Thursday, March 23, 2006

The Year of The Performance

I have named 2006 The Year of The Performance.

My goal is to juggle in front of audiences as much as possible so I can learn how to handle the pressure of being in the spotlight. For instance, I want to teach myself how to keep a positive attitude when I drop so I can focus on the next trick.

So far this year I've been able to juggle for an audience three times. The first was an audience of 80 in a college lecture hall. I assistant teach a career decision making class and juggled for the class on the first day. Later in the term I stayed after class to juggle for the next class with about 50 students that was held in that lecture hall. I didn't tell any jokes or have any music, it was just me trying to do some tricks. I tried to do too many hard tricks and wound up looking like I sucked at juggling.

Last Tuesday night I juggled for over 100 people at a party. This was the best performance yet because I brought music and did easier tricks so I didn't drop much. The music was critical to set the mood. I really had a lot of fun being in the spotlight. I felt like I belonged there.

Quote of the Day
The norm is obedience, adoption of uncritical attitudes, taking the easy path of self-deception. ~Noam Chomsky

1 Comments:

At 11:43 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good luck with the performances. The best way to get more comfortable with them is to do them, so you're on the right track! :-)

My personal opinion is to save the hard stuff for the practice floor. If you think it's hard, then chances are, it's going to be that much more difficult to do on stage or in front of an audience. Of course if you're "feeling it", then there's no reason to try and bust out a cool difficult trick.

Most important though . . . HAVE FUN!!!! :-) If you're having fun in front of the audience and it shows then they are much more apt to be on your side, even if you DO drop (which I tend to do often as you've seen . . . heh heh)

You're making fantastic progress in juggling Ed, and I'm sure you'll make fantastic progress in performances as well. I'll do my best to keep you posted on any performance stuff I hear about.

Hopefully we can get an OSU Show at Flinn's sometime. We'd just have to remember to promote the heck out of it. Much more fun when the place is packed.

 

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