the Way of the Showman
Philosophical and esoteric perspectives from a modern day Showman.
Each season is different in its approach. S1 is essays. S2 is one book length attempt at Understanding Showmanship, S3 is conversations with remarkable Showfolk. The brand new Season 4 explores the relationship between Showmanship and Play.
The host, Captain Frodo, internationally renowned circus performer, director, writer, husband and dad lays out, in great detail, his practical performance philosophy for performers who seek to deepen the conversation with their audiences and themselves. You can find him, and more of his writing at: www.thewayoftheshowman.com
the Way of the Showman
153 - Stage Presence Demystified w Jay Gilligan & Captain Frodo part 1 of 2
Some performers step into the light and the room leans in. Others work just as hard and leave us cold. We wanted to know why. Together with juggler and performance thinker Jay Gilligan, we unpack stage presence without the fluff—what it is, how to build it, and why authenticity beats polish every time.
We start by challenging the myth that presence is a gift you either have or don’t. Yes, some people radiate charisma from day one. But most of us can raise our baseline by choosing the right lane and aligning our inner life with our outer expression. We explore useful archetypes to find leverage (clown, lover, hermit, magician), and show how mismatched personas create static the audience can feel. Then we get practical with a simple, powerful framework: head (ideas), heart (emotion), hands (skills), and senses (look and sound). When those four line up, presence clicks.
Jay and I share stories from street stages and theater runs about entrances that land, silences that speak, and why the “living time” is the beat between tricks. We dig into micro-choices that shift everything—how your eyes acknowledge the crowd, how breath sets tempo, how a half-smile reads as gratitude instead of performance. We talk technique versus embodiment too: you can copy moves and still miss the moment; intention is what makes shape meaningful. Expect grounded advice you can use tonight: choose one beat for connection, test variations on camera, refine details like shoes and sound, and let your true motives shape your mechanics.
If you care about connecting—juggling, comedy, magic, music—this conversation will sharpen your instincts and your toolkit. Subscribe, share with a performer who needs a lift, and leave a review with your biggest presence breakthrough. Your story might spark the next one.
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Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to the Way of the Showman, where we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo, and uh I will be your host and your guide along the way. Today I have a new conversation with you.
SPEAKER_05:Uh well when I say it's new, it I was actually recorded in January. In January I flew to Stockholm, Sweden, and visited my good friend, and yours too, I reckon, if you've been listening to some of the episodes. It is Jay Gilligan, the extraordinary juggler and thinker about art and all things showmanship. And today we are actually talking about quite a more sort of practical topic. Some of the latest episodes that we did with him, although it's a while since they came out, was him questioning me on the philosophical implications and uh minutiae of what I was doing in the first um ten, uh, eleven episodes of when I was talking about showmanship and play. So those are kind of a little more uh esoteric, although at the heart of it I believe those are the most important things. We can get the practical stuff from many podcasts and from many conversations and from many um the everyday life of being a performer. But some of these deeper thoughts, um he is one of the few people that I talk to about that. So I'm glad those came out. But today we're tackling uh the uh subject of stage presence. Um and as you hear, this was something that was uh actually brought up by Jay.
SPEAKER_03:So uh without any further carrying on, let's uh get into the conversation.
SPEAKER_05:Today I would like to talk about stage presence, but it uh was sparked by you having an experience with seeing a juggler. So should we talk about it? What it is like when you watch somebody and you all of a sudden find yourself not engaged with it, and you're wondering what it is that's not working. What what was the experience that sort of triggered this uh us talking about this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I saw a performance where uh there was a performer and it struck me at one point, and I thought, there's just no stage presence here, and then I which was kind of my immediate response, but then of course, uh right after that, then my brain said, Wait, what is stage presence? And I think it's one of those things where it's like it's such those words stage presence, it's such a ubiquitous term that's kind of thrown around my entire my entire life, like in our community in our circles. Oh, they have a lot of stage presence, or you gotta work on your stage presence. I heard that when I was a kid. You gotta work on your stage presence, you know, and but and so it seems like a term that we're familiar with, but uh of course I wanted to immediately call you and say, Frodo, what is stage presence? And not only what is it, but how do you get it and how do you work on it, how do you curate it? And if you don't have stage presence, how do you get some of that stuff? And so, yeah, I would really wanted to hear what you thought about stage presence.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, it it is as soon as like it it I think it's connected to something that you could call charisma as well. Certain people step in front of an audience and you just are drawn towards them, and what is that?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_05:There is a uh it's it's very hard to define, but you know it as soon as you see it.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, we can give a good we can give a couple of examples, but one common one we have would be space cowboy.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's just riveting. Like Space Cowboy comes on stage, but that stage could also be a street corner, and you're just kind of it's it's like magnetism. You're just drawn to look at this person, they hold your attention somehow.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's right. I performed for many years together with the Space Cowboy, Shane Halkron, Australian uh performer, and we were doing street shows first, and there's just something riveting and magnetic about this guy. Yeah, steps out in front, and people just quite literally sort of fall in love or whatever. He's charming and beautiful and interesting, and then he's always got amazing skills, yeah, more than what you thought.
SPEAKER_01:Right, and then and this, and then we're we're gonna dive into this later, I hope, or I don't know what you're gonna say uh about stage presence, but you know, Space Cowboy is a good example, and then you can even start to say uh is stage presence something that you are just born with? Yeah, is it intrinsic in some way, or can you actually uh work on it and develop it and achieve it if you aren't if you don't automatically have it?
SPEAKER_05:Like and different people have uh different kinds of stage presence. And I think in the case of the Space Cowboy, he is a good example of it being, I think, innate, it's inborn. He has that flavor, it wasn't something that he specifically studied himself.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's what I mean was doing. That's a good example. I mean, that's why I thought of that, right? It's because I don't know Shane so well personally. Um, but I would assume that when I see him perform, uh it wasn't that when he did his first show, he didn't have any stage presence, and then over the course of you know, 10 years he did a bunch of push-ups and no, I don't know, took a bunch of acting classes, I don't know. And then suddenly he had stage presence. It felt like when I see him, it's so strong, yeah, I can't imagine him without it. And that's when you get those thoughts of like, wow, was he born with this?
