How to give your audience what they want

Regardless of what you do – you have an audience.

And your audiences wants one thing more than anything else.

THEY WANT YOU.

Specifically: they want your truth.
They want to connect to your aliveness – your authentic present self.

Obvious, right?
But it’s often unclear HOW exactly we can do this.

I want to give you a simple and mighty exercise to bring your truth, your YOU, to your acting, your presenting, your interactions, your life.

The exercise is called STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Here’s how ya do it.
Give this a try.
It’s simple, and it’s a game changer.

1)
Choose a few lines of a monologue, the words of a nursery rhyme, or a song. Anything that you have memorized.

2)
Now for the Stream of Consciousness part…
For two minutes say out loud what you feel.
For example: “I feel unsure. I feel calm. I feel annoyed. I don’t know what I feel. I feel energy buzzing inside my torso. I feel nervous. I feel the bottoms of my feet. I feel calm again.”

3)
Now, let’s put it all together…
In the midst of your stream of consciousness – staying connected to the sensations in your body – I want you to experiment shifting away from your own Stream of Consciousness words to the words you have memorized.

FOR EXAMPLE: “I feel grounded, I feel bored, now I feel peaceful, I feel annoyed, (Going to your memorized words) Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water…”

WHAT TO LOOK FOR: This is important.
Did the quality of your voice change when you went to the memorized words?
Did you lose the connection to your body when you started using your scripted words?
It’s very common in the beginning of this exploration to leave YOU – and say the lines how you THINK they should go.

But remember – your audience wants YOU.
(Not your idea of you, or the idea of how you should be.)

Try this a couple more times going back and forth between Stream of Consciousness and the memorized text. 

How did it go this time?
Let me know – leave a comment below.

In class this exercise always reveals where you’re at in terms of offering YOU to your audience. With some feedback and a few minor tweaks this exercise can make a radical shift that has transformed the careers of countless actors, artists and entrepreneurs. That’s CI, yo.

Wishing you a delicious day!
Josh Pais