In this series on rehearsal techniques, we are focusing on using the five senses as a way to play with our content. When we prepare for a talk, an interview, a training, even a tricky conversation, it’s important to surprise ourselves by using techniques that bring out the unexpected. We often think of preparation as simply “looking over” or “running through” the content. This is great for familiarizing ourselves, but keeps our relationship with the content pretty superficial. In rehearsal, we deepen that relationship, giving the content an aliveness, a spontaneity. We’ve talked about hearing the sound of the words, tasting the language, and this week we use sight: we use our bodies to show the words, to move them. We’ve all seen speakers who seem divorced from their bodies, their arms, faces, breathing held tight, rigid, as if they are more electronic speaker than human speaker. By showing the content in our bodies…Read on.

Many people ask me, “How do you rehearse for a talk? What exactly do I 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 words 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…Read on.

In my work I often get push-back when I insist that my clients do what I call Extreme Preparation, which includes everything from what to say, to what to wear, and tons of practice. I get it. I do. There is a lot of fear around digging in deep. First, we may not know how to prepare, what to do, how to rehearse, what questions to ask, what skills and techniques to employ. Also, there is a real fear of losing that ineffable sense of being fresh. “I just want to let it happen. When I rehearse, it just gets stale.” I hear ya. The trouble is that when we do not prepare fully, we are counting on luck. We are crossing our fingers and hoping that the stars will align and the talk or presentation or interview or hard conversation will be brilliant! And sometimes it all does come together. Phew! And other times, it just doesn’t. It’s hard to be consistent when we do not have strong undergirding.

If you feel stale when you rehearse, it’s not because you rehearsed, you feel stale because you didn’t rehearse enough.

This week, set aside time to prepare for any important, heightened or weighty communication you have coming up.