In this series on using the five senses in rehearsal, we have talked about sound, taste, and last week, sight where we showed the content through movement. This week, we look at using TOUCH in the rehearsal process in a very particular way. We start with … 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.

During the Renaissance, artists developed a painting technique that brought a sense of depth and luminosity to human skin: verdaccio, from the Italian word, “verde,” meaning green. They would start with an underpainting of the least alive color: gray-green. Think hospital green. The Flemmish call this the “dead layer.” The artist would then apply layer upon layer of vivid color: cadmium red, yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna. Oddly, this chaotic jumble of color renders something deeply authentic and organically human: the skin has depth and pulses with life. This is how I think of rehearsal. In rehearsal…Read on.