minstrel: Re: Fwd: Embarrassing performance

[Lisa and Ken Theriot]

Eliza wrote:

[It is not stage fright - it's more like adrenaline - excitement.]


That's what stage fright is.  That's why it has a special name.  It just 
means you care, either (emotionally) about what your audience thinks of 
you, or (intellectually or artistically) about how you present your piece. 
 It's not true fear, in that you believe that some harm is going to befall 
you, but it is physiologically identical, so stop worrying about 
categorizing and accept that you have to deal with it pretty much as though 
a lion were chasing you.


Some people will tell you to practice more, or get more experience.  IMO, 
this is good advice for about 50% of folks.  Obviously, the more confident 
you are, the better, but _you_ know if you truly feel unprepared.  If you 
are reasonably proficient in your craft, and you aren't paralyzed at the 
mere thought of getting up in front of people, and you still feel 
adrenaline poisoning... sorry, but practice is probably not going to help 
you significantly, nor is "performing experience".  People who tell you 
that there will come a point where you have practiced enough or performed 
enough that stage fright will go away are doing you a great disservice.  If 
you are temperamentally disposed to stage fright, you are, and no amount of 
practice or experience will change the fact.


If you saw the Oscars last night, you may have seen Enya give a choked-up 
and below-average (for her) performance.  She left the family band 
(Clannad) precisely because she HATES performing live.  Barbra Streisand is 
another famous stage fright sufferer, and it has caused her to perform live 
but seldom (and purportedly never again).  And it's not just singers.  Look 
at the Olympics-- Michelle Kwan has done the same jumps for hours per day, 
every day of her life, for over a decade, and when the pressure is on, she 
still screws up occasionally.  (Performing is physical; sports psychology 
is very relevant!)  Nobody is more talented, practiced or experienced than 
these people, and yet the adrenaline beast gets them.  You're in excellent 
company.


Stage fright is natural, and I believe, beneficial _if_ you can control it. 
 You'll never give the peak performance without it; the day you feel NO 
anxiety about performing means that you don't care, either about your 
material or your audience, and there's no way your performance will be 
anything but lack-lustre, even if it is technically perfect.  I'm lucky, 
because though I feel like throwing up for most of the day prior to a big 
performance, it usually goes away when I step on the stage or hear the 
music start.  I don't feel nervous sitting on a living room floor singing 
for friends, but then I know I'll never give my best performance there, 
either.


You don't sound like you're in the unprepared, paralytic phase where you 
need to practice in front of friends and work your way up to strangers. 
 You simply have a strong adrenal response.  So deal with it, either 
physically or mentally.  Once you're in "fight or flight mode", you've got 
to control the adrenaline somehow, either by using it up or stopping the 
flow.  If you have the luxury of being out of view before a performance, 
you can deal with it physically.  Jumping jacks, wind sprints, even just 
strong windmill motions with your arms will get your heart pumping.  Far 
from making the situation worse, you will increase the metabolism 
(break-down) of the adrenaline, and by doing a short burst of physical 
activity, you will probably convince your body that you have "fought or 
fled" and the adrenaline should stop flowing.  Obviously, in the pub 
situation, or at a bardic circle, this isn't practical, so you have to go 
to a mind-over-matter approach.


You can deal with adrenaline mentally, using either biofeedback techniques 
or rituals, both of which are arguably forms of self-hypnosis.  There are 
some pretty cheap biofeedback monitors out there, and you truly can teach 
yourself to slow your system and control your physical response, but you 
have to work on it, and not everyone succeeds.  I'm pretty good at it, my 
husband is terrible.  His natural stress level is so high that unless he 
concentrates totally, he actually makes things worse.  The (I think) easier 
way to go is to create a ritual, something you always do before performing. 
 We are higher brain animals, and if we are thinking our way out of 
problem, it usually shuts down the "fight or flight" response.  I used to 
volunteer with the LA Philharmonic when Zubin Mehta was the conductor.  We 
used to laugh watching him backstage, because before EVERY performance, he 
would walk to the wings, take three deep breaths, reach into his pocket, 
pull out a comb, comb his hair straight back, replace the comb in the 
pocket, raise his right arm across his chest, then wave it forward and 
sweep onto the stage.  Every time.  I asked him about it once, and he said 
that was his ritual, it was how he let his body know that this was a 
performance and not a rehearsal.  He was "putting on his performance 
persona", because he was not given to theatrics in everyday situations, but 
he needed it when dealing with an audience.


