This week I’m performing on a stage inside a tent. It’s a nice tent and it solves a lot of outdoor performing problems, it gives the audience shade and cuts down on wind.
The first couple of days of the week I was performing at the front edge of the stage. The shows were doing alright, but I realized I was losing people on the side bleachers. It was a consistent loss of people from specific positions in the audience, so it was something that probably wasn’t my show. To try to fix this I watched another performer’s show from one of those positions and figured out why I was losing them.
You’ll notice there are two poles at the front of the stage and when I was playing too far forward, they people couldn’t see the show. Then there was a smaller problem that when playing too far forward it was hard for some people to see my face as they were almost behind me.
The solution was simple, I just moved my show two steps backwards. Once I did that the change in the show was dramatic! I kept the audience in the spots where I was losing them AND the side were more enthusiastic about the show!