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
What Creates Stage Presence w Jay Gilligan & Frodo part 2 of 2
What makes an audience lean forward before the first trick lands? We dive into stage presence as a lived practice, not a buzzword. From Jay’s house in Stockholm, Frodo and Jay unpack how real attention, honest emotion, and contextual awareness turn raw technique into connection you can feel in the room. No acting notes, no hollow smiles—just the hard, generous work of being here with people, right now.
We share the messy path many artists take from hobbyist to performer and why conviction matters before the material is perfect. You’ll hear how a modular show architecture lets you answer a crowd in real time, when quieting down tames a rowdy room, and how three loops—your inner state, the audience’s state, and the social relationship—guide moment-to-moment choices. We talk about reading the room beyond clichés: the corporate ballroom with chairs turned away, the school assembly building to a roar, and the town theater reopening after a flood. Context isn’t decoration; it is the content your presence must meet.
Words versus abstraction, authenticity versus mimicry, and the test that cuts through everything: would you want to watch this? We dig into teachable charisma, why about half of presence can be trained, and how to find an archetype that fits your truth instead of chasing someone else’s shine. Craft supports presence—framing, tempo, applause points—but love powers it. Love of practice gives you something worth showing. Love of the audience gives you a reason to share it well. That’s how feeling transmits, Tolstoy-style, from your center to theirs.
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Greetings, fellow travellers, and welcome to the Way of the Showman, where we view the world through the lens of showmanship. I am Captain Frodo, and I will be your host and your guide along the way. And today I will be taking you back with me or to Stockholm. It's a recording from January, and it is me and Jay Gilligan talking about stage presence. I mean this is a really important topic, and I believe it lies right at the heart of shamanship. Shemanship is that an active service of being on the stage for an audience and being there truly sharing a moment. And we will kind of get into the nitty-gritty of this as we go along. And if you haven't already, it'd be really awesome if you could subscribe and do it right now on your podcast downloader. It'll make me very happy. And if anyone out there has any ideas for uh specific topics of interest that you think I could uh tackle, then uh why not uh go to Instagram, be the way of the showman, send me a direct message there and uh suggest, you know, a person that you might think that would uh be beneficial to talk to or any kind of topics that you uh are interested in. Um be a practical showmanship or be a more philosophical uh aspect of it. Um it would be really good to hear from you. You can also send us an email at the wayofteshowman at gmail.com. But all right, let's uh jump into our conversation. Uh being a 49-year-old man and haven't done this my whole life or whatever, and now I know that it has to do with who you are on the stage, etc. But I also know that when I was 20 in 1996 and all of that, the reason why I could go to this circus school, because the circus was and that school and all this was not recognized by Norway, so I could get nowhere, I got no support.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So all the money that I used to go to this performance school came directly from performing. So I and when I performed with my dad, I got good feedback, and when I performed on the street and traveled around, I got great feedback, not just from the audience who actually paid me, but also some seminal events where I was doing shows and talking to meeting other performers who back then I was doing a show with another guy and have and that I was aware that I was getting a feedback from other performers that the other person was not necessarily getting. And going, you are funny. You well, like when I watch you to David McSavige, I remember him saying, said, like, he's going, You want to be funny, and I can I I can tell as soon as you walk out there, I know that you you want to be funny, and you're looking for that thing, and as a like as a compliment, and I might maybe I've said this before, but anyway. So there is no this whole thing with like you have to look inside or whatever, but you go and stand in front of an audience and you gotta know who you are or whatever. But this brings to the thing that I didn't know then who I was, or whatever, right? But what I did know was that I really felt like I belonged in front of those people, and this is where Angela DeCastro, in her book How to Be Stupid, I think, uh she says charisma is the pleasure of being there, just that you're walking out in front, and and with that, the pleasure of being there, this is sometimes enough. And the person that you described and you described in more detail when we've talked of like how they walked out onto the stage and how they did, and then like that, now they juggled and now they smiled, and now they go like on paper you did everything you needed to do. But what you didn't feel was that that pleasure of being right here, right now, and then the next step, which is maybe more difficult, is to be right here, right now, with exactly you, the audience. You and you and you and you.
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna make all this audience, the specific audience, not a theoretical, like ubiquitous audience. You look at me and it's one.
SPEAKER_02:It's not the new circus stare where you're just walking around and and your eyes are set to lay focus and that. And then you have your eyes towards the audience. But we know that when somebody looks at you but they don't look at you right, or like a Scientologist or the general um uh uh cult stare, where they look at you but they're actually looking to three inches into your eyes, and you can see it in the way that people talk, and it's a domination kind of tactic.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I don't know, I don't know acting at all. I mean, that's the whole thing, but there is that thing of Franco Dragon always said, you know, don't act, uh, be real. That was the thing. And I always have the example from an old friend when I was young, and it was like, okay, now in the show. No, I was in a show. That's right. That's right. I was in a show, and I had to run across the stage, and I remember my friend saying, Jay, you're pretending to run across the stage. We are born somehow with some sort of theatrical conceit about what a performance is. Oh, I'm on stage, so now I will run across the stage, and you pump your arms really big. You're miming that you're running. And he goes, just run across the stage. And it took me like 20 times before I got it. I'm like, oh, he wants me to run across the stage. Because there is that always that theatrical layer that in my young mind was like, oh, but we're doing a show, so I have to represent running across the stage, and I will it's like when me and you sat down to do the speaking for reflex, and I never spoke on stage before.
SPEAKER_02:And now I'm like trying to figure out how to talk from the and at the end of the day, it's like how to say the kind of things that you and me had been jamming out, so they were maybe a bit slightly different than what you normally say.
SPEAKER_00:But I couldn't speak. I couldn't speak for three days, Frodo. And then if you ask me now, oh, how do you speak in that show? I go, Well, I just talk, man. I just I just talk like this. But it but it's But it took me three days to figure out how to talk like I could talk before. So this idea of like running across the stage, just go ahead and run across the stage for real. And that's what you're saying about this looking. When we look at the audience, we don't mime that we're looking at the audience. We're not doing a representation of that. We're actually just look at the audience.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And this and so a couple of things came to mind. What you were talking about going to circus school and being in front of the audience and discovering who you are. I just want to talk for a second to mention the rhythm of how a lot of people in my life end up in this situation, which is we start off as hobbyists with no intention of performing in the bigger picture as like the main goal. The main goal is to stand in the, like I said uh on another one of our conversations, the main goal is to is to be in the studio and learn new tricks to the point where I would turn down work so I could go practice, because that was the main goal, right? So the main goal is to learn the technique. The the main goal is the technical journey of learning the five balls, how long can I do five balls, right? But at some point, because these art forms are aligned with performing, and the history of them comes from a tradition of performing, they're very adjacent to performing, or they are performative. And I mean, juggling is very visual, so it makes a lot of sense to you could put it in front of an audience, for example. Um, you find yourself through this journey of not having performing as your first priority, but suddenly you are in front of an audience. But that is a little bit sometimes a happenstance. It was with me. It was kind of a byproduct of learning these skills that, oh, I guess I could go on stage two, right? Like it wasn't a first motivation, but it's where I kind of ended up. And now I'm very interested in that process. But I don't take that for granted. And we can say Jack Dinger, who was our friend, who one of the, Frodo, one of the best jugglers I've ever seen in my life. Like, no hyperbole.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, but he was also realizing I was talking a lot there and it sounded like whatever, but then I really juggle.
