We gotta move! Our own decision fatigue can be holding us back from giving our audiences what they need.
When I go to a restaurant with friends, the most important thing to me is the friends. I know if I spend all day looking through the menu options I will…
Spend a lot of time reading
Try to pick the very best option
Get perfectionistic about it
Still not know what’s the best one based on reading
Second guess my decision
Maybe regret my choice
My usual technique instead is to look at the menu. When I see something that looks good, I stop reading and choose that.
My work is done.
If it’s a bad choice, i don’t regret it because I didn’t have my heart in it.
I’m just enjoying the food and not thinking about whether it’s good enough.
I’m spending my energy on my friend connection instead of the food.
I don’t look longingly at what other people got.
I think it’s helpful to examine how many of our decisions can be about good, not perfect. How many decisions can we just choose to check off the list and let them go. Ed Catmull (of Pixar) in Creativity Inc says something about the creative process being millions of decisions. Let’s make those things easy on ourselves if possible.
With everyone developing more of a social consciousness, and with our society making opinions more and more important, there’s a ton of flack going around.
Flack means nothing
I’m not really into taking unsolicited feedback. It’s usually off track. I love getting solicited feedback from people who know what I’m doing.
Flack usually comes from a person’s personal yearning instead of from their desire to help.
With Boobietrap we got a lot of flack for different things because we were available to a lot of people. We also got some flack probably because we were doing things in new ways.
Most of the content of the flack was valid and sensible from the flacker’s perspective. We even got flack for not including enough women or diverse people in some of the shows. Just because they were right didn’t mean we wanted to listen to it.
We didn’t respond
The best way to respond to flack is to listen and let them know that they were heard. Getting defensive, justifying, or any other response is not usually very effective.
I didn’t want to make changes to things because of flack. I wanted to make changes to things because of intention. We did respond to the diversity issue in Boobietrap, but we didn’t respond to the flack. We responded to the issue before we got the flack.
Organizations and individuals who respond to flack are too late.
We all need to work from our intentions. What do we want? Sticking to our intentions, though it takes responsibility, gives us power and gives us a voice. When we got flack for our business model, or our time limit, or our booking style, or our whatever, we knew that people may be responding to why we’re different, but we’re different on purpose. That’s the point.
I make fun for a living, but I don’t want to hear it when I’m buckling down to make something happen. It’s so hard to accept my advisors saying to find joy, to live life, to savor sweetness when I have stuff I NEED to get done.
The helpful vibe is fun. When we’re getting serious, we’re getting slow. I don’t want to hear it in the moment. I want to hear a practical system for total control of the situation.
One of the problems I have with the word “Creativity” is that it is often used to mean boundless imagination. People think they don’t have it, or they think they need to be freed from bounds to achieve it. What it really is is making stuff. Creating. And if we’re waiting or shaming ourselves, we’re not making.
Creativity (Making) Happens when we’re solving problems
The problem is, sometimes there aren’t enough problems. If we are free to imagine a lot of stuff we can do, it’s paralysing. Our brain is looking for the problem to solve and there is not clear problem.
We need to make things concrete. Let’s say we have to write a book, but we don’t have a budget, a deadline, a topic, an audience, page count, or a genre. Most likely we’ll be glad to have the freedom, but will quickly feel put on the spot.
The easiest solution is to make limitations. When someone says they want to make a new stage act and they ask me how to start, I say “which show do you want your stage act to go in? ” If they want it to work in Scot Nery’s Boobietrap for example, they’ll immediately be dammed up. They’ll know…
stage size
ceiling height
setup needs to be easy
it has to have a certain aesthetic
it probably won’t be expensive to perform
it will not require lighting changes
and a million more things
You might call these limitations or problems or puzzles. Whatever they are, if our projects are boundaryless, they’re not projects. They’re messes and it’s very hard to feel fulfilled in them.
Stefan Haves is a master of this
Creating clown bits is pretty limitless. Clowns are not restricted to even logic, so anything goes. Stefan is really good at just getting something going. He doesn’t care about making something good at the beginning. He knows he’ll make it good later. He just has to make SOMETHING to start. So, when he’s directing, he’ll just say “Walk over there, pick up that box. Cry into it. Then pull out a pickle, sit down and eat it.” Those actions don’t matter very much. They’ll probably change later, but it gets the clown working, making, and moving. Then, the clown has the challenge of “How can I make this little action of eating a pickle funny?”
The original pattern are just the lines on the sport field. Those lines are boring and bland, but that doesn’t make the game boring — theres still a lot that can happen in that game. At the same time, the game wouldn’t be fun without those lines.
This is the annual time for my facebook friends to post about how we all need to support local businesses or small businesses. This is my annual time to ask small business owners to find more ways to support their customers. This is way more important.
Our businesses are community services. We are here to do some good work. That’s why we get fulfillment from what we do. The more we serve the more fulfillment we get. We will not get more fulfillment from people charitably giving us business for things they don’t want.
As we find new ways to serve, we also get more security for our pursuits because we’re able to get exponentially more revenue and impact in the world.