SPEAKER_05:So and I think here that that you absolutely uh can or are born with a certain amount of of presence, of being in the presence of others and being charismatic. So there's an element of of nature in that that's not just come some from the craft, but that doesn't mean that you can't learn it, because there's lots of things that you can learn as well, but like with everything, some people do are very good at chess, they have that way of thinking, right? And some people do the 10,000 hours and then they uh then they are uh chess masters or whatever, but there are also people then that say, but that person that has that intuit intuition for what chess is and then does the 10,000 hours, they will always supersede those people who don't have a talent for it. Much like if I was to be the like I've often thought of it how, oh I'm I'm lucky that with the way that my hair is and the way that my body is, that I didn't make an act like David O'Mare, who is the famous bath guy from first from La Clique or and La Sorre with me for 12 years, but now he's been an absinthe for an additional ten years or whatever it is. Beautiful, sculpted, muscly, just like you would imagine. And and I mentioned it yesterday that um we were doing a show, and and uh one of the guys in the show had made a new act, and in the end of that act, he pulls his shirt off. And the boss of the company, uh Brett Halock, was saying, like, oh, but it's we we there's too much of this now. It's just the guys they do a show, do their act, and then they pull their clothes off, and then they do one more thing. Um, because this guy had already done that in in his duo act in the beginning. So then when he was gonna do it in the end, and he goes, Well, there's all these guys just in the first half, it's like the English gents they pull their shirt off, and then uh and then David O'Mare, and then it was whoever else was there, and then I said, Yeah, and me, because I also didn't have a shirt on back then. Yeah, and he goes, Well, you don't count.
SPEAKER_01:We're talking about stage presence, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so it was like I got my shirt off, but that's incidental or so. So I got a so but and at that point I was going, Oh, I'm lucky. Uh as I have evolved and changed, and I look, I have male pattern baldness, I'm bald on top in a classic clown hair dude. And um it's kind of unfunny. I said, Oh, it's good it's lucky that I that I didn't start out being the sexy guy or whatever, but but maybe it isn't luck as well. Like I've always kind of had that the funny thing has been with me since I was doing show with my dad.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what you're saying there is what so you said something earlier now already where you said everybody's born with some sort of presence. And we don't have to say stage presence, but sure. Everybody's born with different personalities and different sorts of I don't know, energies or whatever you want to say. And maybe it's just that those people, like people don't have to be like Space Cowboy in the stage presence of that overtly magnetic, riveting way. You can have different forms of stage presence, I guess. And the same thing with you, like, yeah, the English gents take off their clothes and they're these muscly guys, these hunky, kind of sexy guys. You have your shirt off in a different way. And it doesn't always have to be this one superlative, kind of stereotypical, uh, you know, quintessential way. There's also different shades of nuances, right? And so maybe those people with what we say is stage presence, it's those people who have resolved what they were born with in terms of their personal identity or style or I don't know, right? Presence. I believe so too. And then they resolve that with the type of performing, for example, that they get into. And so if you're not the loud, gregarious kind of person, maybe you don't become the carnival barker. Instead, you become the quiet, introspective, yeah, like little close-up magician or origami artist or hand shadow puppet or sand painter, or do you know what I mean? So maybe this whole thing of stage presence too is somehow how we recognize and resolve what we have to work with, yeah, with what we end up actually doing. And maybe then sometimes when I see someone who I say, oh, they don't have any stage presence, or I feel like this isn't connecting for some reason, and maybe it's because that as a performer they don't have that magnetism. Maybe it's just because they're in the wrong context for what they have. Yeah, that that's true.
SPEAKER_05:And and what I was sort of uh hinting at before is that it's lucky that I wasn't going for the sexy guy. Right. Because I am not that.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_05:When I come out onto the stage, when I try to be the sexy guy, people invariably laugh. Maybe it's that I can't whatever reason that is, if it goes towards something that's kind of funny, but I can do the combination of funny and profound, that's my real house. But being sexy, I just that would take a lot of work or whatever, and I would work against my natural uh ability or my natural gifts or so. And uh this just made me think of the book by Anton LeVay called The Satanic Witch. It's a book on how to become a witch and how to use your magic in one of the early chapters, and he goes, he says in that book, because he worked at a carnival playing music at stri uh at uh strip shows and stuff at the carnival for a while before founding the Church of Satan. But anyway, this is a book about women and how to help them get what they want, because that's kind of the magic that he is after. How any person can get what they want, and this the satanic witch is about how to get what you want as a female, and he makes these sort of categories or whatever of so we have we know what the witch is, and and I can't remember what they are because there's there's several, but but the two that I kind of remember is like the weird cat lady, the old croned, like that weird kind of woman that has crazy powers and uh whatever. Uh that's one thing, but then you also have the seductress, the really beautiful woman, and uh that has that classic beauty or has that charisma in that particular way, because the old crone or that the the real oddball can also have a certain kind of charisma where you like you say, they could do the shadow whatever, and he says you need to work out by looking at yourself by thinking about uh it, you need to shape yourself based on how you actually appear.
SPEAKER_01:So are these kind of maybe archetypes or something or characters that like ubiquitous characters we have out in the world, and then you kind of place your I I get I get what you're saying, right? So it's like I'm kind of a more of a funny guy or a quirky guy, or I'm more like Nick Defat's a perfect example, right? Like he knows what he looks like and he leans into that image. He's not trying to be the you know something he's not. Exactly.
SPEAKER_05:And and the point of Lave is you want to get maximum uh uh Utbeta in English, you want to get maximum bang for your buck when you're doing it. If you are a dorky looking, he's talking specifically about girls because it's a book on how to achieve what you want as a girl, or whatever, but it's like if if it will look at like it's a dorky, nerdy looking guy. If he wants to be the David O'Mare, he's gotta do the first 10,000 hours on sculpting his body and the uh alter his mind and his mindset and read the pickup artist or the social engineering books, this kind of bullshit that's going on. Like to mimic this other person, then once you have mastered being something or something or someone else, then you need to get onto the thing which we are supposed to delve into now. So some of the charisma, and I have talked about this on this podcast in season two when I talk about what authenticity is, and I think authenticity in performance or whatever comes from, and it's just a reformulation of what you just said before it's when there seems to be a complete um uh resonance between the inner person and the outer expression of it. Right. So when I say these philosophical things that I say, I believe in them so much that my body aligns, my character aligns, and I speak that because it's a truth, and it feels like an easy truth to tell for me. And we had this when we were doing reflex. Sometimes we would both laugh at something, and then you would laugh and we write it into the script because we liked it, and then when we stood in a room and you were gonna say it, it wasn't your truth, and you couldn't make that funny because it was kind of like that was my way of being funny, yeah, or whatever. And some of the jokes that we came up with, or that we I riffed and you went, some of them worked really well because I managed to get capture my capture your yeah, yeah, and somehow also that altered after we had spent a week together here, practicing every day and actually hearing you talk and going, okay, now we can shape the jokes more towards that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's funny you point that out. And in this context, I think it's worth saying again, just to remind myself, even that when we first started working together on Reflex, the first few sessions, um, you know, we're trying to figure out not only to make a show, uh, we're trying to figure out how to make a show at the same time. It's the Derek Delgadio, I'm building the bicycle while I'm riding it, you know, kind of quote. And I remember the first few times, the first few sessions we had, we're feeling each other out. We don't know each other, so there's like that layer of like who's this person and how do we communicate? I think it's the thing, like what's our shared language? And then what are we trying to create, but also what's the process by which we create something? And after, I don't know, a few weeks, I kind of got the hang of taking what you said to me and then interpreting it into my own world, and that that took a lot of practice. But then there was that moment of like, oh, I get it. When Frodo says this thing, that's what he would do. But what he really means, or you mean what you mean, but there's a conceptual you know, what his deep the details of what he's saying fills this certain role. How would I fill the cer that role in the certain in my own way, right? That's exactly what it is. And it became almost not unconscious, but I got much more, it was a natural after a while when we were working together. I'm like, I could just translate Frodo language into J language.
