The Joan of Arc Rule or Breaking the “Sorry! Sorry!” Habit

Have you ever found yourself saying, “Sorry! Sorry!” out of habit or anxiety? Certainly, I have. This is not so much a true apology for harm done, but a strange way of both diminishing ourselves and calling attention to ourselves. And it does not serve us or the situation. In fact, it undermines both.

During rehearsal for a play, there is an awkward period between being “on book”( or rehearsing while reading our script), and being “off book” (or having the text memorized). For this period, someone, usually an assistant stage manager (ASM), holds the script and follows along. When an actor can’t remember their line, they simply say, “line,” and the ASM reads out the line until the actor picks it up and moves on.

Last summer, we saw a production of Macbeth at the American Shakespeare Center . When an actor would lose their place, they said, “Prithee!” It was marvelous. The play continued, the story unfolded, the tension held. Imagine if the actor had started apologizing? “Sorry! Dumb me! Ahhh!” The experience would be derailed and we would be thinking about the actor, not the character. We would be pulled out of the story.

This week, take note if you find yourself apologizing for simply being, doing your job, speaking up, making a trivial mistake. Resist the urge to apologize. Apologizing in these instances disrupts and undermines. Instead, graciously move forward. If you are unsure of the difference between a real and needed apology and an habitual or anxious, “sorry,” ask yourself, “Would Joan of Arc apologize for this?”