Audiences South

Small stage musicals

James — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:01:15 +0000

Have you thought about enacting a musical in your theater and then thought that your rooms might be to small for it. If so, then maybe you should reconsider it. The effect of musical on a smaller scale can be absolutely impressive. You just have to “work” with the small scales of the theater to create a special and unique atmosphere. The intensity of this atmosphere might even be greater than those of a big opera house.

Musical production © by ☺ Lee J Haywood

The shift in room size will allow you to provide the audience with a totally new musical experience. Of course, you will not be able to use bombastic special effects. Instead try to realize an imaginative staging that breathes through innuendos. The songs of ensemble will vastly change their mood and will develop a totally new personal touch. Some members of your audience might become more fond of this kind of musical than of the larger ones that appear overproduced in comparison.

You will observe one small scale musicals that the focus shifts away form the songs of solo artists to the numbers that involve the ensemble. While a large theater only lets you see the ensembles as an ensemble you will now perceive it as a mulch-faceted entity full of depth and surprises. Of course, you will have to react to these shifts and choose musicals that work as an ensemble piece. This also means that your small theater will not have to compete with the larger houses, but provides a unique and personal program with its own audience instead.

Develope a voice

James — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:00:34 +0000

A stage performance might be outstanding but if it not heard it is wasted. Everyone who will perform something on a stage or who is going hold a speech or presentation will need to train his voice accordingly. Especially, long performances or speeches demand a balanced voice that allows speaking loud and pleasantly sounding without getting tired or damaging the vocal chords.

choir © by zoetnet

It always takes quite a lot of time to develop a great voice. But eventually you will have a consistent voice that does not wear out. However, you will have to consider some basic rules of vocal health, do not neglect your daily training, develop some technique and avoid vocal abuse.

Vocal health can be achieve by things a simple as staying healthy in general. Eat healthy food and avoid sugar, highly salted dishes and fast food. Instead eat more fresh foods and citrus fruits. Herbal teas are very beneficial as well. The most important thing is drinking lots of water and getting enough rest. Dehydration is one of the worst things that can happen to vocal performers. The tone, range and loudness of your voice will suffer dramatically if you forget drinking enough of water.

You also must not forget your daily exercises. Especially tongue and lip drills on a scale will help you to improve your voice. They will even help you to undo some bad customs that you began to follow while speaking or singing.

Then you have to develop some technique. I won’t give you advice for this. Get a teacher!

Finally, never abuse your voice. Know your limits and avoid screaming at loud events!

Difficult Audiences

James — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:14:12 +0000

There can be several ways an audience might make you uncomfortable and distract you: it can be unresponsive, restless or even angry. However, there are ways to deal with those kind of audiences. You should always be calm and consider, that the reasons for the audiences’ behavior probably don’t lie in your person, but in things like the subject of the speak or even banal things like to much heat or bad air in the room.

Audience at Humanities Theatre © by batmoo

If your audience does not respond in the way you expected them to (e.g. after jokes or point you think are of special importance) you should not try to pause you speech. Instead you can try to slow down a bit. In many cases speakers speak to fast to let the audience follow. In other cases the audience loses its concentration because the speech is to long or it is one of many speeches they have heard on that day. If this is the case, there is not much you can do about it instead of being aware that it is not your fault.

If your audience seems restless or are disturbed by people coming late are leaving early it might be a good idea to make short pauses in your presentation. This will help your audience not to miss vital parts of you speech and keeps them from losing interest after that.

If your audience is angry because it disagrees with you it is usually best to finish your speech and debate the topic afterward. If you always let yourself be interrupted by questions you probably won’t be able to present your point. Only if nothing else is possible you might turn your speech into a debate. However, this demands that you can improvise and alter your speech. It also means that you need to compromise, because you will have to drop some parts of your speech.

Understanding Your Audience

James — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:28:04 +0000

For any cultural organization it is of fundamental importance to understand how and why their audience acts in specific ways. This process begins with analyzing who your audience actually is. Once you understood who to talk with it is important to communicate your ideas.

Most people would give cultural activities a chance if they just had spoke before with the curators, directors and artists. This way they would have experienced the enthusiasm and passion that drives the people behind the art. The problem herein can be found in the limited resources of budgets and time to effectively communicate with audiences. But only then you can understand the diversity and complexity of your audience and understand their feelings, thoughts, expectations and wishes.

Find out whether your audience enjoys you events or whether the cleanliness of your bathroom pleases them. Surveys will help you finding out what customers like and dislike about your event and what they would like in the future.

It is also extremely helpful to create maps that show where your customers live. On such a map you can determine from which kind of neighborhoods your customers come from, how far they live away from your event and whether they come in groups or alone. You can also spot areas where nobody or only few customers come from and act accordingly. Understanding the geographical distribution of you audience helps you defining your market.

In order to collect a valid set of reliable data it is most advisable that you box office utilizes a computerized database. You can then combine this data with common access statistical data to create profiles of your audience. Usually, an audience consists of several segments of people that share the same profile. Such profiling enables you to address you audience in the most effective way.