Steps to conquer stage fright: Doing the work

This is a series about conquering stage fright. First, we talked about the importance of knowing yourself. Then, we talked about the fear factor. Last week, we talked about creating positive experiences to help fight the panic. This week, we’re looking at the importance of knowing what you’re doing.

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Some of you may know that I’ve been in Australia for the past few weeks. Tonight on the news, there was a report about the preparations of Australia’s leading artistic gymnast Lauren Mitchell for the 2012 Olympics. After winning gold medals at the 2010 World Championships, Mitchell said she immediately began preparing her routines for London 2012.

She has been working on them exclusively ever since.

Sometimes we forget the levels of training and dedication that experts devote to their pursuits. In order to win a gold medal, Lauren Mitchell is working every day to make sure that she knows every split second of the routines she will perform later this year. And I am willing to bet that she is working on two different fronts:

  1. The specifics of each routine – the protocols for each move she is going to make. FM Alexander would call this the “means-whereby.”
  2. Her general condition, or the means whereby Miss Mitchell uses her body. (Don’t worry if the distinction seems tricky – this bit is for the Alexander teachers out there!)

Today I want to talk about the specifics – we’ll save the more general for next week.

If there is one lesson to take from Lauren Mitchell, it is this. Excellence takes work. If we want to be good at something, we need to do the work. For Miss Mitchell, it means breaking down her routines into split seconds, rehearsing each and every movement. It means making sure that she knows every movement so well that she barely needs to think about them at all.

So if I am to perform a new piece of music, I should know every note intimately. If I am giving an after-dinner speech, I should know not just every joke, but the position of every comma.

How well do you know the piece you are about to perform? What difference does it make to your nerves when you know it really well? Let me know in the comments.

 

*In the chapter I am looking at from Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, ‘Uncontrolled Emotions and Fixed Prejudices’, you will see that FM uses both ways of writing the words ‘means whereby’, and he seems to make a clear distinction between the two uses. See Irdeat Complete Edition, pp.341-2.

 

 

Steps to conquer stage fright: How to banish panic

This is a series about conquering stage fright. First, we talked about the importance of knowing yourself. Last week, we talked about the fear factor. This week, we’re talking about creating positive experiences to help fight the panic.

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Last week I talked a little about the fear symptoms we experience when we’re about to perform. I explained that many of the symptoms that we experience are the result of hormonal ‘fight or flight’ response – what FM Alexander described in 1923 as ‘fear reflexes’.*

Right on cue, after I posted my article, a friend of mine posted a link on Facebook to an article in Scientific American, entitled ‘This is Your Brain in Meltdown.’ The authors are scientists who have been researching the way even small amounts of stress can cause us to jettison the logic-based functions of our pre-frontal cortex (home of our executive centre), and fall back upon the primitive reactions of our amygdala to take over. The amygdala is responsible for emotional responses, and can cause us to experience mental paralysis and logical ‘meltdown’.

I bet many of us have experienced this kind of mental paralysis. I can remember a music performance where I was so paralysed that I couldn’t remember not just what the first note was, but also what fingering I should use to play it!

So how do the scientists recommend we prevent our brains jettisoning our reasoning and going primitive? Interestingly, current research seems to be confirming FM Alexander’s principle of building a ‘staircase’ of satisfactory experiences to build confidence. The scientists write:

“Animal research suggests that the sense of psychological control that becomes second nature to a soldier or emergency medical technician remains the deciding factor in whether we fall apart during stress… The routines of the drill sergeant are mirrored by animal studies that show that juveniles grow up to be more capable in handling stress if they have had multiple, successful experiences confronting mild stress in their youth.”

 

Steps to success!

If you have a big performance or presentation coming up, here is a plan to help you prepare.