SPEAKER_05:But it was also what we were talking about. It's like even when Reflex was morphing and changing uh during the first season and during onto the second run of the show and into the different where we go, we work so hard and we we cry about every word in the script. Yeah, and uh in terms of the whole story, like well, we need this to be there because it's referenced there and there and there and there. But then after a while, when the show is actually out there and has been performed in front of real people, you start to get this feeling like the words don't matter. That routine doesn't really matter. I can put something else there, but there is something in that routine which is needed there, or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that goes back to the thing when I mean when you're making a new show that everything is equally important because you don't know what's what the show is yet, and and so every word is equally weighted. Yeah. And then when you put it in front of an audience, you go, Oh, actually, those words there are kind of inconsequential. We can either even r we can cut it or rush through it, or it doesn't even matter what I say, it just has to fill a rhythmic void.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But then this part's super intently purposeful, and I need to tweak that language there, like very specifically. And you start to learn that the show has ebbs and flows, and you're not every single moment isn't the most life or death critical, that the whole thing is hanging on every single moment or whatever. But but you were saying that um so it's it's kind of fun already, uh, because that like eventually in the conversation, it would be nice to get to the point where we say, okay, these are some potential qualities of stage presence, and not only these qualities exist, but if you quote unquote don't have stage presence, how do you get it? And you kind of already gave a suggestion, right? You said from this book about being a witch, you can look around in the world and see what kind of archetypes there are. Like, like, so let's say we sit down and I say, Frodo, I have no stage presence. People tell me all the time they come see my show and they say, Man, Jay, you have no stage presence. You got to get some of that. I mean, one very concrete step is then I should look around in the world and see, huh, are there kind of archetypes that my personality is drawn towards? Am I drawn more towards the Frodo comedy quirky character? Or am I draw drawn more towards the David O'Mare, you know, sexy hunky dude character? Is that like how do I how do those things even resonate with me?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And maybe the first step of that process, before you can even start to choose what where you relate to, is you just have to look around out in the world and be curious and start to know what what already exists.
SPEAKER_05:And but the shorthand is to go to somebody who has already done that work and has made somebody that you already care about a little bit or that you find interesting. So, like Anton LeVay had uh has writes about carnivals and about being on the midway, and he goes, There are different people that seek different things as they walk down the midway, and you're no point in wasting your time if you're gonna maximum maximize the amount of money that you're gonna make to go after this guy who looks like this and behaves like this to get him into your girl show or to get him to see the freak show or get him to play the game of chance. Because you if you hit the right person, then it's already so you maximize the potential by seeing being picking out uh types. Sometimes you're wrong, but a lot of the times we uh look like how how we are.
SPEAKER_01:I mean that that already just again points to something that I think is is uh so important. But many times I'll ask uh let's take let's say a student in a circus school, and you say, Okay, we're gonna do juggling class today. Uh before we start, let's just out of curiosity, who's your favorite juggler? So many times they don't have one. Oh, I don't really know. I don't really have a favorite juggler, I don't know, or whatever. And I get it that like sometimes it's like I said to you the other day, if someone asks me who's my favorite band, my mind goes blank and I go, What is music? And I put on the spot, you know, I kind of freeze up or freak out about like my mind can't. I get that process, but that's not what these students are saying. They're just saying that, like, in general, um, I don't really either pay attention to juggling or I don't really know that many jugglers is often an answer. And that kind of shocks me because it's like that's so fundamental to um like what you're saying in this process here, you know, let's start with what you know, let's start with what you like, and in order to have that, you need that you need to look out in the world and find these people that you think is your favorite juggler, right? I don't know, yeah. It's important.
SPEAKER_05:And it's uh it's also important in this thing here, is like, of course, anyone can be anything that you want, but if you have gnarly teeth and wildly curly hair that sticks out in every direction and you're uh short and squat and you're all that, and you uh and you want to be a kind of Audrey Hepburn type uh person in your show, you have so much work ahead of you to to do that or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And if if if you're like me, who is a gangly looking skinny guy, so that when the queer dude uh points out the other guys in the show that they take their shirt off and all of that, he literally goes, You don't count. You take your shirt off, and it doesn't matter as a doesn't this doesn't count as a house. It's not relevant to this conversation, it's not what I'm talking about. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, as much as I'm like then going, Hey, hey, yeah, it's this is me, this is my body, this is kind of funny. But I'm going out and I'm going, I'm also kind of attractive. I've got my shirt off, I got my nipples pierced. There are some crazy people out there, like my wife, who thinks this is beautiful or whatever. Yeah, but anyway, it's then important when you are looking at this to maximize uh your uh the distance that you have to uh span before you're at where you can have an authentic expression. It's that you need to look at yourself for what you actually are. You need to use a if there is a Google search that's like that. You put a picture of yourself in whatever costume and whatever you are, and then finding who are the other more famous people that look like this? Who are the other where is this? Like if there was one of those, and then you go, Oh, I am within this spectrum. Another thing is that you could look at the tarot. Am I the fool? Am I the magician? Am I the hermit? Am I the emperor? Am I the the goddess? The world? Am I am I the lover? Like what what are those those like that are archetypal? Which one is it that I align with most? And you need to somehow be honest, because what we're looking for now is not what I I wish I was the guy so that when I take my shirt off, the room goes like they actually go, like which when the English gent Soromere comes out, yeah. It's that it's literally is like a sort of it's a wet dream, whether you're a boy, whatever, whichever direction you go, you you are, and the same with Shane as well, the space cowboy, it's like yeah, it's just good looking and in that and but if you aren't that, then you also like me with my hair and my lack of or whatever, or like I am something else, and if I can take that and go run with that, I will run further because when David O'Mare comes out there to get them cracking up and laughing and and does self-deprecating jokes, it's a totally different thing. Yeah, and I have a head start on him in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's true. Part of the having an authentic expression is to know uh first or like what's your external and then who are you inside? Because one of it is it's like let's uh talk like so. What is stage press?