SPEAKER_00:And it's unbelievable. He's one of the best, right? Yeah. And now lead me away. And he said at one point he wanted to, he had kind of reached the end of that journey, of that technical journey of saying, well, I went as far as I wanted to go in terms of technique. And at one point he wanted to quit. Right? I mean, he's this is all on his podcast, so it's not talking out of turn. And so uh he wanted to learn the the he so he said, Oh, maybe I'm done juggling now. Then he discovered he wasn't done juggling, and then now he's on some sort of new journey to figure out what is performance, right? And so again, it's like we find ourselves. I just wanted to point this out that like sometimes people people are on stage, and the that journey to the stage is through different sorts of paths. And sometimes that you're on stage because you want to be on stage, and sometimes you're on stage because you happen to find yourself on stage through whatever through whatever process. But it doesn't matter, either way, however, you're on stage, then you can start to uncover what you're actually doing there, and uh yeah, anyway, I just wanted to put that out give a couple of thoughts on breaking down the process of of of of uh what stage presence is, because in a way it's what uh Gollier does when he sits in front of the group at the clowning school, and you come out before in which school?
SPEAKER_02:Uh but it's I can't it's Goliath.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I see.
SPEAKER_02:It's uh it's in front uh it's in France. I have it and I haven't been there. Gotcha. Um and and you go out and he sits there with a drum and you walk out in front of them. This is just some stories that I've heard told. And he walks out, sits there with a drum and a thing, and then you walk out onto the stage. And in the beginning, most people they just walk out and he goes, dung dung dung, go away, don't want to see you. You have something planned that you're gonna do, but you never even get to do anything because you walk out and you're like, No, this is not it. And some people don't get to. A friend of mine who amazing performer on the stage is to perform with him for years, said he just went there and you never got to do anything at all. And that's this is a professional performer which kills it in front of audiences and whatever. But for the specific thing that Collier was looking at, he didn't even get to do nothing in front of the person. He just walks out onto the stage. There's pretense, we don't want to see this. And he comes in with a preconceived idea of what he wants to do, and that's it is a particular thing within clowning, also to find that clown state of where you just you arrive and you are it's like zen, you you you you are nothing but you are all presence, yeah, yeah, yeah. And learning how to do that is really difficult, and some people might have it so that they've made a a life and a career and supported their family from doing a show. Yeah, when they walk into the space in front of the discerning uh teacher, yeah, they don't this is not what he's looking for in that being in the moment. And I guess what I am talking about here of being you, by knowing who you are, and and and and that doesn't mean that you know and this is who I am forever. Because I am not the same guy as what I was when I was 20. Or even one minute ago. Yeah, even one minute ago, but yeah, but to make it not abstract. Oh, yeah. I don't go out and go, What are you gonna do? I'm gonna do this juggle first, I'm gonna do that. I'm going, no, I'm doing this first because I am connecting to them. So I need them to actively engage in with clapping, shouting, laughing, and in family show, the kids going, God, it's stupid. It's just behind your back or whatever. Like, I need them to scream and literally engage because I'm setting up the patterns that I'm gonna work with for the rest of the show. That's why this routine is there. So when I swap, but I do that out. It's having specific goals, that's why that routine is there, not in the end or not in there, because I want them to tell teach them how to behave throughout the rest of the show. But um, this so but you can gain a lot by knowing who you are and what you want from the situation, and to try to make it a little more abstract, but by saying it, it's like there's two levels always going on. It's your own, uh it's you, and then there is the social level, the relationship that you have with the people who are there. So you need to be aware of what your own emotions actually are, and whether those emotions are being portrayed to the audience. Because if all you do when you are doing your seven balls is focus, then having a smile and look at the audience is not the thing you want to do. Even if you can do that, you can smile and juggle seven balls and look at them. If this is going to be the peak finale, you somehow go, the emotional truth of this moment is that it's at right at the edge of my capability and uh possibly even on human this is the edge of what's possible for a human being to do. We're watching a sports moment, and and then your face needs to portray that. Right. So that means you need to be aware of what you actually feel, right? Firstly. And then you need to go, is this portrayed? Is am I so you have the actual emotional state, and then you go, is this being expressed? And then you have the sensitivity to this, meaning, am I aware of my emotion? And I am am I aware that the balance of then is it expressed? And even then going like, uh I put put portraying the wrong emotion when I'm doing this or whatever. So that's about you. And all of those same ones needs to be for the audience as well. You and that has to do with the social or the relational stuff where you're standing there in front of them, and I want a particular to do a particular act. And if it's just it's three minutes of three ball tricks and it's just gonna make you feel lots of crazy things, and it's like, oh, it's full of surprises, whatever, then you need to just be aware of what it is that you want want it to be. Yeah. And then you go, uh is this the emotion? Like are your emotions being shown in such a way that they infatuate them? Because and the and the so that means you gotta be aware of their uh emotions, how they are expressed, and then you need to be sensitive to them in going, are they how am I gonna navigate myself to change to to be sensitive to because the last point in both of them uh of the yourself and the audience is that is the control. You need to be able to control your own emotions so that you can actually feel this is on the edge of human capability, and you need to be able to be sensitive to them, whether they feel it and then control it, so that you are uh tweaking your own emotions uh and your own expressiveness to afford them that reaction. Because if there's anything that a live performance is about, it's about you go in front of them to cause some sort of reaction. You're doing an action and they are at least reacting to it, and that bit there, that's uh and if you come out there with a really strong intent of wanting to do that and that you want them to engage and react to it, then you need to, as you every time you do your act, you go, when I just put the fake mouth smile on, is that what they want? Yeah, because if you think it can be a funny way to do that or a weird way, you can make them unnerving. Sure. Like you go, I am a weirdly introverted guy, and now when I come out there, at the end of it, I put on the fake smile. Uh, because I've been told to do that. This is why I'm wearing a bow tie or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so so yeah, the so this idea of reacting and and and being sensitive and responding, one thing, maybe this is like normal performer knowledge. It took me forever to figure this out. But it's because it for me it was very counterintuitive. But I found that because me and Eric, we do a bunch of school shows for kids. And when the kids get loud, if the kids get loud and a little bit rowdy or you know, more vocal or whatever, my my intuition would be that me and Eric would also be louder to kind of overcome overpower them. But that's a that that's just like a losing battle because they'll just be louder and you'll be louder, and they'll they're just gonna win. There's more of them than than us. So I found that when the when the kids get a little bit loud or something, if we want them to quiet down, we