Creating an experience has been on my mind since I went to The Soiled Dove show in Oakland over the weekend. Basically, this was Cirque du Soleil meets a burlesque show meets Burning Man. With amazing food and drinks that were served by waiters and waitresses who ended up being THE FREAKING PERFORMERS OF THE SHOW, and were “some of the nation’s most acclaimed acrobats, aerial artists, contortionists, and circus sideshow acts, an array of unique fire performers, a bevy of gifted thespians, and a barrage of the most enticing go-go’s.”
So yeah, possibly a little overqualified to serve me my delicious curry soup, but that surprise and awe and wonder the audience felt when these individuals proceeded to fly through the air and contort their bodies into positions that are still making me cringe was exactly the point. It was all about their dedication to creating a truly incredible and memorable experience.
It reminds me of a video I saw from magician Dan White about creating experiences that people will always cherish. He says that at the core of all of these experiences is wonder, which is “that sense of amazement that you get when you see something beautiful, something unfamiliar, something inexplicable. It’s the root of all art.”
So how do you create wonder and give people these experiences? According to Dan, you can design it with just four ingredients: mystery, anticipation, preparation, and surprise. For Dan, mystery is pretty easy. What mind-blowing trick is he going to perform next? And he said he must anticipate problems people may have before they happen.
One example he gave is anticipating that someone will be hungry and then preparing by doing the research around what this person likes to eat and practicing A TON around executing the trick. So when the person finally says, “I’m hungry,” Dan can ask, “Well, what would you like to eat?” And that person will then say, “A ham sandwich,” leading Dan to say, “Surprise! There’s a ham sandwich in your pocket.”
There is a whole lot more wonder in this example than if Dan had just told the person there was somehow a sandwich in their pocket. Kind of creepy actually. The story and build-up really matter when creating wonder.
How then did The Soiled Dove create wonder? I, unfortunately, wasn’t asked to come watch them practice before the show, but I do have some guesses. For mystery, that big top in the middle of Uptown Oakland has been grabbing my attention for over a year and leading me to try to figure out what the heck goes on in there.
For anticipation, they probably expected that we would just assume that our servers were just our servers and not SOME OF THE NATION’S MOST ACCLAIMED ACROBATS. And before the performers ever entered that big top, I’m pretty sure they had spent thousands of hours preparing by practicing to be the best at what they do, so when they eventually did fly through the air and contort their bodies on Friday night, yeah, I was pretty surprised. And filled with wonder.
