Crowd Show
What is a Crowd Show?
A “Crowd Show” is a show that involves the crowd in ways they don’t normally get involved. It is a show in the sense that you do watch something happen on the stage, but it is more. Crowd Shows turn spectators into participants.
The audience gets involved. They BECOME the show. It makes audience members famous. How does this happen? Here are some of the ways that make a Crowd Show distinct.
1. Members of the audience become members of a team. The crowd is divided into 2-4 sections. Those sections become teams. If you are sitting in that section, guess what? You’re on that team!
2. In a Crowd Show, not only can a participant on the stage score points for his team, the audience can score points. They might score points by shouting loudly, answering a spontaneous question or something else.
3. The stage crew are untrained audience members. They are briefed before the show but they have only a general idea of what to expect. This allows the director to have some fun with them. For instance, they might get “punished” for making a mistake.
4. Each segment draws ordinary people out of the crowd to do something extraordinary, something they would never ordinarily do. They get pushed farther than they would normally go.
Crowd Shows use music but they are not concerts. They use games/challenges but they are not game shows. They are real–in the sense that they are not scripted and you never know exactly what is going to happen–but they are not reality shows. They are not dramas even though there is some drama. They are…crowd shows.
It’s not the art of the performance,
it’s the art of the participation
–Leonard Sweet–
