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🎙 STAGE MIGHT: Harnessing Your Fear of Public Speaking

Overview 260 Lovely Attendees
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Your Host

Karen Kohler

Singer, actress, speaker, author, stagecraft and story-telling coach at Fin Alley Arts.

Vermont, USA

Born in Germany, raised in New York and a Texan for 15 years, I live for the unconventional in art and love. I’ve been a singer, actor, director and coach since 2000 when I traded in a top management position at a Fortune 500 company to pursue my passion for singing. Since then I’ve fueled a gratifying international performance and recording career from my base in New York City, crossbreeding in multiple languages a range of theatrical and musical styles. I coach performers on refining their stagecraft, train clients in the art of public speaking, and guide a variety of artists in fulfilling their creative calling. Recently, I’ve begun writing my own poetry, prose and lyrics around the subject of artful living and artful marriage. You can find my guided meditation channel Artist Heart on Insight Timer and my life arts podcast The RudeWoke Sessions on Apple Music and Soundcloud. A member of Creative Mornings since its earliest days in Brooklyn, I’m also a Field Trip host and delight in bringing my stagecraft and life arts workshops to this community…my chance to give back!

About this FieldTrip

We all speak in public and yet public speaking is something most of us have never been taught. Most of us have a mortal fear of going before others to share information, open our hearts and use our bodies to communicate effectively.

Learning to surrender by stepping both into and away from your message is what makes for honest, persuasive and artful presentations. In this workshop, acclaimed singer-actress Karen Kohler shares her performance techniques and tools to help you relax on stage, expand your confidence, identify where your story-telling voice resonates most with your truth, and ladder up from fright to might.

Topics from her methodology in stagecraft include Intention, Fear as Fuel, The Faculties of Observation and Empathy, Tapping the Universals, Self-Collection, Audience Rapport and more.

✨WHAT TO EXPECT

✔️ We’ll begin with an overview of what defines a stage in our current paradigm of live, virtual and hybrid forms of presentation, followed by a brief talk about the nature of fear particularly as it pertains to public speaking.

✔️ From there, we’ll launch into a free-write around memories and experiences of self-expression, such as the ones we’ve experienced in childhood, at school or family gatherings, in public forums, or as recently as at a team meeting here in the virtual realm. This will be followed by a visualization around Karen Kohler’s techniques of Playing Opposites, Taking Risks and Tapping the Universals and is designed to offer an alternate perspective on the lived and embodied experience.

✔️ We’ll have break-out rooms to share our experiences.

✔️ Next, we’ll choose a message with which to explore Intention, Fear as Fuel, Self-Collection and Audience Rapport. This will be followed by a guided visualization around how to universalize our message and own it, and how to best deliver it by understanding the true nature of the role of the audience.

✔️ We’ll again have break-out rooms to practice stepping up and expressing ourselves.

✔️ We’ll share out at the end and leave with a better understanding of our public speaking anxiety and self-doubt, and our general relationship with fear. We’ll take away tools we can use to access a deeper level of comfort with our messages, vocal instrument and connection with our audience by harnessing stage fright as an ally in our quest for honest, authentic self-expression.

❤️This FieldTrip is Interactive

This FieldTrip is interactive and includes optional Breakout Rooms. If you do not want to be in a room, no worries! You can stay in the main room.


about your host

Here’s an opportunity for you to work with one of the great story singers on the international scene! Karen Kohler shares her stage mastery, guiding students through a methodology that promotes intimate connection to self and audience. Her emotional connection to her material is renowned as is her concert movement and staging. Karen’s workshop is a must for those who want to hone their stagecraft and presentations in a variety of intimate performance venues and settings.

Karen emigrated to the U.S. from Germany as a child, learned English as a shy girl in a gospel choir, married her college sweetheart and was being paid handsomely in stock options when the call to performance seized her. For decades she has fueled a critically acclaimed international singing career from her base in New York City. She is passionate about story songs, crossbreeding in seven languages a decadent range of theatrical and musical styles from jazz and Delta blues to classical, rock-folk and cabaret. Winner of the Nightlife, Mac, BroadwayWorld and Backstage Bistro awards, the iconoclastic Kohler is the founding producer of the Kabarett Kollektif and the award winning cabaret festival, Kabarett Fête. She is a sought-after director, lectures at the university level on the European roots of small stage performance, and guides a diversity of artists in stagecraft and fulfilling their creative calling. She recently published her first books of prose and poetry, and launched her life arts podcast, RudeWoke. Visit www.karenkohler.com for info on concerts, workshops and events.


FieldTrip Category

🎙 Public Speaking


What to expect

Lecture format!

This is a more traditional format where participants absorb information through presentations and talks.

Real-time only!

This FieldTrip will not be recorded.

Learn more about FieldTrips

Kk social thumbnail 2019
Your Host

Karen Kohler

Singer, actress, speaker, author, stagecraft and story-telling coach at Fin Alley Arts.

Vermont, USA

About Karen Kohler

Born in Germany, raised in New York and a Texan for 15 years, I live for the unconventional in art and love. I’ve been a singer, actor, director and coach since 2000 when I traded in a top management position at a Fortune 500 company to pursue my passion for singing. Since then I’ve fueled a gratifying international performance and recording career from my base in New York City, crossbreeding in multiple languages a range of theatrical and musical styles. I coach performers on refining their stagecraft, train clients in the art of public speaking, and guide a variety of artists in fulfilling their creative calling. Recently, I’ve begun writing my own poetry, prose and lyrics around the subject of artful living and artful marriage. You can find my guided meditation channel Artist Heart on Insight Timer and my life arts podcast The RudeWoke Sessions on Apple Music and Soundcloud. A member of Creative Mornings since its earliest days in Brooklyn, I’m also a Field Trip host and delight in bringing my stagecraft and life arts workshops to this community…my chance to give back!


Attendees

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Kristin Steenstra

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How to make the most of FieldTrips

The FieldTrips experience is defined not only by what the host has to share, but also by how we show up individually and collectively. The way we show up impacts our capacity to be moved, inspired, and activated.

Show up fully

Get ready to be immersed! Engage with smiles, nods, waves, emojis. Share in the chat. Get cozy. Turn off notifications. Sip your favorite beverage.

Stay curious

Wear your beginner’s hat. Go with the flow. Welcome the stumbles and fumbles. Congratulate yourself for trying. Keep going! 

Celebrate your host

Our hosts are members of the CreativeMornings community—just like you! Everyone comes to this with different backgrounds—a lot of our hosts have never done anything like this before! And we love that! Cheer them on when something goes awry and when it goes perfectly.

Support each other

We’re all figuring things out in real time. Celebrate, rather than critique emerging ideas. Cheer each other on as you try new things.  Try “Yes! And…” in conversation.

Not vibing?

It’s 100% okay when a FieldTrip does not resonate with you. Pop out quietly and try another experience later. Fill out the survey with your feedback (no dms to host or chat commentary, please.)