  1. Prepare your speech/performance thoroughly. The better you know it, the less you will need to work your pre-frontal cortex to remember the words or music.
  2. Do trial performances. Find a sympathetic audience or three. Or six. My recorder quartet like to trial new music at our local music festival, where the audience is small but appreciative. If you’re doing public speaking, find a local Toastmasters group (or similar) where the members are friendly and knowledgeable.
  3. Have a goal for your performance. Small goals help you to keep focussed. When I played a recorder solo recently, my goal was not to win the prize at the festival. My goal was to play a very difficult piece of music, to allow for mistakes to happen, and to keep going. And I did.

Do you freeze pre-performance? Do you become irritable? Have you tried having goals and constructing a stairway to success? Tell me about it in the comments!

* FM Alexander, Constructive Conscous Control of the Individual in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.338.

Photo by criminalatt from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Steps to conquer stage fright: Fight the fear factor

This is a series about conquering stage fright. Last week, we talked about the importance of knowing yourself. This week, we’re talking about the fear factor.

 

There was a pause. The group in the room all turned towards me expectantly. This was the moment I had feared. I breathed in slowly, trying to control my thumping heart. This is it, I thought. I tried to collect my thoughts, remember what I had to do. It’s now or never.

“Kalimera. Me lene Jennifer. Pos se lene?”

 

Yes, that was my first ever Greek class, and my first sentence in Greek. Scary stuff. My heart pounded, I can tell you, just as it used to every time I performed as a musician or actor.

But why? Why did it pound? Why was I so anxious about saying a very few words (albeit in a foreign language)? I mean, it isn’t as though I was doing anything death-defying!

And that’s just the point. When we stand up to make that speech or sing that song, our bodies pump us full of adrenalin. It’s the chemical that is behind the fight or flight response, the response that was so useful to us when we had to deal with dangerous animals on a daily basis.

But when we are onstage, or making a speech, we aren’t being chased by a lion. We aren’t in danger of imminent death. Our bodies just make us feel that way. I think this may be part of the reason why FM Alexander wrote “Unduly excited fear reflexes, uncontrolled emotions … are retarding factors in all human development… This is particularly the case when a person endeavours to learn something calling for new experiences.”

So how do we deal with the fluttering tummy and pounding heart?

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Steps to fighting the fear

1. Accept that it is normal. So often my students think that the physical signs of adrenalin are bad and wrong and they shouldn’t be feeling them. On the contrary, it’s a normal reaction to stress. So don’t stress about it!

2. We need to do something to make the activity that is stressful to us, not stressful any more. And the classic way to do this is to give ourselves a few trial runs. FM Alexander says of teaching that the teacher should ask the student “to learn gradually to remember the guiding orders or directions.” And why learn them gradually? Be ause, in Alexander’s words, “satisfactory experiences … make for confidence.”

3. Give ourselves time. If we allow ourselves trial runs and give ourselves confidence from our steps to success, Alexander says that success is guaranteed. But he doesn’t say when: “This may not be today, tomorrow or the next day, but it will be…” So let’s give ourselves time, and a little bit of latitude!

 

Do you get butterflies? Do they stress you out? How will you deal with them next time?

Quotes are from Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, Irdeat Complete Edition, pp.338-9.
Image by renjith krishnan from FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

 

Steps to conquer stage fright: Know yourself!

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A week or two ago, I did something I haven’t done in a fair while (and no, I won’t tell you just how many years!). I performed an instrumental solo in public.

It was only a local festival competition, and the audience wasn’t large. But it was a big occasion for me. For me, it was proof that I had finally found the key to the anxieties that I used to suffer before every performance. I was a stage fright sufferer.

And now I’m not.

Stage fright is a big problem, whether you’re a musician, a famous actor, or faced with giving the best man’s speech at your friend’s wedding. In fact, in the UK I believe that speaking in public ranks even above death as the thing that most frightens the general public!

In the next few weeks, I want to share with you the things that I have learned through studying the Alexander Technique that have helped me to conquer my stage fright. And for the first week, I’m going to start with the principle from FM Alexander’s work that makes it all possible.

