Public Speaking the Actor’s Way with Buzz Mauro

Feb 23

About This Episode

Our guest today is focused on objectives.

We get it. We're all focused on objectives. Why should this episode be any different? Here's the trick: much of our advocacy and change efforts are centered in who we are. That's at the core of so much of our diversity and equity work, after all. Today, we ask what happens when we focus our advocacy, our engagement, and our public speaking on what we want, augmenting the message of who we are?

Buzz Mauro is the founder and co-director of the Theater Lab School of the Dramatic Arts in Washington, DC and a Helen Hayes Award nominee. He's also the founder of Center Stage Communications, a consulting firm specializing in the application of acting techniques to the business world. He's the author of three books on applied acting and he's a composer and lyricist who counts among his many works, Alex in Wonderland: A Gender Journey Down the Rabbit Hole.You can find Buzz on his podcast, Public Speaking the Actor's Way.

Approaching the larger questions of advocacy and change from an actor's perspective offers insights into the method and craft of engaging emotion. As you'll hear this week, Buzz is as much about engaging minds as he is about engaging hearts, and we're thrilled he's agreed to share some of his wisdom with us on the show.

Buzz Mauro:
We talk a lot about objectives as actors, and the example I always use is Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz. She wants to get home to Kansas, right? She has a pretty clear objective. So if you're playing that role, a lot of people think, well, what you're going to have to focus on is what is it like to be a young girl from Kansas, and what are the ways that I can seem like Dorothy? But what the actor really probably is going to be focusing on if they're good in that role is what are they trying to do? Why am I talking to the scarecrow? Maybe he can help me find the wizard, or whatever it is. Focusing on what you're trying to do. And I feel like right now I am trying to get through to you about this. I can see you through that screen, and I know why I'm talking because I love this idea of the actor's objective, and I think everybody should focus on it more. So a public speaker should not start to talk until they know what it is they're trying to achieve by talking.

Carrie Fox:
Hi there, and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast, where each week we bring you a thought-provoking and perspective-shifting conversation on the power of communication. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B Corporation. And that was the voice of Buzz Mauro, founder and co-director of The Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts in Washington, DC and a Helen Hayes Award nominee.
He's also the founder of Center Stage Communications, a consulting firm specializing in the application of acting techniques to the business world. He's the author of three books on applied acting, and he's a composer and lyricist who counts among his many works Alix in Wonderland: A Gender Journey Down the Rabbit Hole. Oh, and did I forget to say, he's also got a podcast of his own called Public Speaking the Actor's Way? And listen in for some great tips that he's going to share with us today. Now, one thing before we get started. If I could have someone narrate my life, it would be Buzz Mauro. He's got one of those voices that just makes you feel optimistic about life, and I think you'll agree. Buzz, it is so great to have you with us on the Mission Forward Podcast.

Buzz Mauro:
Thank you so much, Carrie. No one has ever told me that I have that kind of voice before. I'm glad to hear it. And thanks so much for the invitation to be on this podcast and for all the work you and Mission Partners have done for us at The Theatre Lab over many years now.

Carrie Fox:
My pleasure. You're one of my favorite people, and your organization has always been one of my favorites, so I'm glad to give Theatre Lab and you a little more space to talk about the effect that you and your partner, Deb, are having in the DC area and well beyond. Before I set this up for today, before we got on the call, we talked a little bit about how this podcast generally talks about the role that communications plays in social change. And you are living that through your work with Theatre Lab, right? So beyond the incredible resume points that I just shared a little bit, give me a little bit more about how you got onto this path as a stage actor, a teacher, an author. You're so incredibly embedded into the arts community. How did you get there?

