The project "The Art of Public Speaking" presents an Australian-born comedian Louis Zezeran, who currently lives and works in Estonia. The comedian will share the secrets of public speaking, will present the importance of humour and its use in rethoric. Learn to prepare for speaking, to deliver the speech, make the public laugh and discover your own style for this great expert of the field!
The event will be held in English.
Louis Zezeran is a Stand Up comedian and Startup founder, originally from Newcastle Australia and has been living for almost a decade in Tallinn. Louis was one of the founders of "Comedy Estonia" which introduced Stand Up culture to the country over 8 years ago and has now grown into a fully fledged events promotion and artist management agency working across Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Louis' background is a diverse mix, he started with a Master's degree in Computer Science where he quickly fell into being a software trainer, as it was clear he was better at talking than sitting down for days on end with his head in computer code. At the age of 25 and living in Sydney an important event happened to Louis: he went to the theater for the first time. It was just student theater for 100 people at the university, invited by a friend who was part of the production and afterward he asked if he could help them out.
"I had never met people like these artists and actors before. Outgoing, expressive, creative, constantly having new ideas. These people were an influence on me like I had never had before and I wanted more and more of it. I also noticed they tended to be emotional at times, with ups and downs and this seemed to be part of the artistic process. Pursuing art seemed to mean embracing the good and the bad, I was totally fascinated by this, a whole new world compared to my life in IT.
I knew I wanted to hang out with these people and I quickly became a producer, as I was able to give them my basic project management skills and they opened my eyes to this new way of thinking. It has been that mixture of art and business which has defined my career for the past 13 years, living in that zone as both a Stand Up comedian and a startup entrepreneur"
Based in Estonia, Louis has 17 years experience in talking and helping people to talk better. A large part of his job at Comedy Estonia is "Talent Management" which means developing and mentoring young Estonian Stand Up comedians. However, Louis does not speak Estonian and this has developed into a unique and useful mechanism, while he does not understand all of the words, it does allow some detachment which is vital when mentoring artists as they need direction but they also need to feel they have space to explore their own directions. Despite having an allergy to 9 to 5 work, Louis still does consulting for companies, helping them with their presentation skills and also broader topics like internal company communication and working in a mixed language environment.
Our talk on the 18th of October in Vilnius will be about how regular people can learn how to speak better in public. His style is very practical, with a small mix of theory combined with real steps and procedures which if followed, will help you produce and present your ideas better.
Some of the areas covered in this talk
- Understanding how the audience will see you
- The importance of preparation: a practical list of steps to go from a blank page to a first draft of your script
- Practicing and editing down the script
- How to then throw away that script and not sound like a robot saying prepared words.
- How to avoid the nerves on the day (there are more ways to calm down that just take a shot of vodka)
- Why humor is important in speaking but it must come naturally. Not every talk needs to be hugely energetic; communicating your genuine self will work much better
