Acting Reframes

Using NLP to Make Better Decisions In and Out of the Theatre

Robert Barton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136812989
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Acting Reframes presents theatre and film practitioners with a methodology for using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) as a tool to aid their practice.

Author Robert Barton uses the NLP approach to illustrate a range of innovative methods to help actors and directors, including:

• reducing performance anxiety

• enabling clearer communication

• intensifying character analysis

• stimulating imaginative rehearsal choices.

The author also shows how NLP can used alongside other basic training systems to improve approaches to rehearsal and performance.

The book shows the use of NLP to the reader in a playful, creative and easily accessible style that is structured to enable solo study as well as group work. The text offers a range of engaging exercises and extensive analysis of language patterns used in performance. It is a source for enhancing communication between all theatre practitioners in training, productions, and daily life outside the theatre.

Acting Reframes gives actors a richly rewarding approach to help them develop all aspects of their craft.

1

What is NLP?

N.L.P. is the most powerful vehicle for change in existence, whether it is applied to business, law, medicine or therapy.

Psychology Today

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is also the most exciting aid for acting I’ve run into in many years.

Origins, definitions

NLP was developed by a linguistics professor and an information scientist, who examined great communicators to figure out what they all did in the hopes that their interactive excellence could be transferred. The result is a system that helps us learn how others code their experiences in order to connect with them better. It also helps us recode our own experiences in order to feel greater contentment and to function more effectively in the world.

The name breaks down as neuro (brain and nervous system), linguistic (spoken and unspoken language), programming (repeatable patterns). Or using words to get yourself and others to respond in a productive way more often. There are over 100 NLP institutes in both the U.S. and the U.K., and a similar number scattered around the globe. The founders, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, started with the brilliant research question “What can we learn from the best communicators that we can apply in our lives?” Or, as Bertolt Brecht once put it, how can we “steal from the best”?

They decided to examine world-renowned therapists who had brought healing and contentment to thousands of others. They studied Virgina Satir (family counseling), Fritz Perls (gestalt therapy) and Milton Erickson (hypnotherapy), all creators of powerfully innovative ways to restore wellness that were eventually integrated across the therapy community. Virginia Satir could take a family, no matter how dysfunctional, and bring it back into loving accord. She was the first in her field to recognize the value in meeting with each family member separately, helping each to dissolve some resentments before bringing them all together – when they were ready to connect again. Fritz Perls changed counseling by emphasizing the fact that the mind and body cannot be isolated and must be treated together. He encouraged everyone to “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Milton Erickson pioneered the concept of various levels of trance states, connecting with the unconscious mind, the potential for positive change to take place while in a hypnotic state and the importance of being strongly motivated. One of his classic statements was “A goal without a date is just a dream.” Like many communication geniuses, their ideas now seem to us like common sense, but all were controversial and innovative when they were first released into the world.

Because all three could “cure” clients so swiftly, many considered what they did not just therapy but magic. But Bandler and Grinder recognized that there were identifiable patterns and structure in their models’ actions. They ended up titling their first two books on the subject The Structure of Magic I and II.

While their approaches were strikingly different, what Satir, Perls and Erikson shared was a use of words that were highly specific and deeply respectful of their clients. They were able to recognize how the people they worked with processed information and to join them, putting them at ease before pacing and leading them in the healing process. They framed ideas in very specific and learnable ways. They reframed their clients’ experiences, even the most painful ones, in a way that made those events bearable and allowed them to move forward. They were able to get them to recognize swiftly where past actions had been nonproductive and to embrace useful alternatives.

Using these three geniuses as models, Bandler and Grinder developed a series of exercises that became NLP. Ironically, because Neuro-Linguistic Programming is all about clarity, many have criticized the name as quite the opposite, always requiring considerable explanation for anyone being exposed to it for the first time. Sometimes called “the study of excellence transference” or “software for the brain,” NLP is about using language to program yourself to respond more often the way you want to, avoiding knee-jerk, habitual, self-defeating reactions, and being in a place of readiness and productivity. The idea is that we have all been given a brain, but not an instruction manual. Not surprisingly, practitioners almost exclusively use the initials rather than the full name, many referring to themselves as NLPers (pronounced “nelpers”) and “verbing” the term as in “He was confused so I NLPed (nelped) him.”

While private institutes abound, NLP has not been embraced by the traditional therapy community nor by academia’s behavioral science departments. These have historically insisted on a theoretical base that is then tested by a wide range of empirical research to substantiate hypotheses. NLP leaders have always insisted there is no actual theory, that the entire discipline is pragmatic and based on “what works,” and that its highly personal applications do not lend themselves to control groups, systematic variables and large population research. I am a big advocate of empirical research, but I appreciate this stance and the courage to take it, because of my own experience attending and leading workshops. Every single time I have led an NLP class, the participants report back the very next session that they found immediate applications in their own lives, were able to change their perceptions and choices in an effective way, not necessarily for everything we covered, but always for some. So NLP practitioners feel little need for further substantiation, as they have done mini-empirical research in their own lives and are satisfied with the results.

Nevertheless there is a great deal of criticism of NLP just as there is a great deal of advocacy for it. The confusion often stems from the fact that there are literally hundreds of processes, which are not taught the same way at various institutes or even described in the same way in various documents. In this book, I will attempt to share what, in my own experience, have been the most reliable and worthwhile of the myriad explorations that can fall under the vast umbrella of NLP and to filter these through the life and work of the actor.