Look at baseball players up at bat; some have religious rituals, like 
making the sign of the cross, others tap invisible dirt out of their 
cleats, usually in a particular order, or they take X number of practice 
swings, or they adjust their batting helmet.  It doesn't have to be 
practical, it just has to focus your mind.  Try touching every peg across 
the top of your harp, or doing finger dexterity drills a certain number of 
times (touch your thumb first to your index finger, then your middle 
fingers, then ring, then pinky, and back again).  Or create a ritual that 
separates the performing you from the practicing you; create a character 
who is confident and play the character rather than yourself.  When I teach 
vocal projection, I have everybody stand up and sing, then I tell them to 
pretend to be an opera singer, and have them sing again.  Their volume, 
tone, posture, presence, everything improves just in shifting from "Joe" to 
"Joe pretending to be Luciano Pavarotti"; the fantasy insulates them from 
the risk of exposing themselves.  Have a piece of jewelry that only your 
performing self wears or a mannerism only your performing self exhibits.


Michael wrote:

[One additional note: however meek you may feel inside, NEVER apologize to 
an audience, or disclaim your piece in any way.  Get up on the stage like 
you own it, knowing that the only flaws in your performance that the 
audience will ever see are the ones you point to.  If you do that, odds are 
strong that you will exit the stage knowing that you did nearly EVERYTHING 
wrong, only to be congratulated by your friends and told by strangers how 
wonderful you were.]


To which I respond with a loud "Amen!" and a quiet "Easier said than done". 
 My husband and I still wrestle with this at virtually every performance. 
 We know we are our most critical listeners, but we _are_ our most critical 
listeners.  It's tough to bury the immediate wince response when you know 
you've screwed up, under the colder logical knowledge that 95% of your 
audience (or more) hasn't a clue that anything went wrong.  I don't think I 
have ever given a performance so bad that someone hasn't come up to tell me 
how great it was, and I have given some baaaaaad performances.  Generally, 
non-musicians are non-critical; even if they are the type of people who 
would criticize someone, they probably lack the ear or the technical 
discernment to tell a good performance, either vocal or instrumental, from 
a bad one (unless it's _really_ bad).  Most musicians are non-critical, 
because they live in the same glass house you do.  With the exception of 
formal competitions, most people listening at performing venues, whether 
mundane or SCA, are there to have a good time.  They want you to succeed, 
and they want to enjoy your performance.  Whether you know them or not, 
they are much more ready to approve of you than not.  Running yourself down 
is a disservice to them, because you are interfering with their enjoyment; 
perhaps if you think of ignoring your own flaws as showing respect for your 
audience rather than the contrary, it will come more easily.


Only you can decide whether your adrenaline will "make playing in public 
impossible"; Barbra Streisand obviously made that decision.  But balance 
that against the joy that music brings you.  In our house, the mantra is a 
line from "Forever Plaid": "There's nothing on this or any other planet 
like being inside a good, tight chord."  There will always be times when 
you mess up and feel mortified, but there will be those shining moments 
when it all comes together that you will miss if you eschew public 
performance.  And when you tally up, remember that only you feel the bad 
moments, but the glorious ones bring joy not only to you, but to everyone 
within earshot.  In terms of net increase of happiness, it takes a lot of 
terrible performances to overcome even a few really good ones.


Adelaide