129: Rebecca Surmont and Andy Garrison - On (Human) Performance

Hey everybody, and welcome to This Moved Me, a podcast about creating talks that move the world. With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking, because a good talk can move the world and it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful. That's not a small task.

I love your giggle. Wow.

Oh my gosh, so waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Hey Movers, it is time for a final interview episode of 2016. And here, here today's gonna, today's gonna be a little different. Here's what happened. I was scheduling out my podcast and I realized I've got a handful of interviews that I've done that have just, the timing has not quite worked in terms of when to publish them. And I realized I've got two people that I interviewed, two really amazing people who have a very similar background. And so I thought it would be kind of cool to curate parts of their interviews and mash them up together. So today is a first-ever This Moved Me interview mashup. Hey yo! And the two amazing people I'm introducing you to today, number one is a woman named Rebecca Surmont. And Rebecca and I connected because she lives here in the Twin Cities and she has this amazing mashup herself of her experience. She works in organizational development and talks about, with the organizations that she works with, about human performance. And I like that she uses that word, and I think it's intentional because she herself is a performer turned businesswoman. So she is an actor and a voice talent, and she's done mime work. She's got this really fascinating history in in mime. And so the physical expression of the body has a lot to do with our human performance in the workplace. It really does. And so we talked about that connection, and I really wanted to explore that a little bit. Um, and so I'm really excited to share with you some of her work. She has a very impressive resume. She spent years working, um, in the Twin Cities here in the Margolis Method and the actor training work there, and she herself has done lots of acting and voice work. And before— and she owned a small business. Like, she's got really fascinating history. I can't wait to share more with you from her. And then I'm mashing that conversation up with a man named Andy Garrison, who's an acting coach and also does the acting training. He is the founder of the Actor Training Studio. In, uh, I think it's in Kansas City. That is exactly where it is, it's in Kansas City. And he, uh, has some, I think, really wonderful history as a performer. And so we talked about that really interesting connection between performance and speaking, and there's something really important that connects these two worlds. And so we talked about that. So these two have a lot in common but also really, really different. So I liked mashing those up together, and then of course mashing up performance with speaking. So it is just a mashup day today. We're mashing it up here on this Move Me. So very excited to share with you both Rebecca Cermont and Andy Garrison. Okay, so Rebecca, you and I met, we had fantastic conversation about all kinds of different things about your work as a performer and how you've found yourself in the world of organizational development, which is quite a leap.

Yeah.

So tell, tell us a little bit about, especially giving— give us the context of your work as a performer.

Yeah, so theater and performance was something that always has been in my blood, and so even through college, I was still performing, and I met a master mime teacher, believe it or not. He was quite well known at the time in Poland, but he had been living in the States, and I started taking a class with him at my little tiny college, and then I continued studying with him.

Not just any master mime—

Polish. This guy was a Polish master. Yeah. And yeah, he had had a company in New York, and I think through Polish connections, because the school where I was going to college, St. Mary's College in Michigan, had also a very strong Polish bass. And although—

funny.

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, he ended up living in Ann Arbor and teaching this class at our college, and immediately, you know, I was hooked because it was like the best parts of dance that I really liked, and yet it was the expression, and it was theater, but it was, it was a totally different kind of theater, and it wasn't, you know, all like illusions, walls creating walls and ladders and things, but it was really a whole body kind of guttural experience. And so I fell in love with it, studied with him for several years, like once a week I would go down and take, take, you know, class with him. And usually there were only 5, 3, 3 to 5 people that showed up. And eventually he, he said, you 'You have to study with Marcel Marceau. He's a friend of mine. You must go.' And so I said, 'Okay.' Okay. I knew who Marcel Marceau was, but, you know, I just knew of him, but I didn't know his work, and I didn't really know the global impact that he had had with his work. So I ended up going to a little place in Ohio, Kenyon College. And in the summer, Marceau had come for several summers in a row to do a summer intensive. And apparently it's the only place that he's really done this, where he— he doesn't like to fly, so that was, I think, one thing. But he had this connection to the people that were running what they called the Mind School in southern Ohio, and I ended up spending 4 summers studying with Marcel Marceau, and then the people that were running the school who were really amazing artists in their own right. And I ended up on faculty there, you know, eventually. So it's 9 summers of my life were spent at mime school in southern Ohio. Yeah.

