This article is by Kathryn Marie Bild, an acting and public speaking coach and author of Speak Up! Speak Out! Acting Techniques That Make Public Speaking Fun and Fearless!
I have made a discovery. I have discovered that the acting techniques I have been employing for more than 20 years to help my acting students master and deliver beautifully-honed, well-controlled theatrical speeches can also be used to help executives and other presenters master and deliver any kind of speech.
I find this exciting. It means that you, as a speaker, have at your disposal a whole tool kit of techniques to help you develop the skill—and the confidence that comes with it—to more effectively and fearlessly express your ideas.
Here are a few acting techniques that can be of particular value to the business executive:
1. Know all the characters before you ever step onto the stage. In a play or film, each actor knows every character. His character doesn’t necessarily know all the other characters, but the actor playing that character does. He has studied the play. He knows who he is dealing with and what to expect from them.
This can be a useful idea for you as speaker. Granted, not as many variables are invariable for the speaker as for the actor. For one thing, he isn’t assured a certain ending. But there is much he can do to achieve his desired outcome by getting to know the other players before he steps onto the stage. Who are they—your audience and those who hired you? Why did they ask you to speak? What do they hope to get out of your presentation? What do they hope to do with it?
Knowing the answers to these questions enables you to predict what you can reasonably expect in the way of reaction. And it can be done with a little research. Interview some of them while you are still crafting your presentation, Google them. Why face and operate in the dark when with just a small effort you can flick on the light
2. Dress for the part. When they dress for the part, proponents say, it helps actors give themselves “permission to play.” Then, in that freed state, they begin to do the deeper work of acting.
You, as a speaker, are also playing a role. You are playing the role of “speaker.” That much we know. The question is, what kind of speaker? Intentionally or not, you are going to give an impression of yourself by the way you dress for the part. Are you giving your audience the impression that you want them to have? Because, right or wrong, the way you look plays a big part in making you credible to your audiences.
How should you dress? For success. Be the best dressed person in the style most appropriate for the occasion, the best dressed one in the room. Why? Because you and your ideas are the attention-deserving star of the moment. In short, look good. Dress the part you are playing, the successful speaker.
3. Claim the stage as your own. A speaker usually gets less rehearsal time onstage before his performance than an actor does, but he can usually manage to get some. And I highly recommend that you do so. Not to get familiar with the set, as an actor does, but more as a claim to rights and authority. Your claim is, “This place is my place, no one else’s, and I am the one." This is huge for you. You are empowering yourself. “I am on assignment, me, an assignment that I take very seriously.”
Whether you claim the stage days before you speak or have to stake your claim for the first and only time as you step onto the podium in an already packed room, you can still take a moment to accept, with humility and self-respect, that this event, and your part in it, are sanctioned by the same intelligence that sanctions everything else good that is going on that day or evening. Step up to it.
4. Play your part with full emotional enunciation. If I ask you to enunciate your words, I am asking you to say them with precision, to the end that I may more clearly discern and interpret their meaning. When I ask the actor or speaker to enunciate his emotions, I am asking him to feel and express his emotions more precisely, to the same end, that I may more clearly understand them.
A speaker’s opinions and points of view and feelings need to be clearly discernible by the audience. We, the audience, don’t want any what-is-she-feeling ambiguity. If an actor is meant to be feeling angry, we want to see it, clearly. If he is meant to be feeling delighted, let us be clear that he is delighted. Don’t leave us in uncertainty. We want to be able to read what the actor is feeling. And we want the same clear emotional and intellectual read of our speakers.
There is no fence-sitting in drama, and there is no fence-sitting in public speaking. The effective speaker knows what he has to say and says it with full emotional enunciation.
5. The cast is all in it together. At the beginning of a theatrical production the cast members will assemble around a large table in a theater or rehearsal space, each with a script before him or her, and read the play from start to finish. When they come to a point of conflict, and one character says, “You took Suzie and all my money, darn it!” and another says, “Tough tiddlywinks!” the actors don’t push their chairs back from the table and take it outside. They know they have a common purpose. They know that the cast is all in it together.
When a speaker steps onto the podium, he or she has the same opportunity an actor has to claim that the event is a partnership. It is a group commitment, the speaker and the audience in it together. They are all aboard the same ship, of which the speaker is captain, and they all want the same thing, a safe journey brought to a satisfying arrival.
These are a few tried-and-true acting techniques that can help a speaker handle his nerves, remember his lines, engage and persuade his audience, and remain confident and in control. You will be able to go more confidently into any area, no matter the size, and say what you have to say with power and poise. And you will more readily recognize new opportunities to speak, because, utilizing these acting techniques, you will have become more able, and therefore more willing. And that will make you more of a player in this world that is shaped by our participation in it.
