Rehearsing with the Five Senses

Many people ask me, “How do you rehearse for a talk? What exactly do you DO?”

Last week we discussed the painting technique, “verdaccio,” layering vivid and chaotic colors over a “dead layer” of gray-green to create a skin-tone that has life. I use this same theory of layering for rehearsing communication—anything from keynotes to tricky conversations.

Last Spring I was asked to do a talk for Charlottesville’s Tom Tom Foundation event, Quintessence, curated by Darcy Gentleman and the Cville BioHub. The audience was made up of people from the worlds of STEM and academia, as well as curious artists.

Darcy asked that we use the idea of “quintessence,” to guide us. He was not using this term in its usual sense as the “purest form of something,” but thinking more about the roots of the word, literally, the “fifth essence.”

For me, this means the fives senses or essential somatic experiences. Our senses offer us a spectacular way to rehearse using quintessential verdaccio. I find rehearsing with the senses particularly helpful with clients who need to translate their work for a non-specialist audience, fields that use a lot of jargon and Latin terminology, like doctors, scientists, attorneys, and academics. Think: scientists speaking with journalists, academics speaking with students, CTOs speaking with CFOs, CFOs speaking with CEOs, accountants and attorneys speaking with clients, engineers speaking with sales teams.

Next week, we start with the first of the five senses: SOUND.