quiet down. Right? Absolutely. And that's what you're talking about, and that that's a that's a very concrete example of what you're talking about here. Yes, it is, yes. And so uh it reminded me of a project I had because of Mr. Ivar Heckscher. I'm gonna blame him for all of this, which is that Ivar had said a thing to me once that I took maybe too seriously. And Ivar had said, you know, Jay, what you should do is, because he his whole thing is about necessity. Everything you do in art has to be necessary. You're not just gonna be novel to be novel for the sake of being unique just to be unique. And he tells the story of Toulouse Lecrec with the mirror, who had the mirror and they were they were hanging the wall, hanging it on the wall sideways or upside down, and then suddenly somebody flipped it around at 180 degrees just to be new, but then it didn't work as a mirror anymore. So thanks for being new for nothing, right? That's like his symbolic story of this new just to be new. And so he said, What you should do, you have to be necessary for the audience. So you need to learn their lives and their hopes and dreams and desires, and then you need to do a show for them with that in mind. And I said, Okay, sounds great, man. How do I do that? Yeah. And he said, Well, here's an idea. You would you would go to a town and you would stay there for a week, and every single day you would read the newspaper front to back, and you would go on a walk in all the neighborhoods around the theater, and you would talk, you go to the supermarket and talk to the cashier, and you would meet these people, and then you would have this inside of you, so then on the Saturday night, when the town comes to see your show, you have lived in their world for a few days, and then you could do, and then you have that inside you, you know, it'll come out. And I thought this was a really um it was a very strong story when he told it to me. I this image of just like reading the newspaper every day and digging into these people's lives. And so I couldn't really resolve that conceptual like process with like, okay, so let's say I do that, I do that whole journey, and then Saturday night in the show I'm gonna come out and do my three-ball juggling act. Like, how does that translate into my actions? I couldn't really come up with a uh an answer to that, but what I did was I said, well, I should at least leave myself open to the possibility that it can manifest. So I said, I need to make a show where I run all the lights and I run all the sound and I do all the juggling and I do all the stage handwork and everything is modular and everything can expand and contract physically. So the set design can be far apart or close together. I can throw high, I can throw low, the lights can go bright or dim, the music can be loud or soft or fast or slow, and I have control at any moment over all of those variables. And then when I'm in the moment of the show, I will be with the audience and I will feel them, and then I will say, ah, what this show needs right now is I need to turn the BPM up on the music. I need to go a little bit faster music right now, just a little bit, and then I can program that in an instant, and I have a little bit faster music. And oh, I see, I see how those people are responding right now to my high throws. I'll throw even higher right now. And I really had this. I really made this show and I toured it for a while, and it was extremely difficult to do because uh to be that open and raw all the time, to be sensitive was just exhausting, and to have the technical technical control over the stagecraft and the juggling and everything was almost humanly impossible. But it was really funny from this conversation of Ivar of being necessary, that I wanted to make the necessary show that had at least the possibility to manifest in those ways. And I wouldn't say that I ever uh necessarily like achieved you know his lofty vision, but I do I will say that like in a very humble way, there were some times when I performed the show I could actually maybe meet the moment much better than my previous shows, which had a permanent set, you know, an unmovable set design and unmovable, like the choreography was very rigid and set, and the music was on a playback system, so I didn't I couldn't go longer or shorter, right? So it was kind of fun to dive into that that process. That's a very great.
SPEAKER_02:Love that. Love that. And and to have made a show like that, which I think I have those dimensions baked into what I do too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I of course have words in mind, which we have in some of our later conversations worked out that some of the difference between you and me, uh, which is non-trivial, is that I always use words, and you also can do it now, but like when you just juggle, then the expression is abstract, like music without words. But as soon as you start to add words, it becomes more concrete.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um and the stories become more like hopefully more like a myth and less like the vague story that one might discern in a dragon circuit show. Yeah. Which is there is a story here, but it's not like he went to the store, then he bought the milk, then he came home. It's implied. It's like it there's you you you can look at these actions as if it's a story, and then you will see stuff. And and you actually do. With the good with the great examples of this, you do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um I got you. And so I I have those things in mind where I i where I increase tempo or slow down or do or or add in or talk exactly for that. And I guess what Eva Hexer is talking about in that is almost like method acting. Robert De Niro driving a cab for six months. Right. And then I can't remember which actor it was, but someone's told a story of her. He goes, like, oh, and then I to to be that I I was uh drove a cab for six months, and someone said to him, going, Oh, have you ever considered just acting? Yeah, yeah. Not being, but acting. And that there's the sh there's a shorthand way to do it. And if anything, it is that I do aim towards what Hecksha described with knowing everyone and everything, by one of them is to go towards the archetypes or go towards the central human experiences of love, loss, longing, yeah, heartbreak, uh, or passion, or so that those things are things that we all feel the search for meaning or purpose in our life, and that sometimes what you really enjoy doing when you close the door is when you're building your model train set, or you are or you are like you you like to organize your workshop and hang the things on the wall, whatever that thing is that makes you that's valid for you, and it might not be for everybody, those are the kind of things that I try to deal with so that I don't have to know them specifically for what this person does this day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the one thing. Yeah, and the second thing is back to me talking to the people at the show where you saw me do a corporate event or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I had spoken to them and I knew what they had done in the day. They had been on a little boat from that house where we performed, just across the sound of water, to the island where they where these pensioners had built this hut and they'd done, and I so I knew what their experience was. And I came in, and while I was waiting for the show to start, I was on the stage and I was talking to them, and we were waiting, and and I was going, Are we ready to go? And someone said, No, so and so are down buying beers at the moment, and I like doing all the classic kind of stuff, but I'm being there with them now. We are going to have a show and we're going to have, and then the person comes up and I go, Is there anyone more? Yeah, there is some more waiting. And when they come in, let's all give them a round of applause because he's the last one. And then they come up and we get a round of applause and they come on. So, and then when we start, I like, or or I can't remember exactly whether it was when the show started or in the beginning where I was like, oh, oh man, how amazing was it that you guys went on the boat today, yeah, and you were out there. That's my shorthand to get I know where you guys, what you guys have done. Of course, and I know also what your organization is about, of course, and I subscribe to it.
