SING-SONG SHOWTIME, 19 OCTOBER 2024

SING-SONG SHOWTIME is an uplifting one-day master-class in singing, performance, and courage, with ARIA Award Winning musician Clare Bowditch.

• HOW DOES IT WORK?

  In the morning, Clare plies you with tea and cake and teaches you everything she knows about singing, performing, and the cultivation of internal courage.

• In the afternoon, you and Clare and your new choir get dressed up and put on a live show in front of an audience of your most supportive friends and family (their entry is included as part of your ticket). If this terrifies you slightly, good. Beside that terror also lies a great deal of potential excitement. This day will leave you feeling a new sense of courage, joy and inspiration. 

  WHO IS THIS FOR?

  The event is designed both for beginners (especially those who doubt their ability to sing or perform in public), and for professionals who want to deepen their ability to connect with audiences and share their voices in a bigger way.

  Think one-part 'School of Rock', one-part 'The Artists Way', one-part ninja training, one part heroes-journey, and one part best-friend’s club. This day is for you, your friends, you loved ones: in short – it’s for anyone who doesn’t want to die with their music inside them.

  We often get asked if this is a women’s only event and the answer is a definite NO!  Having a mixed-gender choir adds so much to the experience: it just happens that 90% of people who come are women. This lop-sidedness is a very common trend in all choirs, but we would love to see this balance out. So yes, all welcome!

• SOUNDS AMBITIOUS. HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS WILL WORK? 

  Clare has been teaching rooms of doubtful strangers to sing together in groups since 2001 when she undertook Vic Health's “Community Singing Leadership Training” with Faye White here in Victoria, Australia. Since then, she’s had the joy of teaching whole Opera Houses and stadiums of people how to sing songs together in only minutes (as any one who saw her supporting Leonard Cohen in 2010 can attest), as well as working with small community and corporate groups.  The last Sing-Song Showtime was a stunning, sold-out, joyful success. We hope the same will be true for this one.

• PURCHASING AS A PRESENT

• Sing-Song Showtime makes a great present for the person in your life that loves to sing but may not get a chance to as often as they like.  Simply purchase a ticket with their name and your email address and you'll receive the welcoming email in their name that you can print off and give to them on the day.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE TICKET

To capture all of the information we need for each attendee such as dietary requirements, names and email addresses, tickets can be purchased only one at a time.  Please repeat the ticket purchase process for more tickets.

A FEW WORDS FROM CB HERSELF

“What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”, so asked poet Mary Oliver.

For years, people have tried to tell me that they can’t sing. In supermarkets, after shows, strangers have told me again and again, “I wish I could sing”.

And I tell them the truth.    If you can talk, you can sing.

As a child, in fact, that’s how you taught yourself to talk: through singing songs, mimicking voices, experimenting with the sounds that came out of your mouth.

As children, performing our songs in front of other people was a source of joy, not fear.

As adults, many of us forget our ability to sing, and our joy of performing.

In doing so, we miss out on something very deep, powerful, joyful; something that connects us to the rest of the human race.

To be clear: it’s not your fault some of you feel this way about singing.

Perhaps your feelings were prompted by a thoughtless comment from a teacher or family-member, or perhaps it’s your in-born perfectionism that did it: your “not good enough” stories, your fear of being publicly shamed.

Whatever the cause, the longing remains: something in us still wants to sing.

I know this because I lived it.

Although I always loved singing, in my early career I went through years of truly crippling performance anxiety: so much so, I suspected I would be best giving up my dream of being a singer.

I thought, in fact, that my fear was a sign: a sign that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t meant to be on stage, that I didn’t have what it takes.

One day, it occurred to me that my fear of singing in public was really just a metaphor for my larger fears in life: the fear that if I showed you who I was, if I spoke my truth, if I made myself vulnerable, I would be criticized.

Learning to share my voice with the world turned out to be my heroes journey.

I was fortunate to have many very kind mentors, people who taught me that it was this vulnerability, this ability to share my voice, that would become my source of strength and courage in the world.

At “Sing-Song Showtime”, I’d love to share what I was taught with you .

Yes, the day is about singing, and learning to perform in front of audiences, but it’s also about learning new songs, making new friends, sharing delicious food together, sharing our stories with each other, and best of all, it ends with an invitation to join me and your fellow-singers in a live performance in front of a supportive audience of our families and friends.

Sound scary and exhilarating? Perfect!

HERE’S HOW THE DAY GOES: 

You arrive, make a cup of tea or coffee, and we introduce you to your new band.

CB teaches you how to find your voice, and move through your fears, the same way we all have to when we’re taking the risk of letting people know us.

Together you start an instant choir and sing your hearts out, real good, (regardless of “skill level”!).

It feels so good, you wanna do it all again.

But first you eat, and talk, and make new buddies.

Then sing some more.

You ask a lot of questions about how to make a career singing or how to run your own choir and be totally famous or how to live with the fear of your heart-beating-so-fast just before performing that you almost wee yourself, and so on (no topic off limits!).

You tell CB and her crew what they’ve missed and speak your deepest fears to people who actually get it.

And then we draw it all together like the gosh-darn pros we are and put on a little show (your entry includes a couple of free tickets for friends or family-members who want to join us for the show).

We PUT ON SAID SHOW! WHOOHOO!

We then swap numbers, high-five each other, pose for selfies and continue on with our lives with a smile on our faces

You have a day you’ll never forget, and a feeling in your heart that you may not have had before.

THIS IS FOR:

Anyone who loves singing.
Anyone who wants to cultivate courage.
Anyone who needs support in confronting their fear of standing up in public.
Anyone who is afraid they can’t sing but wants to try.
Anyone who wants to improve their skills around performance, and their on-stage confidence in general.
Anyone who needs an injection of “good-times” in their life.
Anyone who needs a reminder of their courage.
Choir leaders and amateurs, left-brainers and right-brainers alike.

Places are very limited, and the last one sold-out very quickly.

Those in need of financial assistance due to low-income, please shoot us an email with your details to marty@storybaker.com (we have a number of tickets set aside for just such an occasion!)

* Each person who purchases a ticket will be emailed instructions about how to invite one or maybe even two buddies to join us in our audience at 5pm at the 75 Reid St, where we’ll be putting on our show! I’ll sing some songs, you’ll sing some songs, we’ll sing some songs together! I’m so excited just writing that, I got the ‘biberacies”, which is a slang Dutch word for “butterflies in the stomach”, or some such! Oh the Dutch, they’re so funny! Forgive me, I’m just excited – this is gonna rock. Cb xo

Testimonials:

I attended last Sunday’s Sing, Song, Workshop and just wanted to say that the day was amazing. I felt like I walked away with many skills for improving my singing both in technique and how thoughts about my singing impact on my performance. Clare is such an inspiring woman and brings such presence, honesty, courage and humour to the room. I think she should be so proud of what she brings to her music and to how she helped many people on Sunday to realise their full potential in being brave.          Samantha McDermott

Thank you for such an empowering & joyful day. It was beautiful to experience such a powerful heart connection with you and my fellow attendees & seeing the joy in everyone's faces. The structure of the day was excellent; Your generosity of spirit was so evident Clare, in the stories you shared of your own experiences and your ability to make all of us feel important and valued by being there. I personally gained so much from the day. I loved it & absolutely hope to attend your next one.  All the best,      Lisa Morgan

Date:   Saturday OCTOBER 19th

• LOCATION:  75 Reid st, fitzroy north