Mariette Rups-Donnelly - An Actors Perspective on Moments of Shift

Trisha: 00:00:25

Hi there, everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives, especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness. My guest today is Mariette Rups-Donnelly, whose Instagram account bio says once was a triple threat actor, singer and dancer.

Trisha: 00:00:58

She has taught other actors how to perfect their craft and now focuses on coaching and training people to increase their presence and presentation skills in a business setting. Mariette,

Thank you so much for joining me here today.

Mariette: 00:01:14

I'm well, I'm happy to be here really.

Trisha: 00:01:18

Jolly good. And I know all of you listening. I can hear you asking what has this got to do with cultural intelligence and increasing your cultural metacognitive awareness? Well, let me explain. I was telling Mariette, who's not just my presentation coach, but is also my friend, about this podcast and about my desire to help people make those shifts to step into other perspectives so that they can be more culturally effective.

Trisha: 00:01:46

And her response was, Oh, yes. As actors, we have to do that. Step into those shifts all the time. So we're going to unpack today what that means and how actors do that to see what we can learn and borrow from this field. But first, like with the other guests, I have a few questions for you, Mariette, if I may.

Mariette: 00:02:10

Yes.

Trisha: 00:02:12

So tell me, what is a culture other than the culture you grew up in that you have learned to love and appreciate?

Mariette: 00:02:20

Well, I was particularly fortunate because I grew up in a cross-cultural environment. My father was born in Holland, but he moved to Indonesia as a three year old. So largely he was Indonesian, even though he was Dutch Indonesian. So the influences of my childhood were not just Australian, a white Australian, they were both Dutch and Indonesian. And so we had Dutch people come to the house.

Mariette: 00:02:48

My father cooked Indonesian food. I learned a lot about both cultures and my mother was a Francophile, bless her. So she studied French her whole life and my Oma and Opa in Holland, the Dutch, speak multitude of languages always. So they read in French, German, Dutch, and they didn't read in Indonesian or passa Malay which was what they spoke and English.

Mariette: 00:03:14

So for me, when I went to university, there was really no option but to study languages. So culture for me is across Culture has always been part of my life and I sort of see myself as multicultural, even though I feel very Australian.

Trisha: 00:03:35

And so there's obviously that appreciation of the differences and valuing of those things.

Mariette: 00:03:41

Yeah, I suppose I see difference, but not that much. I do. I do value it. I mean, when it comes to food, I really value it I, my. I cook through culture. I sort of go, Oh, we haven't had Greek food lately, let's have Greek food, we haven't had Indonesian food, let's have Indonesian food. But even with travel, I love the sound of lang- different languages.

Mariette: 00:04:06

So seeing, seeing the way different people do things in the way they behave, I would love to immerse myself in another culture for a while. Now, and that said, you know, I taught a period of my life. I taught at a tertiary institution called Eora in Sydney, which was an Indigenous creative arts institution, and I was teaching acting and music and a bit of film and that culture.

Mariette: 00:04:35

I've moved in and out of that culture quite comfortably or so I felt, and happily. But the older I get, the more I realize how very different Indonesian culture is to Indonesian sorry Indigenous culture is to the Western culture and how the we expect. The expectation is that the communication is on our side and that Indigenous people will communicate the way we are comfortable and with little understandings of things like it's shame to look people in the eyes all the time or it's shame to to talk about yourself or be too proud of what you do.

Mariette: 00:05:18

We understand those things, but we really and I feel this to my detriment. I don't know that I understand the Indigenous culture as much as I would like to or as much as I should, and I think that's probably the next step. I almost feel like I understand Indonesian culture more than the Indigenous culture and that and that's sad, I think.

Trisha: 00:05:43

And I think there are a lot of us in Australia who could say the same thing and hopefully could be on a quest to continue learning and build that up because that's the good thing. We can, we can develop our cultural intelligence in lots of different ways.

