Latest news with #audience
Bloomberg
3 hours ago
- General
- Bloomberg
How to Conquer Your Public Speaking Fears
Public speaking — and I'm going to say something radical here — is just talking. It's something everyone is doing all the time, they just worry about it when they're put in front of an audience. Whenever there's a survey done about phobias, public speaking is often listed higher than death. What we actually fear is exposure. We view public speaking, particularly in a professional sense, as a testament to our ability and we have very binary mindsets about it. Either we do this business update brilliantly and it goes down the same way a TED Talk would, or it's a complete disaster.
Forbes
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Netflix's Best New Movie Has Near-Perfect Critic And Audience Scores
The Wild Robot It can be tough to know what to watch on Netflix in a given day or night, but the service has licensed one of the best movies I've seen in recent years, kid-focused or otherwise. While children may have been its target audience, it's a movie that all ages can enjoy. That would be The Wild Robot, the 2024 Dreamworks film about a lost robot that bonds with forest animals and ultimately becomes their guardian against encroaching technology. Here's the synopsis: The Wild Robot has stunning scores from both critics and audiences. With 253 reviews in, The Wild Robot has a 96% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and with 5,000+ audience reviews, an even higher 98%. On IMDB it has an 8.2/10, which in the context of that site, is extremely high, and a full quarter of its reviews are 10/10. Having seen the film myself, I think it very much lives up to these high scores. The Wild Robot It's a kids movie, but it isn't. It's one of those situations where a movie aimed at children can be so good that parents and kids alike will enjoy watching it together as opposed to the adults just sitting around flipping through their phones while it's on. For me, the best part of The Wild Robot is its absolutely gorgeous animation, where I've really never seen anything quite like it. The story is good, sure, perhaps a tiny bit cliché, but there is no frame of this film that isn't fantastic to look at. It's an easy recommendation for all ages, and family statuses. If you don't have kids or aren't watching it with any, it doesn't matter, as it's worth checking out for anyone. There are likely going to be two more films in the series adapting two more books that the first one was based on, but we do not have much information about those as of yet. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Fast Company
3 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
The best leaders know how to inspire. Here's how
The goal for any leader is to build strong and productive relationships with their team and other stakeholders. And the best way to do this is by inspiring their audience every time they speak. This means creating believers with every set of remarks, whether they're having a brief hallway conversation or delivering a keynote speech. But how? To inspire others, embrace these five fundamentals: 1. ADOPT AN INSPIRATIONAL MINDSET The starting point for becoming an inspiring leader is developing the right mindset—one that is focused not on informing but on inspiring. Information, even when it's up-to-date and accurate, lacks the power to move others. Avoid content-rich presentations or conversations full of too many facts. Instead, always be in 'inspire' mode. Inspire mode keeps you away from delivering content-heavy slides or numbing statistics, and instead gets you to engage your audience with your belief or idea. Bring your listeners to the realm of possibilities. 2. LISTEN INTENTLY To inspire others, you need to listen intently. Leaders who fail to listen will not understand their audience's mindset and they won't be able to focus their message so it has maximum impact. There are three ways to listen. First, listen with your body. Face your audience and align your body with the person (or people) to whom you are speaking. Stand or sit up straight. Keep a receptive expression on your face and make strong eye contact. Keep your arms open. This body language will send a message that you care about your audience. Second, listen with your mind. You need to listen for the points the other person is making, and you also need to show that you've heard what they've said. You might interject phrases like 'Oh, that's so true' or 'Yes, that's a good point' or 'I agree' or 'Tell me more about that.' Such responses show that your mind is engaged and responsive. Third, listen with your heart. When you listen with your heart, you show that you are emotionally engaged. Heartfelt responses include being polite, being sensitive, and using expressions like 'I share your feelings' and 'That must have been difficult.' (For a full discussion of these three ways to listen, consult the chapter 'Listen, Listen, Listen' in my book Speaking as a Leader.) 3. SPEAK WITH A MESSAGE If you want to inspire, you need to speak with a message. Without a big, central idea, you can't expect people to follow you. Your message should be stated at the beginning of your remarks and elaborated on by everything else you say. So, after opening your conversation or speech with a bridge or a grabber, get to your point. If you're giving formal remarks, you might say 'My message to you is . . .' If it's a less formal situation, you might say, 'I believe that . . .' Own your message and present it clearly at the beginning. After you state your message, prove it. This requires sharing supporting evidence, usually in two to four points. You'll lift your audience's thinking from 'what is' to 'what can be.' 4. USE STRONG WORDS Inspiring leaders use compelling language. They know that every word testifies to their credibility. A leader's language is confident. They own what they are saying with expressions like 'I believe,' 'I see,' 'I know,' and 'I care.' They avoid tentative language like 'I'm not sure,' 'I don't know,' and 'I can't.' They also avoid filler expressions like 'um' and 'ah.' 5. END WITH ACTION Whether you are giving a formal presentation or offering a comment at a meeting, be sure to end your remarks with a call to action. After a job interview, you might say to the candidate, 'This has been a great meeting. We'll be in touch with you shortly.' You might conclude a more formal presentation with 'If we take the steps I have outlined, we will be a much stronger company. I look forward to your support for these initiatives.' By ending with a call to action, you'll move your audience from the present to the future you envision. You'll inspire your listeners by taking them from 'what is' to 'what can be.'