SPEAKER_00:I love what you guys do. I mean, I saw you do that show. You do it in a really genuine, generous way. I know there's a lot of corporate performers, magicians, and jugglers and comedians who are maybe a bit more cynical about it. And you have your three moments, you have your tightly scripted show, but you have your three little moments where before the show, hey, what's the CEO's name? Oh, what kind of car do they drive? Do they have any, like, do they have a boat or something? And you plug and play, and it sounds like you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02:You can And not only that, when I say, and then he's out there with this Tesla, I hold my hand at the 45 degree angle, exactly, and I put my eyelids like this because this has been proven to be the most empathetic uh expression. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then I so it's and and so the a couple other things.
SPEAKER_02:I'm trying to connect and I'm being there real in the moment, and I'm talking to them, and when they say I react directly to what they're saying, and I'm trying to get ready for the show.
SPEAKER_00:Uh but there's a there's a company in France, C Protocol, who actually did Ivar Heckscher's thing. Uh no, I mean they don't know him, but they had this project where they were going to do a show on the Saturday in the town. They would go to the town on a Monday and they would walk the streets and juggle and meet people. They would meet the kids and the you know the adults, and then they would do um interviews with with like the older members of the community. And they would go, then they would edit that into the soundtrack. They would teach people to juggle during the week who could be in the show, and they really did this community-building kind of celebration of a place and a time. So that's that's kind of one manifestation of what you were. That's some sort of social circus, you're like actually built in real human connections and but uh but speaking of like you know, you knew those people on that gig had been the audience had been on a boat that day. I remember I did I did a show with Wes one time near Brian, Brian Crabtree's house, and uh we we were in a situation where we didn't know the context until only later. So I I just booked a little I had booked a gig in a little theater, and we show up to the theater, and the first thing that I noticed is that it was full, like completely full, standing room only. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of weird. Like that's that's great. I'm really happy, but like, why does why is everyone here? Do they know who like they don't know who we are? Like, we're in the middle of nowhere next to Brian's house. I don't know. They're gonna see a juggling show. Well, that's pretty cool, and then we're gonna go start the show, and all of a sudden, then a person comes and says, Uh, the mayor of the town would like to give an opening speech. And I was like, Well, that's pretty weird. Like, okay, that doesn't normally happen. So then uh this elderly gentleman gets up wearing a cowboy hat and gives a whole speech, and it was uh, I don't know, it was kind of a nice speech. And then, of course, he didn't stick around for the show. He was the mayor, he had real stuff to do. But we do the whole show, the energy in the room was just electric, and it was an amazing show, and I was just none the wiser until afterwards, as people were leaving, and then I kind of catch somebody from the audience, they're talking to us, and I and then they happened to say, Oh, yeah, you know, great show, it was amazing, yeah. You know, ever since the flood, we never really had an event like this. And I was like, What? What do you mean the flood? And apparently then it turned out we had no idea, but the the town had been completely flooded out, and people had lost their homes and their livelihoods. I mean, it was a tragic incident. And this theater we were in had kind of been washed away. And now they had rebuilt it over the course of two years, and this was the first show that they had hosted in that theater since they rebuilt it. So the entire it was a it was an event for the community, right? It was healing. It was way more symbolic than our juggling show, and that's why everyone was there, and that's why the mayor made a speech. We had no idea. We're just like, oh yeah, we're gonna do a juggling show. Man, they really love juggling here in this town, and but it wasn't it was an electric night, but again, we didn't we didn't read the newspaper the day before.
SPEAKER_02:Because you were tuned in, so it was yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I got a question for you. Uh I was talking earlier about how people fall into performing through maybe a technical journey or like a hobbyist thing, and that maybe you end up on stage and that wasn't your intention in the first place, but now you're here. So the question is um do you think everybody do you think everybody can be a performer? Do you think everybody Has that ability to find the spark or the connection in themselves to how they manifest it externally? Or I don't know, yeah. Do you think that that that kind of confronts the question of like if you don't have sage presence, can you get it, or are you born with it or not? But it also has this idea of like, can any can anybody perform frodo? It's like is it open for everyone to succeed if you only try hard enough? Or I don't know. What do you think?
SPEAKER_02:Unpopular opinion, I think, it's that not everybody is equal. Not everybody is um supposed to be uh a superstar or anything. Yeah. Like it's not that you can be anything you want. And that's why I struggle often now with the idea of follow your dreams. You can be anything you want, because you can't be anything you want. If you're born in uh Norway or Sweden and you're from a normal family or whatever, you can't be like Elon Musk, who's made one point four million dollars, uh 1.4 billion dollars, his wealth has increased since the uh since Trump got elected. That it's it's this amount that I will never make in my life. You can't be anything, you can't go wake up me white middle-aged guy going like I want to be Kanye West. He is a different thing, and I can't be that. So when I'm saying follow your dreams, it's like when there's a crowd that goes, know thyself, and he goes, There shall be no rules, uh what is it? Um do what thou wilt shall be the extent of the law. But the whole quest of uh Alistair Crowley's uh direction of magic is to know what it is that you want. Because when you go out and you put something out into the world and you're trying to do what it is that you want, sometimes you think that what you want is sexual gratification. Sometimes you think that it is that everybody's gonna stand around you and think that you're a great guy. Sometimes you think that it is that uh this, that, or the other. But maybe that isn't actually what you want. You think it's what you want, and you have to maybe be those things for a while and realize this wasn't what I wanted, or whatever. So you are back to that thing that it's do what you really want, follow your true will. That's the extent of the law. That should be everything you do. But to actually know that is an endless quest that you'll never get to the end of, or whatever. Now I can't remember what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, but could you could we could we maybe say I don't know, I don't I'm not saying I I need to end this with like a positive high note or something. I it's a genuine.
SPEAKER_02:Everyone become a performer. And I think that everyone can become a performer, but can you become the performer which get get contacted by someone because you are so great to fly across the world to come here and do your uh three minutes of genius on our stage or or whatever, or or that we will give you thirty-five million dollars to make a build a casino that's going to be housed around your idea and your things. Not everyone can do that. Like in like in potential, anyone can do anything, but in actuality, you can only deal like what. But we could maybe narrow it down.
SPEAKER_00:We could maybe narrow it down and say that no matter how you end up on the stage, if you do end up on a stage, no matter how it is, even if you're just uh some sort of savant at technique of, oh, I can juggle 23 clubs behind my back, and I I don't know what performing is, and I've just lived in the forest and I haven't met another single person in my life, and now this producer snatched me up and dumped me in the middle of a stage, and I just go, huh? And then I do my 23 clubs behind my back, and that's it. No matter how you end up on the stage, do you think there is because you did end up on the stage somehow, right? And it probably wasn't this stupid scenario I just outlined, where you just got picked up from the forest and dropped on a stage. Um the fact that you ended up on the stage somehow, there's something there. There's something there, right? So you have the potential maybe to have some stage presence.