SPEAKER_01:Well, wait, can I have a question before you can I do that before you do this? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Is it okay? Of course.
SPEAKER_01:So now we're kind of getting into I don't know, I keep saying the word archetype, but anyway, uh certain sorts of certain sorts of characterizations: the sexy, the funny, the bizarre, the normal, the nerd, whatever, right? Can we take a step back from that? It's just a question, I have no idea. Can you take a step back from that? Is there any common ground that is shared between all those types of uh variations that of like a stage presence? Is that a yeah, well you know what I mean? Is there like sort of a general, more basic, fundamental Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And I think there is, and I think that the dimension that we are dealing with here is a human dimension. Okay. What are the things that go beneath the lover or the sexy and the uh and the mysterious and the scary and uh and the clown? W what is that? And that is that all of these have have a soul, so to speak, because that's what how you could express it, as a as a they have a human uh capacity. They have a f they have different faculties that they care about and that are essentially human and it's uh elements of thinking, uh elements of ideas, of thoughts, and how things are put together. There's always also an emotional component to anything that you do, and then there is the actions that you do, the will, like where you how you manifest yourself through actually what you do in in the juggling and whatever. And these three things is the same, whether you are a sexy guy, okay, or you are a clown, or you are just using those three things. There's still ideas in what the clown does, and there's an idea in what the sexy guy does in the bathtub when he does the does the aerial act or whatever, and there's the skills that they have, and how those skills can be done with the clown can struggle very hard to make the the skill happen whilst the the other guy has other ways of like it needs to be somewhat effortless if you're bigger muscle and whatever. So it's like they guide you, and then what kind of emotions are needed and what so that those dimensions that's like a deeper uh kind of uh of level that goes beneath all of those, and you can consider those things. It's like and and uh so the fourth dimension of the like the the if you think of it, it's like the head and the heart and the hands, as in the the ideas and the concepts and all that that you that are expressed in here, and the heart is the how you actually open your heart and and and you experience the heart of and then the hands and what you do with it, whether you juggle or you do magic or you do you do hand balancing, whatever. Okay, then the fourth dimension of that is the senses, is that you you look and you see, and that's the costume, and that's that thing that we talked about first, because the visual component, for instance, and how you speak, the sound of your voice and all that, which my voice at the moment. I mean, I'm in the midst of a cold hair, so you can hear it there. Like I have a squeaky voice and all that, anyway. But um, I thought I just had to say that because I'm coughing and trying to clear my voice and I can hardly speak and whatever. So, but um, but those like the sense things is kind of what we talked about first. So that's when you walk out onto the stage, they will immediately start to go, it's this um Jerry Seinfeld, the common guy that speaks about things that we all think about and part of our everyday life, or is it uh uh Bill Hicks that comes out and is like as soon as he like this is a defiant kind of F you kind of uh attitude from the from the beginning. What what like what's the what's the story here? And that's kind of the sense uh thing. So that's almost like that is one part of the what it means to be human, but that was what we talked about first, and it has to do with if you come out and you look like a really sexy guy, and then you go, hello, and my name is uh is uh John and and I am and but he looks like a bodybuilder, and it's like you first you go out, then then you have then this guy's comedic or something. Yeah, it's incongruous, yeah. So maybe if you want to be the sexy guy, then you need to be quiet or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Right. I mean, so so I think in you know, intellectually, intellectually, I I definitely follow everything you just said there. It's very concrete in one way, but it's still pretty conceptual. And the thing that I love about your work is that you're very conceptual and very thoughtful and cerebral, but you're also you you talk the talk, but you also walk the walk. Yeah, like you're not just saying these things. It's not like you just go out and you do a show and it's kind of the normal show that you always see that's maybe a little bit mediocre, and then you come away from the stage and you have all these lofty thoughts about what you're doing that are kind of not really connected into manifesting in real life, you know. I think you really say these things and you not only think about them, but you mean them and you connect them to your actions of what you do on stage. And so I'm just always I'm in this conversation for some reason now, I'm always just thinking about a person. Like an abstract person who is kind of like, hmm, I don't have any stage presence. How do I get me some of that? And I think that person can sometimes I know I'm also always thinking it through the maybe the eyes and ears of a circus school student for some reason, because that's all that's normally in my life where these conversations have become more relevant, right?
SPEAKER_05:25 years as a teacher.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so you're trying to communicate these things to somebody because you want them to learn and grow from this, you know, from these thoughts of these these ideas. And so I think it can be really intimidating. I think you can you can intellectually hear someone say, Yeah, it's the it's the head, you know, the head and the heart and the hands and and all these things you say, that's really great. But that's pretty that can also be very intimidating, I think, to be like, okay, I get what you're saying, but still when I go do my show tomorrow, I need some stage presence.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So do you can you can you give any sort of maybe examples or you don't I don't know, now I put you on the spot, but like do you have any like little just an ex a concrete touchstone example of like a practical thing? I mean you already said it, like somebody's a sexy hunk and they come out with a high squeaky voice, it's incongruous image, so you're gonna have a certain effect by that. And you were already saying, uh, for example, it's just how you look. So, like, actually, you know, uh I remember I remember I had a I had a student in school where an amazing person, like an amazing juggler, the act was great. Uh three years of school, it's your it's your graduation act, so it's kind of a quote unquote big deal. And then they're wearing you know black pants and a whatever sort of costume shirt, but then like they're old tennis shoes. And I'm just like, get some nice shoes. And and for them, the shoes was so not important, and for me, it was just that little touch of detail of like respect your life and respect your three years of journey, your journey of three years. Like it's so even these little details can be like having some shoes that kind of go with the whole look can be what we're talking about here. It's not like some nebulous, unknowable conceptual, like head, heart, hands, and all these philosophical things. We're talking about like buy some shoes that fit your look, yeah. Is that I mean, it can manifest in these little ways, right? It doesn't need to be a revolution of your craft or art or life.
