Part 1: Great entertainment is about leading an audience. You take care of them thru the whole experience. Leaders are powerful. Leaders think through everything for you.
Part 2: Everything that humans experience is a story. We are incapable of taking in new information or making sense of sensory input without attaching it to a story.
Combine Those Parts: Someone creating great entertainment must give the audience story. A strong, bold, story. Great entertainment overwhelms with story, so the audience can relax. Mediocre / generic entertainment leaves it up to the audience to go off on their own, this is not rewarding, and is possibly even isolating.
Story is in everything. Not just the narrative.
You go to a play and it’s people pretending to be different people in a different town, in a different time, where the passage of time is even different and probably the concept of time and space is different.
There’s a bigger story that envelopes this narrative. It’s the story of the entire world as you know it. You came from dinner. You’re sitting in a historic theater with a slight dusty smell. You know one of the actors from another play. You know that it rained outside today. There are a lot of other things you could be doing.
A great playhouse will overwhelm you with story. There’s messages about their mission, the concessions are fun, the building is grand or weird, the employees are wearing a uniform, the preshow is intentional, the choice of the play and the actors makes sense in that venue even. You get overwhelmed with meaning, personality, story. You are unified with the rest of the audience and on the path to accepting, and enjoying the narrative story.
The story is … we’re all here to play pretend. We’ve all come from different lives because we want something great. We are in the hands of capable people who do this because they’re passionate about sharing something great. They want to give to us. They want to take care of us. They are people like us. This is a tradition. This is tribal. This is amazing. We’re experiencing something historic and also something infinitely immediate.
Michael Rayner will shout a story into you
He enters the stage shouting. He’s either dressed like a used car salesman or Mr. Rogers’ cousin. He’s telling you how he’s old and fat and his daughters are costing him money for tutors. He’s calling out what’s in the room and how his wife is at a concert instead of being there to see him perform. It’s a lot. Then, he’s rolling a cheeseburger on a parasol; or flipping a tennis racket under a wheel barrow. This is a story of a man who loves to show you how ridiculous life is. There is no downtime. There is only a firehose of story.
Lamonte “Tails” Goode is a Magnet for your mind
There’s a vocabulary of only so many things a human body can do. Lamonte’s Cyberyoga is physical modern Shakespeare. Not only is it poetry with the vocabulary you’ve seen, but it invents.
He’s serious, contrary, familiar ( yoga / breakdance / modern dance / contortion ) and on a mission to do something. What is he trying to do? What’s important to him to express? Where’s he coming from? How does he have all these influences and what’s he going to do next?
It’s a story of mystery. It’s not “here’s a thing, figure it out.” It’s more “watch this and wonder!” from his costume, to his expression, to his gestures toward the audience, to his music choice. It’s a story of a man who wants you to see him and also leave you questioning.
Laura Michelle Hughes will flip the script
She’s a vapid singer songwriter, who gets way too far on her beauty. Then, she’s ditsy and annoying too. Then, she’s actually a good singer. Then, it turns out this was a parody of a songwriter. Then, okay, we get it — it’s a comedy song. Then, this is brilliant with an unusual perspective. Then, there’s no way there’s any more directions to go. Then, it goes further! This is a highly trained pro with comedy that doesn’t stop. And she’s hot (I’m married to her).
It’s a story of someone battling every assumption who wants to deliver perfection in entertainment with every moment. She doesn’t keep you guessing… She keeps you assuming and being wrong and it’s delightful and worth it!