minstrel: performing with the shakes

[Katy Kramp]

Luckily for me, my shakes usually start only after a performance.

However, here is a trick I've heard of, which might help you somewhat:

Set up your practice as a performance.  Dress in your performance clothes, 
set up a time, and most importantly, imagine an audience.  Fill it will 
people you know, and picture each one of them and their reactions as 
closely as you can.  Obviously, not quite as good as a real audience - but 
making your head believe there's an audience can actually go a long way 
towards making your body believe it as well, thus at least giving you more 
time to practice how to work around it.

- Elsa, who's just realized that she's been performing for 15 years now...

--On Monday, March 25, 2002 8:55 AM -0800 Heather Rose Jones 
<hrjones at socrates.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

> 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
> *****
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