Mariette: 00:05:59

Yeah, and I think that's a great step into the future where we. Reconciliation is not reconciliation of the indigenous culture into ours. It's both cultures moving together.

Trisha: 00:06:11

So thinking about the shift concept. Can you tell me about a time when you experienced a shift and I don't mean on stage when you had to make a shift, but in your personal or working life, when you suddenly became aware of a new perspective?

Mariette: 00:06:27

When I first started as a corporate coach and trainer yes, massive. I was an actor and I still often talk to people and say, Well, at heart I'm an actor, I'm still an actor. I approached I approach business as an actor, but I had to realize that the rest of the community don't think like actors think. They don't behave necessarily like actors behave.

Mariette: 00:06:53

And so I was not having to tone down because that's very much part of who I am. But I was having to look at the world through different eyes. When I first started as a corporate trainer. I was I was teaching as part of the NIDA corporate program. This was very early on. And I remember sitting in a room full of corporate men at that stage, it was mainly men in their fifties, and I was in my thirties and sitting in that room and looking at them and thinking, I know my stuff.

Mariette: 00:07:28

I know what I have to communicate to you, I know what I have to teach you, teach you, but I don't know your lives. So at the age I was, I had no concept of a 50 year old man's life in the corporate sector. And I had really no concept as an actor of a business life. And so I not just because of that, but I stopped corporate training at that point and I didn't come back to it for quite a few years.

Mariette: 00:08:00

And then I came back with my own company, and then I understood a bit more that I had to learn massively learn about the business world. And then as I got older, there was another point where I realized that I was older, much older than a lot of the people I was working with. And I had to try and understand, make a shift to understand why they would be working with me and to deal with that own ageist shift in my own brain.

Mariette: 00:08:30

That said, you know, I know you're thinking, what would I know? Because I'm older and it was my my, my husband, who is also my business partner who said to me and he had been in the corporate world, he had said to me, you need to tell them what they need. They are coming to you now as the expert.

Mariette: 00:08:51

Don't ask them what they think they need, but they're looking to you for advice so you can get their input on it. But they are largely looking to you to tell them with all your knowledge and experience that comes from age, what they can do, what they need to do. And that was a real shift for me. Very empowering, by the way.

Mariette: 00:09:17

Yeah.

Trisha: 00:09:18

And that sense of saying just the right thing for you at that point in time, that was what needed to help you to see from that perspective.

Mariette: 00:09:27

Certainly was.

Trisha: 00:09:29

So what I'd love to do is to understand a little bit more your expertise. And to do that, I'd love you to tell us a little bit about your experience as an actor and as a trainer and coach of actors.

Mariette: 00:09:43

Okay. Now, I've done quite a broad range of things. As you said, I'm a triple threat. So that means I was a singer, a dancer and an actor. I think.

Trisha: 00:09:54

I love that phrase.

Mariette: 00:09:55

Yeah, I think there's things like quadruple threats now - acrobatics and all those other things that come into it now. I couldn't do that, but I. I had no real training. I had training as a singer and a dancer, but no real acting training. When I auditioned for my first musical, it was a musical called Godspell. I was very fortunate to get into it and travel around with that production for about seven months, and it was a huge learning curve for me.

Mariette: 00:10:26

And from there I went to theatre in education and there was some wonderful learning I did in theatre, in education. Working with kids teaches you a lot, and I learned a lot about acting and the company. I worked for, a company called Pageant Theatre, and in particular a man called Michael Caulfield, who taught me so much about acting in that space.

Mariette: 00:10:50

And of course, consequently I found acting teachers and I did ended up doing a lot of musicals and a bit of television and a bit of film and a lot of plays in the course of my career and fortunate enough to play some very big roles that teach you an enormous amount about accountability and responsibility and leadership. And then I moved.

Mariette: 00:11:14

I was asked to teach very early on in my career and for whatever reason, I don't know. But I moved into teaching actors. And when you teach, you learn a hell of a lot about what it is you do. So I was teaching and learning, and I've taught in lots of great places. I've been fortunate. I started out the University of Western Sydney and then taught it at NIDA as part of the open program at WAAPA in Western Australia at Eora that wonderful Indigenous creative arts institution at the Actors Centre, which I absolutely adore.

