My work in guided suggestion began as an exploration of communication. I was curious about what happens when words, rhythm, breath, tone and attention are used not simply to convey information, but to influence how a person experiences a moment.
That exploration changed the way I teach performance.
It reminded me that communication is never only about what we say. It is also about how we say it, what we leave unsaid, and what we invite the listener to imagine.
For performers, these distinctions are profound.
Here are four lessons that have stayed with me.
1. The Power of the Pause
One of the first things you notice in guided suggestion is the importance of silence.
A pause may appear to be nothing. In reality, it can create space for attention to settle, anticipation to build, and meaning to emerge.
The same is true in performance.
A performer who fills every moment with sound leaves the audience little room to participate. But a well-placed pause can make an audience lean forward. It can create suspense. It can allow an emotional thought to land.
Consider the difference between:
“I didn’t expect you to come.”
and:
“I didn’t expect you… to come.”
The words are identical. The experience is not.
The pause changes the listener’s relationship with the words.
This is particularly important in acting and music theatre. A pause can reveal hesitation, anticipation, grief, disbelief, intimacy or simply the character’s attempt to find the next thought.
Silence is not the absence of communication. Silence is part of communication.
As performers, we do not always need to do more.
Sometimes we need to give the moment enough space to breathe.
2. Intonation: The Music of the Spoken Word
Long before we understand the meaning of language, we respond to sound.
We notice pitch, rhythm, volume, pace, emphasis and vocal colour. These qualities help us interpret whether someone is inviting us closer, warning us, comforting us, teasing us or expressing urgency.
This is why two people can say exactly the same sentence and create completely different experiences.
For performers, the spoken word is therefore musical.
A sentence has rhythm.
A word has shape.
A vowel has colour.
A consonant has texture.
And the movement of the voice can reveal something that the words themselves do not explicitly state.
This becomes especially powerful in poetry, theatre and music theatre. The performer is simultaneously communicating through language and through sound.
The audience hears the thought.
But they also hear the feeling underneath the thought.
This is one reason technically accurate speech can still feel lifeless. The words may be correct, but the music of the voice has disappeared.
3. Repetition Creates Rhythm, Expectation and Association
Repetition is another powerful feature of guided suggestion.
A phrase repeated several times begins to acquire a different quality. It becomes familiar. Its rhythm creates expectation. Its meaning may deepen simply because we have encountered it repeatedly.
Performers have always understood this intuitively.
Think of a recurring phrase in a song.
A repeated line in a play.
A refrain in poetry.
A character who keeps returning to the same words.
Repetition can create musicality, reinforce an emotional idea, establish a pattern or invite the audience into a shared experience.
But repetition works best when it is purposeful.
Repeating a phrase mechanically rarely creates magic.
Repeating it with a change in intention can transform it.
The first repetition may establish an idea.
The second may deepen it.
The third may contradict it.
The fourth may reveal what the character could not previously say.
The words remain the same.
The meaning changes because the human being saying them has changed.
4. The Art of Suggestion: Leave Room for the Audience
Perhaps the most important lesson is the power of leaving something unfinished.
Good communication does not always tell people exactly what to think.
Sometimes it offers enough information for them to construct their own experience.
This is particularly important in performance.
The audience does not simply receive a performance. They complete it.
An actor gives us a character.
A singer gives us a song.
A director gives us a world.
But the audience brings its own memories, imagination and emotional associations.
That is why the same performance can affect two people completely differently.
One person hears a particular lyric and remembers a first love.
Another hears the same lyric and remembers a parent.
Another hears it and feels nothing particularly personal at all.
The performer cannot control these responses.
And perhaps that is precisely the point.
Our job is not to manufacture the audience’s emotional response.
Our job is to create the conditions in which a response can happen.
Performance Is an Invitation
This has changed the way I think about teaching performers.
I used to think more about what the performer needed to do.
Now I think much more about what the performer needs to notice.
Notice the breath.
Notice the pause.
Notice the sound of the word.
Notice where the thought changes.
Notice what the body is doing.
Notice what is being communicated without words.
And, perhaps most importantly, notice what you are leaving for the audience to discover.
This is particularly valuable in music theatre, where singing, acting, movement and storytelling exist simultaneously.
A performer is not simply producing sound.
They are shaping attention.
They are creating expectation.
They are offering information.
They are withholding information.
They are giving the audience somewhere to go.
What Guided Suggestion Taught Me
My exploration of guided suggestion ultimately brought me back to something I already knew as a voice and performance teacher, but understood differently.
The voice is not merely a delivery mechanism for words.
It is part of the experience of communication.
A pause can communicate.
A breath can communicate.
A vowel can communicate.
Silence can communicate.
And sometimes the most powerful performance choice is not to add another layer, but to remove one.
The performer does not need to control every response.
They need to be present enough to create the conditions for connection.
That is where performance becomes more than technique.
It becomes relationship.
And perhaps that is the real lesson:
We do not perform at an audience. We invite an audience into an experience.