Verdaccio: the art and craft of rehearsal

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, we start with the lifeless rigor of research, memorization, repetition, and precision and then add layer upon layer of wild, playful, bold experiments, each layer leaving its mark and resulting in a performance that is fully human and alive. Often these experiments veer us away from the perceived goal, or the “right way” to say or do something. It doesn’t matter, we must commit to the lunacy 100% and play it fully! Each experiment adds a layer of vivid color; we paint another layer of life. And we end up with something that is gloriously human. Saying or doing something the “right way” sounds contrived. Human behavior is never “correct.”

Just as a musician practices scales or an athlete stretches and drills, so a communicator must have a process to integrate the content, practice with the technology, and experiment wildly to allow the performance to come to life. A sense of play and abandon is vital. As is a dedication to working through the dead layer: the research, writing, learning, rote memorization, knowing the space.

After the layers are rehearsed, we can let them go—they are baked in like an underpainting, verdaccio.

This week, when preparing for a presentation, a talk, a tricky conversation, take time to practice with abandon and rigor.

The illustration in this post is by Cuong Nguyen.