Mariette: 00:11:54

And that was probably the last place. And I taught within a Christian university setting. It's called Excelsior now. It was then Wesley, which was a different experience for me as somebody who's not particularly religious, but I enjoyed that very much and I'm still in contact with a lot of my students. Oh, and a wonderful place called the Actors Centre of Theatre and Television, which was great fun too, and a lot of teaching.

Trisha: 00:12:22

Yeah, sounds good. So I'm wondering where and how does that shift happen when you're an actor? Can you tell us about it in light of one of your favourite roles?

Mariette: 00:12:34

Okay. It's not necessarily my favourite role, but the one that demanded the most of me. I was fortunate enough to play the lead in a musical called Evita in the national Tour of Evita. So I played it in Sydney and Melbourne and Adelaide. We didn't go any further, unfortunately. Oh no, we went to Perth. Yeah, we went to Perth, but we didn't go to Brisbane or Northern Territory Darwin.

Mariette: 00:13:01

But Evita is a much maligned person. Eva Peron of Argentina, much maligned person. She did some shocking things and she appropriated enormous amounts of money for herself, but she also did some very good things. She got women the vote. She looked after what she called her descamisados, which are the shirtless ones, the poorer people at the same time as taking lots of money oh for herself, uh, the aristocracy, hated her.

Mariette: 00:13:30

And one of the directors that I worked with in particular didn't like her at all, thought she was a dreadful person. And I had to I had to see why she did what she did. And that that's a real actor's thing. Actors, actors look for why we do what we do, why what actions people take, what their objective is by taking that action and what it's. Actually, first, why they do, what they do, what their objective is, and then what action they take.

Mariette: 00:14:04

And you have to like someone. You have to understand someone in order to play them. And so for me, it was once I understood where she came from, she was a child, a bastard child, as they call them. Then Father did not live with the family. She was rejected and she wanted to be someone. And I understood that totally.

Mariette: 00:14:32

Not that that was my life, but I understood the need to be someone wanting to be someone. And so you always play it from her perspective, not from the way the audience sees it or from the way history may judge her.

Trisha: 00:14:49

That makes sense. And it's interesting because in the last episode I was speaking with David Livermore, who's a researcher and practitioner in Cultural Intelligence and has written a number of books. And we were trying to unpack, you know, how to step into that cultural metacognitive position. He said. One of the key things is to ask why and then ask why again and why again.

Trisha: 00:15:11

So borrowing the Toyota, our idea of the five Why’s to really uncover what might be happening, what what are the possibilities? Because we often don't go to the possibilities for what might be happening in somebody else. We might just be confused by their behaviour.

Mariette: 00:15:26

And in fact, that's something that I use both in corporate sector and in in acting work. We ask, what do they want? And then we ask, what do they need? And I've often asked my corporate clients that. I've said, Well, what what do you think that other person wants from you? Okay, well, what do they need from you?

Mariette: 00:15:47

And I said, the two and I explain they’re two different things.

Trisha: 00:15:51

Subtle difference.

Mariette: 00:15:51

Real difference. And if you can satisfy the need, then sometimes the want is is it goes away. Okay.

Trisha: 00:16:00

So in those moments, you're stepping out on stage tackling Evita, which is a massive role. What practices or processes did you do before a performance to help you step into that?

Mariette: 00:16:13

You do a very good warmup. You you do because you have to dance, you have to sing and you have to act. You do a very good physical and vocal warm up to prepare you and the role itself. She's on stage for all but 11 minutes of the show and those 11 minutes are spent very close to the stage, side stage doing quick changes.

Mariette: 00:16:37

So and they're not simple changes. They can be wig, makeup, costume shoes, jewellery, complete changes. and they're happened very quickly that you have three people with you at all times when you're side stage, a wig person and two costume people and you stand there. Your job, in fact, is to think about what's coming next. So you do not think about the costume change.

