If you have had any media training you’ll already know that much time is spent on concepts such as crafting a message, creating the perfect soundbite, sounding authoritative and engaging.
What is harder to teach and will only come with much practice of both talking and listening is how to make sure you put the audience in the position of taking your message in, rather than simply hear some well-crafted words.
The other day I was listening to an item on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme about a new production by the National Theatre based on the Odyssey, entitled The Lotus Eaters, which is currently touring regional theatres and is due in London in August.
The presenter introduced Emily Lim, Director of Public Acts at the National and asked her why they decided “to pick this way of telling the epic story”.
I live in London, I love the theatre, I particularly adore the National Theatre and studied the Odyssey at school. I was all ears. (You can listen to the interview for the next 26 days here. The segment starts at 8.50)
Unfortunately, Ms Lim launched straight into what can only be described as the elevator pitch for her bit of the organisation, seemingly reciting the entire memorised version without stopping. She was fast and paragraph perfect. But I lost the thread and didn’t follow the rest of the conversation.
“We as a community programme believe in theatre-making as an amazing form of community building, of bringing people together to foster a sense of connection and belonging, and through shared purpose and imagination to forge amazing new bonds and a real sense of pride on who we are as individuals and communities. And we’ve worked in London and we’ve worked in Doncaster, and this is the first time that we wanted to work with a national community.”
See, I have no idea what any of it means and if I'm honest I don’t really care. Then, still uninterrupted by the presenter, she added something that started to answer the question:
“And the Odyssey is a story of resilience. Odysseus is always called the most resilient of heroes and we felt that at this point in our country’s own life cycle, when resilience has been an incredibly important quality for us all to develop and foster over the last few years particularly, that telling a story like this, of healing, recovery and resilience with a national community would be a very important and special thing to do.”
In other circumstances she might not have had all this time to come to some main point that would be of interest to the audience, not just garner the approval of the National Theatre's Board of Trustees.
But she was given plenty of time and eventually, as I discovered listening back today, she went on to say very interesting things about the cast, the challenges of rehearsals, the set design, eloquently and passionately (“The ship’s amazing!” she exclaimed when asked about the main stage device, adding intriguing details about its eventual post-performance half-life).
The problem is, I missed all that because her intro caused me to switch off the first time round, which is the only time round for 99.999 of listeners.
What would have worked better from my point of view? Knowing that she would be given some time to make her points Lim should have started by connecting with the audience and explaining why this production may resonate with them now. The second quote, in other words.
Then, with that connection hopefully established and the audience primed to listen, she could have – briefly- pivoted to her elevator pitch, albeit a much less waffly one (for instance “My job is to bring productions to various parts of the country but this, for the first time, felt like it deserved a genuinely national audience because our recent Odyssey, the pandemic, effected all of all at the same time and in very similar ways.”).
That said, this is not a as science, more of an art, so my opinion is just that, an opinion. Please have a listen and let me know what you think.
Comments