Be careful when you ask for honest feedback or honest opinions. You might just get them.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnYPqippKVw?list=SP86F4D497FD3CACCE&hl=en_GB&w=560&h=315]
When newscasters pray
Today’s dose of silly provides both hilarity and a lesson.
The hilarity occurs within the first 1:30 of the video, a double dose of writhing embarassment at Romney’s awkwardness and a laugh-out-loud moment at the newscaster’s reaction.
This is followed up by a good commentary about keeping true to your style and personality when speaking in public. If your natural state of being is a boring stiff, you’ll look like a complete goober when you attempt to play the smarmy comedian.
Poor Romney. His comedic timing really is atrocious.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5LrK3wsmA&w=560&h=315]
Channeling Tom Cruise
Today’s dose of Friday Fun comes courtesy of Miles Fisher and his promo for Superhero Movie.
I use emulation activities with my clients as a way of recognizing other people’s signature speaking quirks and then using that knowledge to recognize and develop their own signature style. A big part of these exercises involve figuring out the emotional and mental space that the emulator needs to get into in order to make their imitation of their chosen speaker appear genuine.
The headspace that Miles Fisher had to get into in order to produce this imitation of Tom Cruise must have been terrifying!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjGmZJu8OnY&w=420&h=315]
I bow to thee, Miles Fisher!
Smile, damn you, smile!
I have and will always maintain that a weapon every speaker should carry around in their arsenal is the ability to fire up a genuine beaming smile on demand.
Actually, scratch that statement. Everyone, speaker or no, should learn how to smile on cue. And by smile, I mean the sort of eye-crinkling, cheek raising smile that people give when they are truly happy to be where they are and doing what they’re doing.
Why is being able to smile like this so important? Because genuine smiles show signal to your audience that you are interested in them. They engender trust and foster happiness in both the person smiling and being smiled at. They make you seem more approachable and open. They make you more likable and will trigger your audience to smile back at you.
Even better, a beaming smile can hide the fact that you are nervous, tired, panicky, irate, desperate, generally out-of-sorts, and otherwise freaking out!
“But Lauren,” some may protest, “I just couldn’t smile! Everything was going completely wrong with the presentation/speech/situation!” Ahh, my friends, that is when the ability to feign a genuine smile becomes absolutely necessary. Case in point: a photograph of me performing during a particularly disastrous show at a local Lebanese restaurant.
(Please excuse the odd blurriness of the photo – it is quite hard to get a good shot in those lighting conditions.)
Most people see a picture of a happy belly dancer demonstrating her art, inviting a customer up to dance. Here is an actual summary of the scene:
- Due to an equipment malfunction, my carefully arranged 20 minute set wouldn’t play*, so…
- I was improvising to live music provided by the in-house musician who, unbeknownst to me, likes it when dancers do long sets, which means that…
- This photo was taken 40 minutes into what ended up being a 45 minute set…
- Having no idea when the set would end…
- In a costume I had never performed in before and was a little too long for me…
- While 16 weeks pregnant (with all the exhausted, bloated discomfort that comes with that prenatal period).
In the photo, I am imploring the woman – an acquaintance who came out to see my performance – to get up and dance with me. This would encourage other customers to get up and dance, which is quite desirable. That grin you see plastered on my face had been there for well over half an hour, and I was begging, begging, begging her with my eyes to get up and dance.
Believe me when I say that I did not feel like smiling at that moment in time. I was, to put it bluntly, freaking out. But at that time, my job was to be a glamorous belly dancer who entertained the customers while exuding joy, grace, class, musical knowledge, technical aptitude, and general bonhomie. That means smiling. If needs be, I would have smiled until my cheek bones shattered (which, by the end, was exactly what they felt like).
Despite the general wretchedness of my situation and my state of intense panic, the performance was apparently well received. The customers got up and danced, and in an uncharacteristic move, actually tipped me.** Later I found out from my dance instructor, who arranges these gigs, that the musician was heartily pleased with me and very glad that I was so willing and able to dance energetically for the full 45 minutes. This reception is quite contrary to the information my own brain retained, which is best summarized as a long, agonized wail.
