ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE*,INCLUDING YOUR CLASSROOM

Tips borrowed from the acting profession can help usperfect our training techniques. Theacting profession's theatrical techniques assist instructors by teaching us tomake full use of our body, voice, and environment. Theatrical techniques help to increase our energy, ourconfidence, and our spontaneity.

One useful acting tip involves controlling our .internal stage mother,.the destructive critical voice inside our heads. Actors control their internal stage mother through split-focusconcentration -- like learning to rub your stomach and pat your head at thesame time.

We can learn to stretch our power of concentration through thesimultaneous performance of a verbal activity and a physical one. For example, try practicing your verbalpresentation while cleaning out a closet or washing a car.

The split-focus concentration activity helps us to integrate rightbrain and left brain functions. Anactor uses the left brain to organize the speech aspect of the performance andthe right brain to integrate physical movement. When we master doing two activities at once, there is littleconcentration left over for self doubt or stage mother advice.

As trainers, we know we can help our students to retain more if theinformation we convey is emotionally charged. An acting technique to develop a more highly charged speaking style isto practice speaking in an exaggerated manner. Practice your presentation as you ham it up in various ways. How would you present if you were a prizefighter, a bored bureaucrat, or inebriated?

To feel confident we must experience ourselves differently. Using acting techniques helps us toexperience what it is like to try on new behaviors and to act in an unaccustomedmanner. We can learn from actors how totune into the energy of a group -- how to feel it, step into it, and .be one.with it. Acting techniques help us toshed limitations and develop our best public self.

Sources:

• Teaching As Performance, American Library Association Conference, July 2000,Monika Antonelli, Joe Dempsey.
  
  
• Power Talk: How To Use Theater Techniques To Win YourAudience, Niki Flacks, Robert W. Rasberry, 1982. (available from your local public library through InterLibrary Loan)
  
  

Do you use or know of other resources for actors? Please send your recommended list to AnnieNorman, norman@lib.de.us.