Buzz Mauro:
Well, it started when I was a little nerdy 13 year old who decided he wanted to be in a play one summer, and I went and I auditioned for a community theater play, and they very generously let me in. I was not cast initially, and then actually someone who was cast very sadly died of a heart attack before rehearsals began, and so I got his role. So it was kind of an unfortunate way to get started. But I got started, and I've been doing theater ever since then. I was mostly a math person actually growing up and I thought I was going to be a math major in college and everything. But after college I taught math for a while. I always felt that I was primarily a teacher. Whatever it was I was going to be doing, whatever field I was going to be in, I was going to probably be on the teaching end of it. I knew that from when I was a kid, I think.
I taught math for a while, and then I just started getting the itch to go to school. And I actually went to school, to Catholic University, to get a master's in math. But while I was there, I realized I was at one of the great acting schools in the country. And I had been acting the whole time. And so I auditioned for one of their shows and got in it and ended up auditioning for the program and got in it, in the MFA program at Catholic University. And that's where I met Deb Gottesman, my great friend and partner at The Theatre Lab. And it was a three-year program. And after that I started acting professionally in Washington, as did Deb.
And we immediately, in 1992 when we graduated, started The Theatre Lab because we both had that teaching itch. And we also thought that there was not the right kind of acting teaching going on in Washington at the time, not the kind that we wanted to see,, anyway. And that the kind that was going on was of one of two kinds. There were some fun sort of frivolous classes and there was some apparently serious acting training, but it was very hard on the students and had the attitude that you had to break yourself down and be tremendously serious to get anywhere. And we thought that there was a really important middle ground where anyone could study acting and they could study it at a high level, so you could have fun and be serious about it at the same time, and you could do it in a nurturing environment. And that was super important to us.
And so we started off with that theory and taught our first class, and people came. And then we started inviting our friends to teach further classes, and it's grown into the largest theater school in Washington, which is great. Along the way, we started to realize how many applications acting had outside of teaching people who wanted to become actors or people who just wanted to have fun because it seemed to have so much to do with communication on all levels. So we started to teach people or coach people in doing job interviews. Somebody came to us and said, "I've got some people who are in need of some training because they don't know how to do their job interviews." And we said, "Yeah, we can help with that." And so we did that, and then we ended up writing a book about how to do job interviews using acting skills. And then we wrote a second book on the same thing. And public speaking obviously became a major area for us. We were hired by several different companies to coach their speakers, and we ended up writing a book on that called Taking Center Stage.
And for me, that was always some of the most fun work that we ever did. I love the acting stuff, but I really love seeing how it applies in the real world and how people can fulfill themselves in ways that they never expected. The actors expect that to be fun. Public speakers don't expect it to be fun, and business people don't expect their presentations to be fun or to show them new parts of themselves. So that's what we found that acting could do.
Storytelling is a huge part of it, but the way we've always approached storytelling is as a whole body experience. You're an actor. You're not just a storyteller, you're actually an actor. So we ask people to do a lot of acting out of their stories. Another really important aspect of this for us was that we discovered that it had applications in the social service realm as well. Because we had one teacher who really wanted to work with people in assisted living. He had a real connection to older people. And so he started working with them about how they can tell their stories and share them with other people, actually acting them out on the stage.
We had somebody else who had a real connection to the prisons and wanted to go into the prisons and work with young people who were incarcerated. He got them telling their stories and making movies. And we had a connection to a teacher who specialized in street theater and the social applications of acting. And so we started to see this was a huge field. And we started by hiring people who could do that. And I actually used to think you had to be a very special person to do that. Only somebody who came from certain background and had been doing it their whole life could do that. But what we learned from talking to these amazing people is that there are principles of that, there are ways that acting can be applied, and we learned them, and started doing it ourselves. Deb and I both do that now.
And we also saw that, oh, well, we could even teach other people how to do it. We could really get into the realm of everybody seeing acting as having that kind of potential. So we started what we call our Life Stories program where we have lots of amazing teachers who are going into lots of different communities. I personally work with veterans. Actually, the way I came to work with veterans is a story that I wanted to tell you. It's still very meaningful to me. I was teaching a public speaking class at The Theatre Lab, and one of the people in the class was a marine, young guy who's maybe 32 or something, who had been in Afghanistan and he was now transferring to the public realm. He was going to be in a corporation where he had a team of people.
And so the speech that he brought in to work on was his opening speech to his team. And so I said, "Let's see a little of it. And he stood up in front of the class and said, "Okay, here's how this is going to go. You're going to do A, B, and C." And he had this very intense military approach to what he was going to do, and it was just clear that that was not going to get him anywhere. Nobody wanted to be yelled at. And so the thing that I thought to do with him was to take him aside and whisper in his ear, it's a big acting technique [inaudible 00:10:34] the audience to know what you're doing. And I said, "Hey, can you think of a time, any time when you made a mistake, and would you be willing to tell us about that?" Because I thought this guy needed a little vulnerability. And he said, "Yeah, yeah." I said, "Okay, great. Just go out and tell us about this mistake."
So he went out in front of everybody and he said, "It was in Afghanistan, and I was leading my group. And I sent them in too early and two guys died, and it was my fault." And he started to cry. And so whenever somebody starts to cry, which is not that uncommon in acting classes and public speaking too, I say, "Do you want to keep going?" Rather than saying, "Let's stop," because people don't always really want to stop. Sometimes you want to work through the tears. And he said, "No, I want to keep going." And he continued to cry, tears just streaming down his face, and he told the whole story about what he had done wrong and how important those guys had been to him and how it haunted him ever since.
And because he was clearly willing and eager to keep going through this, I said, "Okay, now talk to your new team of people who working under you." And what came out was something, of course, completely different. He was now in this completely different place of sharing his own humanity with the people that he was talking to rather than trying to tell them what they were going to do. And it was just such an amazing moment of transformation for me that I said, "Oh yeah, I really want to start working with veterans." So since then I've done quite a lot of that and it's been super rewarding doing our Life Stories programs with veterans.

