My wife Jill and I recently saw Eddie Izzard’s “Force Majeure” show at the historic Beacon Theatre (a fantastic mishmash of faux Greek, Roman and Rococo design on the West Side of Manhattan). As I watched him tell his stories about Charles I and God and Julius Caesar and dressage and Lord of the Rings and the difficulty of translating his verbal humor into German, with the crowd roaring in laughter, I began wondering how he connected so well with us. He mumbled sometimes, appeared to become lost in a dead-end dark alley of new material, cracked jokes so arcane you had to look them up later, and frittered minutes away being completely, pointlessly silly. But it works – what’s he doing up there that is so successful? And I wondered, what lessons are there for the rest of us who may not be standing in front of 3,000 people, but who still have to connect effectively with business audiences as part of our jobs?
Certainly not everyone gets every joke, and there are always a few in the crowd who don’t seem to understand what is going on at all. But he does connect. This is a man who, all by himself on stage, telling stories, routinely sells out venues like Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden, and famously performed four sold-out shows (44,000 people) at Wembley Arena in London.
Like many of his American fans, we were introduced to Izzard through his 1998 video of the “Dress to Kill” tour, broadcast on HBO. One night while my wife was out to dinner with friends, our oldest boy told me to turn HBO on. There was a Brit in makeup and a sort of woman’s lounge outfit, telling stories about Martin Luther, the geography of Steve McQueen’s motorcycle run in The Great Escape, and being an executive transvestite. It was brilliant and hilarious, and I told our middle son to turn the show on too. So it was when Jill came home a bit later, and she found all three of us in separate rooms, watching the same thing on different TVs, all laughing uproariously, as a cross-dressed Izzard was performing an extended and complicated comedy routine completely in French. She wondered, quite understandably, what the heck was going on. We’ve been big fans ever since.
That night at the Beacon was actually the third time we saw the “Force Majeure” tour; even though it officially launched in March 2013, we saw it prior to that in a tiny black box theatre near NYU, during the original testing and development run he made in preparation, then a year later in Newark, during the middle of Izzard’s five continent/25 country run. Seeing Izzard early in the life of a new show is a special pleasure. Instead of 18,000 people in a place like MSG, there are only about 150 in a small room. He’s relaxed, he’s experimenting, and it’s like a gathering of friends (especially since tickets for those shows are typically available only to fans on his own mailing list).
We first did this with his 2000 tour “Circle,” seeing him in a little rectangle in Greenwich Village, on a night when he was fighting the flu, and I’m proud to tell you we were one of the first to see the famous “Darth Vader at the Death Star Canteen” routine. We caught “Circle” again later that year, in a big midtown theater as he was taping for the eventual video, but “Death Star Canteen” was never as funny as that first night. (A routine that was captured in a popular Lego fan version with NSFW language.)
Thinking back, these small-venue gigs are a lot more similar to what people like me have to do in our jobs. So what does he have to teach us about speaking in front of other people?
Make your points brief
This might be a strange thing to say, considering we’re talking about a performer who often stays on stage for three hours. But each topic is dealt with swiftly, and pointedly. Now, he’ll often loop back, making connections between topics and reaching conclusions that remained just out of reach earlier in the evening. But he doesn’t linger in one spot too long. For you: Keep it moving.
Establish an emotional connection
Izzard acknowledges the audience constantly, responds to them. Even though he is the international star and we are not, his casualness on stage serves to break through that invisible wall and establish intimacy. “It’s just like a big conversation each time,” he told Newsweek in 2008. “Every gig is a rehearsal.” For you: Relax, make eye contact, treat your presentation as a fascinating story you’re telling friends at dinner.
Be clear and direct
Yes, he sometimes mumbles, and digresses, and makes silly noises. But like the dialogue in Robert Altman’s great western McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which seems to be unintelligible much of the time, you always can clearly hear the important stuff you’re supposed to hear. For you: Use your voice and cadence to let people know what the key messages are.
Much of the message is visual
Izzard has said that how people respond to you is “70 percent how you look, 20 percent how you sound, and 10 percent what you say.” He made those numbers up, but the essence is true (some media trainers say that over 90 percent of the message is transmitted visually). People are hugely influenced by your body language and eye contact. One thing that Izzard does is move; he physically enacts parts of the stories he tells, or by simply adjusting his posture or the angle of his body gives life to the people and ideas (or talking animals) he is describing. For you: Take out the nails holding your shoes to the floor, and be a physical presence.
Respect your audience
Izzard brings in an array of ideas and references, and makes dazzling connections between them. Sometimes those connections happen so quickly that you have to think about what was just said before you can begin to get the joke (or even realize that a joke was made). In other words, Izzard assumes you are smart and well-read. For you: Don’t condescend to your audience; don’t spoon-feed basic stuff to people who really want you to get to the important things.
Be inclusive
“I’m a British European, I think like an American and was born in an Arabic country,” Izzard has said. A little empathy with your audience goes a long way. For you: Focus on the benefits to the audience, in ways that make sense to them. Consider it not so much telling other people what you want them to hear, but helping them understand what they need to know.
Be yourself
Eddie Izzard is a transvestite. Sometimes he dresses like a regular guy, with less eye makeup than Keith Richards wears. Other times he appears, uhm, very much different than that. It’s just who he is. He never apologizes or explains, though he does share some stories that arise out of that. For you: We’re all different. Be comfortable in your own skin, and you’ll make everyone else in the room a little more comfortable too.
Finally, when you’re giving that presentation, or that speech, humor is a good thing. A little laughter helps people be receptive to almost anything.