SPEAKER_05:I mean, no, and the reason why I got into the head and the heart and the hands and all that is to go, what's before you manifest as a specific person? What are the things that are the core part of any experience? Yeah, yeah. Human experience. Totally. And I believe that it can be anything, any book that you read about performance acting or performance art or music or whatever will have a different, slightly different system. But but when you look at it, but like I believe that you will uh still find uh you will get very far with these three easy kinds of things. What are the ideas? What am I actually doing, and how do I emotionally uh engage this with emotion? Because if it's just a story of like there is a man that walks into the movie and there is a woman there, and then they find each other and then they make out, and then that's the end of the movie, or whatever. Like it's sound it's totally flat, and there's nothing there. But if it comes in and one of them is conflicted with what they actually want because there's a this person is whatever straight like that that it's hard, they have to overcome something, or yeah, then there is more depth there. Uh so so there's more emotion, and you need to get emotionally invested in it. And we know that uh when you we when I think of a street show where you go by the end, the guy's gonna juggle the fire on the unicycle. You think I've seen that one. Yeah, exactly. And then you see that, and most of the time when I see it, I go, okay, that was like it it it just it just fails to grab me and it's boring. Yet that person might be making a decent living from that. Yeah, and they do that over and over and all over the world, maybe, or some people live in one town and they do it, and they just haven't got aspirations towards greatness in performance. But then every now and then a performer comes out, and here again, Space Cowboy is an amazing example of that who in his street show when I met him, and maybe still also doesn't do so many street shows anymore, maybe, but but uh he juggles on a fire fire on a unicycle in the end. Yeah, but when you see what he does and how he gets flipping thousand people to stop, builds them out and stand and and then he does it and he put does it blindfolded and all that the way that he does that, then I get the feeling that maybe the general audience might have to that person that I feel there's nothing special about that act. Yeah, but I get this is the archetype. This guy is taking the cliche and making it into like, oh my god, he he managed to juggle those things on top of the bike, even though it was so there is a power in those things. Now I lost it.
SPEAKER_01:Is that no, but is that process, is that process to get to that point, is that process intuitive? Is it knowable? Can you make it conscious? Can you actively, or is it can you actively curate it, or is it more just through experience and not like shots in the dark, but you know, it's it's trial and error. Or do you yeah what do you think?
SPEAKER_05:Alright, let getting a little more practical. So when you are um when you first start out, I uh went to circus, uh did a circus course in uh 2000 and uh no in 1996. That's right. And I had as my goals for going to the school having a ball routine to music and a club routine to music or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:That was my expressed goal and to improve the amount of time that I could juggle five balls on. I don't know, there was like goals like that, yeah, which were crushed uh pretty soon by seeing these uh two German jugglers juggling like machines, unbelievable skills, and I was never gonna be that technical juggler. But what I the scope of what I wanted to do back then at 20, it was just to to have that technical juggling and be able to do the act with minimal drops and to have it nicely choreographed the music. I didn't and I didn't at that point fully think how would I want my audience to feel, or they they weren't so basically the the dimension that I could imagine was was my it was myself and what I was going to do. So I'm still in solipsistic in my uh expression, right? I am gonna juggle, yeah. So so what do you imagine you're gonna do for the audience or whatever? First, I'm gonna do the cascade and the reverse cascade, then shower like that, and then behind the back. Yep, and and and that is what you do. But now when I come out, I'm always thinking about what is the experience for the audience. How are we to relate together? Because they are there and I am here, and when I come out before I start my act, and this is the key thing that I will probably say today, is that I come out, and when I am in front of them, I am here, and I fully 100% acknowledge that you are there and you are watching a show. You are watching me, and I am going to give you something, and that time and attention that you give me is going to be refined, and you are going to enjoy yourself, and afterwards you're going, Wow, that was what that transaction was about. It's a simple, straightforward thing. You are watching me to with and you want that time to be well spent, and you want that experience to be a good experience. It can be that it's like it punk is a good experience, black metal can be a good experience, and a sweet pop song or a folk song can all be good experiences. So it's not doesn't mean that it can't be nihilistic or just uh saccharinally sweet. Whatever that experience is can be a good experience. So so but it needs to be in the genre of good.
SPEAKER_01:So so so so you're okay, you said a couple things there that kind of stuck out to me. And one of those things is that you come out and you you said you fully acknowledge the audience is there, and I'm always kind of uh I'm always trying to leave things open in a in a more abstract conceptual way, because I I can see that, for example, well, how do you acknowledge the people are there? Well, I come out and I look at them, for example. That'd be a very straightforward way to kind of acknowledge someone's there is that you you you you make eye contact with them. That's a social construct we have in our world. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:But this is connected to how oh no, that's right. But you we said that off off screen.
SPEAKER_01:No, but but this person that I saw on stage who didn't have stage presence, they they did look at me and they even smiled, which is again a very normal social construct in our society.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I'm I'm friendly, I'm here, I'm here, and we are friends, but I felt like it didn't matter if I was there or not.
SPEAKER_05:So this is this is what I was going to uh say, but I realized that we had talked about this before we started recording. Okay, now you just said that now, which is what I was gonna say.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it felt like it felt a bit if it felt like it didn't matter if I was there or not. But then on the flip side, I felt like there was no one behind the smile. And man, this sounds so pretentious when I sit here and say this to you because I mean There was no one behind the smile, Frodo. I was watching this show, but like it really felt that the person Yeah, it's what you already said, it's about being authentic. It just felt that the person had was either guarding their true self, and so they weren't kind of sharing themselves with the audience, and then therefore they was they were closed off, and then I just felt there was nobody behind the smile, and I'm just like, I don't care to look at this person, like I don't, I'm not compelled to look at this person. And again, these seem like very lofty big ideas and existential and conceptual conversations here, but it was just I don't know, it was so simple and practical. Here's a person on stage, they're in a show, they're gonna perform for me. I look at them and I go, I don't care about looking at this person, and that's that's a truth. I mean, and that that's a very basic, banal thought, even. And then I just go, like, why not? Why do I not want to look at this person?
