As conference speakers and presenters, we always rehearse. Whereas lots of people don’t. If they did then any audience would receive something far more impactful. What are the four stages of rehearsal? Understanding, Exploration, and the other two? Listen and find out!
The more you rehearse the better the quality. Some people think they don’t need to at all. That’s a self-certification bias. Many speakers never rehearse. Most presentations are overwritten. What’s Harold Pinter’s perspective? Ken Loach? Jack Nicholson? Al Pacino? David Lean? Alec Guinness? Luke Radley? Hermann Ebbinghaus? Terry Wogan? Michael Gearin-Tosh? Bob Marley? Bob & Jeremy?
Plus, enjoy our new feature: 3 is the magic number! Don’t keep winging it! You’ll never under-rehearse again!
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
As conference speakers and presenters, we always rehearse. Whereas lots of people don’t. If they did then any audience would receive something far more impactful. What are the four stages of rehearsal? Understanding, Exploration, and the other two? Listen and find out!
The more you rehearse the better the quality. Some people think they don’t need to at all. That’s a self-certification bias. Many speakers never rehearse. Most presentations are overwritten. What’s Harold Pinter’s perspective? Ken Loach? Jack Nicholson? Al Pacino? David Lean? Alec Guinness? Luke Radley? Hermann Ebbinghaus? Terry Wogan? Michael Gearin-Tosh? Bob Marley? Bob & Jeremy?
Plus, enjoy our new feature: 3 is the magic number! Don’t keep winging it! You’ll never under-rehearse again!
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Bob and Jeremy's Conflap the Reality Podcast.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello Bobby Boy, hello Mr Blake, how are you? I'm quite sunny, Are you sunny? You look?
Speaker 1:sunny. It's beautifully sunny here in Kent. Is it sunny in Bucks?
Speaker 2:Oh yes, and yesterday was the sunniest of sunniness.
Speaker 1:I can see that you've caught a bit of rays.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my youngest was saying Dad, you don't look very healthy. I said what do you mean? It's the beginning of a tan.
Speaker 1:It is, it is. You're a little bit puce, as my father would say. I've also caught some sun walking this weekend. I've also caught a cold, which is why my dulcet tones are even more dulcet on this particular podcast.
Speaker 2:You have a cold, whereas I have hay fever. I don't know how you've got a cold.
Speaker 1:I don't know how either. It's a big head cold, but good to get out of the way before the summer.
Speaker 2:Maybe you were in a public house where someone had a cold, because most of the time it's just the wind and you know anti-virulent environment, you're in Well quite.
Speaker 1:So today we are going to do a podcast on the subject of rehearsal. Yeah, and we've both gone off and done some research into this subject. I'm not sure what you're going to talk about. When it comes to rehearsal, I've got a few things that I've discovered and I've also got some anecdotes to talk about it as well, but it might be an idea, because this was your idea to talk about this subject. So what was your perspective on this subject to rehearsal?
Speaker 2:Well, I tell you why I chose it as a topic. Because we were doing a conference last week and, without any kind of need to suggest it, we're always going to rehearse. You and I, yep, and Joe who was with us and Anne who was with us. We always rehearse, don't we? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:If you didn't know, bob and I were actors in our youth, as we say, and rehearsal is part of putting on a play, part of putting on anything. So that's why I picked the topic. And then I just got excited about the concept because I thought lots of people who we work with and don't work with don't rehearse. And if they did, I'm pretty sure the audiences, whether it's in an actual theatre or just the audiences if it's in the room, any room, any audience number, would receive something more considered, more impactful. And then I went down looking into the topic of rehearsal and when it started and all that sort of stuff, and it sent me down a few tunnels that aren't necessarily connected but maybe linked, and, of course, our background. We went to drama school, we were actors. You can't put on a play without rehearsing, you can't just turn up.
Speaker 1:No. It's going to be pretty shocking because it's Although sometimes you feel as though you are seeing something that has just been thrown together.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But there you are. I did some research into this and do you know what the four stages of rehearsal are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I looked at that and one website went about the five. There's loads. Let's give people that that's nice.
