banter

Welcome to my blog, Banter.

I’ll start, you chime in—I really want to hear from you!

Kate Bennis Kate Bennis

Five Sense Rehearsal: Smell

In this series about rehearsal using the five senses, we’ve talked about using sound, taste, sight, and touch. This last rehearsal prompt, invites us to use the sense of smell in rehearsal. There is a wonderful saying in the movement practice, the Nia Technique: “smell the moment.” As speakers, in that liminal space just after we’ve rehearsed and warmed-up and just before we open our mouths to speak, we take a breath and smell the moment. We look into the audience, read the room, take in the faces, the space, this specific, particular, unique, exact moment. This is perhaps my favorite moment, when we are ready, alert, and waiting, peeking over the precipice, through the curtain, our hand on the door before turning the knob. I remember waiting back stage in that liminal space. I was listening to the audience, their chatter and laughter, the programs murmuring, the chairs scraping, the ushers ushering, the expectation and delight. One of the actors asked if I was nervous. I said...Read on.

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Kate Bennis Kate Bennis

Savor: How to slow down

Watching a video of a stage play I did years ago, I was stunned to notice that I sounded like Minnie Mouse. On helium. I know this about myself, that I speed up, but to see the proof was a great reminder that one of my consistent communication challenges (aside from my handwriting!), is that I gallop ahead leaving my audience behind. So many things can contribute to speaking quickly—anxiety, feeling like the content is boring, being type-A, going on auto-pilot. The end result is the same: we are not present, we are not connected to the other/audience, and we miss the opportunity to connect, lead, have impact, move others to action, change ideas, attitudes, and, importantly, to be moved, to be impacted and influenced, to learn from others and our audience. Remember, the best talks and presentations are relational. Instead of telling my clients to “slow down,” I ask them to…Read on.

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Kate Bennis Kate Bennis

Listening to Subtext

In this photo we have the ‘seen’ and the ‘hidden’ ,the sunlit tracks and the mysterious tunnel. In communication we see this dichotomy in the words we use, or the text, the ‘seen,’ and the true meaning, or the subtext, the ‘hidden.’ In a recent post, I talked about how Intention animates language and even changes its meaning; HOW we say something carries more weight than the words themselves. In fact, HOW we say something is sometimes in opposition to the WHAT we are saying. Sometimes it sounds like people are “speaking in code,” saying one thing but meaning another.

What would happen if we answered and addressed the hidden, the subtext, rather than the spoken words? This is fun to play with. Read on…

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