Okay. So before we even, like, get to the part of your journey where you've, like, translated all this into the work of of organizational development and business, I just want to talk about mime for a moment because in my mind, mime is this kind of other thing that I don't even— I don't know what you do with mime, like besides the sort of stereotypical thing I have in my head right now, like what you're saying, the letters and the walls and the— I don't know, got hired for parties. I don't know. And of course there's more to it. So will you illuminate me and then I'm sure many other people on really the, I don't know, the scope of mime or what it's really about for you?

Yeah, sure. I mean, it is kind of a strange thing. And I sometimes hesitate to tell people that I was a mime because of the images that that conjures up. But mime is ages old, right? So, you know, stories have been told using the body in a sort of mimetic form for hundreds of years. And then we can go even look at, you know, Commedia dell'Arte and some of those stock characters and how mimetic, you know, it's about imitating, imitating life. It's always been a part of theatre traditions. Then you get into the 20th century and you've got Jean-Louis Barrault, you've got Étienne Decroux in France and I'm sure other areas of the world as well. Then we arrive to Marcel Marceau who actually was a student of Étienne Decroux and then a guy like Stefan over in Poland who are all doing this sort of mime-based work whether it— it's more tied to a dance tradition or, you know, a theatrical tradition. It looks different in different parts of the world. And Marceau really popularized the illusion-based work. And so, Stephane's work was— it was very earthy, looked more like modern dance. And it was just the whole body. It wasn't really based in characters. As Marcel Marceau's work was. And his teacher, Étienne Decroux, his work was more ensemble-based. So, he had a company and they would do more ensemble work. So, really just continues to evolve, actually. It has ties, of course, to clowning and, yeah, just different traditions look different. I particularly really enjoy the ensemble-based work. So, it's really meant to be seen on stage under lights. Mime tradition in general starts with the actor, the creator, at the center of the process, and then once that person or that character is fully developed, then we add costumes, then we add props, then we add lights, but we don't lose the actor as the center, the creator of that experience. It's not about spectacle. It's really about paring down to the most basic of emotions and the simplest movement that can convey the most important message. So it's really about economy. Economy, economy, economy on stage.

Wow, I love some of the things that you're talking about, really taking your openness and curiosity and ambiguity and innovation and putting pieces together and building something together. You know, like you talked about, you loved ensemble work from the beginning, and that's building a business.

Yeah, really getting people aligned, getting them on the same page, getting them to hopefully perform at the same level, but recognizing you're only as good as your weakest performer. And so how do you get people up, you know, up to a level where they're, they're really, you know, performing, um, so that you can have the results that you want? So yeah, a lot of, a lot of similarities, um, I think, between business and the arts. And not everybody has the opportunity to, to make that flip, uh, or to live really in both worlds, because at my heart, I, I'm both a businesswoman and an artist, and they're really intertwined. They, they just can't be untwined.

Yeah, and I love that. And, and now your work, you're doing organizational development and really bringing some of these ideas to the people that you work with to help them—

yeah, in their work. And the beauty of it is, is, uh, because this is a new Organizational development, first of all, in a law firm, which is where I work, is in a law firm, is relatively new. There aren't a lot of law firms that really have this department, and there's two of us here for about 1,000 employees. And so because it's new, I can still be entrepreneurial. I still can create offerings and sell them internally. Influence and provide different kinds of services. So, of course, there's coaching, there's a strategy piece, there's the learning and development, and then there's presentation coaching, which I can offer internally to anybody, really. Attorneys and non-attorneys alike can have presentation coaching because there's a lot of presentations that go on here. So yeah, I can still use a lot of that creativity because essentially we're building a department.

You know, I feel like this would be really empowering for parents of kids who are really into the arts to listen to because You know, I, I think my parents were, were never ever concerned. They were never the type— like, I wanted— I was a theater major and an English major, and they were like, go for it. They were never like, you know, you should be practical and get a business degree. They just said, you know, I don't know, I don't know what they were thinking. They were just trusted that I would find my way, and, and have, you know. But I know other parents, when they hear their kids like, oh, I wanna, I wanna go into theater, I wanna study mime, I wanna, you know, and be like, what are you, you know, okay, that's great, it's a wonderful hobby, but what you're talking about is the value of those skills and how they translate into our world. And I mean, my goodness, I can't think of the skills I use more on a daily basis than the skills I learned as a theater company member, as, you know, uh, in speech, but also just putting a show together. The process of that applies all the time, every day, I feel like.