Carrie Fox:
Buzz, there's so much to that story, and I'm glad that that's where we started because I think it gives us an incredible jumping-off point. And you shared in your introduction that you were thinking about all of the different applications of acting, but what I kept hearing, even though I wasn't hearing this word and through that story, is that it's not just about the application, it's about the benefit. And it's not just the benefit to the audience, it's the benefit to the actor or the individual on the stage. And how ironic perhaps, that when we think about actors, we think about people taking on identities that are not their own. But what I hear you saying is that acting can be this incredible tool to actually understand who you are more authentically.

Buzz Mauro:
Yeah, it's funny, as an actor and somebody who is sort of immersed in acting and acting teaching and talking to acting students all the time, I forget that that's not commonly understood. People talk about Meryl Streep, and what they love about Meryl Streep is that she's so different in every role. And I always say what I love about Meryl Streep is that I can always see Meryl Streep in the role. I see so many different aspects of this incredible person through her acting, and I think that's actually why we love her. Looking at it from the other side, it's the fact that she's able to share herself in so many different ways. So that's how we approach acting.
In a Life Stories program with homeless women that we did, women in a shelter, we had somebody tell their story. And it was, of course, a terribly painful story. I won't go into the details of what it was. But the technique was to say, "Okay, who in the group will act that out for her?" So she told her story and was willing to go through this process where she said, "Okay, you're going to play me." And we'd say, "What are two things that you're feeling in this moment right now?" And she would share that with those actors. "And you'll play my child, and you'll play the police officer," or whatever. And then they acted out. And what's always amazing to me is those actors were not there. They don't really know exactly what happened. They certainly don't know how this person herself behaved and really what she was like. And yet always when we do that exercise, the person who told the story says, "Yeah, that was it. You found it."
It's incredible. It seems like the odds are completely stacked against that, but because people honor the story that was told to them so much, and they filter it through their own lives and there's so much commonality among our lives to begin with, you filter it through your own life and you do what seems important about it to you, it ends up being very true to what actually happened in the real world. And that, for me, is just emblematic of how much we share as people. I think people who watch a lot of TV like we all do, but don't ever try acting on their own, think that acting is about becoming different. But it's really about what makes us the same. How am I really like that character, as opposed to how am I different?

Carrie Fox:
For those listening who don't know this, I have had the incredible pleasure and honor of working with Buzz and Deb and Theatre Lab over the course of several years. And there is something that the two of you taught me many years ago, and it was actually around the time of that work within N Street Village, but I have never forgotten, and I've actually shared many times with others, that when you share your story, you have the ability to change the ending. Because in many cases, the last chapter hasn't happened yet. You're still telling that story. And so what I have always found so incredible about your holistic approach, but very specifically with life stories work, is that you have people who have gone through traumatic life experiences and they are seeing their story play out on stage. And then to have the ownership of determining where that story goes next, that's profound. That's incredible. What a gift that The Theatre Lab has created for so many people who are experiencing their life from a different perspective.

Buzz Mauro:
Well, thank you for saying that. It is amazing to me also to watch that play out over and over again. The example of that that I think of most often was a program in a prison. I was not there. I wasn't part of this personally. But the instructor asked one of these kids what was important to him? What do you want to talk about? And eventually what came out was his relationship with his mother. So the teacher had the kid improvise some discussions with his mother. So somebody from the prison, a woman at the prison, played the mother. And they sat down, and at this point they had learned a little bit about improvisation and everything. So they actually learned acting skills.
So they have a talk. And the kind of thing you do there... So this is an example of somebody playing the role of themselves. Sometimes you play somebody else, sometimes you're playing yourself. So he's playing himself. She's playing his mother. And you say, "Okay, let's hear some things about a conversation that you once had, but then also what's the conversation that you wish you had? Or what's the conversation that you want to have?" Turns out, this kid had been estranged from his mother for four years, hadn't seen her at all in that time, did the conversation that he would like to have.
And once again, the woman playing the mother doesn't really know what the mother would say, and yet she's saying something true to the moment and communicating with that other person. And the communication is so true because you're so in it. You're not just writing about this. You're not just telling the story, you're acting it out with your whole body and heart and mind and everything. And that kid said, "Okay, after that, I want to get back in touch with her." And he talked to the people at the prison, and they made that happen. So he actually reestablished a relationship with his mother after having looked at the possibility of changing his ending in exactly the way you're talking about.