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
They're Exquisite. They're Divine. They're Incomprehensible. Why?
I recently had the privilege to receive an honorary degree. The diploma is in Latin. I like that. My Latin is approximate, but even when I can't read the words, the fact that diplomas are written in a different and antique language gives them an air of distinction, distance, gravitas. Pondering that effect reminded me that some people feel the same way about how we encounter opera. I couldn't agree less. The debate over translation in opera is lively and ongoing, but it's more relevant than ever today, when opera companies struggle to attract new audiences and digital distractions lure away even some devoted fans. Like the qwerty keyboard, sitting through a three-or-more-hour performance in a language we don't understand is a peculiar cultural phenomenon we accept only because it's often the only option we're given. It's happenstance. And it's a big part of what keeps opera from reaching more people. In the 1800s and well into the 1900s, it was routine in many countries to present operas in the language of the audience. The music critic Anthony Tommasini wrote, 'Verdi would have found it absurd for a French audience to hear 'Il Trovatore' in Italian. Even in Salzburg and Vienna, Mozart's operas were typically performed in German until World War II.' Wagner expected his works to be translated into French when they were performed in France. I wish I regularly had the chance to experience them in my native language. In Act II of 'Die Walküre' ('The Valkyrie') the god Wotan solemnly recounts the 'Ring' story and reflects on his fate for what can be 20 minutes of rumination. It is a pitiless challenge to theatrical momentum that wears me to a nubbin. (I once watched it sitting next to a very famous singer I will refrain from naming, who was so underwhelmed that he spent the whole section canoodling with the woman he had brought.) If the performance had been in English, at least the audience members would have been able to comprehend what they were struggling through. America used to cherish opera in translation. An English version of Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville' was a big hit in New York for season after season between 1819 and 1824 and played in French in New Orleans in 1823. But in the Gilded Age, opera caught on with the wealthy as a symbol of European sophistication, conditioning an idea that to really count, it had to be performed in the original language. In 1961 the classical music critic Harold Schonberg sniffed, 'The fact that the Paris Opera does Verdi in French, or the Berlin Staatsoper does Puccini in German, does not necessarily mean the procedure is right.' The arguments for these translations have 'immoral aspects,' he wrote. 'Instead of wanting to bring people up to the level of music, they are demanding that music be brought down to the level of the people. Their idea is to get people into the opera houses by offering inducements and bribery.' Nevertheless, in the mid-20th century, European opera in English experienced a certain fashion on these shores. Especially cherished were the fresh and singable lyrics of Ruth and Thomas Martin. In their version of Mozart's 'Così Fan Tutte,' instead of the early passage that begins with 'La mia Dorabella capace non è,' we got 'To doubt Dorabella is simply absurd. Completely absurd. She'll always be faithful and true to her word.'' That may not be identical to what its Italian librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, wrote, but it's exquisite. To the extent that opera in translation acquired real traction here, the advent of supertitles, the simultaneous translations projected above the stage or on the backs of seats, wiped it out in the 1980s. They did spare singers from having to learn the same opera in more than one language. But with supertitles, you're always peeking away from the action, reading when you're supposed to be hearing and never — at least in my experience — feeling truly satisfied. Puccini didn't write 'Madama Butterfly' to be read. Many opera fans object to translation on the grounds that composers set the music to the words carefully, according to the accent patterns and vowel colors of the language in question, in a way that translation can't hope to reproduce. Others note, in particular, how ideally suited Italian, with its open vowels and buttery consonant clusters, happens to be for singing. But the composers of yore had their works translated, despite both of these concerns, because they wanted audiences to understand what they were hearing. I'm with them. It's hard to