Yeah, I'm 100% in agreement with you. And my parents also were not concerned. So my, my other— my oldest sister is also an actor. Her husband's an actor. Their son is an actor. They all live in LA. And, yeah, there are real challenges. There's challenges to any job that you do, but it's a hard road. But they were never concerned. In fact, I remember being in college, and my father, who was a dentist, who kind of grew up poor, first-generation American, became a dentist. And I remember him saying something to the effect that, you know, how fortunate he was that he could grow up to be a doctor and have a child who was a poet. And so he saw my work as a mime in the arts, in writing, because I like to write poetry. I mean, he was just— that was really important to that. I think maybe it was affirming for his own evolution. But yeah, he was not concerned. And it's funny because there's been periods of my life in recent times where I left building— well, I left the company that I was in, building the company. And was kind of on my own for a couple of years. It was during the recession and there weren't a lot of jobs available, and I fell back on my acting, literally. So it was a couple of years where I had more voiceover work than I had ever had, and I was literally falling back on my acting. I was able to drum up a couple of workshops and, and started using my creativity and my movement background with other consultants. I was brought in a couple of times to do specifically movement-based work with two consulting companies for their leadership teams that they were consulting to. So I just realized, wow, you know, this is, this is so needed. The thing that I took for granted and, and the thing that I thought, oh, this is so weird, and, you know, no one's going to want to hire me because I have all this arts background, but I, you know, but I need a job in the business world. I really flipped my thinking. When I started seeing the results that I could have in workshop settings with leadership teams who were so out of their bodies. They've not lived in their bodies like we have, and we know what that's like, and we know the kind of intelligence and insights we can access if we only allow our bodies to have a certain kind of input.

Right.

And so we know how to create the limitations to have the certain kind of input that results in innovation and just access to other levels of intelligence, I think. Right.

Yes, we become so cerebral that work is cerebral and really our bodies are with us in this. And I give that feedback to speakers a lot. Like, I know when you're in your head because the body sort of is moving, um, it's mirroring what's going on in your head in so many ways. It's like, how do we bring yourself into your body and bring your whole body up there? Use your space.

Yeah, yeah, you can, you can see when I— when the body and the mind are really aligned, and you can see when they're really disconnected.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. We could do a whole show just on the body.

I know.

I would love that, actually, Rebecca. We'll do that next time.

Okay.

Because I think that would be really cool.

Okay.

Well, one of the things that you and I talked about when we sat down and grabbed coffee was the value of being a beginner. And the—

I don't—

I, you know, What is that about for you right now as you're thinking about that when, based on, I don't know, our conversation and how maybe that's bumped around in your head?