Carrie Fox:
I can't think of any more powerful example, the idea of communicating for social change, that the doors that you open, the lives that are changed as a result of how you use, as you say, applied acting techniques. I want us to shift a little bit to think about the folks who are listening and the world that we are in now. In an ideal world, you and I would've been together sitting over a cup of coffee having this conversation, but as we now know, the majority of conversations that we have on a daily basis are happening through a screen. We're sitting here talking, looking at each other via Zoom. And how many times I have heard from folks in the last few years, "Oh my gosh, I just have completely forgotten my social skills. I don't even know how to present anymore. I would rather stay inside with my cozy pants on than going to see someone in person."
We've forgotten in many ways the value and benefit of being together, but many folks have felt like they have forgotten those skills. And so I'm curious, as you've started to... I know you are teaching some courses now. You obviously have this incredible podcast, Public Speaking the Actor's Way. Some of those techniques and skills that you're sharing with folks who maybe feel like they've lost it, how they start to feel comfortable and confident again.

Buzz Mauro:
Interesting. Well, first of all, to deal with the screen issue, I've done so much teaching online now that I've discovered that if you approach it correctly, it's less different than people expect it to be. People certainly didn't think that they could study acting online of all things. But immediately when the pandemic hit, we switched to online classes. And a lot of people didn't want to take them. But those who did discovered that, yeah, well, actually you can. I mean, right now we're here on Zoom together, and I feel like I'm looking at you. I mean, our eyes are not exactly meeting in the way they would in real life because of where the camera is, et cetera. But I see you, and I feel you through this. So I always like to stress the positive side of that, that I feel like we are still seeing each other.
And when I teach a class, I ask everybody to keep their microphones on. That's unusual for meetings, but I think every meeting should do that because you want to hear spontaneous laughter or whatever. So we can recreate that feeling more than we think. But the main thing is that I think that everything that applies in real life continues to apply online. And the main thing is that you want to have some sense of why you're talking. For me, that's the heart of public speaking. It's the heart of public speaking's connection to acting, actually, to look a little bit at what that acting technique is. We talk a lot about objectives as actors. And the example I always use is Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. She wants to get home to Kansas. She has a pretty clear objective. So if you're playing that role, a lot of people think, well, what you're going to have to focus on is what is it like to be a young girl in from Kansas, and what are the ways that I can seem like Dorothy?
But what the actor really probably is going to be focusing on if they're good in that role is what are they trying to do? Why am I talking to the scarecrow? Maybe he can help me find the wizard or whatever it is, focusing on what you're trying to do. And I feel like right now, I am trying to get through to you about this. I can see you through that screen, and I know why I'm talking because I love this idea of the actor's objective, and I think everybody should focus on it more. So a public speaker should not start to talk until they know what it is they're trying to achieve by talking. So that's actually the big topic of the beginning part of my podcast, and the main thing I always stress at the beginning of all public speaking situations.

Carrie Fox:
So tell us a little bit more about this podcast. It's new, it's great. I already mentioned at the top, people will love your voice just sitting there listening and taking it all in. Why are you doing the podcast?

Buzz Mauro:
I'm doing the podcast because actually the thing that actually spurred it is that I went to a conference that was eye-opening in a million ways. It was very well run. It was run on the spirit of things like Mission Partners that know that the people are what matter. It's not like every conference I've ever gone to, but this one was like that. And the people were amazing, and everybody was talking about their podcasts and started inviting me onto theirs. So it was my real first entry into a world where podcasts were something that everybody was talking about. I don't actually tend to listen to a lot of them myself. I started talking to these people about these exact issues of how you apply acting skills in the real world. And it seems so new to everybody. As I said, as an actor, it doesn't seem new to me anymore. In that moment, I started to see how new it was to people, and I thought, well, I don't want this to be new to people. I want people to know this. And that's why. That's why I started to do it.

Carrie Fox:
And it is so practical. Like everything you do, it is both enlightening and interesting and so practical. So I hope folks check it out, and we'll link to it. We only have a couple minutes left. I have two questions for you. One, I am just intrigued, and I hope you would tell me a little bit more. I love the way that you always are pushing boundaries in storytelling. I think that's something that is just so unique to you and broadly to the Theatre Lab approach. But Alix in Wonderland, can you tell me more about it?

