This morning I took my dog on a walk in the woods. A place I’d never been. At some point I realized I was lost. I went around a bend, hoping to see a familiar landmark, but found a whole new path. I knew exactly what I needed to do next: panic. My heart started racing. My voice went up an octave, “It’s OK, Harpo, we’ll make it home…” My eyes darted here and there. I started running through the wet, tick-infested poison ivy. Rounding the corner, I came across a big log to sit on with a sign reading, “Breathe. Listen.” I stopped. Looked around for the wood nymph, Puck, playing games with me. Then, I laughed and followed Puck’s wise advice. I sat down. I took a deep, fresh breath. I listened. I heard the wind. A bird. And then soft voices. And a car. Aha! That way!

This is exactly what I say to clients when they get lost on stage.

Breathe. Listen. The way home will become apparent.

This is what I practice with my clients:…Read on.

Sometimes we have a long, complicated and precise speech, are reading from a book or long quote, or are an on-air journalist or voice-over artist, and want to find a way to make this reading sound vital and extemporaneous. In these cases, I use a “Reader’s Copy” like the one pictured in this photo and the “Taking it off the page” technique illustrated in this video. Otherwise, reading from a text can sound read, sound memorized, because it has the even tempo, lulling us to sleep, rather than waking us up to listen. This is why I prefer talks that are deeply “known” vs. talks that are memorized. Conversational speech has a variety of stops and starts, ups and downs, fast and slow, loud and soft. When we must read or memorize, we work to bring that variety into the delivery.

READER’S COPY

This photo is an example of a Reader’s Copy. I made up all of the symbols because they are clear to me. There are no rules, just use what is clear to you. You can use any way of formatting the text as long as it works for you. As you can see in the photo, generally, I use all caps, bold, italics, parentheses, and mark breaths, pauses, and transitions with backslashes or lines.

Here is what I use for clarity:

//=PAUSE/BREATHE for Transitions, BOLD=EMPHASIZE, hit…Read on.

Shhh…I do NOT tell my speakers there will be safety nets. I do not offer “confidence monitors” or a podium upon which to place pages of text. And yet sometimes, as we near our performance date, it becomes clear that a safety net is required in order to be fully present on stage.

My marvelous acting teacher, Alice Spivak , was called a “dialogue coach” for many famous actors, singers, models, and comedians. She would be on set or in rehearsal and give coaching from the side. One of her clients, the great Diahann Carroll, took on the role of Dr. Livingstone in John Pielmeier’s play Agnes of God on Broadway. For the first weeks, Alice sat in the front row with a copy of the script on her lap. If ever Ms. Carroll lost her way, Alice would tilt up her head, her face mirroring Dr. Livingstone’s emotion, and mouth the words with exaggerated clarity, a safety net lovingly unfurled over the orchestra pit. A seasoned and professional performer knows to ask for support when it is the best choice for the performance and therefore, for the audience.

Susan McCulley has coached many of our speakers at the Charlottesville TEDx. Her background as a writer, editor, artist, and mindful movement instructor give her the skills to support speakers along the way from crafting the text, to embodying the talk. One of her speakers took the very demanding risk of memorizing the entire 18-minute text. The speaker held notes twisting tightly in her hands, but knew she would not…Read on.

Many speakers come to me with a written text that they plan and hope to memorize. The first thing I do is take away the script and ask them to give me the talk right then and there without notes. Off the top of their head. I want to break up that love affair with their text as soon as possible. A memorized talk can be a barrier between the speaker and audience; the speaker’s focus remains on themselves and their text, remembering or forgetting certain lines and phrases. We then begin the work of deconstructing the talk back to what inspired it, reconnecting with its purpose and rhythms to get the speaker back to a sense of aliveness in delivery.

Exceptions to the Rule

Once in a great while, there are talks which invite or even demand word-for-word memorization. These talks are crafted, each word chosen, phrase-by-phrase, the words creating a melody. Maybe the speaker is a poet or spoken-word performer. Maybe the speaker is a writer who knows that the truest way to share what they’ve found, seen, felt, is with this exact language, punctuation, and orchestration; the exact word is the only word.

In these rare cases, the speaker spends weeks, hours, days, reciting until… Read on.

Talks that are memorized sound memorized. Talks that are “winged” sound winged. How do we find the balance so that our talks are both structured and free?

When we speak in public, we strive for a balance that allows for both form and freedom. Both ingredients are vital in any art; finding that balance allows for expression that captures our audience, magnetizes them, “speaks” to them intellectually, emotionally, and takes them on a journey. Without that balance we are left with extremes: talks that are measured, polished, perfected and controlled, or talks that are unprepared, rambling, and incoherent. The rigid talks leave the audience cold, unmoved, and perhaps bored, while the raw, ad-libbed talks leave us baffled and maybe even angry to have given the gift of our attention to someone who does not respect our time.

In my work with clients, I make a distinction between ‘memorizing’ and ‘knowing.’ And I use both.