 

Know thyself.

There’s a wonderful sentence in the introduction of FM Alexander’s final book. It’s towards the end of the chapter, and the unwary would find it slide past their eyes very easily. But it is pure gold. Here it is.

“I think I may confidently predict that those who are sufficiently interested in the findings I have recorded … will find their outlook and understanding … so completely changed that they will see that knowledge of the self is fundamental to all other knowledge”

Alexander makes three major claims here.

1. His work changes students’ outlook and understanding

2. His work is all about knowledge of the self

3. Knowledge of the self is prior to all other knowledge

This is important to stage fright sufferers because we tend to look for external fixes to our problems. We try imagining that the audience are in their underwear. We try deep breathing exercises. We walk; we pace. Some of us resort to alcohol to calm us down. Above all, we try to deal with the awful thought that our anxiety is all our own fault because we aren’t courageous enough.

This isn’t true. We don’t suffer from a lack of courage. We suffer from a lack of knowledge of ourselves: how we tick as humans. We need to know about adrenalin and the fight/flight response. We need to know about discipline. We need to know about attitude of mind.

And those are some of the topics that I’ll be dealing with in future weeks, because these are all areas where the Alexander Technique has helped me.

And does it help performers? Just listen to Dame Nellie Melba, pre-eminent soprano of the early years of the twentieth century:

“When we come to know that certain actions produce certain results,  and when we can, at will, perform those actions, uncertainty is removed, and uncertainty is at the root of most of our fears. In singing, as in all else, the precept “Know thyself” is of the utmost importance.”

So. Do you know yourself? Do you know how you get your results?

Image by scottchan from FreeDigitalphotos.net

Children and (Learned) Stage Fright: a Rant

This is an undisguised rant about stage fright, why our children grow up to be nervous in front of audiences, and why the Alexander Technique is so important.

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Recently my son played cello in his first ever school concert. He got excited about a new piece, and though he didn’t know it very well, he decided he wanted to play  it  instead of the two he’d been practising. Predictibly, he got stuck mid-piece, and I had to murmur hints to help him to the end.

When he sat down, another parent leaned over to him and said in a consoling tone, “It was very brave of you to keep playing. Well done.”

Both he and I fielded many such comments over the next few days. One even said (to me, luckily), “I don’t know how he did it. I would have burst into tears.”

These sound like nice, nurturing, supportive comments, don’t they? So why was my son nonplussed, and why do I feel the urge to rant?

Because they are not supportive comments. And here is why.

These comments come from a very particular world view. If I asked the parents involved, they would probably admit that, in their eyes, having to perform in front of an audience is tantamount to torture. And making a mistake in front of an audience is just about the most awful thing that can happen to you.

But this is just a point of view. It might be common, but that doesn’t make it the only right or normal way to think about performing. How about this for an alternative: there’s an audience of really nice people waiting to hear me play, and I am going to share my favourite music with them. (That was what my son was thinking. I know, because I asked him.)

So which would you rather be thinking as you walked onto the stage: ‘this is torture and I hope I don’t mess up’ or ‘I get to share my fun with all these people’?

The sad thing about the concert was watching all the other children. Many of them were clearly afraid and couldn’t get off the stage fast enough. One girl even burst into tears beforehand and refused to play.

That sort of fear is a learned behaviour. We are not born with a natural fear of performing. We learn it from the people we love and respect.

So… You may be content to live with a fear of speaking or performing in front of strangers. You may be content as you are. Fair enough. But I want to ask you the same thing FM Alexander asked in 1911:

“What of the children?” Are you content to rob them of their inheritance…? Are you willing to send them out into the world ill-equipped, dependent on precepts and incipient habits…? *

Those of us who have any contact at all with children have a tremendous responsibility. The paradigms we live in, the views we hold have the potential to mould their thoughts and actions, for better or worse. In today’s world, a fear of performing or presenting is a serious handicap – one that we would be crazy to want to pass on. For the children’s sake, if not for our own, we seriously need to  reconsider our ideas and attitudes about doing stuff in front of an audience. And for me, the work of FM Alexander is a great way to start that process.