SPEAKER_02:If you're a true amateur, as in that you are doing it for uh it's uh a passion of the heart, that you really have something that you burn for, even and if that's technique and you got nothing else and you go out there, then there is a possibility that that thing that you have, your relationship with whatever it is that you do, reading a poem, singing a song, doing the technical juggling that you're doing, if that thing can come across, if you can manage to make that visible to the audience in any way, and it doesn't have to be through looking at them or through smiling, you can walk and stare at your feet.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It doesn't have to be that you have you could have a fine costume but then bad tennis shoes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can be Kurt Cobain. Totally. Like that's like Daniel Johnson and Kurt Cobain, these two people who are both so you feel they are so authentic, but the troubles that Daniel Johnson had with his like he was a troubled soul, and so was Kurt Cobain. But Kurt Cobain had this star quality or whatever, where they both existed at the same time, and one of them is pointing, and like um Kurt Cobain is pointing to the other guy by wearing his t-shirt. Hi, how are you with that alien on, and like so these things are crossing over, but but that star material and the the vulnerability to a fault that Daniel Johnson had and and and what the other guy had, there's two different sort of qualities, and of course, right time at the right place. There's a it is an immense amount of luck to become like a superstar as well, like being in the right place at the right time. But there's also yeah, so you can learn, and and also you can the producer can do a lot so that you can see the genius of someone. Sure. Take Bob Dylan, I can't remember who it was that signed him first, but that dude was like famous for having signed, I've heard him, whoever it was that he signed, and it was just all these bands that you go, oh wow, all that was one guy that found those talents. And he signed Bob Dylan and his first album, mainly cover songs, and it's an all-right album. And then when he went from that album to The Free Wheel and Bob Dylan, With Blown in the Wind and Masters of War and Hard Rain, these songs, it's like the biggest uh growth of an artist in the like when you're looking at artistic integrity from one to the other. So something in this person saw Bob Dylan sing these songs over here, but he did not yet have his expression of his full capacity yet. But then within the next year he did find it. And I have had this weird experience in my life that I feel like I have this great thing to show. And I have but I know I knew at the time that I I couldn't somehow, I didn't have my act yet, but I knew that I was somehow I believed that I I was and could be a great performer. That this was like somehow I'm going to be able to do this, and I felt like I was trying to be that, even when I knew that doing a passing routine where I knocked the carrot out of the mouth of an audience, it wasn't a paragon of of of cre of um of originality. I was doing a cover song like Bob Dylan in the first thing. Yeah, but some of those people who saw me then, David McSavage, who saw it and said it, when I was still always performing with people because I didn't feel strong enough to go out and do a 45-minute show on the street alone, I didn't know what I was gonna do or what but I knew that I belonged there, but I didn't know what I was gonna do yet.
SPEAKER_00:So that conviction I think you I think you hit on it, I think you hit on it already where you said it's about your passion. And if you have a passion for something in whatever way or capacity or whatever, um, if you can share that passion, then you're good to go. And and so that you're on stage, you share a passion, which means, in one way, that I see that you care about what you're doing. And if you care about what you're doing, I, as the audience member, will at least have a chance to also care about what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02:Avenir, the eccentric. If you are interested, yeah, it will be interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there you go. Yeah, cool.
SPEAKER_02:And it's what also like with so Bob Dylan was then just to go on this a bit luck and all this stuff, Bob Dylan wasn't signed by a solid folk thing that did it and had the integrity and everything. He was signed by someone who signed rock bands and all this sort of stuff. So the spotlight and the focus that was coming on him was totally different than if he delivered his second album with Blown in the Wind and all these songs that now are like iconic. If they had come out on a small record label that he was in amongst all these other folk bands, that that maybe maybe his career would have been different because he was noticed by this one guy that saw some incredible level of integrity or of of prophetic that he had a vision about a potential or whatever, and he thought that this guy is going to explode and he and he could see it before he had the material to match his uh originality. I think there's something in there, and if I and and it might just like if I never had amounted to anything, then people would have looked at me as naive or as stupid, and now when I say that I have that, and I also because I also thought that showmanship has incredible depth in it. And people often talk about me like as if oh yeah, he's a philosophy guy, and they talk about a lot. But I couldn't then 20 years ago, or even before I started my podcast, it's like starting to concretize and needing to speak cohesively for 10-15 hours about what showmanship is. Yeah, then I didn't quite know how to express it or whatever, but I knew that the depth was there, and if nothing else, it was that I had a naive faith that it would be there if you just look in the right way, like we talked about. You choose to look at something as sacred, or you choose to look at the show as being serious, or like we talked about when we talked about Mystery. Yeah, and I think if nothing else, then maybe that is what it is. That I that maybe Cobain just thought that he had something that was a value. Maybe Bob Dylan did, and and he had that star quality as an as a as a charismatic person. He was a performer before that. But and uh um no, I I want it to be to two hours so we can divide it into two. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, sorry. Because it's almost wrapped up, but now it's almost to be it's fine if it goes for another 10. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Um, where we were just repeating some uh No, but I'm I'm no I'm I'm no I'm drawing conclusions where the naivety of me as a performer, because I almost feel like I need to defend that. I said that I always thought that I had something in me.
SPEAKER_00:Really? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:When that that when I went on stage that would that it would be valid for people to watch me, I would have something. But when I look back, that's why I also said earlier that when I was 20 years old, it wasn't just that my goal was to have this three-ball routine, because the feedback that I was getting at the time when I was 20, it was that I was a good performer. I had made all the money to go to the circus school to save it up and all that. Yeah, so I didn't know who I was and I didn't have the philosophy worked out, but I had this faith in what it was that I did, and that it was meaningful, and that it made my life have purpose, and it made uh and that it was valuable for others to see. And how did I know that? I went in front of them, did my street show, and then they paid me. And if I had to go to the next town or do something.