SPEAKER_05:And I think the the key here is that you might have like looking at someone, putting your eyes in one direction or not, yeah. Is that's a kind of can we call that the gaze or whatever? Like it's that yes, I am looking towards you now, but to look the way that you look at your mother and the way that you look at a a lover, yeah. That's two different kinds of ways of looking. And but they're both your eyes pointing towards you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's a technical aspect of it, right? Yeah, your eyelids are open, you're you know, you you've directed your head in a certain direction towards the audience. I just mean but I just mean you can technically look at someone or you can actually then actually look at someone.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, but I've given people direction where you go, okay, so then then no, no, the the person that's coming towards you now in in in the show, like you you you care about her and you love, and then I just throw my arms out and going like, oh, and and and if that person goes, this is like from a show that I was in where there was this Russian guy that was gonna be meeting his uh acro partner, and someone was trying to coach them into the love story, right? And the guy going like and and the director going, oh, and he puts his arms out just to sort of go uh in the way that you reach towards your long-lost lover kind of thing. And the guy goes, is like, hang on, how is your hand? Show me how that hand is, yeah. Your fingers are how far apart, and then you go, no, no, no, this is not it. It need because it needs to come from within, and then the body will align and it will it it'll make sense. So when I say that you go out and stand in front of an audience, you are yes, you have to look at them, yes, you have to smile, but those things have to come from a place of truth. So if you and I've spoken about this in the episode that we did about mysterio and uh and the and and the sacred or whatever, and standing behind a curtain and being grateful for the audience, the fact that I go out there and I don't and and and it's my privilege to be able to stand in front of them. Yeah, so and I genuinely believe that if I'm standing at home and rehearsing, this is not actually the experience of a show. This is rehearsal, it's me in a room, which is related to to uh sex in the way that masturbation and uh and actual having sex with a partner that you love. It's one is halfway there or whatever, like it's it's also great and amazing can be to rehearse and create, but to be there with someone else is a different situation, and you need to be there and want the best for the other person. So if you have that, that there is a form of love involved, and this I think of it as kind of a meditation that you need to be aware of the audience and when you come out there, if that thing is real inside you, that you don't take this for granted that they are like, Oh well, they're here, they better love me when I come out, but that I come out and I love them because if if I can make them care about me as a human being, then they will care about what I do. So, and that I think has to do with something inner because if you have it as an inner conviction that you're actually happy to be there, your smile will be different, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And all of those things. So, to me, that's the shortest route to it to be aware that you are to to make sure that you're happy to be there. And we just talked to another juggler, um Jack Denger, and uh he I sure he uh um who has a podcast. What was that called? The best anyway, I can't remember. But I'm gonna tell you about it later. But anyway, just on in a random thing, he sent the sent the video and he showed, and then he said, Okay, well, I I there's this time in between the tricks, and uh like he does this trick and then incredible jugglers, like seven clubs, and I can't believe the skills he's got. But then he said, Oh no, there's a time in between the tricks, what am I gonna do? But in his podcast, Redefining Progress, as that first episode was called, he talks about how he wants like he mentions a couple of the things that he wants from this new act that he's creating, and one of them is that that that he he really wants to get the audience to understand that I am here for you. And in in the first iteration, in a terrible in the back of the gym, when half of the gym stops to watch him do it, when he's doing the first run-through of a sequence of tricks that he's put together, and it's awkward because you sort of feel like you need to perform it or whatever. It's like some we're not judging anyone for that, but then the time in between the tricks. I was like, maybe the level that you have managed to express yourself here is um just I juggle for you, that's why I juggle. But we don't get the feeling like he's there as a human being in front of you. So I said, that time in between the tricks that he said is like, oh, it's dead time, it's as dead time. I said, No, that is the actual living time that we share together where I am here, and that's where you look at them, that's where you connect and you look with the eyes, and you and you and you also you read them. So, yeah, so that's that's that thing of being in front and uh and actually caring from the inside, then your look will automatically change, and you don't have to remember, oh, it needs to be a 45 angle of my face looking towards them, and the eyelid must be this far awake. But if you are what's what these days is called neurodivergent or whatever, yeah, where facial recognition and stuff is is not easy for you. Yeah, the social cues, you might find those things difficult or whatever. Yeah, but you can have exceptional charisma of like Rain Man in that movie where Dustin Hoffman plays somebody who is strongly uh on the autism spectrum, far out, and it's so intriguing. And that person coming onto the stage like the clown who comes out and is shy, done right, that thing is unbelievably charismatic. So you don't have to be there in the presence and have the smile in the right way. But that person knows how to, yeah. Okay, so what are you doing?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no. So so so you're totally right, and that's what I was saying before, where in my in my I don't know, in my process or something, I love talking about the conceptual and I love talking about the practical and how they actually relate to each other. And I think there's also we have the kind of common knowledge, almost cliche sometimes thing of like, hey, you don't have any stage presence. How can you get some stage presence? Well, the first thing you can do is look at the audience and smile. But now you've really uncovered what that actually means, what's behind that look, what's behind that smile, and how does that function mechanically and tie into your all these things you just said, right? But my but but what what it really I just wanted to say, just to put it out there, that it in the end it has nothing to do then with the actual look or the smile itself. It's all about those other internal things you were just talking about. So I have a couple of examples of that. One thing that comes to mind for some reason is I was always fascinated by Michael Jackson's dancing. If you watch a video of Michael Jackson on any of his concert tours, the bad tour or whatever, he's in the middle, right? And there's a bunch of dancers around him, and all the dancers do the choreography very technically correct. But Michael is the one who does the dancing the best, but he's in one way more technically sloppy. He kind of throws away the pose, or he'll strike the pose, but it's not his leg isn't as straight as the other dancers who are very technically accurate. But somehow, because it is Michael Jackson and it is his it is his choreography, he embodies it just, I mean, he's Michael Jackson. That's why he's Michael Jackson.