 

*FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance, in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.68.

Image by scottchan from FreeDigitalphotos.net

Stage Fright and Alexander Technique: Direct and Indirect Learning

It’s Guest Post Time!
A post from my colleague Karen Evans about her experiences of stage fright, and how we can work indirectly to solve our problems, step by step…

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This post involves quite a long story about me. My apologies. I think the details are important, in an indirect sort of way.
I play the piano. Not professionally, just in a fairly average, amateur way. And as much as I love it, there’s always been an element of fear. For years I would not play if anyone else was in the room. Usually I waited until the next-door neighbours were out.
On the other hand, I really missed playing with other people. I used to play violin in orchestras, and sing in choirs, and now I don’t (long story). Making music with other people has a buzz all of its own.
However, experiments playing for people to hear were not successful. Butterflies in the stomach I can cope with. Complete congealing of the brain is something different. You can’t see what is written on the page, you have no idea where your hands are on the keyboard and those hands are shaking badly. It is not conducive to playing well. And when this starts at random in the middle of a piece of music and will not stop (oh how I envied those people who say ‘Once I get started I’m fine’), it’s pretty catastrophic.
Now here’s the weird bit. I didn’t set out to conquer my stage fright. It was always something for the future; I had other, much more pressing challenges in the present. But, the idea that “I’m a musician, the whole point is to perform music” kept running round my brain. And here and there little things happened.

 

Little things that make a difference
First, I asked my husband to listen to me (he was delighted!). It took several goes, over several months, before my hands stopped shaking. Then came the Christmas carols for the family singsong.
That turned into a game of ‘hunt the right note’, but fortunately everyone was singing so loud they couldn’t hear me. Next was accompanying my sister for sight-reading practise. I stopped apologising for mistakes only at the point where she got really cross – about the apologies, not about the mistakes!
This all took place over months and years, when the right mood and the right chance coincided. Each time took a lot of courage, and a lot of convincing myself not to sell the piano afterwards. But I kept thinking about it, in a behind-the-scenes sort of way.
Next step; one of my Alexander students, a singer, said he needed an accompanist. We negotiated for rehearsals only, and not in public. He thinks his singing isn’t really up to the standard of my playing, and I think my playing can’t really keep up with his singing. But we rehearse anyway. It’s fantastic fun, and we’re both learning so much.
Then came the fateful day when I saw an advert in the local paper. ‘Piano player wanted for the Ashby Spa WI (Women’s Institute) choir’. Something in my head decided ‘I can do this’, and I did it. I now play regularly for about 20 very lovely women.
So what about the brain congealing? Well, somehow, I’ve learnt to control it. I can feel it starting, and (mostly) I can take a step back and choose to switch it off before it gets too bad. My choir don’t have to endure pages of wrong notes, just a bar or two. Now that’s what I call a ‘changed point of view’! (see Jen’s blog Banishing Stage Fright With the Jazzmen Part 1).

 