Speaker 1:The first stage is understanding, the second stage is exploration, which I know is something you enjoy, the third is practice and the fourth is presentation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you use the paying public. Come in the doors. You're now going to do it Going back from that. Connected to that, it's all apparently a French thing Rehearsier to practice, to prepare, and somebody and I haven't written it down thinks it's only really become exact sort of common practice. There's more and more production put together. From about the mid-1700s that rehearsal became a thing.
Speaker 1:I know that in Shakespeare's theatre you would have rehearsed a play a week whilst performing another play you were doing at the same time, so you would have been learning a play whilst you were performing another one, and you'd have had a week to get it in position. That's quite a sort of difficult scenario where you're having to learn words for a play within a week, block it so that you know where you're going to be standing, and in the evening you're performing a play that you learned the week before. It's really tough.
Speaker 2:That's the thing is the amount of time given to it. In some senses there's an argument that the longer you rehearse, the more the quality gets. But actually I think in my own experience that you get to a level of quality in what it is you're trying to produce and then really I think the returns are diminishing. You've reached a kind of good level of the performance or the play and then they get to kind of oh, we've got another rehearsal. I've definitely been in things like we're good, now we're slick.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do we need to keep going again?
Speaker 1:It's interesting, though. I saw an interview with Al Pacino who talked about doing Richard the Third, which he did on Broadway, and there was one scene in Richard the Third. He said he didn't get the scene until he'd done it 80 odd times. Wow, yeah, and about the 86th time he walked in and went ah, I don't know what this scene's about. He'd been doing it automatically and then realized it took all that preparation, rehearsal to then go ah, I don't know what this scene's about.
Speaker 2:I think the Russians do the most rehearsal of any theaters in the world. So I don't know if you were with me when Vanessa Redgrave did that talk about the Three Sisters and we were on the stage. Did you come on that trip from drama school? No, no and she was there with another guy who ran some state-owned theater company most of them in Russia, worcester and he talked about rehearsing for six months. You know we rehearse a check off for six months.
Speaker 1:That sounds excessive. He does, doesn't it. And that feeds into one of my anecdotes.
Speaker 2:actually, Rather than just acting.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a number of ways we can go on this, but I think my sort of reason I wanted to talk about this is I think some people think they don't need to rehearse, and that sent me off down a lovely path, looking at what's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which we may have talked about before, which is where people have an illusory superiority complex. I don't need to rehearse. It's also known as the self-certification bias.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so good, isn't it?
Speaker 2:great, that's brilliant.
Speaker 2:Well, I've listened to an interview with Dunning. Actually, yeah, it's two people, dunning and Kruger. The Dunning-Kruger effect is believing whether you're underskilled or overskilled. This is where it's interesting that you just don't need to check it, practice it, do any more research. And one of the stories that Dunning gives is of a failed robbery attempt of a guy who just believed that by covering his face in lemon juice he would not be visible to the security cameras. And he covered himself in lemon juice and was completely seen the whole time. And when they arrested him he said well, how are you arresting me? How have you? Well, you're on the cameras or play, but I covered my face with lemon juice. But he did no rehearsal or practice, and that's sort of a famous example. But I think we definitely have met people who, when we're putting together a conference, all the tech people are there and yet the main speakers any speakers won't rehearse.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they don't go on and we think are they going to run the whole thing? And I'm thinking a few years ago, a particular client we won't mention, and clearly one of the main speakers who I think was on for some time, had done no rehearsal, hadn't checked the tech but hadn't practiced what he was going to say or anything, and I just think he probably had the self-certification bias and thought rehearsal's not for me, I don't need to rehearse. I think that's an important point as far as learning. The only other spin-offs from the Dunning-Kruger effect are people who don't think they need to rehearse.