imagine any English translation of 'La Bohème' that would allow Mimi to introduce herself — on the seven opening notes of 'Sì, mi chiamano Mimi' — as perfectly as she does in the Italian original. Yet to know what Mimi is saying line by line (and she says a good deal; she is deep) is a richer experience than hearing her singing mere syllables, no matter how pretty. As the conductor Mark Wigglesworth wrote in response to this question, 'Few artistic experiences are more complete than understanding singers' words at exactly the moment they are sung.' Of course, operatic diction can make it difficult to understand even in your native language — but not harder than it is to understand a language you don't speak. Plus I find that Anglophone singers can be quite good at getting English across in an operatic voice. My first opera was the Houston Grand Opera's production of 'Porgy and Bess' when it came to Philadelphia when I was 10. I'm sure I missed the occasional word or sentence, but the singers did their job with the diction, and I had no trouble overall. (I will never forget Clamma Dale's fierce and eternal Bess and Wilma Shakesnider's Serena, who made me realize in one song that life is complicated.) Singing in a language that you speak as a native and that the audience understands also makes for better acting. In Vienna in the 1950s, performances of Mozart's operas shifted from German to the original Italian, largely because of the influence of the maestro Herbert von Karajan. The famed soprano Phyllis Curtin recounted the effect on two seasoned German-speaking actors: 'After we switched to Italian, all of a sudden, because the Viennese audience didn't understand them in the same way, these two consummate artists started acting like the Marx Brothers.' As they used to say, I'm hip. A quarter-century ago, I flirted with becoming an opera singer, and in a summer program I played Antonio the gardener in 'The Marriage of Figaro.' A friend who had seen me doing my yeomanly thing in some local productions of musicals and plays said that as Antonio, I hadn't really connected. I said, 'Yeah, he speaks Italian.' Around the same time, I used 'O Isis und Osiris' from 'The Magic Flute' as an audition and performance song, alternating between the English (by Andrew Porter) and the German. The German version was in no way superior. After a while, I let go of singing opera. The main reason was that despite my exposure to foreign languages, I never could truly understand why we were singing in Italian, French and German. It seemed like something we wouldn't do if we could roll the tape back and start again. The lyricist and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II said he wrote a Black English version of Georges Bizet's 'Carmen,' 'Carmen Jones,' because 'listening to people sing words you didn't understand wasn't much fun.' I highly recommend 'Carmen Jones' as a starter. Try the film and then the EMI recording with Wilhelmenia Fernandez for a more complete version of the score. The Metropolitan Opera is seriously ailing financially, and its attempts to shift to more contemporary programming do not seem to be solving the problem. A suggestion: It should try having all foreign-language operas performed in English and advertising the change. This season 'Aida,' 'Fidelio,' 'Tosca,' 'La Bohème,' 'The Barber of Seville,' 'Tales of Hoffmann,' 'Rigoletto' and 'Salome' all should have been in the language that the greatest portion of the audience in New York speaks and understands. The Opera Theater of St. Louis and the English National Opera are among the companies that saw the light on this long ago. If the Met gets on board, it will surely encounter Schonberg-type naysayers. But a little controversy would only stir up curiosity — and ticket sales. Tradition is fine but should never be an end in its own right. And even the greatest composers agreed: Opera is better when you can understand it.
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
You can witness fictional first dates on the streets of D.C.
'This is going to be a big audience today, so you're all going to get nice and cozy,' the staff running the Folger Theatre's show 'DC, I Love You' warned us at the top. Gathered upstairs at Lost Origins, an art gallery in the city's leafy enclave of Mount Pleasant, we dutifully put on purple stickers to identify us as audience members and slung audio gear around our necks. Like a line of goslings learning how to cross the street, we followed the flag-toting guides from scene to scene. We had to get comfortable — fast — with two uncomfortable situations: looking like tourists and openly eavesdropping on first dates.
