My friend called me and asked what to do with his event. It wasn’t working right. The audience wasn’t happy and the night wasn’t flowing. He wanted to know what to do. Instead we shifted our focus to what we wanted the crowd to do.
With performance, art, creating, we are doing something. With entertainment, we are getting the audience to do something.
Entertainers often think…
- What will I do for the audience?
- What will it look like?
- What will it sound like?
- What format will it take?
The thing with entertainment is that it’s a craft. Crafts have goals. The goal is the audience reaction. Even if the goal is to have the audience remember what happened, that’s a goal. Even when an audience is sitting and watching a movie in silence, they are doing a lot in their heads. They are taking an adventure. Doing.
So, if we ask the question, “What do we want the audience to do?” it makes an easy problem for us.