Everyone likes an audience. Well, every Impresario, anyway. Audiences grant legitimacy, validation, and the feeling that our message is landing somewhere, that our voice is being heard, that our performance is being witnessed. Perhaps more than this, an audience could at least partially be made up of more hungry people – people the Impresario can connect to one another, and maybe even encourage to become Impresarios themselves.
This is all in an idea world. But is an audience always necessary?
What if an audience isn’t available? Is it possible for an Impresario to be an Impresario? Can he still be the connector, the collaborator, the seducer, when there is no audience – when it’s just him and the Muse?
To recap, an Impresario “seduces” by knowing how to engage with people socially, and from there, build a playing ground where relationships are formed and Art – or some shared Cause or Vision – is experienced. The key here is that relationships are at the forefront. This can happen anywhere, in any context, as long as people share common ideas or visions – from, say, an art exhibit, to a group lobbying for the preservation of an endangered species of plant.
But if the Impresario is on his own, without the company of other people who can share the Vision, he can still “seduce.” Only this time, he must “seduce” himself. Just because there is no audience, no other visionaries, does not mean the Impresario can’t still fill all of those roles he would fill if those others were around. He still has a relationship with himself to maintain.
I stumbled across this idea by accident today. It hadn’t occurred to me that the Impresario could still be an Impresario with no one else around. But now that I think about it, those quiet moments could be the most crucial of all.