On Persona and Voice

When I originally started to write this,  this was going to a set of thoughts on the notion of performer's personas and the notion of what is referred to in some literature as the "Ultimate Voice" technique. But as I started writing, other experiences I have had sort of fedinto this.  So just to let you know part of this is me writing about my own experiences so I can think about them, and some of this is me trying to share my knowledge and experiences with everyone else.  So if unusual jargain from other genre's slips in,  that is where it comes from.

A persona is the "apparent mind" that can be seen, for instance what subjective qualities does an audience notice about you.  Are you confident or timid; are you a jock or a nerd.  These qualities that give insight into other minds are qualities of a persona.  The interesting thing is that the persona can change.  We see this frequently in acting in which a person plays a character that is completely unlike the person you met onscreen (which of course into the problem that I want to talk about which is associating personas with the persons actual or possible natures).

When an individual is cast repeatedly into similar roles, we call this type casting.  For instance do the names Hans Gruber of Severus Snape have anything in common.  Besides being characters who have similar traits (thick voices, villainous (or anti-hero),  and extremely standoffish) they are also played by the same actor.  We tend to associated the character with the roles he plays rather than his own nature (Chuck Norris Jokes anyone).

A performer who I worked with at a ren faire once said that his persona came to him in the sense that it was everything that he ever hated about entertainers and performers in general.  But everyone loved him (especially considering that every moment was complete with satire due to the purposely goofy hat and his age which he repeated a lot),  but thats the thing when you have a persona is that those qualities are pretty much tied to you forever more.  People associated them with you when you are out on the street.  Hence why I feel for actors who are typecast.

As a guideline I don't enjoy entertaining for my personal circle of friends and family because my "performance" persona is radically different from the person most of my friends know me to be.  I love to show technique and tricks that I have learned but I don't enjoy entertaining because the person that "I" (little "I" here) am is not what you really would call entertaining.  In my search for a better presenation and asking for opinions I come off as insecure.  A few friends of mine who know me in both worlds have often joked about the difference being similar to "Clark Kent"/"Superman". 

Surprisingly in my spiritual practices (warned you "jargain") I have a similar problem.  I find that the persona of the magician isn't the same as the persona of the guy who came in the front door.  To quote my mentor Robert (R.I.P.) about divination "Your just the guy in the room".  But that is what many people see,  the guy in the room.  That honestly is something depends on the initial impression.  It is possible for people to see more than this,  it just normally doesn't happen (of course the word "normal" depends on your social circle).

This all means that one faces a rather difficult choice if ones performance persona is different from ones normal persona.  Are you always in performance persona or do you seperate your world, that is there is a group of people that know you and a group of people that know the other you.  For me,  because I have not found a way to resolve the differences into one persona I tend to shift depending on the circumstances.  I am lucky to have people in my life who know the big "I" and thus most of my quirks tend to be okay but it's a lot more difficult for those who don't.  The big "I" get's to occasionally dance and create art and therefor there is no need to try to be entertaining.

Your Voice-
So the thing that got me to thinking about this is that I found that my ideal performance voice is actually the same voice I use for what is called "vibrating" (in spirit speak).  In the book entitled "Social Engineering" (Which i highly reccomend for any performer) the author talks about a technique for what he calls the "Ultimate Voice" for implanting suggestions or convincing people to do something.  I discovered this voice a while ago when I was learning intonation and vibratory work,  but the technique for each is essentially the same (some food for thought)