An exercise in constituent recognition to attract primary, secondary and tertiary market segments

By
Stephen Mitchell

I created 'Woman' to appeal to women, as the title suggests. I posited that the public for this show would be female viewers ages 25-50. The actresses on the show were cast accordingly. That women would be interested in watching characters that mirrored them is a given. However, since such a wide age range was envisioned for the show, something other than gender and age needed to be considered to insure an expanding audience base. For the solution, I turned to one of the elements of the acting technique I authored for film actors.

It can be observed that any audience is made up of constituent groups, the demographics of which are seldom taken into account--that of emotions. The Action/ReAction© technique I created requires the actor to perform small "interstitial" displays of emotion that are orchestrated within the major, or chronic, emotion of a scene. To the audience, it will appear as though the character is having a slight reaction to what he or she has said. In fact, the only function of an "interstitial" is, ultimately, to resonate every member of the audience.

It is important to understand the concept of resonance. An object resonates in response to a stimulus that matches the natural frequency of that object. For example, when the bass is turned up on a stereo, a nearby plastic CD holder begins to vibrate. It is "resonating" because the frequency of the bass coming from the stereo speakers is the natural frequency of the plastic CD holder.

Now think of this in terms of the audience, part of which is made up of angry people. When an actor performs a touch of anger at the end of a phrase, the angry people--like the plastic CD holder--will resonate. In that moment, all the angry people in the audience will see something of themselves in the character and begin to identify with him/her. Of course, the sad people will remain unmoved, but the actor can resonate them by showing a touch of sadness at the end of the next phrase. By resonating each of the emotional groups in the audience, the actor forms a personal rapport with everyone who has seen the performance. By the end of the performance, each audience member will have seen a bit of himself or herself in the character and, thus, an amazing affinity is formed.

The result of applying this to 'Woman' is that women of all ages are fascinated by the show, attracted as much by the emotional reach of the show as by considerations of age or social status. I expected this. What I didn't expect was that men are as responsive to the show as are the women! I thought the show would be of no interest to male audiences whatsoever. However, taking into account that there are happy males, angry males, sad males…

I believe it is imperative that entertainment/commercial content contains orchestrated "interstitial" emotional content so as to ensure the broadest possible audience for the material and the message. Without it, one is simply reiterating a message to an existing public rather than attracting new audiences and expanding the market.

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