“Memorizing” means…Read on.

Many of my clients are afraid of emotions. They worry that their talk, presentation, or challenging interaction, will be hijacked by emotion. They fear that they will be derailed, humiliated, and that their reputation may never recover. This is especially true of women, who may have internalized the message that they need to be “more like men,” i.e. less emotional. The fear is that emotional vulnerability is a sign of weakness.

What actors know is that:

*Emotions are simply the by-products of actions (intentions).

*Emotions only have the power to derail us when we try…Read on

In case you missed this live show last week, here is a link to my interview with the warm, wise, and wonderful Lynsie McKeown on her Voice America radio show, Women Thriving Unapologetically. In which we talk about…Read on.

My father, Warren Bennis, believed that great leaders are made, not born. And I believe that great speakers are made, not born. Great speakers are practicing skills and techniques, whether they learned them from acting teachers, by watching others, or through play as a child (and adult!).

Dad was a wonderful speaker. Here are a few of the things I learned from him about public speaking…Read on.

Fractals are ever-repeating shapes we find in nature, from trees and snails, to venous systems and plumes of smoke. Similarly, most every talk falls into a simple and universal structure. Plays also follow this pattern. No matter the length, no matter the purpose, most talks fall easily into the exact form we all learned in high school: Intro, three parts or Acts, Conclusion.

When clients first present a talk for me, I take notes, looking for this pattern. It’s very helpful for the speaker to know exactly what the three big chunks are in order to focus the text and learn the talk. It helps to see the form for pacing, emphasis, and arc. Read on…

Gymnasts know how to end a routine. Look at the phenomenal, Simone Biles. She embodies finality. Everything about her, even in stillness, says a proud, “The End.”

Just as we open a talk in silence, we end a talk in silence. We wait. Just wait. We take in the audience. We breathe in this moment. Silently, we thank them for coming on this journey.

We might want to scoot right off the stage—sometimes we even roll our eyes and run, panicked, into the wings! Please do not do this. If we do, we have undermined everything that came before. No matter how uncomfortable, just stop speaking and breathe. For how long, you ask? I imagine a bass tone piano note, “booooooom!” And wait until the sound is completely absorbed by the room.

As I said last week in How to Begin a Talk, I ask that speakers craft and memorize both their opening and closing lines. (I’ll cover how to work with the rest of the talk next week.)

If we do not know our opening and closing lines, we might meander in and sputter out at the end. Having clean, crafted, beautiful opening and closing lines gives us an anchor. Read on…

SILENCE and BREATH The very first thing we do, before we speak, is to look out at the beautiful view and take a lovely, deep breath. Let it linger. Make sure our eyes capture every face, vista, sigh, mood. Just breathe it all in. It may feel like a million years, but that opening moment of breath and silence before we speak, is vital.

Then, only when the audience is with us, do we speak our first, beautifully crafted and memorized opening line.

A few years ago I was in rehearsal for a play and the Artistic Director reminded me that, “The audience doesn’t catch the first minute or so of any play. They are turning off their phones, checking out the program, unwrapping cough drops.”

But! That just can’t be so! The first line of any play, book, article, poem, is crafted to launch the entire experience! And this play, The Other Place by Sharr White, about a scientist who studies early-onset dementia and who finds herself with early-onset dementia, demanded that the first line be heard: “The first glimmer of it came on a Friday.” THE FIRST GLIMMER OF IT CAME ON A FRIDAY! Wow!

Opening night, I entered the stage, found my light, and I waited. I wanted to make sure everyone was with me. I wanted to make sure they caught that shimmering and meaningful line.

It’s like tossing someone a ball—we make eye contact and make sure they are with us before we let go.

There are so many reasons for that silence, that breath…Read on.

Konstantin Stanislavski, the theater director who gave actors, “The Method,” knew that in real life, people don’t just face each other, lock eyes, and take turns speaking. In real life, we are doing something—eating a meal, shelling peas, walking the dog—and life happens. In fact, he referred to his method as, “The Method of Physical Action.” In his work with the great playwright Anton Chekhov, the characters are given quotidien tasks as the dialogue unfolds—they clean guns, play cards, stoke fires, dance.

When we give ourselves something to do with our hands—a prop, an action (aside from a slide clicker or microphone)—we free ourselves to be more relaxed and present. Lewis Miller, the innovator of the Flower Flash and extraordinary floral event designer, spends his days elbow deep in stems, leaves, and perfumed blossoms. In his TEDx Talk, we brought in…Read on.

It’s easy to leave our audience behind when we slide through important words: names, places, acronyms, jargon, terms of art, foreign words.

Instead, I invite you to savor these words. Let them land. Enjoy them. Even if everyone knows the name, or we assume they do (“Kim Kardashian”), we need to slow down and deliver it with love (KIM KAHRDASHEEEAN). The same applies to names of places…Read on.

Um…So! I wanted to talk about, you know, like filler words, like “like.” And, “um.”