Mariette: 00:17:01

You think then about not just the next scene, but what do I want from this person I'm working with? What is my objective here? What what, what is my action? I'm going to play here and you go into that, you think like that. And when you’re side stage at the opening of the show, you're in that space again.

Mariette: 00:17:20

You'll. Look. It's a bit like an athlete. I say this to corporate clients too, an athlete doesn't stand on the side. A swimmer doesn't stand on the side of the pool, shaking their arms and legs to keep themselves loose and think, Oh my God, I'm so nervous. I am so nervous. They are thinking, I've got to dive in, I've got 21 strokes to get down the pool.

Mariette: 00:17:37

I've got to tuck tight, I've got to start. They're thinking in process and acting is exactly the same. You are thinking in process. You are not thinking about how nervous you are or Oh my goodness, the audience is big or here, my hair's not looking. You don't. You are concentrating on exactly what you have to do in that next moment.

Trisha: 00:17:59

That makes perfect sense. When you began as an actor, did someone help you to learn how to make that shift into another character?

Mariette: 00:18:08

Well, somebody did say to me that you you have to like the character. When I initially started, I was intuiting, I was intuiting all the time. And I still intuit an enormous amount. I didn't realize I was until somebody said it to me. But I still intuit I know an enormous amount and now I trust it much more than I would have if somebody had explained it to me when I was younger.

Mariette: 00:18:34

I trust I do trust that because I know that there is an intellectual component to my intuiting. I know my and my eyes are seeing things and my brain is hearing things in my ears are hearing things. So there's an intellect, intellectual computer working as I'm intuiting.

Trisha: 00:18:52

Is it it just it just to clarify for us, does that mean you're not consciously aware you're automatically operating as that character?

Mariette: 00:19:01

Yes. Yeah. Initially you you read a script and you you find things in yourself that you relate to and you also find things that you don't relate to and you find ways, aspects of yourself that you can relate to that I think it was Meryl Streep or somebody famous Meryl Streep or Cate Blanchett that says you don't play the similarities to yourself, you play the differences.

Mariette: 00:19:28

And I think that's an interesting thing, too.

Trisha: 00:19:30

Absolutely. And especially in light of culture as well.

Mariette: 00:19:33

Well, yeah. Yes. So if you want to create a character that is not you, you don't try and make them part of you, even though you're using what you have, your voice, your body and your experience, you are trying to find what they do that you you don't. What actions do they play that you don't play? And why do they why do they do that?

Mariette: 00:19:55

But did someone help us? So many people helped me find characters. I've talked about Michael Caulfield. He was such an exceptional person in my life. A woman called Betty Williams, who was a teacher at NIDA, who I worked with privately. She was wonderfully helpful. I can't remember what they said, but they're like pieces of the puzzle that come in and directors.

Mariette: 00:20:19

I've worked with Michael Bennett, who directed A Chorus Line, Things he Said, and things that Hal Prince said directing Evita. They make that, Oh, he said, A beautiful Hal Prince said a beautiful thing to me about Don't Cry For Me Argentina. He said, What I want you to remember when she walks on for this speech, which is the song Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.

Mariette: 00:20:41

This is Cinderella. Time for her. He says everything she has dreamed of. Now, that computed beautifully for me because as the actor, it was everything I had dreamed.

Trisha: 00:20:53

Absolutely.

Mariette: 00:20:55

So it still makes me tear up a little bit. But things like that help you take you into the emotional space of that character at that time. And then he said, And then she feels the power of it. And it was an enormously powerful moment for her because the people were calling not for her husband, who was the president, but for her.

Mariette: 00:21:20

And that's what don't cry for me. Don't call out for me. Argentina, I'm one of you. And. But she wasn't, of course, And she felt the power of that. So. Yeah, I all it's. It is a jigsaw.

Trisha: 00:21:34

Yeah. Pieces of the puzzle falling together.