It’s a generous thing to create a casting breakdown when asking an entertainer to do a job. A breakdown lists the details of the gig as thoroughly as possible so that a potential hire can imagine the entire job.
HERE’s an example
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to submit for this job, send an email to scot@scotnery.com. please send a photo and a few line resume (just like three to five career highlights). Please also, let me know what your break schedule would be for a gentle two hour gig.
HOLIDAY PARTY For staff of The Los Angeles Natural History Museum
Dec 13 at the Natural History Museum (LaBrea tar pits)
Circus Themed
5:15 – 7:15pm … call time 4:15pm
250 guests 5000 sq ft
Scot will be there juggling and making sure we all have dressing room and the basic needs
CLOSE UP MAGICIAN – Walking around the event and doing tricks for small groups of guests. Looking a little circus-y is a bonus
TWO STILT WALKERS – Looking circus-y having fun interacting with the guests
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It takes some time upfront
It takes some time to think about all the details, but it gives performers an easy opportunity to say yes. It also let’s the performers know that we’re not trying to trick them or rip them off or something — that we truly care.
I want to keep reiterating we are not lazy. We are doing great. It comes up in so many conversations with creators. Things are hard to do. It takes a bunch of jelly beans to do what look like straightforward tasks. Simple things are not easy. Here’s a story to illustrate. It’s not a good story.
We have a certificate given to us by the Mayor to celebrate our marriage. A prized possession. The glass on the front of the frame cracked in our move and we didn’t hang it. For months, I didn’t get the glass replaced. It sat in the garage. I have finally replaced the glass and it’s ready to be hung… Now, we need to figure out where.
I was thinking today if the glass broke again, it would be okay because I could just replace it again. Then, I realized how much stuff had to happen for it to be easy this time…
find a place to put the frame while it’s broken so glass doesn’t get somewhere dangerous
find out where the local frame stores are
find out what price it is to fix it
measure the frame (get out the measuring tape and put it away again and stuff)
look at the frame to see if it’s easy to repair DIY
search online to see if that size of glass is for sale on its own
find a place locally that sells the glass
find it’s at home depot
go to home depot
figure out which isle it’s in
buy it
wash the glass
install the glass
remove the finger prints
If i did that again, I would be prepared to do some of it and the rest I wouldn’t have to repeat.
That’s a lot of stuff. That’s why it took months for me to get around to it.
This task “replace glass on marriage frame” took up one small line on my long todo list.
Scot Nery’s Boobietrap occured every Wednesday for five years, so we ran into some holidays. We didn’t stop for Fourth of July or Christmas or Halloween. Ticket selling gets weird with all the holidays. So, we gotta think about the experience of the ticket buyer.
Gasp! Another post about empathy! In line with that, I’m writing here about my own singular perspective on holidays. if I were trying to sell tickets to Hindus, I don’t know much about them, so I would definitely do some research so I’m in their heads.
With a regular show, we probably execute it on the weekend, because that’s most appropriate. When we get close to a holiday that our audience will celebrate, we need a compelling reason for choosing which day. I say “will celebrate” because tis’ also possible to throw an event for a group that is decidedly not celebrating that holiday as an anti-holiday show, or who ignores that holiday.
There are non-public-event holidays
Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Labor Day are usually (in my circles) holidays where people have private gatherings with family and friends. If someone is planning to go to a private event, or they feel the need to go to a private event, or they feel left out because they don’t have a private event; they’ll probably not want to buy a ticket.
There are public event holidays
New Years Eve, Halloween, and Saint Patty’s are examples where people are expected to go out to something wild.
There are either way or nothing holidays
Holidays like the Superbowl, Cinco De Mayo might be examples of holidays where people (that I know) are not expected to do any specific kind of celebrating.
Holiday Shows Must Respond
The show has to be on deliberate dates and it has to respond to the celebrated holiday how the audience wants to respond to it.
The thinking
If the ticket buyer is gonna go to a public event in the same week as a show, they probably don’t want to go to the show. They have already spent their money for that week, they’ve already used their good shirt that week.
If the ticket buyer has other options (and the probably do) for the holiday event, they have to have a really important reason that event is good. There is only one day a year to celebrate Halloween for real.
Show dates adjacent to non-public-event holidays could be good on theme.
Thanksgiving is a weird one because it’s not really much of a thing in itself.
It’s good to do a Christmas show starting around Thanksgiving because although people have plans, their plans are not substantial and will most importantly have their family coming to visit. The family needs something to do. This is probably not a time you want to have an adults-only show in the midwest.
Holiday parody shows are pretty sucky
It’s hard to do a Christmas show that makes fun of Christmas. A lot of people have tried. Who is that for? Who really needs to buy a ticket to see someone make fun of a holiday? Someone might need a ticket for a pleasant Christmas show where they can check off on their holiday list that they did a holiday activity. We can make that show and make it fun or weird in our own way.
Quick weird lifehack: when I think, “Why is this thing such a big deal to me?” I change the question to “How do I think this thing is gonna kill me?” If something’s big emotionally, I can usually reduce it down to survival.
