#7 - Iana Serena De Freitas Ribeiro @ Théâtre Les Pieds Nus - On living Aligned
Podcast Transcript on substack | Video on Youtube
My guest today is Iana Serena De Freitas Ribeiro.
Based in Paris, Iana is an actor, an NLP coach, and a yoga teacher. She is the director of artistic projects at Théâtre Les Pieds Nus.
After seeing glimpses of her work online, I was particularly interested in her journey of transformation from her business-schooled corporate self to her becoming a full-blown artist, supporting people in their personal development.
In this episode, we talk about:
🦋 Her journey through burnout to blossoming
🛠️ Actionable insights we can derive from her experience
🎭 Her approach to theater, an interactive upgrade of its Antique form
Am I honest?
Iana started talking about being honest. We know the word, and she meant something deep through it so she took the time to explain to me. Honesty for her is when you are in touch with your deep truth — what your needs are, what your intentions are, for real, not a fuzzy direction but knowing really what you want and what you don’t — and living from that truth, being aligned.
An honesty I heard being called “courage” because it means saying no, but for Iana, the difficult part seems to have been finding that truth. Saying “no” sounded easier. When you know who you want to be, “even saying “no” is peaceful”, once you are aligned deep within, it is easier to align with others.
Her journey to alignment took some time, she recognized her artistic self when she was 7 but to prioritize faster financial autonomy and meet what she perceived the expectations of her family to be, she chose a business career. It took many physical signs, including a burn out to put arts and what she truly values front and center: being honest, having an impact, and prioritizing the impact on today’s challenges (our need to change our lifestyle for a planet that can’t wait).
Am I allowing blank spaces?
Iana did not switch overnight from her corporate life at Accor to becoming a yoga teacher, a professional actor, a director, and an NLP coach. She let go of her apartment, her relationship, and her job and there was nothingness.
She spoke of two years of break. She owns that break and it is from the space she made that new things could emerge. Acting started to take more space in her life, she layered NLP in order to support her teaching and then yoga to enrich her movement acting and teaching.
You might not see an output in terms of creativity or income, and you might not even see any proof of that work when you look from the outside, but the deep inner work flourishes in such moments. And it can only happen if you allow it.
Am I giving my best? Do I allow myself to be magical?
Just as Iana’s leitmotif is “being aligned”, for some reason I spent a good amount of time in the episode talking about being “all in” and feeling some kind of calling to go all in. And I can feel how these questions or even prompts to Iana were for me. Am I giving my best? Do I allow myself to be magical?
Iana keeps surprising herself with what she is capable of. The decision to be a professional actor allowed this to happen. And she is pushing the boundaries of interactive performance in theater. Few of us are willing to bet it all on our ideas, performances, beliefs, projects. We invest ourselves in many different projects. If we are lucky all these projects are important and impactful. But (single?) focus enables us to become magical. It brings back Gladwell’s “10 000-hour rule”, the key to achieving true expertise in any skill is simply a matter of practicing, albeit in the correct way, for at least 10 000 hours.
What’s my Why? Am I being helpful?
Iana closed our conversation with a reference to Simone Sinek’s famous book and TEDx: Find and remember your why, to do the right thing, and also when things get rough and you need to stay motivated to return to work.
And “why” is also how she started our interview when I asked her how she introduces herself, her why was all about being aligned, reminding me of Gandhi’s “My Life is my Message”, having an impact for a planet that can’t wait.
And when I started talking about innovation and it felt like innovation for the sake of innovating, she went back to her center and reminded me of what matters to her: serving people, improving the lives of others through her acting and teaching, if the innovation is aligned, then yes, otherwise no.
A Full-Blown Interactive Vision of Theater
Iana shared how reduced our understanding of theater has become. The meaning we have in mind is someone on stage reciting lines they have learned. Her vision of theater is closer to what the Greeks and Romans of Antiquity were offering: singing, dancing, and acting. Amusing that the innovation is to go back 2000 years ago.
I have been fascinated by the interactive potential of theater, a potential that is not yet much realized and I was surprised to discover that Iana and Bastien (her partner in crime) are developing interactive plays that push the envelope: 4 stages around a central audience, getting the audience to participate before, during and after: having drinks before the show, welcoming them personally, organizing a wedding ceremony where the participants are treated as guests, etc.
Theater as a Transformative Experience
Iana spoke about the importance of helping her audience “arrive” at the performance. Parts of them are still in traffic or have not even left the office yet. You need to create a transitory space before the concert so people can actually experience it fully.
You want people to be fully here because of the deep work you want to do with them. The play is a transformative experience, one that has the potential to lift their spirit, transform their worldviews, and deconstruct their identity. It is one of the rare opportunities to get a group to equalize, and sync through an experience, individualities blur as people become one.
One of the main ways people come to Iana’s theater school is that they have seen the show and they felt something, they enjoyed the experience of being the audience and they want to try, meet the group, and know more. So these are the first steps: surprise and awe, then further curiosity, leading them to sign up for a class.
They show and Iana and her team offer them a wide range of activities: clown, masks, yoga, breathwork, physical exercise, voice exercises, so they can play with different characters, new energies, to get some movement and space in their identity, breaking from psychological fixity and opening towards flow.
Iana mentioned an exercise her students dread: sitting on a chair and talking nonstop. It is hard when you’re judging yourself and you want to maintain your personal filters (what is correct to say, what looks smart and culturally advanced). You can’t go into improvisation and flow while maintaining self-judgment so the voice of judgment becomes apparent.
Where personal development is usually a long project where you stack positive habits over time, theater gives you this opportunity to be who you want to be in this instant. Like Sutra and Tantra.
Our responsibility as teachers
Iana reminded us of the importance of taking good care of our participants, providing a safe environment and experiences with as little risk as possible.
Transformative experiences are opportunities to outgrow our former selves and shine, but they also contain the risk to get hurt and adding traumas. How do you first let people discover their limits and develop the capability to say “no”. What is OK and what is not OK for you at this moment?
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