Humans are amazing: what acting class taught me about communication
In a recent conversation with my sport psychologist friend, Josie Perry, we started talking about our mutual love for the arts (Josie having trained at stage school, before going into journalism and comms, psychology and sport) and me being a dancer, then lawyer, creative careers specialist and now on sabbatical to do circus training. We both agreed that the business and sports worlds can learn so much from the arts, and I veered off into telling Josie about the time I joined an Intro to Acting course at the Central School of Speech & Drama.
I had originally signed up to do the Intro to Directing course, but, as one of my insightful friends pointed out at the time, the content of the directing course would come easier to me and I should perhaps try the thing that would feel more scary. The thought of acting terrified me and had done since school, even though it was a discipline that I had become increasingly curious about over the years. And so it was that on a dreary January Monday evening in 2016, I turned up at CSSD with 15 other strangers (the majority of whom were acting hopefuls and were using the course as a primer for drama school).
I will always remember the first exercise we had to do. Our wonderful tutor, Dana Blackstone, encouraged us to sit down in two rows, facing each other, and whilst maintaining eye contact with the person in front of us, to take it in turns to tell each other the following three things:
What I like about you is….
What I love about you is…
What I see in you that I see in me is…..
Given that I’m an introvert, I was surprised at how easy it was to say these things to the first person I was sat in front of. What I saw in him that I saw in me, was that he was an artist. Turned out he actually was an artist. The fact that I saw that in him, me, and managed to blurt it out from nowhere was even more of a revelation as, at the time, I was not doing any art at all (save for my sub-par acting).
After that part of the exercise, we had to maintain a strict silence, hold eye contact with the person in front of us, stand up, move to the next spot and sit down again, switching eye contact to the person who was now in front of us. The purpose of this part of the exercise was to sense the group energy to act, move as one ensemble, maintaining awareness of those in front of us and around us without looking around or speaking (thus mimicking the work that performers do on stage). The focussed attention on the movement aspect of the exercise meant we had no time to think before speaking, or get caught up in having the ‘right’ answers, and caused us to rely solely on our intuition and other senses.
In only 15 minutes, this exercise enabled me to see, with immediacy, the different ways in which we can relate to new people, the effect of body language and facial expressions on how we relate to them, the power of being fully present and having completely focussed attention, the uncanny ability of our intuition, and above all, how much we can already ‘know’ about people before we’ve even spoken to them. It was like a year of therapy, a team-building day out and an intensive comms course all rolled into one.
Image: Cameron Slater
My unexpected self-proclamation that ‘I am an artist’ sounded ridiculous to me at the time (oh hello, impostor syndrome), but I couldn’t shake it. On some level, I knew it had validity. Since then, I’ve got back into dance, started painting and drawing again, did a week-long voice workshop with Patsy Rodenburg and left work to go to circus school. On reflection, that acting course was a huge catalyst in reconnecting me with some of the things that make me, me, and that particular exercise was a huge catalyst in making me think much more broadly about all aspects of communication and how much of an impact it has on our interactions with others.
Several other things have since struck me about this exercise:
The vulnerability it creates from the off means that you can build more meaningful connections with people. You are learning something real about them, and they are learning something real about you immediately. It is a much better icebreaker, albeit a much more confronting one, than the norm.
For this to work, everyone has to engage fully and to let go of fears and concerns about getting it right. Each participant has to really buy in to what the group is trying to do. This group ‘letting go’ and commitment, builds trust, thus fostering further connection.
Focussed eye contact and careful listening makes you feel really present and alive. If you’re doing this properly, there is no space for distraction. Also, maintaining eye contact is really difficult. Each turn around made me feel alternately pervy, shifty, needy, steely or ‘in love’.
We can ‘listen’ to each other using only our sight and body language - movement and visuals can say so much.
Sensing rather than speaking, can really aid communication. It allows us more time in the process and a more well-rounded assessment of where someone is, who someone else is, and what they are trying to say.
I love the idea of trying this exercise in the workplace - mixing up teams and getting them all to do this. The tricky thing would be to do it with people you already know. I am intrigued as to what resistance there would be to this and what would arise from it.
Humans are amazing. Humans can communicate in incredible ways. We can have connections with people that we’ve barely met. In the current COVID world, where we are increasingly ‘connecting’ via technology, and through digital screens, I like to think back to this exercise as an example of the power of truly connecting in person, and the palpable energy that comes from doing so.
Have you had any unexpected lightbulb moments from participating in the arts? Have the arts helped you your personal or professional development in any way? I love talking about this stuff, so do get in touch if any of this resonates.
