that I published last year, but you'll also be on the pre notification list for my training program. If you want to get inside the being on stage community, you can do that on Facebook. We have a being on stage group you can get there easily. By going to being on stage dot com slash group. Once you're in there to ask you a couple of questions just to help me get to know you a little bit better. And then when you're in there, you get the motivation Monday video. You get the Wednesday drive time deep dive into the motivation. And starting this week, you get the Friday video, which I haven't named yet. But by Friday, I'm going to have a name for this video that I'm going to do. But it's going to be more of a training and more of that focus on connecting with your audience and using the. Stage less on motivation and more on the actual act of performing, which you got to do it all. You got to stay motivated. You got to stay inspired. You got to be confident. You got to connect with your audience and you got to put yourself out there repeatedly over and over and over and over and over again. And after all that, he says, keep on shining.
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