Mariette: 00:21:37

Yeah.

Trisha: 00:21:37

And I know, too, that you were a tutor for many years. You've mentioned NIDA and WAAPA and the Actors Centre. And, you know, I know that many of our most famous actors were trained at those places. In that situation, is there or was there a body of knowledge that you would share with up and coming actors, too, to help them get good at this?

Mariette: 00:21:56

On one level, I am really lucky that I didn't have one teacher's voice in my head. I didn't go to acting school, so I didn't have a teacher there who I thought was the great God of acting whose voice resonated in my head and told me that this is the way you do it. So because my learning was very much bits and pieces of the puzzle coming together, I, I have a tendency to look at people both in a corporate sector and as actors look for what is missing or what they're not understanding of what they need and trying to find what it is that there's so many different approaches to acting and people come

Mariette: 00:22:38

at it differently. Laurence Olivier always used to say that he would find a physical thing to do that would bring him to character. Some people find voices. Some people find accents. Some people intellectually go through the detail of this person. There's so many approaches and you have to you have to work with the person. Everyone is individual. So there's no particular acting technique.

Mariette: 00:23:07

But the more you learn, I think the better from various aspects, the better you become at what you do. And if a role, by the way, every every playwright, yeah, I did this play in Perth and it was so removed from the way I approached the way it was written was so removed from the way I approach a script, which is often intuitively and emotionally, and I couldn't find my way in and I had to come at it quite differently from the dialog.

Mariette: 00:23:37

And that was really interesting for me. I don't know how well I did it, but yeah, that was a fascinating thing. So each play is quite different in the way it’s structured. Yeah, and the way you think.

Trisha: 00:23:55

I'm thinking from a cultural perspective that it's sort of the same with, you know, different people that you meet or a different cultures that you visit. You can't assume you're going to apply the same techniques that worked in Indonesia, for example, as you can assume you're going to apply in France. And so you might be thinking differently and you might be bringing different pieces of the puzzle to bear in different situations.

Mariette: 00:24:19

But I look, I have to agree with you, and I have to say that I was working with a young man and it's not just cultural. I was working with a young man who's on the spectrum. He's autistic and quite openly so and ADHD. And I remember saying something to him or he said something to me, and I then expanded the concept immediately.

Mariette: 00:24:42

My brain just went, Oh, like Elon Musk, Elon Musk. And he said, No, not Elon Musk. And we both stopped for a minute and because he has learned to work with people who are not on the spectrum, he said, oh, you were you were expanding that out to Elon Musk. And I said, Yes. And I apologized and I said, I, I pushed you beyond what you were thinking at that point.

Mariette: 00:25:11

And it helped me because I had a workshop not that long ago with a group of people who as soon as I walked in the room, I thought and we were having a conversation, I thought, Oh, I'm in a spectrum room here. We're right on the spectrum. And I had to stop and think so much about everything I was saying, because all behaviours in that room that normally would either bother me or irritate me or that I would have to say, Can we please focus on this and not do that.

Mariette: 00:25:40

And I realized I was in a very different space and I had to acknowledge it and acknowledge my own challenge in that once more. I'm not sure how successful I was, but.

Trisha: 00:25:54

I think so often the awareness of it enables us to put aside the judgments or the discomfort, or at least recognize that the discomfort is coming within us, not necessarily because of the other person intentionally doing something. So yeah, that's it's certainly that awareness moment is exactly the shift moments that we're looking to try and help people to step to.

Mariette: 00:26:19

Yeah, yeah. Oh, They’re not easy either. I’m interrupting you now. They’re not easy.

Trisha: 00:26:27

No no, they are not. And that's why we're unpacking this from different, different perspectives, not just from, you know, the intercultural perspective, but seeing, you know, what what your field can bring as well. And help us to understand, I spoke with a social scientist who's helping me on my quest to dive into this topic. And I mentioned to him that I was going to interview you to see what we could uncover.