Yeah, it's sort of a newer concept for me and something that I do keep, try to keep in the forefront of my brain. And it is that idea of being beginner because I think we get so tied to what we think an end result has to be. We have certain expectations around how things are supposed to be, quote unquote, in our lives, in our jobs, in our relationships. And I feel like approaching these things, or each day even, as a beginner, just opens up the realm of possibility and kind of cuts off a certain attachment that we might have to what we want to see, what we want to have. And I learned this really, I think, the hard way through a car accident. I've been in a couple accidents, but the one that really, really brought it home for me was almost 4 years ago. Actually, it was June of 2012, and a friend of mine and I were sitting at a café in St. Paul, and it was a beautiful day, early summer. And we really had already finished our coffee, but we were talking. It was like 2 hours of really great conversation with my friend, and a woman backed up over the curb and through the stanchions and then hit me first. My back was to the street and then continued to roll me and then the table, my friend, and then I was pushed about 10 feet under the car and pinned against Wow. So in that moment, everything just came to a literally a screeching halt. Everything in my life, everything that I thought, you know, was going to be possible that week, that month, that next year, all came under question. Can I? Will I? So it began then After that event, it was about a 2.5-year recovery, most of which time I couldn't work. I tried to work. It was very challenging. And I started early in that process, not long after I was out of the hospital actually, really focusing on the things that I could do. And I really had to have a beginner's mind because I couldn't walk, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't lay flat, I couldn't roll over, I couldn't lift things. There were so many things that I could have gone down the list, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, which really would have destroyed me. So I just really started focusing on what can I do? And little by little, I was like, wow, I discovered that I actually, you know, A few days later, I could bend over and pick something up. I could pet my dog. I could hobble really, really well on my crutches and was getting quite fast at it. I could wash my hair. I could go to the bathroom by myself. So it was really sort of those basic needs. Little by little, I thought, I can do this. I can do this.. And so when the time came and I felt like, you know, I was ready to actually look for work, I just maintained that beginner's mind. Like, who am I to think about what's like, what's best for me or what place it is that I, that I should quote unquote be working in or how much money I think I should be making. How about I just go out into the world with a whole new set of eyes, like everything is possible, not just anything, but everything is possible, and see what happens. And it was through continuing to remind myself to just be a beginner, don't think you're an expert. You know, I'm not an expert. I'm just a person. So that led me to meeting like the right people, it seemed like, at the right time and applying to the, you know, really interesting jobs that weren't necessarily organizational development, which is what I really wanted. But I thought, well, transferable skills, maybe it's another kind of company that I can build. Who knows? So I just really opened my perception about what could be possible for my life, trusting that whatever would manifest would really actually be best for my life. And so that's what happened. So I interviewed here at this firm, and it was one of those situations where it was— it just felt immediately right. And it was an organizational development position, and it was building a new department. And completely new environment. I didn't know anything about law firms and how they operate, but that's kind of how I fell into a position that was officially an organizational development position, although I've been doing elements of that, of course, building a company before. So that's, that's the beginner, and I encourage people that I coach And when I'm doing trainings here, it's for everybody to come into the space with a beginning mind and allow themselves to be impacted, allow themselves to be affected, because that's where learning takes place. If we already assume that we know, well, we've cut off the neurons that can really provide the input to, you know, a new insight or something that's new and beneficial for our life. You wouldn't have a ballet dancer— the ballet dancer goes to class every single morning and they do their tendus and they do their pliés and they do their rond de jambes. Those are basics. And it's like approaching it as a beginner. You know, we can always go back to the basics. And when we do that, I think worlds just open up in front of us. Good stuff.

But I think it'd be great to just hear your perspective. Obviously you have a theater background, an acting background.

Yeah.

And I know you also work with speakers, so bridge that divide. For us.

Okay.

I know what I think that bridge is, but I'd love to hear people's perspective who have a theater background. How you bring that, how does that inform your work as you work with speakers and coaching speakers?

Sure. Well, it's the same way that, it's the same thing as when you're talking to a good salesperson. And a lot of people think that acting well and selling well are both putting something on and faking people out. And what we really find out is the best actors and the best salespeople are the most authentic, the most honest in their work, and the ones that are most concerned about who they're talking to. And I'm sure you've had that experience of going in and the salesperson going somewhere, whether it was a car dealership or a clothing store, and the salesperson was really concerned about what you were looking for and what you were going to try to do with it and all that stuff and took time to listen and then be a real person with you. Yeah. I never thought about this before, but I just happen to think that just as an actor and a salesperson and a speaker can be the most effective when they bring what is authentic about themselves to the work.

Right.

At some point, we know that— and in the sales training I've gotten many years ago, we were asked to go ahead and persuade, you know, go ahead and persuade this person to make the purchase. If you honestly think, and you know, it's not going to turn out good for you if it's not a good purchase for them, you know. And so, at some point, that's one of the key elements that we've used in our leadership speaker training, and that is you need to do more than inform your audience. You need to have a take that means you can persuade your audience. And so I guess the gap is— the bridge on the gap is number one, not being afraid to be yourself, that you're not faking anybody out. You're not— even when you're acting in a role that's vastly different from you, that still has to be grounded in your own truth. And if it's not, people aren't going to believe you, and you're going to get in the way of the story. And that leads me to probably the bedrock of what we're doing as actors and speakers, and that is we are providing story for people.

Right.

