EVENT REVIEW

 BVA President’s Day – 6 September 2025 

For one day I joined 30+ other voice-geeks with the British Voice Association at my old haunt, the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, for a Conference called “Words, Words, Words – Voice, body and text in performance”.

Why did this theme resonate?  Because in the business environment, we commonly forget what motivates us: the relationship between purpose, thought and emotion and the physical commitment needed to engage and to express our message. An actor, through rehearsal, learns to connect thoughts and emotions with the words they say. But for a Speaker and Performance Coach in commercial business it is not common practice.

So I was interested to discuss and share some teaching practices to unpick these themes. I spent a joyous day being the student for a change, accompanied by lashings of tea and coffee and some exquisite little cakes, immersing myself in being guided with open mind and thought.

Just a few of my take-aways:

• Centering the visual of a fruit tree and basket to engage the senses during a warm-up can be fun. Thank you, Jenru Wang and Gemma Maddock for leading us with open warm hearts
• To ‘embody’ something requires a journey, defining it is very difficult and requires personal, contextual and literal placement. Is it a noun, a verb or an adjective – or do that we simply have a choice in application? Thank you, Katie Heath and Ellen Hartley for this stimulating and very relevant discussion
• As a coach, don’t be afraid to be the ‘artist’ – (quite hard when faced with a corporate audience who are naturally fearful and skeptical of a world they don’t understand). But the suggested invitation is to throw the ‘form’ to one side and embrace the holistic direction of travel with the energy from the room; take expectation and pressure away. Brave practice to achieve this, but where it works it would be fantastic. As ever, a thought-provoking session from Annemette Verspeak
• So many thoughts from the wonderful Jeanette Nelson:
• exploring rhetoric in speech – fine tuning the meaning to make the intention of speech more purposeful and using listening to leverage
• Speaking from emotional truth rather than toit
• Audiences are more interested in what an actor is thinking rather than seeing what they are feeling…
• The importance of ‘active’ speech – what do you want the audience or recipient to ‘act upon’ – how do you ‘gain ground’ as a result of your speech?
• …and much, much more…

 

For the love of voice, what a wonderful day! A big thank you to all of the team involved at the BVA, and Cathryn Robson and the team at CSSD for a gentle and thought-provoking day.

Rachel Ley

Managing Director, Creative Producer & Speaker Coach