Enlisting The Audience: 5 TIps For Managing An Audience

This is the last post in the Audience Participation series.

Text of Epaminondas

Part 1: Covert and overt Audience Participation

Part 2: Overt Audience Participation

Part 3: Covert Audience Participation

Part 4: 5 Tips For Managing An Audience

In the last few posts, I've gone into some detail to explain what I mean when I talk about overt and covert audience participation. Epaminondas is a great story to use because it is easy to see where the rhythms run in the tale, and how it lends itself to setting up easy rules for the audience to follow.

What about stories that don't have that kind of structure? Can you do audience participation with them? Of Course.

There are lots of things I could say about audience participation but who has space for that? So, here are five common sense things to consider. Some of them are things you can plan before you ever see an audience, and some of them are things you do while you are in front of one.


I often talk about storytellers as being tour guides. We pick up an audience, carry it to various places, or cajole it into following us, as we unfold amazing worlds, characters, and situations for them. I firmly believe that this is what we are doing, but that is not all that is happening.

We are also in hunter-gatherer mode.

We stalk and snare a wild audience and our job is to ride it no matter which way it chooses to bolt, buck, run, or roll. We hold on for dear life and try to figure out what we need to do to keep control of the beast and guide it where we want it to go all the while knowing that at any moment we might be thrown off and trampled.

While we are riding it, we must also respect what it needs, wants, and actually does in order to make sure that when the ride is over we go our separate ways having had an amazing and exhilarating though sometimes exhausting, experience.

Each performer must find her or his own way to do this, but here are some generic "everyone could do these" suggestions I have for working an audience.



1. Ask questions of an audience: These do not have to be individually answered. The whole point of these questions is to establish a communal baseline. 

Here is the way I begin a story about Brer Possum and the Frogs. The only response necessary is a raising of the hand after each question.

1. How many of you have moms who are good cooks?
2. How many of you have moms who are NOT good cooks?
3. How many of you have dads who are good cooks?
4. How many of you have dads who are Not good cooks?
5. How many of you have a relative who thinks they are a good cook...but they are not.
6. How many of you who have parents or guardians who are good cooks, but every now and then they go into the kitchen and they experiment? You know what I mean? They go in the kitchen and bring out something that has weird sauce, or some kind of strange looking noodles or something, and they put it in front of you and expect you to eat it. When I was a kid and that happened in my family, the first words out of our mouths were, "We aren't eating this."
7. How many of you have ever been served something so disgusting at the dinner table it made you cry?


I tell a short personal anecdote about a time when I cried at the dinner table.

Now, we are ready to tell the story I've chosen.

These questions aren't about my finding out everyone's story...they are about everyone joining me in my story. I set the playing field and invite them to come and play my game.

The coolest thing about starting a story this way is that for the rest of the day, everyone in that audience has a story to tell about a family meal or a funny food event.

The audience is engaged during the story, and they walk away to engage other people in story.

The second function of questions is to check in with the audience. By making them actively participate even on the level of raising their hand every five minutes or so, they get used to the idea that you want their input. They begin reacting to you in an active way instead of a passive one. Your overt request to see a show of hands gives you the covert request of having your audience stay with you because there is no telling when you are going to ask for their input.

This leads us to the second tip.

2. Check in with the audience during the story. You can do this by asking them to nod or having them fill in bits of the story over the course of the tale. You can also do this non-verbally. 

This technique is about reading an audience

a. Scan the audience. make eye contact with people

b. Look for nonverbal signals. Where are their eyes? Did they nod their heads? Are they smiling at places that need smiles? What are their hands doing? Are they fidgeting? Are they leaning forward? What are they doing? Do you need to recapture their attention? Make a choice to do something that will bring them back into the situation if you feel like you are losing them.

c. Are they engaged? Do they look like their eyes are glassing over? What can you do to recapture them if they look lost? Why are they lost? Did you say something that they missed? Have you glossed over an idea or point that they needed to understand the tale? Why are they behaving this way, and is this the first time you've seen it? Make a choice to either ask them a question or re-engage them some kind of way.

Once you realize what your audience is doing, adjust your work. You can ask a question or reiterate a point or go into more detail. If you catch the initial place you lose an audience, you can easily compensate...if you go too long without fixing it, then you are lost...and so are they!

3. Allow the audience to shape the tale.

If the audience starts reacting to something in a way that has never happened, take note of it. Do you like it? how will you change the tale because of it during this particular telling? Do you hate it? How do you stop it? Consider why the reaction is happening and adjust.

Some audiences are unique. They might do something that won't happen again. Crafting your piece for certain reactions can help, but sometimes you just get wild cards. Roll with it.

I started telling La Mariposa in schools pretty frequently over the last year. What I noticed was that if the kindergarten is in the room, they often applaud when the butterfly accepts the mouse's proposal, but nobody else does. It happens most often when I am in front of a K - 5 audience. When the older kids are not there, the kindergarten isn't likely to do it.  I am quite fascinated by what causes this reaction. I begin to wonder if there is some way to craft this story that causes the entire audience to applaud...hmmmm.


4. If an audience has a bad reaction to something, don't dismiss it! Learn from it!

Stories grow from adversity as well a success. Let the story that didn't work teach you how to work story. Only an audience can really teach you what kind of storyteller you are. Let them.

I learn a great deal from audiences. Every telling teaches me something. The tellings that weigh on me are the ones where I don't succeed, but I am not often baffled by them anymore. Sometimes I just can't capture an audience and I try to figure out what I could have done better. Other times I misread them and don't give them what they need. Sometimes I am fighting an uphill battle before I begin, but I just keep at it. I learn to crack some audiences, and other times I am confronted with something I don't understand. It's all part of the work.

My favorite saying about this comes from Mythbusters..."Failure is always an option!"