Buzz Mauro:
Sure. I have a great friend, Norman Allen, who is a playwright. And I write music and lyrics, and we were talking about what project we might want to do together, and Norman had this idea of something called Alix in Wonderland, A-L-I-X, where the central issues were going to be about gender, so that Alix would either be... well, would be on some kind of a gender journey, a trans journey of some kind. And I thought, wow, I really want to do that. The main reason I wanted to do that is because so many of my teens that I teach have been coming out as trans, non-binary. And in musicals, there's really not a place for that in existing musicals. There's really not much of a place for anything that's not super sexist in most musicals. And so the kids don't have a way to express themselves through their shows.
So we first did a show called The Kids' Table with Renee Calarco, a different playwright, where the idea there was that every role could be played by any gender, and that worked out great. From a musical point of view, that's never done, partly because tenors and altos sing in different ranges, and so you have to be able to adjust the keys and everything. So I said, "Well, let's try doing that. I think it might be the first time anybody ever tried that." And it worked great.
Alix in Wonderland, it centers the character of Alix going down the rabbit hole, meeting all the traditional characters, and in each case having some kind of a discussion around the question of "Who are you?" which is central in Alice in Wonderland to begin with. That's the caterpillar's question. And it comes up in many different ways throughout. And so who are you in the gender sense is what centers that whole story. And I'm very proud of it.

Carrie Fox:
Amazing. Is that something that people can check out? Where would they find it?

Buzz Mauro:
There is a concert version of it. We did a concert version at the Millennium Stage at Kennedy Center. If you look for Alix in Wonderland Kennedy Center-

Carrie Fox:
So cool.

Buzz Mauro:
... there's a concert there.

Carrie Fox:
So Buzz, we could keep going. And maybe what we'll need to do is have a part two of this conversation in a couple months. But for now as we wrap up, what has you feeling optimistic? That could be about your work, that could be about your world, anything that's got you feeling optimistic?

Buzz Mauro:
The work that I've done with teens recently around those shows has me feeling optimistic. The idea that kids are able to come out and be themselves in ways that were never possible before, that definitely has me feeling optimistic. On the business side of things, the openness of people in the corporate world to bring an actor in to help them with public speaking, that grows and grows. It's been something that's been going on for a couple decades, but now it doesn't seem weird anymore. And that has been hopeful too because it says that business people care about being people as well as the business part of it.

Carrie Fox:
So Buzz, tell me a little more about how you are now expanding the impact of the Life Stories Institute.

Buzz Mauro:
For about 10 years now, we have been teaching other people how to teach these skills so that they can go back to their own communities and get people acting and exploring other parts of themselves. So people who work in a church or homeless shelter or hospital or any place like that can come to us once a year and learn these skills without having to have any acting experience that they can then take back and create their own Life Stories-style programs there. We also have people come to us who are actors who want to have more of a social impact. So they come from the other side and then try to find partnerships that they can make where they can share those skills with people who really can use them in ways that typical audiences and other actors don't think of.

Carrie Fox:
Buzz, when does that happen?

Buzz Mauro:
Generally, we do it about once a year, as I said, and this year it's March 9th through 12th. We do it around a work schedule. So the weekdays are in the early evening and weekends are in the afternoon. It's a very intensive thing that deals very individually with the people who are in it. So everybody gets to practice some teaching by the end of it. We keep the classes small, and it's online, so anybody, anywhere can do it.

Carrie Fox:
Amazing. Okay, so we'll include some details if folks want to learn more about it. But is there a direct site to learn more about Life Stories Institute?

Buzz Mauro:
Not a direct site, but it's easy to find at our website, theatrelab.org.

Carrie Fox:
Okay. Very cool. Well, and maybe that's while we'll close. That's a perfect reminder that anyone can act. And the power of acting to help you better understand yourself is pretty profound. And thank you and Deb, Theatre Lab, all of you, for what you do and how you inspire so many people.

Buzz Mauro:
Thank you, Carrie, so much for having me on.

Carrie Fox:
And that brings us to the end of this episode of Mission Forward. Thanks for tuning in today. If you are stewing on what we discussed here today, or if you heard something that's going to stick with you, drop me a line at carrie@mission.partners and let me know what's got you thinking. And if you have thoughts for where we should go in future shows, I would love to hear that too.
Mission Forward is produced with the support of Sadie Lockhart in association with the True Story Team. Engineering by Pete Wright. If your podcast app allows for ratings and reviews, I hope you'll consider doing just that for the show. But the best thing you can do to support Mission Forward is simply share the show with a friend or colleague. Thanks for your support, and we'll see you next time.