Creative Mornings – STAGE MIGHT: Harnessing Your Fear of Public Speaking

ABOUT THIS FIELDTRIP
We all speak in public and yet public speaking is something most of us have never been taught. Most of us have a mortal fear of going before others to share information, open our hearts and use our bodies to communicate effectively.

Learning to surrender by stepping both into and away from your message is what makes for honest, persuasive and artful presentations. In this workshop, acclaimed singer-actress Karen Kohler shares her performance techniques and tools to help you relax on stage, expand your confidence, identify where your story-telling voice resonates most with your truth, and ladder up from fright to might.

Topics from her methodology in stagecraft include Intention, Fear as Fuel, The Faculties of Observation and Empathy, Tapping the Universals, Self-Collection, Audience Rapport and more.

✨WHAT TO EXPECT
✔️ We’ll begin with an overview of what defines a stage in our current paradigm of live, virtual and hybrid forms of presentation, followed by a brief talk about the nature of fear particularly as it pertains to public speaking.

✔️ From there, we’ll launch into a free-write around memories and experiences of self-expression, such as the ones we’ve experienced in childhood, at school or family gatherings, in public forums, or as recently as at a team meeting here in the virtual realm. This will be followed by a visualization around Karen Kohler’s techniques of Playing Opposites, Taking Risks and Tapping the Universals and is designed to offer an alternate perspective on the lived and embodied experience.

✔️ We’ll have break-out rooms to share our experiences.

✔️ Next, we’ll choose a message with which to explore Intention, Fear as Fuel, Self-Collection and Audience Rapport. This will be followed by a guided visualization around how to universalize our message and own it, and how to best deliver it by understanding the true nature of the role of the audience.

✔️ We’ll again have break-out rooms to practice stepping up and expressing ourselves.

✔️ We’ll share out at the end and leave with a better understanding of our public speaking anxiety and self-doubt, and our general relationship with fear. We’ll take away tools we can use to access a deeper level of comfort with our messages, vocal instrument and connection with our audience by harnessing stage fright as an ally in our quest for honest, authentic self-expression.
❤️THIS FIELDTRIP IS INTERACTIVE
This FieldTrip is interactive and includes optional Breakout Rooms. If you do not want to be in a room, no worries! You can stay in the main room.
ABOUT YOUR HOST
Here’s an opportunity for you to work with one of the great story singers on the international scene! Karen Kohler shares her stage mastery, guiding students through a methodology that promotes intimate connection to self and audience. Her emotional connection to her material is renowned as is her concert movement and staging. Karen’s workshop is a must for those who want to hone their stagecraft and presentations in a variety of intimate performance venues and settings.

Karen emigrated to the U.S. from Germany as a child, learned English as a shy girl in a gospel choir, married her college sweetheart and was being paid handsomely in stock options when the call to performance seized her. For decades she has fueled a critically acclaimed international singing career from her base in New York City. She is passionate about story songs, crossbreeding in seven languages a decadent range of theatrical and musical styles from jazz and Delta blues to classical, rock-folk and cabaret. Winner of the Nightlife, Mac, BroadwayWorld and Backstage Bistro awards, the iconoclastic Kohler is the founding producer of the Kabarett Kollektif and the award winning cabaret festival, Kabarett Fête. She is a sought-after director, lectures at the university level on the European roots of small stage performance, and guides a diversity of artists in stagecraft and fulfilling their creative calling. She recently published her first books of prose and poetry, and launched her life arts podcast, RudeWoke. Visit www.karenkohler.com for info on concerts, workshops and events.

FIELDTRIP CATEGORY
🎙 Public Speaking