Working on the problem by… not working on the problem!
But what caused that shift? How did I learn to do this?? It was nothing I did directly. I’d tried for years to conquer the stage fright directly. Visualisation – no good. Positive reinforcement – nothing. Loads of practice and knowing the piece really well – still no. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway – dreadful. I hadn’t set out with the clear intention of curing myself, I hadn’t deliberately and consistently practised these very helpful techniques until I made them work. I had no definite strategy.
Not directly.
But what about all the other stuff? The carols, duets, the long-suffering and supportive husband?
My sister, my singing partner? The lots and lots of thinking in the background?
Maybe all that stuff did actually come under the heading of learning. Indirectly. Maybe the length of time, the teeny-weeny steps, the ‘in the background’ thinking are as important a part of the process as the most carefully crafted plan, and the most assiduously practised exercises.
But this doesn’t have anything to do with the Alexander Technique, does it? Well, now I come to mention it – maybe it does.
In fact, FM Alexander had very clear ideas on the importance of learning indirectly. He says, ‘A satisfactory technique … must be one in which the nature of the procedures provides for a continuous change towards improving conditions, by a method of indirect approach under which opportunity is given for the pupil to come into contact with the unfamiliar and unknown’.*
So, how did I do?
Procedures – tick
Continuous change – tick
Improving conditions – tick
Indirect approach – big tick
Opportunity – tick
Contact with the unfamiliar – tick
Seems like my adventure is exactly what Alexander had in mind. I wonder if he would have come along to choir practice for a good sing-song??
*FM Alexander, The Universal Constant in Living, V ‘Manner of Use in Relation to Change’, IRDEAT edition p.585.
Image by healingdream, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Banishing stage fright with the Jazzmen, part 2

Last week I told you the story of Darryl Jones, who played bass for Sting when he started his solo career with the album Dream of the Blue Turtles. Today I want to tell you about another of Sting’s musicians, so that we can learn another useful tool to conquer stage fright.

To recap the story…

If you recall, Sting was trying something totally new. He was leaving a very successful band, and was striking it out on his own with a whole new group of musicians. They were about to play their first concert – a new band, playing a  set of songs where half were completely new and unheard, and all of which were being re-interpreted. Sting, if you recall, hadn’t got together just any old band. He had found a group of jazz musicians, and was creating a whole new jazz-rock fusion sound.

Director Michael Apted filmed the build-up to the concert. He asked each musician in turn if they were nervous. Last week we learned from Darryl Jones’ reply. This week we turn to saxophonist Branford Marsalis, to see what he can teach us.

Marsalis

The other jazz man.

Branford Marsalis is another profoundly inventive jazz musician. Back in 1985 he was just at the beginning of his career, but he already had an impressive resume. And he was never one to mince his words! So when Michael Apted asked him if he was nervous about the upcoming gig with Sting, this is what he said:. 

“If I was Sting I might be nervous but I’m not Sting, I play jazz, I know what it’s like to be shat on, you know what I mean? I am a jazz musician, I know what it’s like to play some stuff that nobody wants to hear.”*

I know this is a little stronger language than normally appears in my articles, so bear with me… 🙂

Branford Marsalis isn’t nervous. Why not? Because he is used to an audience not necessarily liking the music he is playing! Marsalis here leads us towards what I believe is a very strong motivating factor that lies behind many performers’ stage fright

they fear the audience’s bad opinion.

Fear of the audience is a strong reason why people fear going out to perform. Back when I worked in professional theatre, I can remember actors nervously  peering out from the wings, scanning the audience suspiciously, and wondering if they would be a ‘good’ house that night. And by ‘good’, they meant an audience that liked them and liked the play.

Wanting to be liked is completely understandable and natural. The problem arises when we think about the audience so much that we begin to lose sight of what it is that we need to do in order to win their good opinion.

We need to perform.

In other words, we need to summon up all that we have learned from our hours of research and rehearsal, all the work that we have done, and carry out the performance in a way that we have reasoned out is going to best achieve our goals.

‘But shouldn’t we be thinking about the audience?’ I hear you cry. Well… Yes, but not in the way that most people do. Obviously we need to remember that the audience is there. But do we need to tie ourselves in knots to try to please them? Well, no, not according to Branford Marsalis! His experience very clearly included situations where, in pursuit of his creative goals, he played in such a way that the audience just didn’t like it. On that day. At that time.

The thing is, not everyone can be happy all the time. But what might you sacrifice in order to satisfy your audience? What if Stravinsky had burned the score of The Rite of Spring straight after its controversial first performance? Western classical music would have been very different!

FM Alexander said, “where the ‘means-whereby’ are right for the purpose, desired ends will come. They are inevitable. Why then be concerned as to the manner or speed of their coming? we should reserve all thought, energy. And concern for the means whereby we may command the manner of their coming.”