Filler words are really OK! We all use filler words when we are speaking unless we are reading from a text or have memorized a monologue. The problem arises when they dominate our speech. We might find ourselves using filler words more frequently when we are nervous, when we have not prepared, and out of habit.

Filler words can be actual words or just sounds that we use to fill a space when we might otherwise be thinking or breathing or just silent.

Common sounds: um, uh.

Common words: like, so, anyway, yeah, you know.

When we use words to fill the space, they are void of their meaning and definition. “Like” does not mean, “to have affection for,” or “is similar to.” “You know,” is not making a statement about someone’s knowledge.

Filler words I most often hear are:

“So,” to start any story, statement, speech, or answer. “So” is often the first words out of someone’s mouth.

“Like” is a word I hear taking over our language. We hear it as a filler word sprinkled liberally throughout sentences.

First, we become aware: Are we using filler words frequently? Then, we practice…Read on.

ACCENT vs. AFFECTATION or ( TRENDY VOCAL PATTERNS)

Accents are wonderful—we all have them! Accents are determined by country, region, culture, family, and even generation. Accents only cause a problem if the audience cannot understand our communication. So, if there is a possibility that even one person might lose our meaning due to our accents, make sure every word is heard and understood by enunciating clearly.

Affectation, on the other hand, is determined by trend.

We’re looking at the two I hear most often:

Vocal fry and up-speaking.

Vocal-fry is fine(ish). I don’t like it because I know how it impacts the vocal folds over the long-term. Not good.

As a teen, I heard it mostly in surfer and skier dudes. Now I hear it mostly in young women.

I want us all to have choice about how we use our voices, so if vocal-fry is a vocal quality you choose, go for it. But look into the physical impact.

If we find ourselves falling into vocal-fry unwittingly and want to stop, the first thing to do is…Read on.

Rachel Bagby frees our voices. Our deepest expression. Through singing. For and with each other.

Doesn’t that sound wonderful? To free our voices? Our physical voices and our voices in the world.

This week we look at overall sound and placement of the voice in the body.

SOUND or NATURAL VOICE

Sometimes we fall into the habit of either pushing our voices down into a “chest voice” or finding we stay in a high “head voice.” Both are fine and we want to have them in our repertoire of vocal variety. And, we want to notice if we are stuck in one place or the other. It’s the stuckness that is a habit that restricts expression and connection to our natural voice…Read on.

When Dr. Drew Ramsey asked me if we could get a couch for his Charlottesville TEDx Talk, I jumped for joy! YES! Of course! And when he requested a couch he could walk on, I knew I was going to love working with him. Just having a couch on the stage gave Drew so much: it created a sense of place, his office; it rooted us in the roles of therapist and client; and it gave him a physical journey and a destination. He did not just sit on the couch, he lay down to ponder, he walked along the edge, reminding us that he was balancing ideas, he jumped on the seats, reminding us that all new ideas spring from creative play.

Movement that is habitual, stuck, repetitive, affected, keeps our communication stuck. Watch out for: pacing, meandering, wandering, backing up (in life, we only back up if a tiger is approaching—it’s OK to turn our backs to the audience).

Both walking and standing still are wonderful! We just want to make sure we are moving with purpose and clarity.

In order to cultivate freedom of movement, start here…

In moments of pure delight, our bodies know what to do. Notice the absolute freedom of movement in this photo by Telma Terra.

In this series about freeing us from habits that might cloud our presence, we talked last week about habits of gesture: hands and arms. This week, we look at habits in our bodies—how we stand. We’ll get to how we use the space and move, next week.

The most common habits of the body involve swaying back and forth or to and fro on our feet. Other habits include…Read on.

People often ask, “How do I use gestures?” This photo of the marvelous filmmaker, Andrew Silver, is my answer: “Any way that suits you!” In my work, I want my clients to be more free, more themselves, more unexpected in their presence.

Gestures, like walking, standing, and speaking, are behaviors that we never think about until the spotlight is upon us. Then, we forget how! Suddenly, our arms and hands become like loaves of bread, awkward appendages. And we can find ourselves repeating the same gesture again and again. We get stuck.

My job is to help my clients get back to that natural, spontaneous, organic way they use gesture all the time when not in the spotlight. Read on…

Look at this photo of Deborah Lawrence about to start her TEDx Talk. She is, what we call in the movement technique, Nia, “RAW:” Relaxed, Alert, Waiting. She is free from this place to speak as her full self.

In order to get to this place of RAW, I help people strip away the habits and anxieties that cloud our presence. By “habit” I mean, any behavior that has a constant cadence, feels stuck in a repetitive, rhythmic pattern, is restrictive. The most exciting communication is fresh, jagged, unexpected, alive. Habits tend to appear or amplify when we feel the spot-light upon us. Habits might show up in gestures, how we hold ourselves and move, and how we use our voice. In the next few weeks, we will delve into each of these areas and play with a few ...Read on.