Great post by TJ Walker over the weekend, with his response to the oh-so typical protest about the concept of rehearsals:
“I don’t want to rehearse because I don’t want to seem canned. I want to seem spontaneous and fresh so I’ll be better winging it.”May I just echo TJ's excellent response by saying, "Gaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" My slightly longer response to clients goes like this ...
There is a one-word difference between someone who likes to wing it and who trots out the "I get stale if I over-rehearse" line and someone who is willing to put in the time to ensure that their presentation or speech is top-notch and that word is PROFESSIONALISM.
Try using that ’stale’ line with a stage actor who endures weeks and weeks of rehearsal and then months or even years of 8-shows-a-week performances. Stale? In front of a full house who have paid 70-100 bucks a seat? I don’t think so! The enormous effort put in at rehearsal and the ongoing cycle of refresher rehearsals keeps the show alive and invigorated and fresh - not stale. What these performers display at every show, at every cast meeting and at every refresher is called professional pride and I sincerely wish that more presenters displayed it too.
Here's the nub - the person who feels over-rehearsed or is afraid that they are going to deliver as though there were a clockwork key turning in their back is forgetting who this process is all about. Your audience doesn't know, realise or care that you have put 40 hours of rehearsal into your one-hour talk. They don't know, realise or care that you are gritting your teeth with frustration and boredom when you deliver your seemingly off-the-cuff humorous asides. But believe me they will very quickly realise if your delivery falls short of the mark; they will immediately know if you keep turning your back on them to read from the screen; and boy will they care if they get any sense that you are underprepared.Laurence Olivier conducted eight weeks of rehearsals for his last performance of King Lear - a role he had been playing all of his adult life. Do you imagine he put in that level of effort because he had forgotten his lines? Olivier's great quote about performing on stage was -
- but hey, what did he know? I'm sure you'll be just fine winging it ..."You must lead the audience by the nose to the thought"
You can find TJ's excellent post here.
6 comments:
Amen, bro!
It's amazing how much I learn through rehearsal. It's classic "learning by doing"!
I've never run across anyone who didn't believe in rehearsing, though! I hope that doesn't ever happen in real life!
Bravo, Rowan,
The new substitute for rehearsing is "looking over one's PowerPoint slides."
My suggestion is always: "Hand out the PowerPoint slides and leave the room. It will go a lot better."
Rowan, you know this is one of my pet peeves; I write about it way too much. But here's my favorite rant:
http://coachlisab.blogspot.com/2008/04/winging-it-not-okay.html
I learned a very stiff lesson in high school about rehearsal. (It didn't m,atter too much becasue it was only high school but it has stayed with me).
I gave one very well-prepared talk which incorporated written material on the blackboard, prepared responses to anticipated heckling, and full knowledge of my material and a couple of jokes. I received an A+ and a victory over the class heckler, fully supported by my teacher.
On a subsequent occasion I tried winging it for some reason and the talk lasted a couple of minutes. Very embarrassing, but I fully appreciated the difference between a fully rehearsed, prepared talk (or presentation) and the disaster that is winging it. Having said that - if you really know your field you can wing it very occasionally - but it shows.
Rowan!
I posted a response on TJ's page, but as you are the one who put me onto his thoughts, here's what I wrote:
----------
I’m a professional actor and a presenter and I only half agree.
Put briefly, it depends on _what_ you rehearse.
An over-rehearsed presentation - or an over-rehearsed show - can really stink. The danger is that it can be so automatic that it loses touch with the audience. It becomes a polished set of actions and words and ceases to be two-way communication, a persuasive dialogue. (Working on stage, we know that the real comic aside - the gag improvised when the scenery collapses or a cellphone in the audience rings - is usually the biggest laugh of the evening because the audience know it was one-off, one-time, genuine creativity. Authenticity, if you will.)
On the other hand, bluffing your way through Shakespeare on a wing and a teleprompter will not get you far. You need the confidence to know what happens next, the experience to get you through the technically challenging parts. And that only comes from practice. Lots of practice.
Hmm. So what to do?
I believe firmly that you should not rehearse your _presentation_, you should rehearse your _presentations_. Plural.
Try every line ten different ways. Try thirty different orders. Try missing out this part, and expanding that section. Try it backwards - seriously. Play with the pieces and bang them together until you know every corner.
This will give you all the confidence you need, because you will have mastered your material. But it will also give the flexibility you need. You will know that there is more than one path through the presentation, and that you can cope with anything. Most importantly, you will be able to adjust your presentation with confidence to genuinely respond to the audiences signals - making it a real two-way exchange, not something that could have been done by DVD.
Cheers and thanks for the blog.
Adam
Work•Play•Experience
&
The Business Comedian
I like the article and the ideas it has engendered. I also dislike people have rehearsed to the point that the come across as robots.
The best answer though is the below excerpt from an article on language learning.
''....Language is like jazz: both are spontaneous compositions derived from a finite set of elements (notes or words). But the jazz analogy may compel people to think that they simply don’t have the talent. What they don’t realize is how obsessively John Coltrane practiced, repeating scales and arpeggios over and over again to build up the skills he would need to make that freeform composition on the stage seem so effortless....''
http://www.expatica.com/de/life_in/feature/How-to-Be-a-Polyglot.html
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