SPEAKER_00:That's a validation there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. So maybe some of that star quality or whatever that that the guy saw in Bob Dylan before he had the material to back it up. I know that the material that I did when David McSavage singled me out and spoke to me afterwards. It's like going, you you got it, and you need to do your thing. You need to find your show. Yeah, that that was deeply important for me in finding that faith, going, yeah, that's right. And what is it that I do? Because then I started questioning that. I was doing a menial job, and I was trying to work out how I would express this and how would I get it out there or whatever. But maybe I was on that surfing that wave to have the feeling like I have the right to be there and I belonged it. And I think that's also what the Space Cowboy felt. Yeah. And then he goes in front of them and it gets justified by the experience from them and from him, and then his feedback, uh, what he gets and whatever that feedback loop that happens there teaches him that yes, he is that. And then you and then it grows from there. And that would be the same with when a mare does those things and strikes, slides his hand across his body, you get one sense of a feeling, and when I do it, people laugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but both have that thing of going, I am here being something specific for you now. Well, there's a conviction there. Yeah. There's a conviction there, even if it's naive, and maybe at the time, oh yeah, if I not hadn't made it to what I'm done now, where I can support my family uh with uh for doing what I do, then would have gone, this guy's deluded. Yeah, yeah. Maybe at the time I was a bit deluded. But I went out and I did those stock things as if it really mattered, and as if it uh and I didn't do it as if it really mattered, I did those things because it did really matter to me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. No, but this idea of having a conviction, no matter how potentially misplaced, no, but a kernel of a conviction of something from inside yourself that you stand your ground for, um, it also confronts, like I think that's confronted too when you have these uh perform potential performers going to a circus school, going to a school, where in one framework of that narrative, people are telling you what to do, right? I'm gonna go to school and learn. And the way I learn is people transmit information to me. They're telling me, oh, this is how you enter the stage, this is how you discover who you are, this is how you turn and smile, or whatever, right? These are possible things that you could do. And at some point, though, you have to have your own conviction. There has to be a kernel of truth inside of you of something that you stand up for that wasn't something that somebody told you to do. And like looking back, I mean, you're talking about your own uh your own journey and your career. You know, I was performing since I was eight years old, and yeah, when I was eight, it was completely unconscious or unknowable. But when I was 12 or 13, I I was doing, I mean, Frodo, when I was 12 and 13, I was juggling three knives and eating an apple. That's what my show was. I was telling quote unquote jokes. I mean, that I, you know, I need I need a volunteer. Oh, that was, oh, don't worry, that was that wasn't your fault, that was my fault because I picked you. I was doing this when I was like 13, man. But there was still something inside of me. I I can re I remember back, I would do like a little devil stick routine or a little three-bar routine, and I remember I would be like, oh, I'm gonna pick this song to do the devil stick to today. And that was my little, not rebellion, but my conviction of like, well, this is how you do a show. You wear the black pants and the and the dress shirt and the bow tie. That's what I had. And I juggle the three knives and I'd eat the apple and I tell the jokes, and I'm gonna do this trick on the count of three. One, two, three weeks ago when I was practicing this. I need you to remember three things nine, one, one, and all these American comedy juggler lines. But I could pick the music I was gonna do my devil stick routine to that day, and that was my conviction, and that turned into Yeah, that picking the music was of a different that could express a different kind of truth from you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Whilst the other jokes, those were things that you were doing. And I remember also sitting when I first started, came to Covent Garden or whatever, before I was even really doing street shows. It must have been extremely early 90s, it's like 90, I don't know, 92, 93 or something before. Because I did my first street shows in 94, and I was sitting there and I was taking notes on going like and I had this epiphany when somebody was doing a street, uh doing their money lines, and they asked for money, but they did it with jokes. Uh-huh. You'd uh don't need to give they don't give you five five dollars.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, take a five dollar out of your wallet and just put the wallet in the hat. Yeah, kids, if your parents don't give you twenty dollars to put it in the hat, that means they don't love you.
SPEAKER_02:And I had this epiphany going, wow, you could ask for money, but you could tell jokes of it. Yeah, or whatever. Yeah, like and and in the beginning, uh you are copying, and not copying and doing one person's act, but copying whatever it is that you do, and then eventually you find out who you are, and I would find out in partial at least, part of it is what I like to do because yeah, it was juggling for a million years, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it was freak show, yeah, and then whatever. So it's almost like the content didn't didn't matter because I each one of those had a good rapport with the audience, yeah. But you need to have that that something that that you you burn for or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the metric of the metric of like, why are you doing this? Because I like it is such a good one. And it's such it's such a it's such a in one way non-obvious because we have all these uh me and you have all these philosophical discussions and all these tying in different references and these different thoughts and they're they're high and low and these connections and it goes deep and blah blah blah. At the end of the day, it's like, well, I like it. Yeah. And it's kind of like that's not a bad No, it's not. And you use it. It's not a bad thing.
SPEAKER_02:You use it specifically where you take the choices. Yeah, you start a routine, you're going, Do I like this? Do I not like this? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. If I don't like it, then don't do it. That's true. But you might also analyze it. So in the beginning, at least, when you're doing it as an exercise at the circuit school, it is why do I like this? Yes, why do I not like it? Try and try and make that conscious in your mind, yeah, because that will make you a better decision maker. We spoke about this with Eva yesterday. Yeah, but a lot of what we do as artists is to take decisions in the material that we do. And for me coming back to Norway and having spent 25 years developing a career in English, it was a difficult transition to be funny now in Norwegian. Not because I didn't speak Norwegian, but because speaking about art and speaking about what I do is a difficult thing. I have found particular ways of expressing what it is that I do that I feel like resonate with what it is that I do. Because the words that I use to describe what I do when somebody asks me, What do you do? are not doing it. If you see what I do, then you know what it is. Right. But I need to find the specific words that I feel evoke what it is. Yes, yeah, yeah. So almost like a poem or whatever, and I don't have those words at that time. So yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, I often, often, especially when I'm I don't know why it's particularly, but for like a corporate event or a kind of business kind of show that's not maybe a more artistic show or even a general public kind of commercial show, but just specifically for corporate entertainment, I feel like I've only been hired as the person who made a bunch of choices. And what I mean is sometimes if I'm gonna go perform in a theater for the general public, I'll sit down and kind of think, well, what do they, what, what would the audience, like what's their experience gonna be, and what would they expect me to do, or maybe even want me to do, and how can I confront that? And then when I have those same questions about like a corporate event, it's like, oh, what what what do these people want me to do? And then I realize, like, they don't really want me to do anything. They're they're not here to see me. They're uh this is a whole different kind of construction, constructed situation. And then I realize, ah, they're just paying me money to show up with a costume, with a soundtrack, with a lighting design, and with some joggling tricks. They don't care necessarily on a certain level, you see what I mean, what those things are. It's just that I made those choices and they don't need to be involved in the process, and I don't need to call the client and be like, oh, I'm thinking about the red shirt or the green shirt. But of course, the best corporate, I mean, again, just to confront that specific situation, the best corporate entertainers, they do leave room in that process to, at the very least, in a cynical way, give the illusion that they have again the name of the CEO and the script and stuff, so that they did consider the situation. But more or less, I really feel like I'm this person who's there who is just paid to make a bunch of choices. Oh, yep, you got the costume, it's the red shirt looking good. Oh, you're gonna play that rock song for the entrance? Perfect. Right? And and and you just need to make these choices, and then that's that's why you're getting the salary.