I have never been so happy that I can smile so realistically and so relentlessly.
Practice your smile, folks. Figure out how to make it look real. Sometimes it is the thing that saves the situation from utter disaster!
*Due to a faulty set up on the mixing board, the sound on my pre-recorded set went haywire about five minutes into the performance. The in-house musician, who was in charge of the sound system, mixing board, and keyboard, frantically waved my husband over to help, and then tried to skip ahead to my next song. This was a bad move, as I create my sets by re-mixing multiple songs into one single track. I had borrowed this particular MP3 player from my mother-in-law. She happens to like really terrible country pop music. Many belly dancers say you can dance to any kind of music. I disagree. You cannot belly dance to really terrible country pop. It was the most horrifying hilarious 5 seconds of dancing I have ever had to get through.
**Part of me wonders if they were tipping me out of pity (“oh, that poor white girl is really giving it all she’s got”). Perhaps the tipping was out of admiration for my endurance of the never-ending-set – we usually only dance for 20 minutes. While I can expect to receive generous tips from the Greek restaurants, the regular customers at this particular restaurant are not known to be avid tippers. Different restaurants can have different customs.
Daily Acts
Acting is part of life. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we spent a significant portion of our day in one performance or another. Life demands all of us to be a bit of an actor, and most people are remarkably adept at this.
We perform in front of our spouses and friends. We act out specific roles and personas at work. We are definitely performers when giving speeches or presentations, regardless of their scale or importance. Sometimes the act is casual or subtle. Sometimes it is a full on display worthy of an Oscar award.
In my work, I’ll use the term “acting” a couple of ways. One of these is the way most people would define it: participating in a scripted or improvised play, film, or similar performance. Sometimes I’ll call people who do this kind of acting dramatists, just to avoid ambiguity (a rather old-fashioned term, I know. But it’s useful, and I am a Jane Austin fan).
The other way I define acting is: the conscious control of our externally projected emotions in order to convey a specific message for a specific purpose.*
This I’ll also call social acting. Sometimes we do this when we want to show an emotion externally that is different or conflicting with what we’re actually feeling. We might also do this to amplify our emotions for greater effect, or even if we’re trying to convince ourselves of something that we don’t yet quite believe. What we do on the outside, after all, has an effect on what’s going on inside our own heads.
When clients or workshop participants tell me that they’re “not an actor,” I usually dismiss the comment. It simply isn’t true. What the person actually means is that they’re not a dramatist. The majority of people are very adept social actors. We have to be – it’s part of getting along in human society. Social acting lets us communicate clearly, get along, keep the peace, motivate others, do what needs to be done in a different situations. People who truly, truly “can’t act” also usually can’t have normal relationships, whether social, romantic, or work-related.
So when are we social actors? Here are a few scenarios:
- A spouse approves of a new living room suite he doesn’t actually like. His partner has fallen in love with it, and that person’s happiness matters more to him than the fact that he hates harvest orange upholstry.
- An employee nods enthusiastically and gives her support to what she thinks is a terrible management decision, because she needs her boss to think that she’s “on board with management decisions.”
- A person refrains from rolling her eyes while being lectured by her friend about a new crackpot nutrition fad because it’s easier to keep the peace than get into another argument about food.
- A parent calmly comforts his child, saying that everything will be alright, even though he himself is afraid that it won’t be.
- A speaker gives his audience a dazzling, confident smile despite his jangling nerves and mounting nausea.
- A person tries imitating the physical mannerisms of her role model in order to project some of her idol’s charisma.
These performances aren’t necessairly done to be duplicitous. Social acting is as likely to be an honest act as a dishonest one. Sometimes we are social actors for the benefit of others, sometimes for our own benefit. Have you ever seen someone try to get over a phobia? When someone refrains from screaming or gagging while petting their friend’s boa constrictor because they want to get over their fear of snakes, they’re engaging in an honest bit of acting for their own benefit.
This week, try taking note of the instances where you think you are doing a bit of social acting. You might be surprised at how prolific and accomplished an actor you are!
*In case you were wondering, yes I really do get this nerdy when I’m babbling about work. This is what happens when I get excited!