I still perseverate with regret about the time my dad gave an entire speech IN THE DARK! It was at the Harvard Kennedy School for about 100 people. He stepped behind the podium and into the shadows. Thank goodness he had a mellifluous voice to carry the rest of the audience with him. My mind, though, was whirring! How do I fix this? Do I ask someone? Who’s in charge here? Do I just start flicking all the light switches? Do I mime, “MOVE!! Shift to the right!” or stage whisper, “DAD! WE CAN’T SEE YOU!” Do I simply walk onto the stage and nudge him over or move the podium or…?” I did nothing. Thus, the ruminating. However, I vowed to be proactive and make sure future speakers, whether known to me or not, are IN THE LIGHT! For TED Talks, the hottest lights are aimed at the famous red circular rug on stage, showing the speaker where to stand. At our Charlottesville TEDx we encourage our speakers to use the whole stage, as long as they know the center red dot is their sweet spot. And, if they want to use the aisles or sit on the edge of the stage, we ask the tech crew if it is possible to make this happen. (They always say YES! Great thanks to JF Legault and The AV Company!) One year, we wanted a few of our coaches to start the event by reading poetry from different seats all over the 1000-person theater. JF and his crew set the lights in advance so that we knew our actors would be seen. In this photo by Edmond Joe, you see Mercedes Herrero reading her poem, lit up and radiant. A few years ago… Read on.

Another place we tend to get passive as speakers is in the bio/introduction—what is going to be said and by whom. And, once more, the organizers will only be grateful when we are proactive. The best thing about tackling the introduction in advance is that we can off-load the bragging we often feel obliged to do in order to gain credibility. For our Charlottesville TEDx, we promised our speakers a thoughtful, rich, thorough, personal, generous, and loving introduction. This meant that our speakers could jump right into their talk rather than reassuring the audience they were worth listening to. Our phenomenal Emcees (pictured here are Kellie Sauls and Richard Averitt) spent lots of time researching the introductions and ran everything by the speaker and their coach to ensure that the intro elevated the speaker without giving away the content of the talk. It is not only hard to talk about our own credentials, it can sound desperate, narcissistic, or sales-y, and runs the risk of putting the audience off. It also takes away from the purpose of the talk—not to talk about ourselves, but to talk about our work in the world. Here’s what I recommend…Read on.

Some times I love to hear just the voice, the simplest voice, tell a story. No embellishment so that my mind can create castles out of words. Sometimes I love a voice to play characters. Lynn Redgrave reading Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart is extraordinary. And on stage, when I can see the whole person, I love to see the story—not acted out, exactly, but “shown.” Miranda Hope told her story at our Charlottesville TEDx Open Mic and we asked her. ..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…

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.

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.

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.

Questions that Connect Us

Jun 30

Written By Kate Bennis

In the Fall of 2016 I visited our dear family friends, Joan Goldsmith and her husband, Ken Cloke. I was trying to make sense of a world where all the things I valued (empathy, connection, representation, equity, equality, justice) seemed to be rejected by so many of my country-people. The cognitive dissonance left me bereft and lacking the capacity to see the complexity of the moment: everything and everyone seemed to be “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong.”

Ken caught me up short in a conversation that reframed everything. He said, “The trouble is that we are asking the wrong questions. The questions we’re asking only have polarizing answers.” I was flooded with examples: “Who did you vote for?” “Do you believe in God?” “Do you support abortion rights?” “Do you support gun reform?” “Where do you get your news?”

These questions have only one-word answers. There is no room for a complex human being to reside in those answers.

Ken guided me to ask a very different question, a question that invites infinite answers, a question that has framed our humanity, given us meaning, culture, and connection.

This week, think about the questions we ask. Are they likely to polarize us? Or connect us? This week, we play with questions that invite connection.

Read on for Ken’s question, a question that cracks us open…