Notes & Testimonials from Sondra Bennett, 
Quick Change Studio performance style consultant 

Years ago, as a New York Broadway actor, I was on my way to an audition and noticed that wherever I went people seemed to be acting. On the bus, in business buildings, on the street…everyone was performing in their own fashion. Some were acting nice to me even though I could tell they didn’t mean it, some acted important – and they did mean it. Some played dumb; some were more dramatic than others, some demanded attention, and some would act as if they didn’t see me even though I caught their glances. I later labeled it “social acting.”

As I became more and more fascinated with people watching, I saw that people had different styles of acting and that each style had certain tendencies. Being an incurable thespian, I likened it to people falling into various theatrical genres noting, “Oh, he’s action oriented”; she’s high drama; Jerry favors silly comedy, while Ashley liked smart comedy. Others were drawn to compelling adventure, fervent love, romantic comedy, thought-provoking mystery, sci-fi, mystical fantasy & other genre’s. 

I noticed fellow actors unconsciously type-casting themselves and being put in categorical boxes by directors because of their genre tendencies. So, I began to label our tendencies as “mental actor” or “physical actor,” and so forth according to their genre attraction. In those days, I was just noticing these things quietly to myself without much thought or discussion about it to anyone.

After a few Broadway & Off-Broadway acting jobs, I moved to California, gave up acting and forgot all about that stuff. What followed was a procession of both fascinating and mundane life experiences, and eventually I made my way back to people watching. This time sparked by my increasing interest in eastern and western philosophy and a lofty desire to understand the universe and my place in it.

Still a thespian at heart, my newly added philosophical slant led me to appreciating all of us human beings as social actors seeking happiness and fulfillment in life by operating in their choosen genres. Not really knowing where I was going with this, I began to watch how these genre tendencies shaped our attractions and aversions to each other, and also categorized our style of relating. Our genre choices displayed what I began to regard as our performance styles, our way of acting and operating in the world.

At that point, I knew I did not want to perform professionally anymore, yet, something else about the art was slowly formulating within me. In my own daily interactions I saw that issues professional actors face in theatrical performance paralleled our own issues as social actors in life performance - like being upstaged by others, typecasting yourself in the same roles, and stage fright. I realized how much an actor’s training could benefit the social actor’s everyday performance, especially in work situations. However, the performance training and goals of professional actors is so different that I knew I had to develop a training that was exclusive to the social actor’s purpose.

So I crafted a process that helps us clearly see what our everyday actions create and how those actions affect outcome. The results are a practical, easy to apply training that help people honor their creativity and quickly change things that are not working.

I began developing this training in 1984 with a small group of interested actors and soon began working with stroke and head injured patients at Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood, CA. The work proved magical for many who rediscovered their ability to create a different attitude (character quality) as part of their healing process.

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Performance Style Awareness has helped my patients better understand themselves and consequently how to better relate to others. They now know they do not have to live on their tragic side. Your work has reminded them that they can choose to act from their comic side. ~ B. Hadler, speech & language pathologist

Sondra's concept of " Performance Style Awareness " resonated with me as a department manager in a large entertainment company, responsible for the success of many projects and a large staff. Her "Performance Styles" approach presented a positive way of viewing character traits and skill-set differences that allowed me to think of creative ways to resolve personnel issues and form effective teams. The "Empty Stage" exercise was a great tool for envisioning success in all aspects of life.