minstrel: performing with the shakes

[Jennifer Doherty]

Greetings all,

I can't seem to find the original post but...  Is this ALL performances or 
just ones where you are "center stage"?  I've found it's a lot easier to be 
terrified while singing in court, feast, for high-table etc., but a good 
bardic circle it's easier to relax.

Usually its a relaxed atmosphere with friends, so the "oh no, what if I mess 
up" fear isn't usually as pronounced.  Most of the circles I've attended, 
you don't have to stand up to perform, unless it's easier for you, so the 
spotlight is "off".  And it provides a nice place to warm up, try new 
material, learn new songs as well as gauging your audience to see what song 
styles are popular.  And I've usually found that whatever "shakes" I have, 
by the second or third time around the circle I've relaxed.  So the 
butterflies might still be dining, but the shakes at least have stopped.

Also, if more formal venues are scary, try some informal ones.  The kitchen 
staff (particularly during dish duty) love the entertainment and there's not 
a lot of pressure.  Anyone sitting Troll during a long stretch with no 
check-in's have often been appreciative too.  (Particularly midnight on a 
friday night of a camping weekend!).

Just my two cents.  Cheers,

Anna MacKenzie
BardofBH at hotmail.com
Barony of the Bright Hills
K. of Atlantia





----Original Message Follows----
From: Katy Kramp <katyk at umich.edu>
To: minstrel at pbm.com
Subject: Re: minstrel: performing with the shakes
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 18:48:17 -0500

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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>




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