How do I set myself up to speak?
Take each of the words and emphasise them in turn so:
HOW do I set myself up to speak?
How DO I set myself up to speak? etc.
Different meaning eh?
Now do it with the rest.
What did you learn?
What we say is important but how we say it is very important and I wonder if that is an element in actors who don't stammer on stage eg Bruce Willis and Rowan Atkinson.
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About Me
- PM
- I am a middle aged medic who is interested in Modelling Behaviour. I have 12 yrs experience and attend trainings regularly with John McWhirter at Sensory Systems Training in Glasgow, Scotland. I am interested in stammering and I am convinced that in the majority of cases it is a behaviour and not an affliction. Rather than lurk on other sites I decided to share my thinking on a blog.
4 comments:
Did Bruce Willis indeed really stutter? I never noticed the slightest thing, even in his interviews. He seems to have completely overcome it ...
Hi Jerome
I heard Bruce Willis on an Actors Studio program recently answering how he got into acting and he said, as best I remember, ' When I was young I had a very bad speech defect,. I had a very bad stammer and didn't when I got on stage. So I thought 'I like this' and kept on acting.
He is not ashamed of stammering and, I believe, is supportive of stammering organisations.
Also Rowan Atkinson I heard about 3 years ago being telephone interviewed, and this top British actor stammered very badly, I thought. Check him out on amazon - he is an excellent, highly intelligent comedian and comic actor. Infinitely superior to 'Borat'.
This kind of thing is what makes me believe that stammering is a behaviour. Someone with Down's syndrome doesn't lose the syndrome when he goes on stage. And even the best actor can't change his eye colour!!
The actor changes the way he thinks on stage or set.
All the best
Peter
Hi pm, thanks for answering.
It's interesting to hear this about Bruce Willis. Do you know if that Actors Studio Program internet can be seen on the Internet somewhere?
I know Mr Bean. He's very funny :)
He stammered during the phone interview?
And just thinking about it, Barack Obama apparently also has a stutter which becomes obvious in certain situations. I noticed it myself during an interview/debate.
And I too think that it's mainly a bad behavior that's difficult to get rid of ...
I used to have an intermittent stammer around ages 11-14. One day (I recall it quite well) I discovered a way to "think over it". It now recurs rarely, in moments of stress where I'm attending to what I'm saying.
It's a little hard to describe what I did... subjectively, part of it was that I moved my centre of consciousness - the point within my body which I think from, measure the world from - from my mouth/throat to higher up my head, behind my eyes. That's where the "over" bit comes from.
And I can bring it back at will (not that I often want to). Mostly by reversing the process described above, plus a bit of body tension, and directing my attention to my speaking/hearing.
cheers Ash
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