And it's really important to make, as a speaker, to make the distinction between telling anecdotes and shaping your speech as a capital S Story. And I was really glad to see, you know, Nick write about that in his Public Words blog, and I've seen it in other places too. Story has become— storytelling has become, you know, a nice— what do I want to say— you know, buzzword sort of trendy topic in business recently. But I'm not sure that people— I'm not sure that everyone understands the depth to which human beings require stories. You know, I think it's part of what makes us human. Beyond the need to know what makes us human, right? So authenticity, authentic story shaping with your speaking, and then the ability to amplify yourself. And that means, obviously, there are going to be times you're going to be speaking to one-on-one, and that's pretty— if you can't be yourself when you're talking to one other person, you probably don't need a public speaking coach. You probably need some other kind of help.

That's a really good point.

You ever talk to somebody that you felt was really not genuine, and it's like, It's like, if you can't do this as an adult person in this world, you know, where are you headed? Where are you coming from? Right. And then, of course, you're going to be speaking to smaller groups of 5 to 20 people, 30 people. And that takes a little bit more amplification. And then at some point, you're going to speak to groups of hundreds or and maybe even thousands. And that's where some, you know, major league amplification comes from. The granddaddy of all acting coaches, Konstantin Stanislavski in Russia, developed the Stanislavski system for acting, and he's the guy that figured out, oh, the best actors have this inner reality going on. And so it doesn't feel like they're really acting all that much. And so, by the way, one of his students came to the United States in the late '20s and did a speech on the Stanislavski system. And Lee Strasberg was in the audience and took a little piece of that system and called emotional recall. And developed it into what we think of now as the method. And so, but getting back to Stanislavski, one of the things that he talks about is the idea of spheres of attention, spheres of influence. And so if you can imagine being at a table with someone and the only light is a candle in the middle of the table, you've got this 6-foot sphere of, or what he calls, circle of attention. And then if you were to— and so that's you and one other person, and your behavior and your speaking adjusts accordingly, just naturally.

Right.

And then if you turn on the lights in the room and it's a a good-sized 13 by 15-foot room, and there are people around the edges of the room, your behavior again is going to adjust accordingly, right? And then if you have a bigger room that seats hundreds, your behavior again is going to adjust accordingly. But the challenge is to be able to continue to be yourself no matter what size the room is. Just like the challenges when you're reading a script, to be able to take in what you're reading, but talk it, as opposed to read it.

Right.

And this is what a lot of speakers go through, and a lot of audiobook narrators have to deal with. One of the best things I think you can do as a narrator, and as a speaker, and as an actor, is to read out loud to somebody every day, whether it's the newspaper, whether it's a novel. Elise and I read to each other last thing a lot. And there's nothing— by the way, there's nothing better than going to sleep with someone reading to you. It's really, you know, I don't think I'll ever get too old for it. I hope not.

That's lovely. That's really a lovely thought.

Well, it's true. I know this. I know this having— I know this because we fight over whose turn it is to be read to.

That's really sweet. Yeah, well, that's really sweet.

I mean, you know, I read to my kids a lot, but yeah, yeah, but you know, get your, get your husband to suggest a novel and read to him. And yes, he might go to sleep the first page, you know. Don't think. Go ahead and finish the chapter and then tell him he can catch up and then read to him, you know, whatever. And you can share it too, as long as it's a book that you're both interested in. And yeah, I just think it's a really wonderful practice. And it's good for you. And what you want to know is, it's good for you.

Alright? Thanks so much for listening to This Movie as we close out 2016. Oh my gosh, it's been quite a year, hasn't it? I am super excited because what is coming next your way is the New Year's Eve Roundup. So I'm gonna publish that, I think maybe even on New Year's Eve. The last final throes of 2016, what moved you? So if there is something that has moved you in 2016 that you want to share with me and share with our audience, I would love to hear it. Send me an email, info@thismovedme.com, and all you've got to do is pull out your voice memo app, which is what I'm doing right now, record something really fast, and then email it to me, and I'd love to hear it. What I'd love to do is be able to choose from a whole bunch and showcase some on the show. So send them my way. Looking forward to it because that's what this is all about. Wishing you a great day and hope your 2016 is ending on a high note. Talk to you soon.