Method Acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York

The professional speaker as "Actor

What distinguishes a good keynote speaker from a purely technical expert is not the technical competence, says one of Germany's most distinguished speakers Hermann Scherer. In his opinion, it's the performance on stage that also gives you goose bumps during the talk. Because I take my job as a speaker very seriously, I went to New York together with Hermann Scherer to the renowned Lee Strasberg Acting Institute to learn Method Acting for Speakers.

The Art of Method Acting

While a good stage actor can play any role - including any person - after six months of training, this doesn't work in film because of the close-ups. The film camera gets so close to the actor's face that even the best professional can no longer hide his true personality. A film actor always plays only himself. Tom Hanks is always the average American running, with HIV, on the island or on the way to the moon.

Meryl Streep, on the other hand, always plays the smartest woman in the room, beyond Africa, on the bridge by the river or in the divorce war. And Brad Pitt? To this our acting teacher said, "He just doesn't look the part." That's why his best roles are those of the crazed mass murderer. So is Charlize Theron, the picture-perfect South African who won her Oscar for portraying a serial killer. That's why the great Laurence Olivier refused this medium for decades after his first film experiences. Allegedly, he could not bear to show himself as he really is.

Authenticity is everything

So in the course of our training, we spent hours on imagination. We imagined the coffee cup from home, smelled the coffee and touched the broken parts. We remembered sad, outrageous and funny scenes in our lives. Because the Method Actor always plays himself, he brings the feelings from his experience into the present in order to be able to reproduce them authentically. That is the whole art. And yet it is anything but easy. And the art of the good speaker lies precisely in this. It's not about stuffing his listeners with knowledge that they can also read up on, but about letting them participate in their own emotions.

Improvisation, breathing and voice

Of course, we also improvised - individually and as a group, which was especially fun. We spoke to fill the whole room and, of course, sang. The whole thing was rounded off with Tai Chi for speakers. This is the art of pushing one's excitement into the ground and, if necessary, getting missing energy from above and controlling one's breath.

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Graduate of the Lee Strasberg Institute

For me, the training was very worthwhile. And it was fun, too. I'm still in touch with many of my colleagues from New York. In addition, I am now a co-graduate of Marilyn Monroe and Angelina Jolie, although the colleagues took a little longer. At the end, I was also presented with the Masterclass certificate by Hermann Scherer.