Eliminate every second that is unnecessary or boring. The other night, our international student from Korea asked us, his host parents to attend his event. He is the student planner of a talent show at his college. As responsible, caring, host parents, we attended. This is a two hour talent show with ten musical acts and a comedian emcee.
What are talent shows, auditions and auctions notorious for? Guesses? Getting behind schedule. Well, I don’t know the schedule for this event, but if you took out all the wasted time in between acts, then sold this time to a busy person, you would be rich.
We were impressed with the talent. I just don’t understand the hairdos, but then again I am an 80’s child from the land of a million hair products.
The emcee announced the next act, then steps off the stage. Meanwhile the audience stares at an empty stage. The acts take a long walk and gathered their items, then eventually got on to the stage. As an entertainer, you need the enthusiasm of the crowd to hype you up, not the silence of the library scene. Your introduction has already been said and bored eyes are glazing waiting for the act to start. You are setting up your set, such as arranging the chairs, music stand, microphone placement, and get settled. The audience sits another 1-3 minutes. You can feel that the audience is getting ancy. You are a bit stressed and you are not thinking straight because you are under a microscope as you set up. You usually are behind the stage, but this time everyone is staring. The paid emcee, says your acts name again from off stage and you are on.
How interesting is it to see a band get set up? Not interesting, unless they are famous. By the tenth time of setting up, the musician better be worth it. Because the set up is boring this also puts more pressure on the audience to be better because the audience has to wait.
This is a wasted 4 minutes of our lives multiplied by 6 acts, 24 minutes. I could have updated Twitter, sent 11 texts, read facebook updates, booked a flight, downloaded and audio book, referred 2 linkedins, and had extra time to be bored. We left after wasting the almost half an hour on noting. Multiply this ten times (40 minutes) and then add the judges tallied time, which is always painstakingly long, so long, that we left.
Even though this is an amateur show, you still want to make the most of it.
The role of the emcee is to warm up the crowd, guide the crowd, choral their attention and to keep the show moving, eliminate drag and make your talent look good.
The comedian emcee was relatively appropriate for the college age crowd and had his stories and bits. However, I think the placement for his monologues should have been delivered while waiting for the acts to show up on stage and set up. Extra time was inserted for him to mess around with the crowd adding more time to the program. His entertainment value, in my opinion was not worth the extra time. These bits would have been great while serving the purpose of stalling while the act gets ready.
To give the acts more attention, a bigger entrance and more energy, the emcee should remain on the stage while the acts are setting up and until they are ready to perform. The emcee should take the attention of the crowd away from the behind the scenes set up.
While the act walks on, the emcee can give background on the act.
This is all background the audience may find interesting and builds the credibility of the talent. When the act is just about ready, they can signal the emcee to do the official introduction and pull up the momentum.
Your emcee should be prepared to improv when…
The emcee should have an arsenal of 30 sec, 1-10 minute bits to fill, transition and or energize the crowd. He/she should do research on the acts so he/she can be prepared to add interest to each act.
I would have put the stage in the center of the room and the chairs in a u-shape. The room was twice as big as it needed to be. The audience was 5 rows deep and set 10′ back from the stage. The last row was about 30′ from the action. A front row seat for a concert can be much more interactive and engaging. Here is an alternative plan, I would have done.
All and all, the talent was impressive. The lighting and sound was great. The seating was fine. But making these changes would take this community college talent night run by students, seem like a funky, professional, off-broadway, interactive, night club lounge feel. None of these changes would take any money to do and would not take any more labor.
These modifications are a win-win for all.
