Weekly Voice Insights #78 - Répétition
Rehearsal, Direction, and the Early Stages of Work
Epictetus writes:
If you want to make progress, be willing to look foolish in the eyes of others.
I hear that less as a statement about courage and more as a description of rehearsal. Real work begins before things are polished, before choices feel settled, and before we know whether what we’re trying will hold. In other words, progress often starts in repetition—when the outcome is still unclear and the only task is to stay with the work long enough to learn from it.
That came into focus for me while preparing for an upcoming Valentine’s Day concert. A friend and colleague—someone I’ve performed with before and deeply respect—helped connect us with these performances and suggested that we include a few duets. It was genuinely lovely to be asked. She proposed Something Stupid, the Frank and Nancy Sinatra song.
Of course I knew the piece. Its familiarity wasn’t the issue. What surfaced instead was something more subtle: that quick, internal commentary that arrives before the work has even begun. A kind of mental chatter that evaluates capability before any evidence is gathered. It’s fast, persuasive, and often mistaken.
Rather than taking that first response as fact, I turned toward the song itself. I looked closely at the text. I checked the range. I paid attention to what the piece was actually asking for—how conversational it is, how much restraint it requires, how lightly it needs to sit when it’s allowed to be what it is.
As that examination continued, something shifted. Not dramatically. I didn’t talk myself into confidence. Instead, the initial noise lost relevance. The work began supplying clearer information than the early judgments ever could. Through contact with the material, I could make grounded choices about what fit and what didn’t.
This is where rehearsal matters. In French, the word for rehearsal is répétition. It’s a direct reminder of what rehearsal actually is: repetition. Not a demand for correctness on the first pass, but permission to go through something again, notice what happens, make adjustments, and try again. Rehearsal is not the place for perfection. It’s the place where information accumulates.
When something is new, the uncertainty isn’t only about execution. It’s about direction. Repetition provides orientation. With each pass, the path becomes clearer.
And yet, it’s easy to forget that. The mind is quick to focus on what feels wrong—what didn’t line up, what slipped, what could have been better—especially when learning a piece. That’s one reason listening back to rehearsal recordings can be so useful. When you’re no longer actively in the moment, you can hear more clearly. You can notice what actually happened rather than what you feared was happening. You begin to distinguish between what needs attention and what simply needs another repetition.
From the inside, this can feel almost unremarkable. There’s no moment of arrival, no sense of having crossed a threshold. Just a quiet transition—from reacting to the idea of the work to engaging with the work itself.
Epictetus doesn’t promise ease. He points instead to willingness: the willingness to enter before polish appears, before judgment quiets down. In practice, that willingness looks very ordinary. You study the text. You listen. You repeat.
And you allow the work to stand long enough to teach you something.
