minstrel: performing with the shakes

[Heather Rose Jones]

At 9:55 PM -0500 3/24/02, Catherine Sayre wrote:

>
>To the lady who shakes when she plays, all I can recommend it keep 
>playing in public.  With time the shakes will go away.  Also, most 
>people watching you do not know that you are shaking.  I know that 
>knowledge helps when I am nervous.

I had/have the same problem -- when I first started doing "on stage" 
performing with the harp, it was almost incapacitating.  My hands 
would shake as if I had Parkinsons'.  I had to stick to my most basic 
arrangements because anything complex was going to get messed up. 
And I had to do a lot of "shutting out the audience", which isn't 
good for the "performance" end, but was pretty much necessary just to 
get through the pieces.

I can't guarantee that the shakes will entirely go away, though.  If 
you keep at it, the problem lessens to some degree, and you get a lot 
of practical experience in knowing that it's possible to just keep 
going even when you blow it.  But I've been playing the harp in "on 
stage" situations for ... hmm ... about 20 years now, and my hands 
_still_ shake when that mental spotlight hits.  I play incidental and 
processional music for my department's graduation every year, and I'm 
fine when I'm doing the incidental music as people are coming in and 
getting seated, but when they signal me from the back of the room and 
I strike up the processional and everybody's really _listening_ then 
my heart starts racing and my hands start shaking and I'm glad that I 
write my processionals with that experience in mind.

I also can't assure you that the audience won't know you're shaking. 
The first time I performed in competition on the harp (a small, 
friendly SCA competition), a friend came up to me afterwards to ask 
if I were ill or something.  I suspect that a lot of times the 
listeners simply assume that I'm not that skilled a player when I 
screw up or hit the clinkers.  I know this doesn't sound reassuring, 
but I suspect that it's even _less_ reassuring if the responses you 
get don't seem to understand the basic problem.

I get horrible physiological stage fright -- I always have, and I 
probably always will.  It's not something that any amount of psyching 
myself up or reassuring advice from other performers has ever had an 
affect on.  I think that people who don't have the same level of 
physiological reaction don't actually believe me when I describe it. 
I hear a lot of "Oh, the adrenaline makes me perform better" and 
similar opinions.  Performing in "spotlight" situations is something 
that I find physically very unpleasant.  On the other hand, the 
non-physical aspects are why I do it and more than balance it out.

While practicing your brains out before performing is an absolute 
essential, in some ways the only practicing that counts is actual 
stage time.  I.e., it order to work through it to any significant 
degree, you have to grit your teeth and be willing to make a fool of 
yourself for a while until your body starts to get tired of 
maintaining that level of panic.

Tangwystyl
-- 
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu
*****