Remembering the day your dog died in seventh grade can bring authentic emotions to the surface. Sadness, nostalgia, regret. Often, speakers and performers use personal experiences and memories to prepare for deeply emotional moments in the spotlight.
But using past trauma and emotional memories to provoke an emotional response onstage might not be a good idea. Not just because it can lead to “emotional hijacking” and hurt both your performance and mental health—but also because it usually doesn’t work.
In fact, it might even make your performance feel corny. Overacted. Exaggerated. Inauthentic. Predictable. Or over the top.
Why? Because showing an emotion onstage isn’t enough to make your audience feel it.
How to Increase Your Emotional Impact Onstage
Authentically connect with your audience on an emotional level using an advanced performance technique called Playing Actions. As mentioned in Part 1 of this article series, this technique refers to the specific choices you make to provoke a desired emotional response in your audience.
When you change how your audience feels, you’ll be able to change what they think, and in turn, how they act—inspiring them to put your big idea or core message into action. But it all starts with making your audience feel.
Playing Actions makes your speech more entertaining, more honest, and more effective. And it starts with just three simple steps:
- Identify your baseline.
- Decide what emotions you want to evoke.
- Test which actions you’ll play to create the desired emotional response.
Over the past decade, as we’ve taught speakers to provoke emotion using different timing patterns, staging choices, speech rhythms, and language, we’ve noticed that speakers often fall into the trap of emoting.
When they do, their performance almost immediately starts to feel dishonest, exaggerated, and awkward… and self-centered. (It’s what I often refer to as “masturbatory”—you’re making yourself feel something instead of focusing on the audience’s experience. This approach can come across as self-absorbed and even self-indulgent.)
Fortunately, this mistake can be easily corrected if speakers understand the delicate balance between emotion and performance and shift their focus outward, not inward.
What is emoting?
Emoting is demonstrating an emotion with the goal of making someone feel that specific emotion. However, it frequently backfires, because it makes a performance feel fake or over the top. Simply put, it’s the classic case of bad acting.
When Playing Actions, it’s important to differentiate between playing an action directed toward the audience to make them feel something, and falling into the trap of demonstrating that emotion yourself and hoping your audience will mirror your emotional state.
If your goal as a speaker is to make your audience feel destroyed, that doesn’t mean you get up onstage and cry, moan, and bury your face in your hands. There are many ways you can make your audience feel destroyed without wailing and crying yourself. It’s ultimately not about what you’re feeling, it’s always about what you’re making the audience feel.
What is emotional hijacking?
Emotional hijacking is when the emotional, primitive area of your brain takes over the rational, thinking area. This limits your decision-making ability and allows your emotions to take over.
This can happen to both professional and non-professional actors while performing emotionally charged scenes. In her research paper about generating emotions for acting performance, Angela Baker mentions that emotional hijacking is more likely to happen when performers choose to relive negative emotional experiences to provoke those emotions for a given scene.
A similar type of emotional hijacking can happen to speakers. Speaking about subjects you’re deeply passionate about or sharing intense personal experiences could stir up powerful emotions for you onstage. If telling a story makes you cry, it’s not a problem—as long as you keep fighting through the emotion for the sake of your audience. However, if you become so emotional that it affects the delivery of your speech, it might be time to reconsider your approach.
Ultimately, your emotional experience cannot take precedence over the people you are there to serve. Think: audience first. Always. Focus on making your audience feel specific emotions, rather than indulging in your own.