SPEAKER_05:So it feels authentic and practiced.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it and it was always like a it was always like a kind of a disconnect for me intellectually because I because I would watch Michael and I go, okay, these he's doing the dance, and the dancers are doing the dance, and they're doing the same choreography, but for some reason you just watch him, and then I go, Oh, maybe he's doing the dance better than the other ones. And I by better, what's the first uh measurement of that? Well, technique. Oh, so maybe his he spins, you know, or if more fast, or his arm is straight when he hits the pose, but it's not that his arm isn't this straight, his arm is bent, and the other dancers are like, I'm doing this perfectly because I'm a professional dancer. And Michael Jackson's like embodying the choreography, and he's throwing the arm out and just flinging it, and it's not you know perfectly straight, but it it captures the spirit somehow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's really compelling in what you said also about this idea of like, I love that idea of the of the hand-to-hand couple, and then the director says, Yeah, and reach out as if it's your lover, and the and the the acrobat says, Oh, but at what angle should my arm be? And how how uh straight should my fingers be? I just had that situation uh recently in a show I was in where I was I was asked by a director to kind of uh uh I was asked by a director to have a, I guess you could say a clown moment with another cast member, and the conceit was, or like the idea of the scene was that this other person on stage was gonna help me out and we were gonna do a little juggling moment together, but that that person was late to the scene. Like they were late to the stage because they forgot or their character is, you know, habitually late or lazy or something like this, right? And the director uh was on was on stage uh in rehearsal and kept saying, So, Jay, then you take your juggling club and you smack them in the face because you know they're not they're not behaving correctly. And I was just like, What? Like I was appalled. I'm like, what what? Yeah, yeah, just hit them in the face with the club, like really hard. And I I mean they're talking about in a theatrical clowning way, right? And he and but the director kept saying, you know, you know, you just hit him in the face, you know, like because you're frustrated, you know, you know, because you're and I just kept, and this was the actually the day you we had been having some conversations, me and you, and you told me, no, but Jay, stand up for yourself and really tell them who you are and what you are good at doing. And that really helped me because I'm just in my mind, I'm like, first of all, I would never hit somebody in the face with a club. That's not my how I relate to my objects, and that's never how I would behave on stage, even my character or whatever. Even in a but even in a fantasy, right? Like I would just never that's not my that's not in me. And so when the director kept saying, you know, you just hit him in the face, you know? And I literally, then I was like, I remembered your your your advice to me. You said, Jay, just be your like stand up for yourself and just tell them who you are. And so I just kept saying, No, I don't know. I don't know. And I and I did the I did the thing, how should I hold my arm when I reach out to my lover? I did it in that moment. I said, I gave the director the club, I said, you hit them in the face and I will copy your action because I don't know what you're talking about, because that's not who I am. And what you had said before earlier in our conversation, now you said you need to believe that you want to be there on stage. You want to believe that that smile, that smile is only a manifestation of what you believe inside.
SPEAKER_05:Right? It's a manifestation of what the truth in that moment, and that's what the authenticity is.
SPEAKER_01:So you don't need to, you it's not about looking at the stage presence is not about looking at the audience. It's not about smiling at the audience. Because it's a it's about that connecting to the audience. That connection can come through anything. It can be a voiceover played through the soundtrack, it can be through a piece of costuming, it can be through a gesture with your hand, it can be through a juggling trick or a magic trick or a one-arm handstand. The technique is just a manifestation of that inner kind of uh desire and impulse, right? And I think that's what was really missing was what from the show I had seen was this person on stage. I just didn't don't think has it had a resolution inside themselves of like, wait, why am I here exactly? And like what am I actually trying to do? And like, and I think those questions again came for for me, even for me for me, can be very intimidating. Hey Frodo, why are you here on stage? It's like, whoa, it's like, what's the meaning of life? Like, what are you who are you? If if someone that was Franco Jigan, that was his favorite thing in rehearsal. Everybody sits in a circle, you go into the middle of the circle, and you would say, Who are you? And that's a very instigating pro uh, you know, provocation of like, oh, I don't know, I thought it was just me, and now suddenly you're asking me to, you know, confront this big question. I don't think it has to be that big. I think they can be small answers. I think they can be very um small steps, you know, who are you? Oh, I'm the juggler. And that that's that's what that's what I was doing on that stage that that on stage that day a few weeks ago with the with the director and the clown. I mean he's he's literally saying, hit them in the face with the club. And then inside of me I'm going, but I'm the juggler. I love my objects, these are not weapons. And also I don't disrespect the people next to me. And I don't have I don't want to have a higher that was I mean, now I just now I just realized it right now saying this out loud. I don't want to have status over someone. That's not my general place in the world, and it's definitely not my place on stage. So to smack someone in the face with a club, I'll smack you in the face. Like me and Zeppel, my drummer, I smack them in the face with the club, but we're equal. We're jay, you've seen the show with me and Zeppel. We're just making chaos and it's crazy, but we're we're brothers, right? Like we're on the same level. It's not a status thing where I whack Zeppel because I want him to shape up and I want to control him. Like we're in the we're in the play together.
SPEAKER_05:And then it's a white-faced clown and the August clown, or like the dumb clown and the smart clown and whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Like that's so so so, yeah. It wasn't even about, now that I think about it now, it wasn't even about smacking the guy in the club in the face of the club or not. It was about that status power play that the director was asking me to act out. And he kept saying the way to do it was like, you know, like as meaning you know what I'm talking about, you can relate to my desire for you to have status over this person. And then that's the thing fundamentally I couldn't relate to that. And it was also thanks to your advice that I could stand my ground and not pretend that I knew what he was talking about and play into that because I would suck at it. Um yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_05:But I think that all like all good stuff, really good. It's and I the problem with talking about stage presence at all is that when we talk about it now, it's a little bit the only things I can say is uh try to uh if I say throw your hands out towards somebody like it's your child that you thought had drowned, and if they go, hang on, show me again how your hand is, then we can't talk about it. And that's what that innate sort of thing is, and why when you are out there on stage, you and that's the nafist thing to say, you somehow have to be yourself, but being yourself is the most difficult questions. Know thyself, right? Dragonic goes, Who are you? Yeah, and that is just so unbelievably hard because there's so many dimensions to that thing to go, you're standing in front of them as you, as the juggler. And sometimes when I was young, it was just that. All I had to do, and they go, Who are you? Well, if I really had to answer that back then, maybe it would be like I am the guy that comes out and I put on this suit with the and then I I'm gonna do that. Who are you? No, but I'm gonna do the cascade first, and then the reverse cascade, and they go, No, but who are you? Yeah, no, but then in the end I throw it behind the back.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_05:Like that I hadn't thought further than that. Yeah, and now it's all about being a full human being in the way that I speak, in the way that I do, and whatever, and the way my relationship to them. I've thought a lot about who I am and who are you? Like, if it really comes down to it, I am the guy that comes out here and stands in front of you guys, and I've spent my entire life making sure that the time that you give me now, at the end of that, you will have had an experience, a shared experience. I am the conductor, and you guys are the are the orchestra, and I will orchestrate this in because each one of you have your own voice, but I'm going to make it into so that afterwards you go, it was worth it. My life is better because I gave this guy my full attention than if I had given it to something or someone else.
