All the World's a Stage: Become a Featured Player

Is your stage presence all it could be? When you’re face to face with prospective clients, do you own the space? And if so, do the clients recognize that you do?

These may not be questions you’ve given much thought to. You may think of your website as the public face of your practice, or focus on your email marketing as your best way to bring in new business.

But there’s no substitute for being there. Even in the era of texting, Slack, and virtual conferences, face-to-face presentations still matter. They afford you opportunities to embody and project competence, trustworthiness, and engagement. These qualities are important as you try to take your consulting practice to the next level – finding bigger and better projects in your sweet spot.

Here’s where B.J. Williams can help. Grande dame of Boston-area community theater, she’s been helping actors claim the stage for decades. Now she’s bringing her expertise to the SPC.

Her key points:

• Preparation: You always need more than you think
  
• Energy: What’s the best way to warm up?
• Confidence: It’s a muscle, and you should exercise it every day
• Position: Take up space; use your entire stage
• Eye contact: How do you connect best with a single person, or several in the audience?
• Attention: How do you behave when you’re not “on stage” yourself?

This will be a hands-on presentation, with volunteers recruited from our attendees to model the good and the not-so-good ways of taking the stage.

B.J. will also provide tips for how to keep strengthening your stage presence after the session: what to look and listen for when you see a play or hear a speech; and what you can learn just from watching the way some people enter a room and command attention.

About Our Speaker:

B. J. Williams, teacher, director, producer, publicity manager, and editor, was educated at the University of California, Berkeley (B.A., M.Ed.), and has a second master’s degree in theater and speech from Emerson College. She’s spent two long stints as high school drama director – at Belmont High in Massachusetts and Moorestown High in New Jersey. She’s been a master teacher in the Harvard University Master of Arts in Theater program. She’s also been the supervising teacher for English and theater interns at Emerson.

She has worked as director and producer, among other roles, with the Arlington Friends of the Drama, the Belmont Dramatic Club, and the Winchester Players. She’s also been a consultant and board member for the Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theaters.