I recently spent a few days in Las Vegas.  I was there for a conference, not to gamble, and I wasn’t there as Susan B. Anthony.  (She would have been appalled!)  The conference, called CSICon, was sponsored by the Center for Inquiry (CFI), an organization that promotes the validity of science and reason over myth.  Speakers and presenters included scientists, activists and entertainers–some of them famous, and some who should be famous.  It was a very informative and energizing event.  While sitting in the audience, quietly knitting as I listened, I got to observe some qualities that landed especially well with the audience.  While the speakers were not there specifically to entertain (except for Piff the Magic Dragon–hilarious–and an amazing mentalist named Banachek*), they all managed to hold our interest in a variety of ways.  I observed that what they were doing in a “lecture” format should also be present in the world of theater.

There was, first of all, a fundamental sense of importance in what they were saying.  As actors, we need to think of the character’s motivation and understand why what she is saying matters.  As any good acting  coach will tell you:  If you don’t care about this person/event/object/etc., then neither will the audience.  You’ve got to commit to your choices.

Many used humor to lighten the seriousness of their topics.  I’m a great believer in humor!  It goes a long way to keep the audience engaged and happy.  Shakespeare certainly demonstrated the value of comic relief in even his most violent and serious plays.  I do respect plays and films that address  serious topics with unrelenting gravitas, but I can’t have a steady diet of them.  I just believe that life is so much better if you can laugh.  I like to inject humor into my work as Susan B. Anthony and love to work in comedic improvisation.

There were visual aids in the form of power point presentations, film clips and occasional props.  Something to please and attract the eye goes a long way to keeping an audience with you.  Now, that being said, this was Vegas, where I also observed unceasing examples of VISUAL STIMULATION OVERLOAD!!!!!  The same goes for sound.  There were audio enhancements to some of the presentations, which also helped engage the audience, but I was distressed to find that my hotel room was truly the only place in Vegas where I could get any peace and quiet at all.  I don’t generally work with AV enhancements, but I appreciate them very much when they are judiciously employed.

Except for Piff, none of the presenters wore costumes of any kind–which was fine, since they would have been distractions.  Out on the street, though, things were very different.  Show girls with lots of feathers but very little clothing wandered the sidewalks, posing for pictures and promoting their shows.  The costumes certainly attracted attention, but I don’t think anyone was curious at all about what these women might have to say.  They might well be very deep thinkers, but it would be very difficult to get past the feathers and pasties.  To be fair, I will point out that there were also some Chippendale men in correspondingly scanty attire; they weren’t trying to get attention with their degrees in neuroscience or architectural history.  Costumes are great, but don’t make it “all about the costume” if you want to get anything else across.  And let’s not forget the Elvis impersonators!  What’s Vegas without Elvis?   These Elvises were a pretty disappointing lot.  Mostly they just stood around in costume and let people have photo ops.  Some were very uncommitted to being Elvis.  I saw one who was drinking from a large can of Bud Light, sitting on a motorized scooter, scratching his conspicuous belly.  This is not to say that Elvis never did that!  It’s just that it’s not the best way to get people to connect with Elvis, if that’s your goal.  Historical interpreters work hard to differentiate ourselves from “people in costumes.”  In fact, we rarely refer to our clothing at “costumes” at all.  We just say “clothing” most of the time.  (Plese see my earlier post about “interpreter” vs. “impersonator” or “reenactor” for a fuller discussion about this.)

It was an exciting few days and I’m glad I went.  I confess to finding Las Vegas a little hard to take, but clearly that is not a universally-held opinion.  A steady stream of visitors find the Vegas approach very entertaining, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  If entertainment is your goal, it helps a lot to know your audience.  I hope to find you in one of my audiences someday.

*If you’re wondering what a magician and a mentalist were doing at a conference for skeptical inquiry, it was to remind us that it’s still fun to be amazed and amused by unexpected events and inexplicable outcomes.  But, if we can’t understand how something is done, that doesn’t mean it’s magic.  It just means that someone has studied and practiced very diligently to create these illusions, and we can be the happy beneficiaries.