Speaker 2:The other reason why you should is you'll get some psychological benefits by rehearsing. You'll grow in confidence, you'll feel better about it, your anxieties will reduce, you'll be less stressed, and so there's other reasons to rehearse keeping all this nervous energy and this is what you're going to love, bob, because you'll think of me in my box of food. The physiological conditions that will hamper a successful rehearsal are if you haven't eaten enough, you haven't slept enough and you're stressed. That's why I always make sure I've eaten enough before I do a rehearsal. Where's the food? So that's nice, and then of course, we can go into some theatre bits, but I would love people listening to this to realise that you do need to rehearse, whether you're underskilled or overskilled. You know, the very self-righteous believe they don't need to rehearse. But they do, don't they? Bob?
Speaker 1:We're looking at those four stages. First of all, understanding what it is. So if you're rehearsing anything, you're going to have some text, whether it's a speech or a play or a presentation. There's going to be the understanding of the actual text. Then, through rehearsal, you explore that text and in many cases that leads to cuts because you know it and you don't necessarily need to say it or you think that's over-egging it or whatever it may be, and so you then explore that text and edit it, then you practice it so you become confident with it, as you say, and then you're able to present it.
Speaker 1:I remember years ago watching a rehearsal of the Hot House which was directed by Harold Pinter and he in his text for this play, which he wrote in 1958 and then left it in a draw for over 20 years before it was done originally at the National with Derek Newock and he put at the front of this text I wrote this in 1958, I then took it out 20 years later and then rewrote it through rehearsal, which was mostly cuts, and I think when I read that I thought yes.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I don't understand that last bit, which was mostly cuts.
Speaker 1:So he rewrote the play through the rehearsal process, which was mostly cuts. So he gave them the text and as they rehearsed he took text out. Right wonderful Because he was realising that he'd overwritten bits of it, which then made it doable. And I think, if you think about any form of presentation and we've talked before about the long bullet points on power points and all that sort of thing most things are overwritten, Most things you can take them down.
Speaker 2:I think it's a really good point you're making and people produce their slides because they don't rehearse. They give the audience too much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, or they?
Speaker 2:can't elaborate on it, or it's just cognitive overload. We don't need all this stuff. No, go on. That's a lovely thing, we've pintered that. I'm just thinking, if you go to the opposite, if we stay in the world of the arts and you go to someone like Ken Loach, he will often say the opposite of that. So what Ken Loach will say is you're this character, he'll work on characterisation mostly. So you are a single mum and you're going mad dealing with these three children. You're feeling that I get that OK.
Speaker 2:And in this scene your husband returns and he's not done childcare for two years and then he just says what do you want to tell him? And they might do a little rehearsal, but he tries to keep the immediacy of language and reaction. But of course that's film and it's only being done once. In a sense, you may rehearse a bit, whereas the actor in the play might do it for a year, sure, and so, however, the tightness is, and the timing, and, again, film, depending on your budget, you might let the role of film go on another two minutes into the can, whereas if it's theatre, no, no, the scene ends and we've got 90 minutes and it's a 90 minute play. You're listening to Bob and Jeremy's Conflab, brought to you by Reality Training. We're a leading training and coaching company based in the UK. For information on how we could help you improve your business, check out our website at realitytrainingcom.
Speaker 1:So that is a brilliant thing about film, because that's the anecdote about Jack Nicholson when he was doing the Departed, which you would have seen as an excellent film, wonderful. Yeah, and he says that he's a writer as well as an actor because he'll take a scene. There was one scene in it where he and Ray Winston shoot this couple.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's the scene. And Jack Nicholson, when they came to do it, he just said look, if you keep the camera rolling and the first one falls on top of the other one, then I can say she fell funny. And if you keep the camera rolling, then I can say this. He would add in words in rehearsal that would make the scene better. And that's another inspiration, rather than allowing just a writer to do it.
Speaker 2:Yes, rather than allowing the writer before he's actually played it out. Yeah, he's in it.
Speaker 1:He's playing that far Now, yeah, and pushing it, pushing it, and again that's back to the exploration bit where, through the knowledge of doing it, because he realises that filming is finite and there comes a point where you have to stop so he's thinking well, what can you do to maximise that time that you're in shot? You don't have to change the camera, you just carry on.
