I have a baby and a dog. They need “yes” space. As much as possible, we try to keep them in areas where they can do no wrong. I can leave pieces of plastic wrapper on the floor and yell “no!” at the dog every time he goes near it, or I can pick up that piece of plastic.
I love “yes” spaces for me, too. I like it when I can do no wrong, or at least where I know the rules. It’s fun to go to precious places, but generally, I’d rather be in a dive bar than a snooty restaurant because I’m less likely to get judgemental looks or booted out.
Master entertainers create “yes” spaces for their audiences. We make it as clear as possible what’s expected, and make it easy to attain a rewarding experience. We light up the stage. We darken the audience. We don’t give the crowd swivel chairs.
It takes a lot of forethought to make space yessable, but that effort is exponentially paid back with a collaborative audience.
Let’s do better. Let’s think about what we “no” and take it away, or make a “yes” alternative. This article is related.
prereq: everything that we learn / remember is tied to a story.
I loved the power of the story of being a street performer. I was a punk kid on the street shouting at people walking by, then 30 minutes later was surrounded by 300 strangers cheering for me and giving me money… Almost like rags to riches in real life. I got from point A to point B with nobody’s help, using only my wit and will. It’s not a totally true story, but it was a great one that I got to share with thousands and thousands of people.
When I got on stage, my story was that I was wild and energetic, but the audience wasn’t really sure if I knew what I was doing. After some stumbles, I eventually made a show that was insanely successful. People would come up to me after the show remarking how it all worked out. They would ask me how long I’d been performing and would be surprised that I had lots of stage time. Seasoned pros knew I didn’t just luck out that night, but the normal audience member got to enjoy that story.
When we watch AGT, we see it’s not about the best trick, it’s about the best story. And that story needs to be happening right there on stage at the moment. We want to see someone changed.
This can be a difficult balance for someone who wants to present consistency. It’s tough to connect with an audience through some thread of authenticity, but also change in front of their eyes. We can’t completely change who we are every single time create. All it takes is a dedication to thinking, “How can I elevate the contrast between how I’m (or my character is) perceived at the beginning and at the end.
I street performed for 4 years. I met a lot of beggars. A beggar says “Spare a dollar?” They don’t say “Spare a dollar, or you know I need socks, or give me some food, or your subway card, or treat me with some respect.” It’s clear and it’s simple and it works.
A single call to action is aggressive
Asking for one thing is direct. It might feel intense to ask someone directly for one thing. That aggression and directness can create a tension that drives action from the askee.
A single call to action is bold
Being direct is a responsibility for the asker. On the flip side, that responsibility is a relief to the askee. We follow boldness. We assume that a bold person is to be followed / responded to.
A single call to action is rewarding
When a friend tells me their favorite flower, I know I can get them that flower and receive positive feedback. It’s a simple game. When we ask someone for one thing, they know what they need to do; and if they think it’s an attainable goal, it will be a joyful little journey.
Ask shrapnel sucks
Due to insecurity, or lack of direction, or general excitement, we can sometimes have trouble asking for one thing. We end up giving people a wishy-washy, uninspiring, unfulfilling, situation. We don’t get what we want, and we end up burdening them with the responsibility of decisions and rejection.
We might think we’re hedging our bets when we ask someone to subscribe to one of 4 social media platforms, or buy a ticket, or get a book, or give us a call… but we’re doing them a disservice.
Pick a thing. Doesn’t have to be the most important thing. If it’s important, ask for it.
We’re possibly getting back to doing shoulder-to-shoulder live shows. I mean, responsible producers are getting back to it. Some people never stopped.
People talking about “returning to normal” always made me feel creepy MAGA vibes. I don’t want anything to return to normal. I don’t want anything to return to anything. We’ve come thru a year and we’ve learned a lot and grown a lot as a civilization. We made and released a vaccine in less than a year! We changed so much stuff about the world! Here’s some stuff that I hope happens coming up for entertainment…
Online entertainment gets better. We’ve had a chance for online entertainment to grow at warp speed since the lockdown. I think online video platforms will have more ways to interact, I think online entertainment will tap into other styles of content (like Clubhouse).