Branford Marsalis, when faced with the choice of playing the way he wanted, or trying to be ‘right’ for the audience, chose to play in the way that he had decided was best. He stuck with the process he had chosen. And fear of the audience’s reaction became unimportant as a result.

What about you? Will you stick to the process you’ve reasoned out will get you to your goal?

* Sting, Bring on the Night, directed by Michael Apted. Quote occurs at about 60.58 on the DVD release.
** FM Alexander, The Universal Constant in Living in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.587.

Banishing stage fright with the Jazzmen, part 1

Today I want to discuss what we can learn about conquering stage fright (performance anxiety, call it what you will) from jazz musician Darryl Jones.

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One of the first LPs I ever owned (remember LPs?) was Sting’s The Dream of the Blue Turtles. My parents gave it to me for my birthday in 1986 or 1987. I absolutely loved it, and played it a lot. The thing that made it so different, so exciting, was the jazz influence. Sting had managed to get hold of some very well-respected and influential jazz musicians to play in his band, including Kenny Kirkland, Darryl Jones and Branford Marsalis. 

Now, as part of my current general revisiting of things past, I went in search of the documentary Bring on the Night that director Michael Apted made about the beginning of Sting’s solo career.

It is a fascinating film, and a great piece to watch if you want to see a document on the way creative process is both sheltered and commercialised by artist management. To my mind, however, the most fascinating element occurred towards the end of the film, as the band prepared for their first live gig. Apted asked the members of the band in turn if they were nervous.

Now, let me back up a bit and explain the background. Sting had just left The Police, one of the most successful bands of the 1980s. He was creating a rock/jazz fusion album that most people at the time thought would be a disaster. The jazz musicians were not only doing a different style of music, but flying in the face of general opinion that they were ruining their careers. And  they were all about to go on stage for the first time; a new band, to play a set list where half the songs would be completely new to the audience.

If you were a member of Sting’s band and Michael Apted asked you if you were nervous, what would you say?

Would you be nervous? Would you be scared? Would it affect the way you played?

You see, many people would have very definite answers to these questions. They would feel nervous, and they would view that as a negative thing. And the combination of the physical sensation and their negative interpretation of it would then affect their performance, causing them to play less brilliantly than they would wish.

But is this what the Jazz Man says?

This is what bassist Darryl Jones said in reply:

Darryl Jones: “yeah, always. I mean, I think that’s a good space, to have some nervous energy. So many times that first night is the best night because of that nervous energy.”

So often the thing that separates the truly great performers from the rest of us is their attitude towards nerevousness. We feel the butterflies in our tummy, and conclude that it’s a bad thing. Darryl Jones feel the butterflies, and knows that he’s “in a good space” and ready to go out and have fun.

So, today’s lesson about conquering stage fright from the world of jazz:

We can change our attitude toward nerves.

FM Alexander said something similar when he commented that “a changed point of view is the royal road to reformation.” *  If we change our point of view, we can help ourselves and turn something we have labelled negative into something that can help us.

Do you have a performance or a presentation coming up? What would happen if you took the butterflies as a good sign? 

** FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.44.

 

 

Stage fright? Untwist your thinking!

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Perhaps because the topic is in my mind, it seems as though every time I turn on the TV or listen to the radio I hear another instance of a performer whose career was blighted by panic and performance nerves.The most recent reference was on Radio 3 (the thinking person’s Radio 4!), during a programme about the Swiss-Romanian pianist Clara Haskil.

The prevalence of the condition is truly mind-boggling. And the most interesting thing about it is that it isn’t just us amateurs who struggle and suffer. Some truly great professionals have fought their panic every performance night. Laurence Olivier survived by asking his fellow actors not to look him in the eye while onstage. Ian Holm, according to the website IMDb, developed severe stage fright in 1976 while performing in The Iceman Cometh, and has barely returned to the stage since.