Speaker 2:Whereas the complete opposite of that would be David Lean, who wouldn't let an actor do anything else. You know that was it. No, you're not doing that. And actually David Lean would often go out and show them exactly how to do this scene. He became more and more like that as he got older, didn't he?
Speaker 1:A great story about that. When he was doing Lawrence of Arabia and they had a scene with Alec Guinness playing this Arab, with Peter Gatall and Anthony Quayle and Peter O'Toole and Anthony Quayle got the giggles and they started laughing and Alec Guinness lost it and said gentlemen, we are professionals, we are absolutely professionals and we are not to laugh. We're going to get this scene in. And so David Lean said walk around the tent a couple of times, come back in and we'll redo it. And so they walked around the tent twice, came back in and sat down and they came to Alec Guinness's line and Alec Guinness went. He just cracked up, even though he was the one who got most annoyed. The humour of it hit him at that point and he just couldn't get through the scene. I mean, they just kept on corpseing.
Speaker 2:He was Aoudu Abutai, I think that's right, that's right, yeah, just come back to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the other thing that has made me quite excited because I haven't found it till now and I can thank Luke Radley for this, who's a teacher doing some research for end of ours he works with my wife is he sent me this thing that people in training should know all about, called the Ebbing House for getting curve. So Herman, ebbing House, and it's really simple. But people chuck all the fake made-up percentages at it, depending on what they know about how much we forget. But the reason why you must rehearse is, as you don't rehearse, all that happens is that your memory of what you've done Just keeps dropping off and then by rehearsing again You're lucky it comes back up again. I know, if you're not rehearsing, it drops again.
Speaker 2:How he designed his curve was he created a load of made-up words Like quacks and Zoff in lists and he made himself memorize these words and rehearse them through various techniques, and one is might be a song or adding other things to it to remember it, or rhyming, and then, having not Rehearsed again or revised again, he'd see how long it would stay in his memory for.
Speaker 2:So the other point why you should rehearse and it could be, for example, and I think of a CEO who's going to do a talk what the Americans love to call town halls and you're going around places and you, just you do the first one, then you're not doing the next one for two weeks. Well, the people you see next might get a fairly duff presentation if you don't rehearse it, because you've forgotten some of the anecdotes or the fun or the humor or the punchiness, because if you're not rehearsing, you personally are going to forget it, but also your audience are going to forget it, because it doesn't have the impact it's desired to have. I'm now thinking of Terry wogan used to make a joke of we're in here so early because we have to do a rehearsal first.
Speaker 2:You know I can't, I can't see you at that morning. At seven I'll be rehearsing. Of course there's no rehearsal at all. No, but that's a nice joke to professionals that do rehearse. Yeah, you know who want to get the rehearsal Right should we go to our new feature? Our new feature. Hmm, what we're going to call on you feature the new features called three is the magic number.
Speaker 2:It's called three is the magic number. So three is the magic number. I'm going to ask Bob three questions. We're going to go one, one, two, two, three, three and About with no prior preparation. So I'm going to hit you with the first one you ready and give you my number one. Who taught you rehearsal?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a really good question. I'd have to say the pipping players that were my mom's drama group in the village that we lived in and Every week she go off to do these rehearsals for plays. And then we'd watch the plays a few weeks later and, yeah, I realized it was actually quite good fun to go off and rehearse a play and and put it on. So from a very early age rehearsal was a regular part of my life that was around you. Hmm.
Speaker 2:Nice. Thank you to the pipping players.
Speaker 1:So here's my question to you what have you done, whether it be a presentation or a performance that had the least rehearsal?
Speaker 2:Least rehearsal. Gosh the least rehearsal ever. What?
Speaker 1:are you thinking of yours?
Speaker 2:Now I've got it go on then got it. It was a play called suffering for art yeah, isn't that extraordinary, was called that written by a lovely guy called Henry Lewis. I wrote another musical called Joan of Kent that did rather better than suffering for art. We didn't rehearse that enough and and as a result, some of our blocking was wrong walking off when someone else is walking on and, yeah, it wasn't rehearsed enough.
Speaker 1:Was that performed at the Baron's Court?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's that one. Yeah, the Baron Court Theatre.
