Public Speaking and Finding the Self

Who were you before you were told who to be?

Călin Coțoiu and Ana-Maria Cononovici, 09.03.2026, 19:27

Who were you before you were told who to be? This is one of the questions in a campaign launched by Teatrul Simplu, under the motto “I succeeded!” In addition to acting courses, public speaking workshops are held here, led by its founder, actress Alice Nicolae.

I asked Alice Nicolae where this idea came from and why a public speaking course is important:

“The idea came a long time ago, somewhere in 2011, when I was a recent graduate of a Master’s degree in acting, in classical theater, I noticed a great need for people with wonderful ideas to manage their emotions in order to be able to speak in front of an audience. My professor Radu Gabriel came on the last day of the course and said “I have good news and some less good news: the good news is that you are very talented, the less good news is that there are many of you and each of you needs to find another calling”. And I heard, I understood and I realized that acting had done wonders for me in the sense that it helped me manage my emotions and that I could pass this on. With emotion and without knowing exactly what awaited me, I remember how I formed the first group in the fall of that year, I announced the news to the country, I gathered a handful of people who wanted this and then, the first action, right, acting comes from acting, through action and perseverance, we have been doing groups repeatedly since then. So, it has been 15 years, our story has expanded, now we also teach acting, we do plays. But that’s where it all started.”

Alice Nicolae seems to have found her calling, and one of the tangible results is the creation of a platform where people can find themselves and then express themselves freely:

“I don’t know how many of us are satisfied that we have completed I don’t know how many tasks, but we are happy when we have an impact on the lives of others, that is, when what we say reaches those we are targeting. And then I think that a person who manages to convey a message with clarity, who manages to impact the people around him, is a person who has a better, happier life. We are very happy because we can bring acting closer to people, it is an art that truly changes lives for many of us, not only when it comes to public speaking and managing emotions, but also through connecting with oneself and self-knowledge. It is truly satisfying and uplifting, so if people feel like doing this, let them do it!”

George Grigorescu, a participant in the Public Speaking courses organized by Teatrul Simplu, is a person always interested in personal development. We learned from him that, after practicing tango between 2011 and 2016, during which he learned that dance is like life, once he joined the classes organized by Alice Nicolae, he discovered the importance of vulnerability in everything you do.

“Like every opportunity I’ve had so far, I said I’d give it a try. The public speaking thing started more out of curiosity than out of a desire to be able to speak in public. They say that public speaking is the second greatest fear of man after the dentist. We do theory, we learn how to structure a speech, we learn to control our emotions, we learn to have eye contact, we learn to ask closed questions rather than open ones when we’re outlining our speech, we learn to repeat key words, but in the end comes the litmus test: that of showing that you can give a speech, for five minutes, in front of an audience. And it wasn’t a small audience, in the sense that it took place somewhere in Bucharest where approximately 50 people participated in a conference room. There were 6 of us colleagues who spoke. We were pretty nervous. But once we rehearsed the structure of what we had to say, we got the feedback from our guide, and she, Alice Nicolae, was more than just a technical guide, she was also an emotional guide, we managed to pass the test successfully. It seemed to me that each of us managed to successfully overcome our fear of public speaking.”

The public speaking event was also held under the motto “We succeeded!”, because each participant achieved something. George Grigorescu returned with details:

“The topics were chosen by each of us, along the way some of us changed the topic, it was a free speech, each one spoke more from personal experience. The course spanned 8 communication sessions of two and a half hours each, each session having a distinct theme and addressing different aspects of what it means to create structure, control emotions, how you present information. One of the examples that seemed brilliant to me is that if you no longer know what’s coming, it’s no problem, because the audience hasn’t read your speech beforehand. I thought it was extraordinary that you can manage to recover just by a simple pause. You lost the logical thread, or you heard a whistle in the hall, who knows how many things can distract you from the speech you’re giving.”

We asked George Grigorescu if he discovered anything unexpected in this whole process: “I think the most important lesson I had to learn was that I had to be vulnerable, to allow myself to bring a vulnerable part of my experience into this speech. To be a being who connects to his own emotion, feels it, and at the same time speaks from there. People feel when you are not vulnerable! The more you manage to make the speech more human, the more impactful it is.”

A call to authenticity, so welcome in challenging times like the ones we are living in!