The most intriguing reference to stage fright in the past couple of weeks was, again, on Radio 3, this time on the excellent programme Composer of the Week. Last week’s composer was Enrique Granados who, in addition to being a fine composer, also a renowned pianist in his day. Indeed, it was his performing career that paid the bills, and this was a source of difficulty for him. For Granados, like Clara Haskil, like Laurence Olivier, like Ian Holm, was a sufferer of near crippling stage fright.

The reason why I found Granados’ plight so intriguing, however, was because of a short quote that was included in the radio programme. Apparently Granados said:

If, in an audience of 1000 spectators, I know that 999 like me but one does not, I will play poorly, because for me that one person will be the only one out there, and I know that nothing I do will please him.

Take a minute to read that quote and think about it. Granados has just admitted that if the audience contains just one person who is not guaranteed to love his performance unconditionally, he will play poorly. Hmm. The problem with this is that no audience is 100% guaranteed to love you, unless it is entirely composed of your family and friends, in which case you are unlikely to hear anything constructive afterwards that will help you to improve.

Not only that, but it sounds uncomfortably like Granados makes a decision to play poorly, based on his fear-filled assessment of the audience. He doesn’t say “I am likely to play poorly.” He uses the far stronger statement “I will play poorly.” That one person doesn’t like me, so I won’t bother to play well because I know that nothing I can do will change their mind. Those of you with any knowledge of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy will recognise this as a fully-fledged cognitive distortion – a type of twisted thinking. Granados is basing his whole performance on his opinion of an audience whose thoughts and feelings he cannot possibly know in any detail! From the sound of this, Granados’ life as a performer may well have been plagued by the tension created by his desire to play well fighting with his decision to play poorly.

Would you want to live in that particular universe? Does the logic of it sound reasonable to you? I suspect not! Yet, when it comes down to it, my hunch is that most performers, when questioned closely, would ‘fess up to a similar sort of twisted thinking around their performance practice. One of the most common, for example, is an actor looking out at the audience before the show, and expressing a strange combination of fear and hatred towards them as the actor wonders if the audience will be ‘good’ tonight.

Clearly this sort of twisted thinking is of no help to us whatsoever. But how do we get round it?

What we don’t do is to try to block out those twisted thoughts, or to just struggle on past them. This is just adding a whole new layer of tension on top of the stress created by the original twisty thinking.

Instead of this, FM Alexander suggests that we approach the problem indirectly by inhibiting our habitual manner of use in reacting to the old stimulus. We then give ourselves the opportunity of making a new decision.* In other words, when we’re approaching the performance date, or when we’re waiting in the wings ready to come onstage, we feel a strong stimulus to think about the audience. Our instinctive reaction is to be drawn away from ourselves and into a nightmarish fantasy where we leap to conclusions about what the audience will like or want. Alexander is asking us to notice the stimulus, but not to be drawn in. Instead of thinking about the things we can’t control (the audience and their reaction to us), we could think about things that WILL be useful to us. We need to make a decision to think about ourselves, about our role or our music, about the care with which we have prepared ourselves to perform.

And we need to stick to that decision. Alexander said:

We are by nature creatures of impulse … and will remain so, more or less, so long as we are content to struggle on … in the last analysis, success will depend upon the individual’s capacity to carry out a decision.**

So make a decision not to be ruled by the twisted thinking that leads us out of ourselves. Think instead of those things that are useful to you: your preparation, a sense of perspective about performance and audience, sticking with the process of just saying the words or playing the notes, and knowing what you want to achieve with your performance.

And enjoy it!

 

*Paraphrase of Universal Constant in Living, Iredeat Combined Edition, p.601.
** ibid., p.602.

Four words to conquer stage fright

As I write this, I have less than a day before I take to the stage area of a local church and perform a lunchtime recital with my recorder quartet. If I were counting (which I’m not), I’d tell you that I’m to be walking out and playing my first notes in 22 hours’ time. And once upon a time, just the act of typing that sentence would have caused within me a paroxysm of cold fear.