Examples:
Having trouble writing an email to a booker
1) I will say the wrong thing 2) I will not get the gig 3) I will not get money 4) I will never get money 5) I will starve 6) I will die
I am afraid of criticism
1) If I get criticized, that means I did something wrong 2) if I do something wrong, I won’t be loveable 3) I will be rejected by everyone 4) no one will every help me with anything 5) I will die
I am angry about dog poop outside my home
1) people are inconsiderate and irresponsible 2) I cannot control them 3) I cannot control the world 4) chaos is coming to kill me 5) I will die
Upset that someone cut me off in traffic
1) people are crazy 2) I’m probably crazy 3) I make mistakes all the time 4) I’m a danger to myself 5) I’m going to die
Making it simple makes it silly
I like it because that’s how my animal brain is working and my animal brain doesn’t have to run my life. I can say, “I’m not going to die if I don’t purchase the most cost-effective toilet paper.” and I can move on. My mind is trying to protect me and that’s great, but I can give it a break and get stuff done.
They say that everything you want is outside your comfort zone, and I agree, but I don’t think “comfort” gives it enough credit. We’re trying to stay non-corpse here!
Setting up a performance space is a deep craft that is incredibly effective and affective. Even experienced entertainment pros think that we just gotta setup some chairs facing a platform and we’re good.
I recently did shows at a resort and the room was not set up right. I got there early and helped rearrange the seats so they were more conducive to a great performance. This made me feel more in showbusiness than anything else.
Here are a bunch of random thoughts…
We were constantly making tweeks to the environment at Boobietrap. Just little things that changed bigger things. Chairs don’t need to always be lined up straight. eg: If I showed up for a punk rock show and there were a bunch of chairs there, I’d be confused.
Audience needs to be close to the stage unless the performance is supposed to be removed like in opera / ballet.
If the chairs are secure and lined up straight, but the show is unhinged in some way or the doors at the back of the room are not closed, this makes the audience feel more uncomfortable than if the chairs are arranged more communally.
The stage usually needs to be bright and the audience dark. Bringing up lights on the audience, takes them out of sheep mode. It can be useful sometimes for more participatory entertainment, but not usually.
Having the audience be well lit just so the performer doesn’t have to deal with the bright stage lights is pretty crappy.
Temperature being low encourages a responsive audience. They won’t subconsciously feel like minimizing their activity like clapping and laughing.
Vents blowing on the audience, making the room breazy is destabilizing. Usually this isn’t helpful.
Low ceilings are usually better for comedy than grand rooms.
We usually want the whole audience close to the stage. The way to do that is make the front row as wide as possible. Performances in the round (like a circus) mean that there are more people close to the stage. This isn’t always practical of course.
Fog machines create volumetric lighting which can change a room a lot without more decor
Having more aisles for walking is good for convenience, but not good for proximity or audience members to each other. Also, if an audience member feels less like they could easily get up, it might be good to subdue them and get them in sheep mode.
The goal is comfortable enough. The goal is not comfort. This is entertainment.
Dirty, unkempt environments are destabilizing. Some performances need more authority, which can be developed thru focus on production quality.
Musician records a demonstration (demo) of a new song
Musician falls in love with this draft recording
No ensuing recording will stack up
Demoitis is a mental block. It doesn’t apply when the demo is actually the best version. If that happens, great!
Demoitis is holding a musician back from getting the next level recording. It happens a lot. It costs musicians lots of studio time.
I’ve never recorded an album, but I can relate. I can easily get trapped by my first draft of something, or an attachment to an old idea.
We can cure demoitis by accepting that we may be victims of it. For me, the two best ways to dump these unrequited loves are to…
Get an outside opinion
Re-evaluate what my goals were in the first place
I think we’re all scared of the creative process, no matter how experienced we are. It’s scary to jump back in after we already got the reward of making something good. The familiar is safer. It’s also scary to let go of some work. It’s also scary to make something good. At this Halloween time of the year, let’s get scared and enjoy it!
Let’s think for a second about non-fungible things as viral content. Everyone has of course read my blog about virality. Everyone has committed to believing what I say — things are most shareable because they are tools for social status.
Because of “Share” buttons, we often think of fungible stuff (videos, images, tracks, webpages, etc) when we think about our audiences sharing our work. We can also think about how they share our non-fungible stuff.
The easiest for me is to think of books. People buy each other books all the time to say something about themselves. Maybe the intention is to say “I know you” maybe the intention is to say “I’m really smart.” A person can say a lot about themself with a book.
This is true for all information gifting and entertainment gifting. Why does someone want to have me perform at their party? Maybe they want to tell their friends…
Hey, I am really good at finding entertainers
Hey, I know the underground world of Los Angeles
Hey, I have a weird sense of humor. I think that means I’m smart. Here’s proof that I’m smart.
Hey, I am rich
There is a person behind purchasing whatever we create. That person wants to show the world their identity. We help them do that. If we’re conscious of it, maybe we can do it better.