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but to me, it's like all of those choices to me that I question why is it that I've made those choices? And it is to create a certain kind of experience for them. And it might be that it's just being colour and movement in the corner, and if that's what they booked you for, right, then that is in a sense what's necessary in that moment. Right. You wear the shirt and you do all of that. But for me, when I am hired, it is usually that I'm hired there to to to be an entertainer, to make them have fun. Sometimes they hire me specifically to be an icebreaker. I come in in the beginning of the show, and after they've gone through what I have to show them, which is entertainment by unease, they are uncomfortable, but they're also laughing, and it's or whatever, and then it's strangely emotional at some points when you didn't expect it. And then after that, so I've gone on, and in Norway now a lot of the gigs are like half an hour or so. So I go on to a half-hour set, and then I leave, and then they are now having maybe it's a bunch of business people who don't know each other, and then this now they have this shared experience where they've had some, and or if I am the one that comes on after the main thing before the dinner, then they're in a different headspace, and I can come. I don't have to be so folk circus and come out and go, How are you all doing? and build it from zero to five. Maybe they're already drunk and excited, and I come out and it's a Christmas party, and I come out late at night. Then I can come out and just go, All right, everybody, we're gonna take it to the next level. So I'm always there to serve a specific social function as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and maybe that's the good point, is that it's it's part of a bigger picture. Yeah. And I don't have to be so cynically kind of targeting a corporate event that I don't do very much and and whatever, or connect to personally, because it's not my career very much. But just to say that you're part of a bigger picture, because in that case, just to realize that you're not the main event and that you're part of a bigger experience of that whole flow of that day, they've been out since eight in the morning with meetings and lectures, and then and to understand then that and the reason I keep thinking this image in my mind is I saw you do a corporate event here in Stockholm, and even then, because you are part of a bigger picture, you're not the main agenda, so not everything is is geared towards you. So I saw you perform in a room, in a ballroom with round tables, and half the audiences literally fake their seats are facing away from the stage, yeah, and all these other sort of um technical or just bad staging and bad rhythm circumstances they put you in. And what was so fun during that show was that you kind of come out and like it wasn't the ideal situation, I'd say, for any sort of performance, let alone for you or whoever or me, you know. But because of you have done all the due diligence on your end, you overpowered and overcame the situation to the point where I watched, you know, a quarter of way, a quarter of the way into your act, those people turned their chairs around like because they couldn't help it. They were drawn to it, and that was so fun, and that's such a powerful moment of like, oh man, Frodo has really dove into this and the mechanics of it, and all the presentation that you you've crafted, that it it really was a true a truth that not only does it work for an audience facing you, it makes people it makes people turn around and face you. And uh, yeah, anyway. So, yeah, stage presence. I mean, from your stage presence.
SPEAKER_02:From my stage presence, you're making those people and in that in those moments I'm commanding it and I am steamrolling it a little bit because I know that I need to deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver so that the people who are paying attention goes, but so that the other people also go. They get gripped by the train and then has to turn around. And when they all turn around, I can finally relax a little bit and change the tempo. I don't have to push so hard because now they want to watch, they're basically leaning in or whatever. Not that we are.
SPEAKER_00:They had put you on during the main course, too. I think they just served the stakes. Yeah, they had just served the main course, and like, yeah, because they were gonna put you on later. They're like, oh, we'll put you on after the dessert, and then suddenly changes the. I remember we were backstage, like, you're gonna go on earlier, and they had just turned all the stakes. So we were cutting into their stakes, you know, and then you you start your act. And I would watch these people kind of glance over at you as if just to be like, oh, what's that distraction? But then they couldn't not look back, they couldn't look away.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it was really cool.
SPEAKER_02:And then as a result, everybody had cold stakes, nothing situation. But um, so I so maybe that what I had, my stupidity or my self-aggrandization, or my belief in myself, that I somehow had the right. Well, not the right, but that but that that I that if I went in front of them, it was going to be valuable. Yeah, and that was because I was I was also practicing all the time and doing so that I had something to show. If you turn around and look at me, I have something here and I'm going to grab you or whatever. Yeah, and that might be just naive or dumb or whatever, but maybe that is that thing that when we talk about something is inborn and something is not. Because some people, like we talked about yesterday, when at the big juggling convention where all the crazy jugglers are, there's always some people who don't go and see the show. They just stand and juggle or chat or whatever, and go, I'm not interested in performing, I'm just interested in passing or whatever. That these things are like real, real things. People have their own inclinations and they never want to go on stage. And yeah, and if they are, they can be in the background and do some passing or whatever, or do a little bit, but not be at the front and w work with the audience. And that that maybe that's that thing that I'm going like, all right. I sound like I'm full of myself or whatever, going. I believed that I I could have something valuable to offer when I stood in front of them and that they could feel that, even when I didn't have the material to fully back it up.
SPEAKER_00:Well, what I was gonna say, I mean, that that's exactly that's exactly a point I was gonna say, which is that um this idea of stage presence, it's like now we've kind of isolated it as a topic and talked about it on its own, but it is interwoven with all the other stage craft techniques, right? Yeah, that's that's that's a proposition I have, right? Where it's like it's like often we see stage presence, if you have it in spades, um it can overcome a lack of other craftsmanship in other areas of your performance, right? So it's like, well, I didn't really nail my costume, but I don't care. I I'm gonna just I people are drawn to me anyway, or whatever, right? Like that can kind of overcome. But in general, stage presence is part of a bigger uh the the crafts, the craft of your act, like you know, the the construction of your act, and it's it's part of a it's part of a bigger whole of that act. And so I don't I don't know um this idea of just like we can't hang we can't hang everything on stage presence um is definitely an important part, but it's equally important like like all these things we're saying, conviction, having something to show. It's it's related, it's interwoven, and it's sometimes it's hard to extract it on its own and isolate it.
SPEAKER_02:And so to try to sort of wrap it up or whatever, it is that the meditating on that you actually want to do it, and that you want to do your act, and you want to do it, and and hopefully you should also at some point actually want to do it for these specific people. If you can get that into your head, then you will have benefited a lot. And there's gotta be love involved involved. Like I loved practicing, I loved thinking about the tricks, I loved thinking about and preparing to do it, and then I go out there, and this is my only opportunity, and I've worked hard towards this moment, and I love that I have the opportunity to be able to show it. So I think love needs to be involved in that you love what you do, like that you love your your craft and you're doing it for that, and then I love once you can also learn to love the audience and the and the performance situation that they afford to you, when that is visible, then all else will fall into place.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I er this is an Eric idea, but I've I've adopted it now. Um whenever you do a show or whatever a performance, you can yourself think, would I like to watch this? Yep. So whatever you're doing on stage. You can imagine yourself watching another person doing that on stage, and you say, Would I like this? Would I enjoy this? Would I connect to this? Would I cry watching this? Would I feel something watching this? Would I enjoy this or whatever? Yeah. Yeah. Would I find this compelling? Film yourself. It's a good. Yeah. Well, it's it's just a good metric of because we've seen it.
