Audience Alchemy: How to Take Your Crowd with You

How do you show up for your audience?  Performing art is a co-creation between you and your audience. . . which can be invigorating when you feel connected, but can be hard if you’re not.  In this episode with guest composer, vocalist and cultural instigator, Meklit Hadero, you’ll learn from her extensive touring experience on how to connect with your audience, how to pick your collaborators, maintain your artistic vision and more! Holly will also share The Watermill exercise which helps you calm nervousness and keep the wheel between you and your audience turning. This episode examines your partnership with your audience so you can feel more at ease and confidence leading the room.

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Meklit is a San Francisco based Ethio-Jazz singer-songwriter and cultural activist. Meklit’s 2017 album “When the People Move, the Music Moves Too” is a love letter to the Ethiopian Diaspora, originally commissioned by the MAP Fund and released on Six Degrees Records. The album reached #4 on the iTunes World Charts and was named amongst the Best Soul Albums of 2017 by Bandcamp. Meklit is a TED Senior Fellow and her TED Talk “The Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Sounds” has been watched by more than 1.2 million people. She has toured extensively across the US, UK, and East Africa and her music videos air daily on Ethiopian national television. She been an artist-in-residence at NYU and Purdue. She sang alongside Angelique Kidjo and Anoushka Shankar as a featured singer in the UN Women Theme Song, and works with Brighter Sound Manchester on developing women songwriters across the UK. Meklit sits on the Board of YBCA and holds a BA from Yale University. Find out more at meklitmusic.com


About Your Host, Holly Shaw

Holly Shaw, CHT  is a performance coach, creativity researcher and stand up comedian.  Growing up in Indianapolis, IN she convinced her parents she needed to go to Chicago to get her own agent when she was 14 years old and has spent a lifetime in film, T.V. and on professional stages all over the world as an actor, dancer, and director.

Now she shares her passion for the problems that artists face as a Creativity Coach and a Certified Hypnotherapist and has helped hundreds of artists, from Emmy award winning and Grammy nominated artists to world class choreographers overcome their anxiety, stage fright, impostor syndrome, and creative blocks so that they can create original work and totally kill it onstage again and again without feeling like they're selling out or losing their sanity.

In 2016, Shaw wrote and released her book, The Creative Formula: Compose, Choreograph, and Capture Your Masterpiece  which has become an Amazon bestseller.  In 2018 she launched the Performers & Creators Lab podcast which was named one of 2019's most outstanding podcasts by Databird Research. She teaches regularly at the SAG/AFTRA offices in L.A. and SF and runs creative laboratory workshops like the Comedy Lab Open Mic once a month at Monaghan's on the Hill in Oakland. Follow her on Instagram @hollyshawspritely