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The Performing Art
In Livingston Taylor's class, performing is all about the audience.
By Jason Roeder
(January 12, 2000)
Livingston Taylor's student slides the microphone to a comfortable height. She introduces herself to her audience, and her accompanist on guitar counts her in. She begins:
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Livingston Taylor |
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Photo by Bob Kramer |
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Love is flying through the air
Love is falling down
Love is fighting on and on
For the love you're dreaming of
"Hold on," says Taylor.
This is Taylor's Stage Performance Techniques class, and for the sake of helping his students evolve as performers, he's willing to interrupt. Better he than someone who paid for a seat. But he isn't cutting in to tinker with his student's pitch or to scrutinize her lyrics—she'll get that guidance from her other professors. In Stage Performance Techniques, losing yourself in your music is no excuse for losing the interest of your audience. If his students retain only one fragment of counsel from the entire semester, let it be this: "It's not about you—it's about them."
And this is why Taylor has brought his student's song to a halt. A good performance isn't a broadcast; it's a conversation, an event in which the fans recognize that the artist on stage is as involved with them as they are with him or her. Her conversation seems more of a monologue, which has more to do with what Taylor sees than what he hears. To his eye, her motions have no focus. She sways. She shifts from hip to hip. She taps her foot but gives up on it.
"There are two kinds of motion," he says. "One kind of motion is used to emphasize rhythm, but normally that involves just one body part or another."
To illustrate, the lanky, middle-aged Taylor clambers on stage for an Elvis-style demonstration. Keeping the rest of his body fixed, he swirls his pelvis and bucks for two beats: "Uh! Um!" Point delivered, he reclaims his seat and calmly continues his critique.
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| Taylor has taught Stage Performance Techniques for more than a decade. |
| Photo by Bob Kramer |
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"There's always a place that's still. But full motion says, 'I'm avoiding you. An object in motion is more difficult to hit.' But there's nothing to have a conversation with. I love motion, of course, but not when it's used to avoid truth."
Taylor has been working with Berklee students for more than a decade. His course represents the wisdom accumulated through more than 4,000 performances worth of double-decker arenas and 20-stool taverns, signing autographs and ducking whiskey bottles. In fact, it's safe to say that Taylor, who has also recorded 14 albums and the Top 40 hit "I Will Be in Love with You," has written the book on stage performance—because he has. Stage Performance was published last year.
"I looked around before I wrote this book," Taylor says. "I looked around for anyone who talked about what I talk about, but nobody ever does. Nobody ever tells a group of students that a performer is employed by the audience. They bought a ticket, they hired you, you're working for them."
But selflessness isn't easy when you're under a cone of spotlight. Taylor says artists need to realize that their performances carry a different, and less consequential, significance for audience members than for themselves.
"They've got their own agenda," Taylor says. "It's so funny because myself or any performer is such a remarkably small part of people's lives. Even the night we're playing for them, we're a small part of their lives. It's only a catalyst for the time they're spending with each other, for their relationships."
Taylor's student, three takes later, has her body language where it needs to be—still, not stiff—and, as she takes her seat, Taylor rewards her.
"I saw you playing in class, and I'm such a big fan of yours. Can I have your autograph?"
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Taylor clowns around with a student. |
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Photo by B.Kramer |
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He's not kidding. He presents her with a pad. In this class, autograph technique is part of the curriculum. To expand their audiences, performers must first tend to the supporters they have, and to do that, they have to tend to the details. In other words, says Taylor, an autograph is much more than a signature.
"If you do it right, it goes to work for you," he tells the class. "It's out there. It's doing its work for you silently and efficiently on your behalf for the rest of your life. This is the small stuff, but this is the stuff that makes the difference in a career."
But how can performers nurture their audiences while simultaneously growing them? In other words, how can performers expect loyalty from their longtime supporters when they enter into a mass-marketing relationship with a record company? Taylor doesn't recommend that artists pass on stardom, of course, but if they shun their original fan base, they could be hurting for listeners later on.
"Your fans will feel betrayed because you are betraying them," Taylor says. "But, statistically, you won't start making money until your sixth record. You need to live to fight another day, and one of the ways you do that is to not poke in the eye with a sharp stick the people who are paying your salary right now. If you leave them unprotected, I'm going to steal them from you because you brought it on yourself."
But Taylor aims to help his students avoid that fate. He can prepare them, fortify them, motivate them, but much of what they'll learn will come from what they experience on stage, as it did for Taylor, gig by gig. And with that in mind, he calls another singer and her accompanist to the microphone.
"Who knows?" he says, "Maybe I won't be so tough on the two of you."
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