Bennett Brandriff and Josie Rourke
Bennett Brandriff is a barrister and a public speaking champion. Josie Rourke is the artistic director of the Bush Theatre in London and has also directed plays the Royal Shakespeare Company. The pair of them lead a workshop on rhetoric at the RSC.
Audio Excerpt
What makes a fool? In this excerpt, Brandriff and Rourke use a scene from Twelfth Night to demonstrate how someone thought to be a fool actually uses sharp rhetoric to win.
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Workshop Excerpt
BENNETT BRANDRIFF: The first thing that rhetoric is about is about understanding argument, about understanding the patterns of argument. Recognizing logical fallacies, fighting them, and occasionally – rather wrongly – deploying them yourself. That’s the first thing.
JOSIE ROURKE: I’m sorry, what’s a logical fallacy?
BENNETT BRANDRIFF: A logical fallacy is an erroneous argument. You’re trying to prove a particular point, but in order to do so you deploy, perhaps, a suggestion that has nothing to do with it, but which the person listening fears to — to come back. The Hilter gambit is a classic example. Vegetarianism is a good thing; Hitler was a vegetarian – ooh, Hitler — bad thing, ergo vegetarianism, bad thing. Ignoratio elenchi. There will be a lot of Latin so I’m hoping you’re going to keep up. So that the first thing — understanding argument.
The second thing; what is the second thing that you have to address your mind to? Rhetorical technique. You’ve got to draw on two thousand years worth of rhetorical training to devise an argument that is clear, well-structured, concise, and which has emotional impact – emotional buy-in from your audience. I’m going to give that to you today. Emotional buy-in. I can feel it, frisson, myself. And some of you – yes, you madam in particular – I can see are also feeling that emotional frisson . That is number two of what we’re going to do.
JOSIE ROURKE: What’s number three, Bennett?
BENNETT BRANDRIFF: Number three is performance. Hypocrisis, as the Greeks called it; acting, as we understand it. So those are the three elements.