(I have friends who balk at the word "failure". They say, "It isn't a failure if you learn from it, or "you didn't fail!" I'm here to tell you that sometimes I fail. Failing isn't the end of the world. I think of it as a place to start. If the word makes you uncomfortable substitute something nicer.)

5. If you notice a recurring thing happening in a story that you feel adds to the story, incorporate it, and let it help shape the tale.  

We don't always know what is happening to an audience when we choose a piece. Just because we think a story is about one thing, doesn't mean that is so. Let the audience help you figure out what to do with certain tales.



The stories I tell in tandem with audiences are all due to the work I did with Epaminondas. Crafting that story over the course of five years helped me identify other stories that could be crafted in similar fashion.

So, that's my advice. Good luck out there.

Happy Audience Rustling!

Enlisting The Audience Part 3: Covert

Text of Epaminondas

Enlisting the Audience Part 1: Covert and Overt

Enlisting the Audience Part 2: Overt

Enlisting The Audience Part 3: Covert

Enlisting the Audience Part 4: 5 Tips



In the last post we discussed how overt and covert participation work together to help a storyteller read an audience.


Reading an audience gives the performer a chance to figure out what they need to do to effectively connect with an audience, but, in my opinion, the best part of the covert work is when it engages an audience so deeply that they become tandem tellers.

A good example of this happens in the second chapter of the Epaminondas tale.



The story starts with a sequence of language that is repeated throughout the story, but of course the audience doesn't know that the first time through. Some of the audience members are taken by how physical the story is, and they are already trying to mimic what they are seeing as it happens.

When Epaminondas gets to his grandmother's house they have an interaction that is also going to be repeated.

After that, we get into the particular language in the episode.

The first special sequence at his grandmother's house establishes some rules for the audience when we are not in repetition mode.

1. After Epaminondas and his grandmother clean up the kitchen, I go through some ingredients his grandmother is gathering. The sequence ends when I say, "His grandmother baked up a great big chocolate cake."

2. A number of the audience members make some kind of yummy sound. "mmmm" in various pitches and lengths.

3. After they make this sound, which I am pretty sure is coming so I wait for it to subside, I say, "with thick chocolate frosting."

4. The audience makes the exact same sound they made before, but usually louder and more enthusiastically.

None of that is prompted.

5. Next, I say, "His grandmother gave him a great big ol' slice of that cake." I mime cutting a slice of cake, and then I mimic whatever sound the audience has just made to signify yummy. Some of them will laugh at me at this point, but it is not lost on them that I have taken their sound and incorporated it into the story.

What does this mean? It means it is okay for them to add things to the story. It is okay for them to make noise. It is okay for them to play with me. That is the covert instruction. Some audiences figure out at once that they have some power over me, and they begin to search for other places to take over the story.

This happens in the first five minutes of the telling.

The next bit happens when his grandmother cuts him another piece of cake to take home to his mother. I make the same yummy sound with this second piece of cake. Inevitably, some audience members predict that he is going to eat this piece of cake as well. I hear it whispered all over the room.

He doesn't, He smashes it through his fingers because he's worried he might drop it.

(There is  a whole bunch of literacy stuff going on at that point, but this post isn't about that, so we'll leave that for some other time.)

His mother is upset when he gets home and the audience gets to say his mother's refrain. She tells him that if he gets something small he should put it under his hat.

The opening comes around again.

The entire sequence repeats from causing a ruckus to going to his grandmother's house. At the end of their second day together, grandma gives him some butter.

Now comes the moment when we go tandem...if it works.

1. He takes the butter outside and asks, "How did my momma say to bring stuff home?"

2. I get a mix of four reactions.

a. Some raise their hands - still asking permission or a conditioned response
b. Some answer while sitting perfectly still
c. Some reproduce the whole mime sequence I used when his mother told him what to do while saying the words in rhythm.
d. Some don't respond at all. Either they don't remember, don't care to participate, don't realize I actually want a response or they are still in television mode and don't realize they have to do anything to further the story.

Either way, the audience realizes around the same time the he plans to put two pounds of butter under his hat.

I say, "He took the hat off of his head. He put the butter on top of his head. He put his hat back on. He started walking home." I pause. "It was a really hot day."

Reactions:
All over the audience kids make predictions out loud. "It's going to melt!"

Now, the last time they made a prediction many of them were wrong. This time they are waiting to see what will happen.

I say, "He got butter in his hair." I make a surprised and disgusted face, but I say nothing.

Some members in the audience vocalize the sound that goes with that face. "ewww" or something like that.

I say, "He got butter down his face." I make the same face. More voices make the "yuck" sound.

By the third time - when butter is going down his neck - the whole audience is reveling in making the sounds I am not making, but they know belong in the story.

If I get an audience who just watches without making the sound, I have an ace in the hole. the fifth thing that happens is he gets butter in his pants.

The audience makes the "yuck" noise very loudly at that point - even the ones who haven't been involved up to that point tend to react.

Last but not least he gets butter in his shoes.

- The coolest thing about that sequence is that without any prompting, by the second reaction, the audience decides en masse just how long they are going to make the "yuck' sound, where it goes, and how intense it is going to be. It sounds like we have rehearsed it.

The first time it happened, I was pretty shocked. Now, I set it up covertly from the beginning and I expect it.



From that sequence on in the story the audience is empowered to participate to the point where I don't actually tell much more of the story. The only bits I vocalize are the things that happen at grandma's that are not part of the repetition. They do the rest, and they offer up sound effects and everything.

The key to effectively using covert audience participation is, of course, crafting. The more crafted your material, the better you can use it to create an amazing experience with an audience no matter what age.

I have one more post in this series. It will be a series of tips for using audience participation techniques to keep your audience actively participating all the way through your set.

Happy Telling!