2. Hybrid gets better. Most stage shows will develop a streaming option. Streaming will be a different experience, but still valid for so many remote people.
3. Showbiz companies will get more efficient. It’s gonna be forced on us to find how to use remote workers, streamline casting, automate more, and find alternatives to old processes.
4. Being “the best” will be different. As the world gets more accessible and “content” becomes less valuable, audiences will know their options better than ever before. The best entertainment anyone can find will not necessarily be the best for everyone, or even the best for any of their friends. We’ll be able to find what works for us as individuals and we’ll feel like we deserve it. This will not eliminate group activities, but will make the group activities more about the group and less about the activity.
5. Customization will be crazy. We’ll start looking for customization, interaction, personalization, and malleability in everything. Someone’s going to be willing to provide it and we’re gonna know that we can look for it.
6. Audiences will have a toughness. It won’t necessarily be the case that audiences will be more difficult, but they know more now. They know what they can survive, and what they want better than before. They also know their own resiliency and this might lead to a confidence to not follow old patterns.
7. Everyone will be more prepared. Audiences and creators will be prepared for more pandemic type stuff. We’ll be watching out and figuring out how to enjoy precious moments, but looking around the corner.
8. Generous creators will thrive. People are being called out for who they are. We as a society are no longer trusting that someone in the spotlight is necessarily spotless. Generous creators who are sensitive to others and want to improve the world will be seen for their hearts. It will be obvious and they will be rewarded with the chance to give more.
9. Everyone will be used. There will be many people uplifting marginalized groups. We will spread privilege out and encourage all members of the world to participate and joyfully share what they have. Entertainment will finally get the guts to lead the way in more racial and other diversity — first as a consumer response, then as a social response, and finally a default economic response. We can all make more progress when everyone’s a part of it. Because of this, we’ll hear new voices and our entertainment will become more human and honest.
A great comedian knows when to get off the stage. Get the big laugh and scram. “Leave them wanting more” is the phrase, but it’s really not the strategy. Leave them satisfied. Don’t ask them for more.
Same in sales. People try to get booked by me and they keep giving me promo materials. A lot of them.
Here are my three videos.
Here’s my resume.
Would you like a ticket to my show?
Please look thru my entire website when you have a chance.
My mother will be calling you tomorrow.
It’s not likely that I’ll refuse to book someone because they give me too much, but it will change the interaction.
A booker wants to hear “I’m perfect”
All gatekeepers are waiting for is, “I’m the right fit for this job and here’s the exact proof.” A publisher doesn’t need to see a writing sample and know what our grades were in middle school English class. When we tell a gatekeeper exactly what they want to know and it’s honest, we…
Get out of our way
Give them peace of mind
Show that we respect their time and bandwidth
Look more like specialists, and less like jack-of-all-trades
Save ourselves time and energy
Foreshadow a good working relationship
All of this stuff is worth money to clients.
Minimize down to the crucial
At the start of my career, an agent told me that she could book people easier on a phone call than if she sent out all the videos and websites of her acts. This baffled me at the time because I loved advertising and marketing. I thought there’s no way that she could describe a juggler’s act on the phone as well as a video could express. I was right and she was right. The thing was, she didn’t have describe the juggler’s act or costume or anything else. She just had to tell the client how that juggler serves the clients needs.
Showing a picture of the juggler could trigger a red flag like “that juggler looks like my mean uncle!” or “that juggler’s costume doesn’t look like they’re top-shelf!” These false red flags don’t serve the client or the act.
Fulfilling purchase
Conveying simple value also results in our clients feeling good about their purchase. Everything that happens after the booking is in the context of that high value. They got a great deal, and everything that we do after that is a bonus.
My son, Arlo, is 12 months old today. I was thinking it would be really cool if I had some amazing lesson I’ve learned or some story that relates to fatherhood and entertainment.
I can’t think of something like that.
