An actress stands on center-stage at the Gershwin Theater in New York City exchanging comedic dialogue with other actors and performing the physical comedy needed to accentuate her character’s clumsiness. Throughout the performance, she listens to “how the audience feels tonight and how well the material is connecting with them.”
She gauges the tone, length, and timing of their laughter. She pays attention to when they applaud, and when they are still. This information helps her make small adjustments in her delivery to better connect with the audience.The actress is looking for immediate feedback about how well she is performing her talent. The next day, theater critics will publish their opinions about her performance. The play’s director will also share his or her insights. The feedback the actress receives helps her gauge the level of her talent and how other people perceive her abilities as unique. Because feedback from other people about how well you perform your talent is necessary in order to improve, you and all performers must have a constant drive to test your talents in public. Back in 2000, Julianna Margulies was clearly looking for the next public test of her talents as an actress. After six years as nurse Carol Hathaway on the hit NBC-TV drama ER, this Emmy Award winner turned down a two-year, $27 million renewal contract in order to return home to New York City for the new challenge of pursuing a career in the theater. She developed her curiosity to explore new challenges at an early age. According to IN New York Magazine, “Margulies’ own family life was far from conventional. Born Julianna Luisa Margulies on June 8, 1966, her father, Paul, an advertising executive responsible for a memorable Alka-Seltzer jingle (“Pop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is”), and her mother, Francesca, a former dancer with American Ballet Theater, divorced when she was a year old. She and her two older sisters, Alexandra and Rachel, lived with their free-spirited mom in France and England before returning to Spring Valley, NY thirteen years later.” The spirit to explore new challenges was a strong value in the Margulies family.It wasn’t until college that she truly fell in love with acting and the instant public feedback that comes with it. When she entered Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY as an art history major, she had little interest in acting but decided to try her hand in a play called In the Boom Boom Room. As she recalls, “I had a small part as a go-go dancer, but the first night, I knew this was what I wanted to do with my life. Seeing an immediate reaction to your work…there’s really nothing like it.”People who have the spirit of performing their talents in public are in perpetual motion toward the next challenge. Margulies, for example, could never imagine agreeing to return to ER as a guest star, no matter how much money was offered. “They ask me to come back every year, but I really worked so hard to move away from that role. I’m simply not the type of person who can move backwards.” Margulies is always searching for the next stage on which to perform her gift.Like Margulies, performers in every field need to search continually for new ways to test and exhibit their talents in public in order to gauge their development and evaluate how other’s perceive their talents as unique. All fields provide opportunities for performers to test their abilities. Students have exams. Musicians have rehearsals. Athletes have competitions.Your job as a talented performer, regardless of your expertise or field, is to seek new opportunities to perform your talent for and in front of others to determine your progress. What’s your next public performance to test your talents? Whether the test is large or small, it needs to take you one step closer to reaching your full potential as a talented performer.