Next Workshop Date
14 June 2025
In this immersive 1-day experiential workshop, expert actors and storytellers share fundamental techniques for discovering confidence and standing out from the crowd.
Strengthen your body-mind connection, encounter your authentic voice and craft your compelling story to face your next presentation, interview or meeting with less anxiety and a whole new boldness.
Next Workshop Date
14 June 2025
In this intensive 1-day experiential workshop, expert actors and storytellers share fundamental techniques for discovering confidence and standing out from the crowd.
Next Workshop Date
14 June 2025
Strengthen your body-mind connection, encounter your authentic voice and craft your compelling story to face your next presentation, interview or meeting with less anxiety and a whole new boldness.
Early-Bird Special Valid For:
Early-Bird Special Valid For:
ABOUT
Find Your Public Persona is an immersive 1-day workshop where you will explore techniques used by performers and storytellers to give you a taste of your own authentic and effective presence.
This is an invitation to you to experience the possibility of presenting yourself confidently in challenging professional and social face-to-face situations.
Each of us has many real, authentic personas that we move in and out of daily in different situations, but many of us have not encountered – and developed – the persona who presents us confidently to the world. This persona has the potential to be charismatic, inspiring and influential.
Our 6-hour process will give you the opportunity to connect with this confident persona. We will introduce you to some techniques for evoking your public persona when you need to. These techniques are drawn from the actors’ and storytellers’ toolkits, and the methodologies are backed up by extensive, proven practice and some of the latest neuroscience research.
Our work together falls into three categories that we will call EMBODIMENT, STORY and VOICE. We’ll be engaging in a variety of short activities, each of which should give you an experience of an aspect of your confident presence.
The principle underpinning this session is that PRESENCE requires – and elicits – full attention and full humanity. There are no wrong ways to do these activities, but what you get out of them is up to you. We welcome your body-mind to a fun day of connection and communication!
PROGRAMME
09h00
Registration and Welcome
09h30
Meet the Mentors: the theory behind the workshop
10h00
EMBODIMENT: harnessing body-mind connection to become more present
11h30
Break
11h45
VOICE: encounter your authentic vocal presence
13h15
Lunch
13h45
STORY: identify your compelling story and charismatic purpose
14h45
Final directions: your public persona’s manifesto
15h00
Closing
LOCATION
(Secure parking on site)
First Floor
Sunrise House
55 Morningside St
Pinelands
Cape Town
7405
TESTIMONIAL
Before working with Adrian, I dreaded presentations and interviews — I just didn’t know how to show up with confidence. What I found in our sessions wasn’t a ‘trick’ or a ‘persona’ to fake, but a real version of myself that could speak with clarity and presence. I learned how to manage nerves, tell my story, and actually enjoy being in the spotlight. I’d recommend this to any student or young professional who wants to feel more comfortable and capable in high-stakes moments.
Sebastiano (Seb) Panieri
Engineering Student | Stellenbosch University
Working with Adrian gave me a whole new level of comfort and confidence in front of the camera. As someone who regularly speaks to millions through our YouTube channel, I thought I knew my voice—but these sessions uncovered a more grounded, authentic presence that I didn’t know I had. The techniques come from the world of performance, but they’re practical and immediately useful. If you’re looking to show up as your best self, especially under pressure, I can’t recommend this work highly enough.
Nic Puckrin
CEO & Founder | Coin Bureau
TEAM
Presence Mentors
Vicki Bawcombe
Screenwriter | Educator | Story Coach
Vicki Bawcombe is a screenwriter and story coach who has paired her own writing over the decades with teaching, lecturing and mentorship. As a painfully shy teenager she discovered first the library, and then the stage, where the world of make believe could become real and she could be anyone. After graduating from UCT she spent the next ten years performing full time in theatre, film, television and on radio.
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Vicki is passionate about the transformative power of story and believes that with honesty and a clear sense of purpose, our self-stories can become effective maps for how we navigate the world. Conveying these stories to others through an authentic embodied persona and finding the vocal power to tell them, are the cornerstones of this coaching offering.
Opportunities to write and direct children’s, educational and corporate productions gave Vicki a taste for scriptwriting and by the mid-1990s she was contributing to popular South African TV sitcoms such as Suburban Bliss and Going Up. While continuing to write professionally, she became a mentor and story coach supporting other writers, and in the early 2000s began her film and media lecturing career. She has held positions at AFDA, SAE, CPUT and UCT and is still invited to present modules in scriptwriting on an ad hoc basis.
A stretch at UCT’s Professional Communication Studies unit gave her the opportunity to work with students in Engineering and the Built Environment, developing their writing and presentation skills. During this time she also coached several UCT lecturers to enhance their physical and vocal presence and developed a short course on accent reduction to assist foreign teaching staff to be more readily understood. She loves working with voice and accent, and apart from her own work as a freelance voiceover artist, she has been the dialect coach on several theatre productions and the TV series Black Sails.
She now splits her time mainly between her work for USEFUL and writing for the screen. Die Nuusmaakers, for which she was the series storyliner, can be seen on Kyknet from 27 May.
With a distinguished career spanning four decades, Adrian Galley has worked professionally as an actor, voice-over artist, dialect coach, scriptwriter, journalist, and broadcaster. His expertise has been honed across stage and screen, in recording studios and lecture halls, with an unwavering commitment to the transformative power of language and performance.