Speaker 1:I don't know whether an entrance or exit in that theatre would have made that much difference with those times.
Speaker 2:Well, at the back, you know, but exactly so small. That's why it did make a difference, because you'd walk straight into someone else.
Speaker 1:Oh no, OK, I mean mine on. That was the Cherry Orchard by Chekov. You mentioned Chekov.
Speaker 2:From the school.
Speaker 1:Yep, directed by Michael Gehr and Tosh, who you remember well, we had an entire half-term to rehearse this play. He chose to do no rehearsal at all. For five weeks. We were performing it on a Monday night and we started rehearsing on the Friday before Wow, and we rehearsed Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and performed it Monday night.
Speaker 2:And that was his conscious decision.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it was conscious, but he'd obviously done other things preceding a few weeks, I think, when I saw that didn't you do one version of it or a scene of it in St Katz in the St Katz Theatre? It wasn't St Katz, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think somebody was holding a script.
Speaker 1:I don't know that they were. I don't have that, I think someone had paper in their hands. Anyway, the point was it was under rehearsed. However, it was successful and we loved it that we were just thrown in to do it in four days and we did.
Speaker 2:Maybe it added an immediacy.
Speaker 1:It did, it did. Ok, give us your next one.
Speaker 2:What happens to you if you don't rehearse?
Speaker 1:God. I mean I've had some disasters as an actor where I hadn't rehearsed and I did a musical night once where I was quite intricate musical number I was doing with a load of other men and I was absolutely hammered under rehearsed and buggered it up. So that's bad news.
Speaker 2:But, generally speaking, what happens to you if you don't rehearse? So we're not going to have time to rehearse this Bob.
Speaker 1:It'll be OK. I'm not bad at getting away with it, but it's not going to be as good as if I had rehearsed once.
Speaker 2:But you're missing out on the thing, aren't you? Your stress level will go up.
Speaker 1:Of course it will, but that's part of the deal. I mean, you and I are quite lucky that if they push us on and say something, it will probably be just about OK, but it is quite stressful, that's for sure. Now, my next question was similar. Actually. What was the last thing you saw any type of performance or presentation that you know was under rehearsed? It's good, good question, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I know exactly what it was. I know exactly what it was. It was the pantomime at Christmas in Aylesbury, Right, and we know it's under rehearsed. As an audience we forgive them because they've done the blocking of who Goes when, which is quite important because you've got large costumes. But a lot of the scenes have been under rehearsed and we went a lot earlier in the run this year and they rely on the length of the run to improve the rehearsal.
Speaker 1:So yes.
Speaker 2:But you're laughing at the lack of tightness. So there's more humour where they look and someone's forgotten a line, or they haven't forgotten a line and they're pretending they've forgotten the line. But that was under rehearsed.
Speaker 1:So I saw a load of bands play a few months ago that my son was performing in these various bands and it was amazing the difference between the different bands. The ones that were under rehearsed were almost unlistable, very, very poor, whereas the ones that had rehearsed were just so much better. The real pity were the ones that sounded okay and you thought one or two more rehearsals and it would have been elevated, so you would have really found something, and it just wasn't quite what it could have been.
Speaker 2:Just an anecdote on that. I saw a documentary on Bob Marley and the whalers the other night. Oh, and they this guy heard of them and they had a slot free and he booked them for a haul in Coventry. Hmm, and Somebody had heard a bit of a buzz about them came along he said they were so well rehearsed and so tight. They were booked solid from that night and for what people said and they couldn't relieve how in tune it was perfect. The song finished. And then then they were so well rehearsed because they played together so much in Jamaica before they come over and they rehearsed their set Right down and it absolutely is the reason that they got more bookings and did so well in the UK and then he stayed in London and so on and so on.
Speaker 1:Your best ever rehearsed you've been a part of okay, that was the rose tattoo in drama school, where I had to learn an entire part overnight because one of the actors had a bad back, so I learned it overnight and Performed it the next day in rehearsal. I didn't drop a line, which is amazing actually, and I know now. That was probably one of the best performances of my life, but sadly no one ever saw it and I know because the guy had the bad back said he was alright again. I know.