Trisha: 00:26:52

And he told me to check out Goffman and his theory of the presentation of self. Now, I had never looked at Goffman’s work, which is interesting, and I'll put it point in the show notes about it. But basically Irving Goffman presented the idea that a person normal people are like actors on a stage and that in our everyday lives we're using what he called impression management to present ourselves to others as we hope to be perceived.

Mariette: 00:27:21

It's very true that actors, actors get a bit annoyed sometimes. Oh, they're acting. They're always acting right. And I look at people and I think, no, you're acting, you have you have selves And there is a whole study on this. I haven't read Goffman, but there is a whole study on The Selves, the selves we present to the world under different circumstances, our parent self, mother, father, our child self, our sister, brother self, our friend self, which is possibly the most outward and engaging our our business self of our social group self I mean that involved people that are not friends, you know.

Mariette: 00:28:04

Yeah. So we have all these selves that we present to the world and I, you know, I often talk about people and helping, trying to help them understand their different characters. One of the things I find interesting in the work I do now is that people will present and they present as their presenter-self. Presenter-self and they get up on stage and they sort of and I think no, you’re much more

Trisha: 00:28:36

They’ve got a specific voice.

Mariette: 00:28:39

They’ve got a voice, they've got a persona and, and yet i know you’re much more interesting than that, and part of my job is to try and get them to bring all their selves at various times into a presentation. Because the key to presenting well is authenticity. So be all of yourself and also connectivity. Being able to connect to an audience and they will only connect to you if you if you are real, if you have all those people that you are and bring them up onto a platform, it's easier said than done.

Mariette: 00:29:19

But even if I will sometimes say, just see the audience as your friend, bring your best friend self up there, These are my best friends. And that will help. But yeah, I think I don't think people understand enough that they are constantly in a space of, if not acting, They are playing different roles to suit different circumstances.

Trisha: 00:29:45

And possibly not from a position of awareness.

Mariette: 00:29:48

No. We learn it in the playground, for heaven's sake. You know, kids learn how to how to fit with certain groups and, you know, the way they behave with their teachers is different to the playground and, yeah, yeah. We take on roles.

Trisha: 00:30:06

And we may never unpack them. They recognize how we're using them or not using them or like you say, how we could choose to bring the friend onto the stage. Our friend self and how much more powerful the friend self might be than the teacher or presenter self.

Mariette: 00:30:23

Yeah, the friend self is much more generous, much more giving, much more outgoing, and then not in a sort of hyper energized way, but just generous in in personality. And I think that's it's sad when people feel they have to play this role that is limiting.

Trisha: 00:30:44

Mm hmm. Well, there’s lots we've unpacked here today, Mariette. And I really appreciate the the depth and the interesting things we've uncovered. I know that I can attest to how helpful it's been working with you on aspects. You know, we do work about voice and presence and thinking about how I'm communicating to someone who's listening to me. I haven't been doing as much work on a stage, but certainly even in a virtual world, there's lots of things that I've learned that from from working with you that I apply into my virtual work as well.

Trisha: 00:31:21

If people want to find out more about your work. Mariette Where should they look for you? Should they go to that Instagram or should they go to LinkedIn or?

Mariette: 00:31:29

They can go to Instagram. I have a work Instagram that sits on the powerhouse presentation, and possibly LinkedIn is best, though I really need to update it because my website has disappeared into the ether at the moment and I have to establish a new one. I think it got lost by a new provider, network provider. So now I'm LinkedIn.

Trisha: 00:31:53

LinkedIn is good.

Mariette: 00:31:54

Yeah that’s the best.

Trisha: 00:31:56

Fantastic! l’ll put the the links in the show notes below and anything else that comes up that we we want to highlight for you. I'll put that in as well. So thank you so much, Mariette. I really appreciate the time and the discussion that we've had.

Mariette: 00:32:10

Oh, I've had a ball. Thank you.

Trisha: 00:32:13

Thank you so much. And join us for the next episode coming up soon.