I’ve always loved playing music, but I never enjoyed performing. I hated – no, loathed – the act of walking out onto the stage. As the years went by, it became harder and harder to function as a musical performer. This fear, combined with the debilitating pain I suffered in my arms, put a stop to any desire I had to share music with others.

But not any more. I am a recovering stage-fright sufferer.And the Alexander Technique has been the most powerful tool I have possessed in advancing that recovery.

For me, part of the process of studying and teaching the Alexander Technique has been a methodical re-examination of the rules I have made for myself around issues such as performance. So often I see articles in the press and online that stress the physical aspect of this work, as if it was limited only to physical movements such as sitting or standing. But the scope of the Alexander Technique is so much broader than this. My colleagues and I often say to students that it is a physiologic fact that we can’t have a movement without some sort of thinking preceding it. If this is true – and it appears to be so – then we must draw the conclusion that what we think is of vital importance.

This means that the ideas and beliefs that we have about certain activities may be the very things that are holding us back from performing those activities as well as we would like. This is certainly true in my own case, and from the experiences I have teaching, seems to be true for my students too.

Based on my own experience of stage fright and that of my students, these are the major issues that I believe cause the problem:

Lack of preparation.

This is possibly the biggest issue amongst my acting students. This is how it works: I know that I have not practised enough and do not have the music/speech/whatever completely under my belt. So I worry about messing it up. Then I worry about messing it up – in public. ‘What will they think of me?’ My head is now spinning so much that I have little or no chance of remembering my music/speech/whatever.

Perfectionism.

I place pressure on myself by expecting myself to be perfect and to give a flawless performance. I also know that this is pretty much impossible. So I also berate myself first for expecting perfectionism, and second for the mistakes I am certain to make. Now we are back to ‘What will they think of me?’

Etiquette.

People expect performers, especially amateur performers, to display nervousness prior to going on stage. It becomes good manners to oblige. By extension, it is bad manners to appear calm and confident!

Misunderstanding the physical.

Most people experience certain physical sensations pre-performance:  ‘butterflies’, shaky knees, etc. We are conditioned to think that these are bad and will disrupt our performance. What if these are simply side-effects of pre-performance adrenalin – the same adrenalin that sharpens our instincts, our senses, and speeds up our thinking processes…

So, how do we get around these issues? With four simple words! And to help you remember them, they mostly begin with P!

Here are the three Ps and one G:

Preparation.

There is only one way to know something really well, and that is to do the preparation. We all hope and dream that there is some kind of shortcut, and that talented people don’t need to do the long hours of study. Actually, they do. That’s why they are so talented.

Perspective.

Does it really matter if we make a mistake? Realistically, who is going to notice? And even if they do, will one or two little mistakes really outweigh all the good things about your performance? Of course not!

Process

As soon as we start thinking about the audience and wondering what they are thinking/feeling, we have lost our train of thought. We are no longer doing the process of performing, but wondering about the after-effects of it. In traditional Alexander Technique language, we are end-gaining rather than sticking with the means we have chosen in order to achieve our goals. In my experience, when I am staying within the process of singing or playing a piece of music, note by note, phrase by phrase, I don’t have the time to worry about the audience. And my performance, I am told, improves radically as a result!

Goal.

It’s often overlooked, but… What are you trying to achieve with your performance? Do you have a goal? Having a goal in mind for your performance can make a big difference to the way you approach things. For example, my recorder quartet recently performed at a local music festival. Our aim was to test one of our pieces in a hall acoustic, to check whether all the notes could be heard clearly on the instruments we had chosen to play. Because we had a specific goal in mind, nerves weren’t an issue.

So there you have it – three Ps and 1 G towards conquering stage fright, based on my experience. I hope they’re of help. And if you catch up with me on Facebook, I’ll let you know how the concert goes!