Speaker 2:It's unappreciated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a bit very sad.
Speaker 2:I did get to see a bit of that because I was knocking around the alfie station that afternoon.
Speaker 1:Well, there you go. Yes, it was an interesting play. Yeah, there's a longer description of that play in my book. I'm currently working on the drama school, which Exposes that period of my life. Now my last question.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's Tennessee Williams's best player tool, by the way.
Speaker 1:Oh no, it's dreadful. My last question to you is what is an example? Can you give us an example of someone you've seen, or a time when you have totally had to wing it and how you've done it?
Speaker 2:Oh, I can talk us immediately about when I've went, when I've winged, and it's when I was a teacher when I was a language teacher and I hope they're not listening the wonderful people who employed me. I was very rehearsed for a lot of it.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go.
Speaker 2:It's a long time ago, but when I was working in the summers and when I was at St Clairs for an entire summer, teaching for nine weeks.
Speaker 1:Nine weeks.
Speaker 2:You've got two weeks of lesson plans, but you don't. You don't have another seven. And Me and Simon Crow, who you know, we used to meet it in the breaks with a digestive biscuit, a cup of coffee, and I go what have you got? What have you got? And he'd go art, okay, give me a bit more. What you do is you ask who owns a lovely piece of art in their house. It might be your parents, might be something your sister's done. I, okay, okay, so you elicit that. Yet then what then? What then? You do art, vocab, oil painting, brilliant, brilliant, got it.
Speaker 2:And you'd go off and you'd sometimes have had 30 seconds of a loose lesson plan from another teacher and he'd say to me Jays, jays, what have you got? I'd say, um, holidays, a Best childhood holiday memory, and you can do all the memory stuff. You can do rock, see, crapping, there's a load of you know, boat wave, there's all over cab that comes from it. Then another teacher used to join us, called Simon Harris, and he got really excited about writing a book called the Winger's Guide To English language teaching, which he thought he could sell, which is loose lesson plans for anyone teaching English Anywhere in the world to foreign students. We've got the, the outline. Oh, I would wing those, but somehow, with the energy and the enthusiasm these students probably got an okay lesson, you know, sure, but no, yeah, I did wing, then I wing, I wing, winged. So anything else on rehearsal, we think you should. I hope that's coming across clear and I.
Speaker 2:Another thing is that the opposite of the Dunning Kruger effect, by the way, the underskilled who's the illusory superiority complex is people have imposter syndrome. And Do you know what? If you've got imposter syndrome, then flip in, rehearse, because then you'll stop worrying about that. You think you're, you're not ready for this job or ready for this talk, or you'll defer to someone else. A number of people I coach have this about them. They think they can't do certain things, and so I say well, stand in your room, walk around, say it out loud, practice it, record your voice. That's another tip. Don't just keep it in your head panicking, and then turn up and do it, rehearse, the flipping thing.
Speaker 1:I think I have a stat which I've been quoting for years that I don't know where it came from, but I think it's right which is that if you rehearse something once, it will probably be ten times better than had you not rehearsed it at all. That's nice, it's probably true. I think it is because once you've done it, once you're going to edit a bit, you're gonna change it a bit, and it will be ten times better. If you rehearsed it a few times, it's gonna be way, way, way, way, way better.
Speaker 2:So just connecting to our conference do's and don'ts, we might have touched on rehearsal, but if you are booking your company conference and you are the big swinging CEO or whoever you are, male or female Please don't rely on your brilliance and your high status to carry your speech and the fact that marketing have knocked you some slides together. Rehearse, listen to your voice over a microphone. Think of pausing. Listen to the greats. Look at zig-ziggler, look at Martin Luther King, look at Great Ted talks, because good speaking makes a flipping impact. Well, look, thanks, bobby. Thank you, time for your um Lemzip, although other brands without brand names are available.
Speaker 2:Thanks, well, see you the next one and Rehearsed please, because there'll be no scripts on the night.
Speaker 1:Bob and Jeremy's conflag the reality podcast.