Skills

Through studying NLP, the following skills are likely to increase significantly:

• sensory acuity (more readily recognizing shifts of state in others and in yourself)
• rapport (assisting others – and parts of yourself – to feel safe and trusting)
• internal state management (feeling and perceiving by choice)
• chunking (placing tasks into forms and sizes that will get the job done)
• well-formed outcomes (setting goals that are obtainable and clearly planned)
• modeling (recognizing and implementing the learnable patterns of outstanding work)
• resourcefulness (having other choices always available and knowing when to change).

We will address in subsequent chapters ways to achieve each of these skills and states.

Calibration and congruence

These two C words capture benefits of studying NLP. Calibration is the process of noticing and adjusting. It is measuring, comparing, specifying and seeking accuracy. Someone who calibrates well possesses a high level of sensory acuity. So many of us go through life relatively sight-, sound- and sense-impaired, failing to pick up on all the signals around us. Or we may notice, but fail to adjust. NLP gives us more awareness and choice.

Most of us are accustomed to the negative use of congruence, with something described as incongruous. Some words are almost always used in their downside. When was the last time you heard someone called “couth”? Or heard the weather person announced that tomorrow’s weather would be “clement”? Incongruous means not quite right, pieces not fitting together, a lack of harmony or agreement. A person who is incongruent may say one thing but do another, lacking self-knowledge, trustworthiness or sense of balance. Someone congruent seems in balance and accord, fully integrated and consistent, while at the same time flexible. When Dr. John Grinder was asked what characteristics he was looking for in his NLP training staff, he answered “congruence” and provided this list of what that state should entail:

1 personal integrity

2 a deep, bottomless curiosity

3 a driving desire to discover new patterning

4 a deep commitment to creating new insights

5 a continuous seeking for evidence that one is mistaken in every aspect of their personal and professional beliefs

6 an open-learner attitude to exploring life

7 a desire to be of service

8 a commitment to physical health fitness

9 real-world experience in any field in which one intends to present NLP

10 an excellent sense of humor.

I don’t know about you, but that is the kind of person I want to be. And while I am still seeking, I can offer ready testimony to being closer than ever would have been possible prior to studying NLP.

The two also have a definite relationship: the more we automatically calibrate, the more we are able to stay effortlessly congruent.

Core language patterns

NLP has had a profound influence on everyday conversational choices, many of which have gone into popular usage without our even being aware of their origins. Listening carefully to ways in which the three original models used words, and then noting effective language choices by others, evolved into these patterns. Each of the choices below offers greater clarity of expression than the alternatives and is respectful of other persons involved.

1 Use the exact right small word to describe your experience. Say “and” instead of “but,” when you are truly in a quandary. Not “I love you but I am really angry at you right now” but “I love you and I am really angry at you right now.” In the former case, “but” tends to cancel out the statement before it. If you are genuinely divided and experiencing a dilemma, “and” more accurately identifies your feelings.

If you are in a situation where you are feeling powerless, instead of saying something like “This kind of thing makes you feel like you have no idea what to do,” stop and realize that not everyone would feel this way, that in fact the only person you can really speak for is yourself. So replace “you” with “me” and “I” so you are accurate. The tendency to use “you” or “someone” instead of “I” or “me” dissociates you from the experience (see Chapter 2) instead of allowing you to own what you feel.

2 When you need to confront others about something unpleasant that is getting in the way of your relationship, instead of directly blaming them and potentially putting them on the defensive, stay with a factual identification of the connection between their behavior and your response. Telling someone they always make you angry or never respect you or intimidate you, assumes too much about their intentions and power. Instead say “When you do …, this is what happens for me.” You are starting out with what you know to be true, which is free of accusation and is a far more effective way to open a challenging conversation where you are hoping something will change.

3 When you are not 100 percent in a belief, feeling or desire, say “a part of me ….” It is far preferable to acknowledge that you only believe, feel or want something part way, if that is accurate. It is perfectly acceptable to acknowledge two or more parts of yourself that are currently at odds as you struggle toward a decision. This also alerts others that you have not yet made a decision, in spite of their impressions.

4 Too busy to talk with someone but they are in need? Say something like “This needs 100 percent of my attention. I can’t give that now, but promise to when …” Acknowledge the importance of their problem and make a future commitment. This is far preferable to brushing them off or struggling to give them what they need when you simply cannot do that right now without disappointing.

5 Give someone who did not nurture you or the friend to whom you are speaking the benefit of a doubt. Statements such as “She did not have the skills to give me what I felt I needed” or “You grew up in an era that was ignorant about …” are ways of creating some small measure of empathy for the oppressor. It is very rare for someone to calculatedly decide to make our lives miserable. Instead they have usually come from a place of (admittedly hurtful) ignorance. Acknowledge that if the person had known how to do better, they may well have done better, which is often the case.

6 Use metaphor over direct criticism. For example, instead of telling someone directly they are over-reacting, try something like “W...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. What is NLP?
• 2. What is VAK?
• 3. VAK in theatre
• 4. Reframing
• 5. NLP scene study
• 6. Getting it done
• Appendix A: Self-study form
• Appendix B: Metaprograms self-analysis
• Appendix C: Character analysis NLP-style
• Appendix D: Finding anchors in the scene
• Appendix E: Outcome form
• Appendix F: Sample class syllabus and schedule
• Glossary
• Further study/Bibliography
• Index