Cirque du Soleil
TRADE
Richard Oberacker will present
“Beyond the Curtain of Cirque du
Soleil” at NSA’s Presentation and
Performance lab this April in Las
Vegas ( www.mynsa.org/lasvegas).
Here’s a peek at his performance tips.
Try improv. Know your speech, but
don’t over-rehearse. Leave room for
spontaneity and a natural exchange
with your audience.
Keep asking questions. The secret
to keeping your performance
engaging is to keep asking questions about your material and pushing yourself to find new answers.
Think you have all the answers? “Put
yourself in a situation in your field
of expertise where you will have to
ask more questions.”
Change the set. Making physical
changes as small as not using a podium if you’re used to using one or
wearing a turtleneck if you usually
wear a blazer will enliven your act.
“Changing something physically
forces your body to do something
your mind has not rehearsed, which
makes your performance seem fresh.”
Never stop training. Once a Cirque
du Soleil show opens, the work
never stops. “Once a week the
actors are in training to bring in
new artists, invent new moves and
perfect old ones.” Likewise, speakers
should always inject their script
with new ideas; an audience can
always detect complacency.
Creating a Believable Performance
Aside from the incredible stunts and
technical stimulation that Cirque du
Soleil delivers, Oberacker
is convinced that Cirque is
so spellbinding because the
actors and musicians expe-
rience each moment in a
believable way and give
the audience that same
reality. “It is so much
harder than people realize
to actually create and
manipulate your own body and mind and
express something that you are experi-
encing for the first time,” he stresses.
So just how do Cirque performers trans-
fer that magic so audiences accept it as
fact? They ask questions. The world of KÀ,
for example, contains a mysterious,
vaguely Asian kingdom. What sort of
clothes would citizens of this particular
kingdom wear? How would the human
body respond to floating above a four-
story pit that the audience can’t see the
bottom of? How would our legs operate
in a world with no gravity? Once the
performers answer such questions, a
believable, real-world emerges. That, when
combined with the artistic use of their
bodies, as well as production elements such
as lighting, costume, make-up and sound,
is undeniable, according to Oberacker.
“This is the magic of Cirque: The audience
can’t deny the reality of this environment.
They have no choice but to believe it.”
The creative process of bringing make-believe to life is not restricted to the fantasy world of Cirque du Soleil,
Oberacker adds. “These same principles
apply to any speaker. Every day you
should ask yourself questions about your
craft. ‘Do I know everything about what
I’m talking about? Do I know everything
about who I’m talking to?’ Speakers also
need to constantly reexamine their
focus.” If you speak about management,
for example, get back in the field and
manage a new group of people, such as
the mentally challenged or individuals in
another part of the world. “When our
actors feel themselves getting complacent—they’ve done the trapeze too
many times, or they’ve run out of earthbound inspiration for movement—they
are the first to ask for new challenges.”
New experiences stimulate new questions, which keeps your material fresh
and meaningful.
Injecting Breathing Space
On both theatrical and speaking stages,
the most common mistake Oberacker
sees is over-rehearsal. “It is a general
patina that can coat an entire performance; a glaze that goes over every inch
of the body.” Oberacker points to many
of the candidates in the presidential pri-maries: “There is a been-there-done-that
feeling with so many of their speeches.
They are repetitious and start to seem
like false sentiment.” When we really
connect with a candidate, it is usually
when they are speaking without a script;
Oberacker gives the example of Hillary
Clinton’s appearance on the Late Show
with David Letterman when she said
“something naughty and gave a grin; we
saw her walls come down when she wasn’t looking and we saw her truth.”
While you need to know your script—
“only geniuses can truly wing it,” he
says—welcome surprise into your performance by allowing for 10 to 15 percent unrehearsed material. “If you’re
playing Hamlet, for example, rehearse
up to the point where the character
contemplates suicide; don’t utter the
words ‘To be or not to be’ until you’re
on stage and it will be a completely different experience. At Cirque, all performers are trained to give themselves
breathing space for improvisation.
Actors are still exploring props and jungle gyms while they perform—“they
leave room for the extra double or
triple flip,” depending on the day.
Over-rehearsal almost guarantees a lack
of flexibility, another performance killer.
If you over-rehearse you’ll overlook
important variables in your environment.
Whether it’s a political candidate pound-
