My passion is to help others in the community, young, old, and everyone in between, find relevance and joy in learning, performing or listening to classical music.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Audience participation? What?? We have to do something???

This is a fabulous post that I think should be read by everyone who attends concerts, art gallery openings, plays, and the like.  I agree with Ms. Saathoff's sentiments...it can be very deflating to give out all of your energy in a performance, walk off stage, and then have to just walk out of the concert hall alone, without any interaction from the audience.  It really makes you wonder if what you do makes any difference at all. 

Thanks for the consideration!

http://gretchenspianos.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/meet-the-performer/

2 comments:

  1. hi erica,

    thanks for this post! i read over gretchen's post and i agree that it would be great to engage with the audience more, but i don't think that is the audience's job--it's our job as performers to reach out to them. they bought the tickets and made the effort to come out to see us play, so it's the performer's job to market/advertise themselves. having a 'you come to me' mentality won't help, in my opinion.
    i guess it depends on the situation, because when you're big, obviously people want to go backstage! but if you're still new i think it really helps to take the initiative to go out and talk to people.

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  2. I think you make a great point. Sometimes I even wonder why the performer even walks off stage at the end of the performance in the first place. Wouldn't it be refreshing if he or she chose to just hang out on stage or even just walk out into the audience and greet people or thank people for coming. Hmmm...I sense a blog post topic. Thank you!

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