Life of a father in quarantine hasn’t been simple and distant. It hasn’t been a cute thing that easily falls into a neat quip. It’s been wonderful and complex and way more engaged with my heart than my intellect. My main audience for comedy has been my wife and kid and that has been marvelous and rewarding.
He’s taken away so much of my ego and my need to be in control. He’s helped me understand how much more I don’t understand. He’s helped me take love and generosity more seriously while taking poop and planning less.
He’s been like a vacation. I feel less attached, less ambitious, less hustle. I feel a relaxed motivation and anticipation toward enjoyment.
I was thinking I would be pulled to define his personality and his trajectory in life, but I really see him as a blank slate. He’s just who he is and that is constantly changing. I hope that I can see more people this way, including myself.
I hope he can see me on stage this year and I hope he understands that his mom and I love to give joy to people.
Variety arts like mime, juggling, and magic are viewed by many entertainers as a crutch. Real comedians don’t need a guitar to get on stage. Real musicians don’t need jokes. Real story-tellers don’t need to converse with a doll.
These concepts are valid, but not very important.
We don’t need to identify as a genre
Genres are good for simplifying the promise that we make to our audience. They give us a shorthand for what we will provide and who we serve, but they will never clarify what we do or how we do it. The best stuff bends genres and goes above and beyond our expectations.
So, for this reason, George Carlin doesn’t need to be a real standup. He can call himself a standup so he has a venue and it will get people in the door. Then, he can give them poetry, stories, and whatever else he thinks will be entertaining.
Crutches are a thing we rely on for support
Yeah. A juggler relies on their juggling, but that is by design just like a mechanic relies on a wrench. Variety artists make a commitment to rely on things but “crutch” in a derogatory sense doesn’t apply very well because that would imply an ignorance of the “crutch”s importance. A trapeze act is not saying, “I could do this just as well without the ropes!”
A comedy juggler writes jokes and demonstrates skills. So, while they might not have the tricks of a serious juggler, or the jokes of a standup it’s still possible for them to get bigger laughs than a lot of standups and bigger applause than a serious juggler by combining skills. This is true for me. I would dominate standup shows and get standing ovations among jugglers. I chose the combo because it was the best way for me to bring the power to audiences the way I wanted.
A handyman is extremely useful to certain people. They would prefer someone who can fix everything to someone who is only a plumber.
Variety arts are weird
I love variety arts for the same reason I love musicals. They are so unnatural. They set up a scenario where I’m trying to communicate with an audience, but the vehicle is so ingenuine that socio-typical behaviours can be ignored and we can get to the heart of how we’re all connected. Get rid of what’s “natural” and get into the supernatural nature of humanity.
When performing on the street, I realized that I could make people laugh the whole show, but if I made them clap more, I would get more money.
Some theories on this phenomenon…
people thought if they clapped more they saw better stuff
it was a way of getting feelings engaged in the body
when you support something, you fall in love with it
the cue and response cycle of doing something and getting applause was rewarding
A lot of times entertainers think “they clapped because they had fun” but when I’m in a more helpful mindset, I think, “how can I get them to clap so that they have fun?”
Obviously you don’t want to tell people over and over to clap…
… but there are a million ways to give the crowd signals even when they’re not having fun.
I think they all kind of apply, but 4th is the strongest reason to work on getting more applause. I want entertainers to be leaders and guide the audience through every show.
Not everyone is suffering. Some people are thriving.
Same with businesses.
Business can move fast. Panera created a curbside grocery service at all their stores in 14 days
People can move slowly. Everyone’s dealing with psychological, geographical, and organizational issues from a quickly changing world. Schedules get changed a lot and that’s okay.
People are creating entertainment online. A lot of it.
Most stage performers moved to livestreaming shows, creating on-demand content, social media content, teaching, or writing to make money.
Many entertainment pros have been digging in to projects they have put off that are maybe truer to their hearts.
Entertainment screws up when it is approached from “how do we modify what we’ve done?” Instead of “what will the audience experience?”