SPEAKER_02:You can think it, but it's more specifically, you can look at yourself in the mirror, but then you can film, and then you go, I don't like to look at myself. And that thing that I showed you that I did of a brand new show. I don't like to look at that because it's doesn't have the details. But it was real in that moment that it was there. But as the show progresses, I will look more and more at those details, and eventually you should be enjoying watching yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think there's absolutely there's there's like the very practical thing of filming yourself, but there's also in an even more conceptual way. I think a lot of performers get these ideas in their heads of like, I will do this thing, and it has this meaning, and internally to them, they have some sort of connection to it, but externally the manifestation of it is maybe annoying to the audience, or there's a it just comes back to that idea. I think there's a lot in circus, and maybe other things too, that's way more enjoyable, enjoyable to do than to watch.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And and so I think even if you film yourself, you could still have the danger of of tricking, like fooling yourself and being like, oh yeah, I see that conceptual idea I have in there. I'm I'm nailing it. Yeah, but it's like you gotta ask yourself, wait a second, would you like to experience it not as a performer but as an audience member? And that's maybe a key there. And when Eric says, Would you like to, would you like this show if you saw it, right? And as an audience member.
SPEAKER_02:And then you need to develop the sensibility, sensitivity to see whether the audience are actually enjoying it. Because sometimes it might be that they did love it, but they didn't want it to be seven minutes. They wanted it to be two. Right. And maybe that was what happened then when in in Mystere Misgiven or not, that it needed some applause points in that music for the nature of the show. I don't know, but it's like you need to put these things in because the audience also wants to to give something back and they don't know and they would don't want to disturb and or whatever. Yeah. Anyway, it is absolutely so. Richard Wiseman says in in uh one of his books, uh, psychologist working at the University of Edinburgh, that summing all this stuff up about charisma or whether you have stage presence or not, and he says that it's roughly 50% learnt and 50% inborn. So you can take any person and raise them by 50%. Okay. So, and that's by techniques, and that's by doing these things that now seem abstract. But in if we were sitting in a real audience and you had a real no not not a real audience at at a group of students with 25 people and we were teaching the craft of stage presence. Yeah. So because you're teaching juggling, and then there is no necessarily, that's not necessarily it it sh that's I'm fighting the fight for showmanship and for stage presence and that to be a thing in itself and its own craft.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And this craft of showmanship can be applied to anything, to magic, juggling, public speaking, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And some so if there was a class for us to do it, it's funny.
SPEAKER_00:Nalle Nale was saying to do that at the circuit university now, that there should be its own class that everybody from every discipline takes exactly what you just said.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So, and I love what Nala does, and I think a lot of what Nala does in his uh his teaching is for clown, is also universally there for everyone. He can do a lot of those games and those incredible things that he touched upon in his book, Clown Manifesto, but also like he and one doesn't need to be him, but that this should be taken seriously as a thing in itself. Yeah. How do you connect with an audience? What kind of experience do you want to create? And the experience is not fully you, it's not wholly you, it's also the audience, but it's not just them either to just give them what they want. Yeah, because sometimes they don't know what they want, yeah. And you have to offer it to them, but they are also guiding you, so it is a co-creation of that experience, so and it's different what is expected, or what you want to do if you want to do freak show, or what you want to do to do artful juggling, what you want to do if you want to amp up the um entertainment or whatever. So I think it's a craft, and if that was there, then we would need and we could we could raise it by 50%, and some of it is to find what's unique about you. You're the person who come out and you really love technique. That's why you're out there and you got exceptional skill or whatever. So then we gotta work from there and not try to make you the space cowboy or whatever, right? Right to try to make you the uh cat power, the woman who's so nervous that she comes out and is standing in a corner and as like I used to love her music, and then saw her on just she just dislikes performing. But the music is amazing, and then there's just standing in the back corner with a or playing or like that, that sort of ambivalent relationship, but somehow in here, the fragility of that person who can move you so much with their music and needs to do this, but got into it to make music, not necessarily to do concerts, but then the world collapses, and they have decided that uh the rich people take your money uh from Spotify and you get nothing, so now the only thing that's left for you is performing again. You can't make money from making records, which was what yeah I don't know if this is not specific about her, but about somebody, and you now need to stand in front of an audience again and you and you don't like it. But this can be something fragile, and there's a way to present that thing so that it shines like a diamond of truth when you see it, or so so those are the 50% that we need to go up. And I don't know, I'm just maybe maybe Richard Wiseman just said that as on a whim.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But because he's a professor and because he goes, there there is that show and sequire, there's some charisma, there's something that you might just have. But no, I'm back to Anton Leigh. There might be within this circle of s of six or twelve archetypes or so of what the different witches are, that there will be one there that I, Captain Frodo, can take. It's it's this one. You can embark. Or it's this one with the flavour of that one, because again, fully three-dimensional character has several of them or whatever. Totally. And that you use that and you start from there, and then you highlight that until that becomes charismatic for what it is, and not for me to try to be the sexy guy or whatever. That yeah, then I will only ever be at best the 50% towards David O'Mare or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And but be finding what's true to myself, I can be 100%, which is what you feel like. The person can get out on stage, be completely authentic, and speak their truth, but that as you're sitting there in the audience and you're listening to them, you somehow feel like at that Captain Frodo on that stage, he's talking just about his own things, but I can hear it as if he is speaking with my voice.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Right on.
SPEAKER_02:Right on.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Great. That stage presence. That stage presence. I'm gonna get me some of that.
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna get some of that. I wonder when that course starts. I wanna take that. Yeah, we should we should sign up. Even just so that next time it doesn't take so long to try to talk about it. To explain it. Yeah, exactly. It's this, it's this, it's that. It's actually easy.
SPEAKER_00:See you later. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Listening to us uh talk about that and that final definition or that final description that I talk about in the end, um it reminds me of the quote by um Tolstoy that we that I talked about. Opened uh episode thirty. No, epit thirty of the showmanship and um and play which was episode one hundred and forty-eight where uh Tolstoy says that art is is to evoke in oneself a feeling and then transmit it so that others experience uh the same feeling. And uh I think there's something connected with what I just talked about there of speaking so that they feel like I'm speaking with their voice. At least, you know, they they might later on think something else, but that maybe through my enthusiasm and everything, they might uh find that they agree with me in part because I've led them down uh a path of of an experience, you know, in a way that a poem or whatever might uh um you know, uh move you emotionally um and then later on you might wonder about it many, many many things, but uh it's that transmission of feeling. And uh if the truth is part of that, then you're doing really well in your state presence. And if you are by it also is uh definition, you're then doing art, so that's worth a lot. So until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.