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Today, Adrian is channeling this wealth of experience into helping emerging professionals find their voice and own the room. His coaching draws on his deep understanding of performance presence, emotional intelligence, and authentic storytelling—equipping students and young professionals to speak with conviction, present with impact, and build trust in every interaction.
Adrian holds a Master’s degree in Drama from the University of Cape Town, where his research explored the neuroscience of empathy and emotional contagion. His training began at the Drama School of the University of the Witwatersrand, followed by a course in Investigative Journalism at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. He later headed the Live Performance Department at the Cape Town campus of AFDA, the South African School of Motion Picture Medium & Live Performance. In 2023, Adrian earned a law degree in support of his ongoing activism as Vice Chair of the South African Guild of Actors, advocating for systemic reform in the industry.
A founder member of the Cape Chapter of the South African Scriptwriters’ Association (now the Writers Guild of SA), he also serves as convenor of the oversight committee for SAFREA, representing the interests of freelance media professionals.
With a postgraduate qualification in linguistics from Leiden University, Adrian is highly sought after as a dialect coach in theatre and film. He has coached actors in a broad range of accents including Macedonian, Spanish, Croatian, Serbian, German, standard American, Puerto Rican, and various British dialects.
His acting credits include nearly 50 stage productions and iconic Shakespearean roles. He was nominated for a Fleur du Cap Award for his performance as the narrator in The Rocky Horror Show, which ran for 444 sold-out performances. His musical theatre work includes touring Europe with Mandela Trilogy and Showboat, and acclaimed performances in Cabaret and West Side Story. On screen, he has featured in 25 films and 18 television series—including as Winston Churchill in the History Channel’s FDR.
Adrian’s voiceover work, produced largely from his own Cape Town studio, is heard on Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, eTV, and SABC, where he has voiced station imaging since eTV’s inception in 1998. He is a familiar voice on radio broadcasters such as SAfm, Radio RSA, 702, and Cape Talk, and has led countless campaigns for both local and international brands.
Adrian Galley
Performance Coach | Communication Strategist | Actor
Workshop Facilitators
Inez Robertson
Actor | Writer
Inez Robertson is a South African actor and writer based in Cape Town. She has starred in various short films such as ekstasis (2021), directed by Emilie Badenhorst and Kanya Viljoen, the bio-fiction Seasons of Longing (2024) directed by Robyn Phillips, and as Emma Louw in Ian Gabriel’s feature film Death of a Whistleblower, which premiered at TIFF in 2023. In 2022 she was the recipient of the Writer’s Guild of South Africa’s Muse Award for Best Short Film Spec Script for Soap.
Joseph Gaza was born in Kinshasa, Congo DR. He grew up in South Africa, and began his professional career in 2018. He’s an actor and musician who has been seen on various platforms including MNet, BBC, Netflix, YouTube and Spotify. He is known for roles in The Kissing Booth 2 (2020) and the television series Noughts & Crosses (2020), and for appearances on music stages in South Africa and the US. He got his Master of Fine Arts Degree from the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles and was a 2022 finalist at the International Models & Talents Awards in New York.
Joseph 'Le Prince' Lopodi Gaza
Actor | Artist
FAQ
Is this an acting workshop?
No. This workshop is aimed at non-actors and non-writers. It shares techniques from the world of entertainment with anyone who wishes to develop a stronger, more charismatic presence.
Who should attend this workshop?
Anyone interested in improving their presence and confidence in face-to-face situations—whether for professional presentations, networking, or social events—will benefit from this workshop. No prior experience in performance or storytelling is required.
What will I do during the workshop?
You’ll participate in a variety of short, interactive activities focused on three areas: EMBODIMENT, STORY, and VOICE. These exercises are designed to help you experience and access your confident presence.
How long is the workshop?
The workshop runs for 6 hours, including breaks and a light lunch.
What techniques will I learn?
You’ll be introduced to tried-and-tested methods that are used by performers to ground and centre themselves, manage nerves and inhabit the personas they present to their audience. You will also be invited to use an age-old storytelling approach to explore the story you want to present to the world. These methods will help you evoke your confident public persona whenever needed.
Is this workshop suitable for beginners?
Absolutely! The activities are accessible for everyone, regardless of experience. There are no wrong ways to participate, and the focus is on personal exploration.
What should I bring or prepare?
Just bring yourself and wear comfortable clothing that allows you to move freely. All materials needed for the activities will be provided.
Will I have to perform in front of others?
While the workshop is interactive, participation is always at your own comfort level. The aim is to create a supportive, non-judgmental environment where everyone feels safe to experiment.
What outcomes can I expect?
By the end of the workshop, you’ll have practical tools to access your confident persona, greater self-awareness, and a taste of how your authentic presence can be charismatic and influential.
How is this workshop different from other communication or public speaking courses?
This workshop is highly experiential and draws on creative, embodied methods from performance and storytelling, rather than just focusing on theory or traditional public speaking techniques.
Is there follow-up support after the workshop?
Details about follow-up resources or support will be provided during the workshop.
How do I get more information?
Should you have other questions, kindly fill in the contact form and a member of the team will be in touch with you directly.