SPEAKER_01:To kind of could to kind of extrapolate from that or like or like propose a process, maybe. Who are you, right? And you and you've just said, I thought a lot about who I was. I thought about me, you know? And I I get what you mean. I think I have the because we are both old men. But you know white or middle-aged men. Yeah, yeah. But we we've we've had the years and decades of reflection of who are we as people, and we've had the trials and tribulations of adulthood to like diff to also shape and also reflect on who we are, right? But so so I just I just mean we've had more of a chance than some people to know who we are than if you're 16 years old, right? You haven't had that many years to figure out who you are yet, but to to propose a little bit of a process there, because then I think you could extrapolate this and say, ah, I get it, Frodo. I see what you're saying. So to have stage presence, I should look at the audience and smile, for example. But when I do it, I should figure out who I am and in what way do I look, like how do I look at the audience and how does my smile go? Is it a quick smile? Is it a little smirk? Is it a little like half, you know, smile? I don't know, right? Like you could you could kind of that that's that's kind of what was running through my head now, and that like interpreting what you're saying into a practical kind of experience would be okay, I've determined I want to look at the audience here for whatever reason, and I want to smile at them for whatever reason, but then the way I do that uh depends on who I am. And then, of course, again, you can give it's like everything you've already said. David O'Mare gives the sexy smile, you give the funny look, or whatever, right? And I remember when I was uh 18 years old, I had a little juggling troupe in America. There were three of us, and now I remember I hadn't thought of this since I was 18, man. We had a ball juggling act. I mean, we had a two-hour-long show and we were crafting the show very meticulously. And I remember it was kind of starting to drive me crazy. I don't know if it drove all of us crazy, I'll just speak for myself. Because the the process we were having was getting pretty exhausting. Because what we would do is in the ball juggling act, uh, let's say there was a moment in the in the in the in the piece where I had to give you a juggling ball. We literally spent like three days on how to give you a ball. And that sounds like what? That sounds so pretentious, or that it also sounds unbelievable, or it also sounds impossible. How could it take you how could it take us three days to figure out how to? give you a ball because how many variations could there be? It was I remember the rehearsals. It was literally like, okay, so do I hold out my hand, palm up, and you take it from my hand, palm down with your hand, or do you take it with your hand, palm up, or do I look at my do I look at you first and then look at the ball and then you take the ball and I look at the ball? And we were very we were we were being very juggler about it. For me, a juggler is a person who looks at every single variation down the line and says, okay, well, okay, we found this variation where you look at the ball first. Now let's try the one where I look at the ball first. It's a very juggler way to explore the world in a very dry kind of laundry list kind of way. But now I realize all these years later what we were doing. We were figuring out who we were right and maybe not necessarily who we were from the from the from an internal from inside out kind of way, but we were looking at it externally. We had a video camera and we would film like 10 different takes of giving each other a ball and then we would watch the video back and be like, no, that's not quite right. That's not quite right. So we're doing it from an outside in kind of way instead of doing it from an inside out kind of way. But that process of giving each other a ball and finding the right way or quote unquote there was no right way but the way we ended up you know feeling that we had to do it we were going through all the versions of who we could be. So that's maybe a that's maybe a proposition. And I mean it's exhaust that that that process that's what I mean it was exhausting right like three days to give someone one ball and the the act that act was eight minutes long and we were making a two hour long show. So it starts to drive you crazy right but I'm just saying this person this abstract person who's a student maybe right now who's like oh I need to work on my stage presence what in the world could that mean and how could I do it? And now it's like well you're gonna look at the audience and smile that's the that's the thing you've settled on that you want to do. How can you do that as being you like really you? Well you can maybe try it. You don't need three days to look in a mirror to see how to look at the audience in this one moment in the act but maybe you could spend three minutes on it or you could spend 10 minutes on it. You could find 10 different ways to look at the audience like does your eyes go and then your head goes or I've just given this advice to my daughter. Okay.
SPEAKER_05:Because we are doing shows and she's 12 and she's in the show and she has not yet mastered keeping control over her face for the whole show. So she might drift off a little bit like I most certainly did when I was twelve and did shows with my dad that you're not always fully present to the moment and everything and I go yeah you have to watch what's going on and she sometimes then moves her eyes and and looks and then you got a smile or whatever and then she moves her mouth so it smiles but it's going this is uncanny because you are not actually smiling you're making a recovery yes and if there's anything that us human beings are clued into it's that subtlety of difference in expression is this a real emotion coming out some people say you can smile with your mouth but there are certain muscles in your eyes that you can't mimic. But me maybe I'm wrong but I have looked at myself not for three minutes. I've looked at myself in the mirror and I am the reason why my eyes also smile when I do it is because I can access that inner state so that the rest of my body aligns so that I so that I can find it. So that my daughter said after I'd taken a picture for my visa to go back to Apple Mad Apple go to America to get the visa and she's like going oh it's like you kind of you're smiling which you're not allowed to do in your passport. Yeah yeah I think I look like the worst kind of predator when I take my hat off and my hair hangs down and I'm not smiling and the way that I look is I dislike myself without the hat if I'm not being a funny guy. And and she was going like but you're smiling and I'm going yeah but look at my mouth and everything I'm not and as it was I went in and nobody asked any questions they just sort of look at your face and I'm just looking and what I'm doing in that one there is smiling with my face but having my mouth in a close as close to a neutral position as you can and then you read it as a as a as smiling even though you can't put your finger on it.
SPEAKER_01:It it reminds me of the blue man group audition like legend which my my friend I mean Patrick McGuire actually who was uh who I worked with who went to Mystere yeah he he auditioned for Blue Man Group one time and he told me about the audition and I don't know if this was like just that one time. I don't think it was I heard other people talk about it but basically you'd have like a day the f it was two days long the first day you would do a bunch of percussion drumming stuff because there's a lot of that in the show but then they would give you a list of 10 emotions that you would take home that night this piece of paper with 10 emotions and you had to come back the next day and you had to show them all 10 emotions without moving your face and and so you had to keep completely stone faced because that's like that's a hallmark of the blue man group uh show that you could only emote the the emotions through your eyes but you couldn't raise your eyebrows or tweak the muscles I mean this is the legendary thing. So you have to be completely stonefaced and they say angry and then you have to just like be angry without moving your face and then happy sad you know surprised and I think that's such a funny thing but that's exactly what you're talking about. Because it is a real thing and you can do it.
SPEAKER_05:Alright then we cut that off real quick there because we are saving the other one for next week when we have the concluding remarks by me and Jay about stage presence. Some practical advice also more more practical advice will come up and uh it would just uh I mean I should always say it in the introduction to this thing, but um if you haven't already please click subscribe to the podcast.
SPEAKER_03:I would love to get you as a subscriber to my podcast. It would be totally awesome. So that's uh all I have to say this um episode and uh I look forward to uh speaking to you again. So until next time take care of yourself and those you love and I hope to see you along the way.