In the newly, truly global economy every business needs to niche more than ever.
Information is not worth very much.
Conversations are worth a lot.
Most people feel like frauds. They don’t understand how valuable they are.
Most people are trying to offer a small part of themselves.
Most people think they need to convince the world that they’re valuable.
Making someone smile is incredible
Zoom entertainment is a different tempo than stage shows and different from TV
Doing something new means being one of the best in the world instantly.
Changing context takes a lot of energy.
People don’t want to ask for help, but they want to be helpful.
The popular things that can be bought from China will be better every three months.
Mindsets are usually better to practice than skills.
People started doing live interactive streaming entertainment. Suddenly, the small town performer who dominated her 40 mile radius was in competition with the world. Local performers from everywhere could do shows for her area and might be better… and might be cheaper.
This shift also affected the world-traveling entertainers in a weird way. Just like the local acts used to be specialists (the best fire eater you can afford in Pooptown, MA), the big acts were specialists (an act worth flying in). Everybody needs to fit a budget and needs to feel like the best available option.
“Experience” changed
Although there’s some experience from stage that rolls over to screen, people doing shows online are not able to bring all of their stage skills to the Zoom window.
“Budget” changed
Some online events became lower-stakes moments as online meetings, some became higher-stakes global playgrounds. So, the money allocated to entertainment shifted tectonically.
“Quality” changed
Many people got really lax with what quality needed to happen. Folks began accepting that things online would not be as good. Other people started looking at the leaders of the medium and wanting that — even though it might be out of their “budget”
Be best
The response to this situation is still for us to be the best choice for the exact people we want to serve. That might mean that we have completely different clients. That might mean that we change what we do completely. That might mean that we get back to the woodshed. That does not mean that we keep trying to do the same thing we did and hope that someone saves us.
When our main project is in our mission, we don’t need side projects.
I have been an explorer for a long time. I’ve learned a million skills, tried a million types of entertainment and I am here to tell you some of it works.
What doesn’t work is side projects.
Side projects are things we do in order to feed a certain part of us. Let’s say we love comedy writing and that’s what we want to do with our life, but we miss the stage, so an improv troupe is formed to do free shows… or at least shows that don’t earn anyone a reasonable rate. We might be drawn into doing something like this subconsciously because we…
are not feeling fulfilled in our main project
want a cop-out from achieving / not achieving our real goals
are not pursuing enough self-care
These are big problems with lots of facets. Before we try to fix, let’s look at what we’re not talking about…
A hobby is not a side project
A hobby is something we do to get away from work. It’s probably best not being in any way related to the work thing itself. It’s a way to rest and enjoy problem solving with low stakes. It’s self care. Hobbies (and everything else in life) can inform our work, but the power of a hobby is that it has a strong mental delineation for us and gives us a vacay.
If we’re thinking, “hey this hobby thing could lead to something big!” We’re hobbying wrong.
An experiment is not a side project
An experiment in our main project is a planned test to increase our results in that main project. To make it work, it needs constraints, goals, hypotheses and monitoring. It’s work.
Dissolve side projects by improving our mission
If we aren’t solid on our mission, or our mission is limiting us so much that we need to diverge; we might need to reexamine what our mission is. We might need to talk it through with some people and get clearer on what would make us feel fulfilled if we worked on it our whole lives.
Dissolve side projects by changing our main project
Maybe our main project isn’t on our mission. Let’s examine that. Let’s figure out what part of that project isn’t feeding us.
Dissolve side projects by changing our mindset
Sometimes it’s as easy as reminding ourself why we’re on this mission, why this project is a worthy next step, and the expected result of this work.
Dissolve side projects by adding accountability
Checking in with people who allow for candor and don’t allow for cheating ourselves gives us the opportunity to stay on task. If the mission is right and the project is right, all we have to do is keep on going.
Jeremy Carberry likes stepping into the unknown of nature, but now he’s stepping into the unknown of entertainment. He’s been behind the scenes a lot, but now he wants to scratch his own itch and make a podcast that he thinks must be heard.
