You’ve prepared, you’ve walked onto the stage, and now you are there doing exactly what you want to be doing.
Are you afraid? Do you feel like Atlas (see picture) holding up the world of the performance entirely on your shoulders and filling yourself with anxiety?
Hopefully the answer is ‘no’. Personally, though, I
Recently, I felt flustered through the beginning of a performance. My mind was wandering and grasping at myriad subjects even while the songs were completely unrelated. This left me feeling afraid and caused me to make a few strange mistakes that I had previously never made.
The experience really bothered me, and upon
By this point of preparation, you can do little to fundamentally change your outlook on the nature of a performance. So your best bet is to set up conditions so that you are in peak shape to perform even if you still have lingering worries.
Get enough sleep the night before. Pavarotti said
The best time to eliminate fear is to do it during the rehearsal period. At rehearsal, you have a friendly and sympathetic audience before which you can face your fears. Take advantage!
Look at these following areas:
Is your material learned? By learned I mean your text, your music, your technique, your blocking, your
Hypothetical: You’ve just been hired for a job. You know exactly what you’ll be doing; you have a month to figure it out; and then the rehearsals begin. Though it seems distant, you can begin dealing with your future stage-fright now.
Dissolve Stage Fright Before Rehearsals Begin Decide if you are ready for the
Oh, no! Stage fright!
We have all experienced stage fright. Wikipedia describes it as having “numerous manifestations: fluttering or pounding heart, tremor in the hands and legs, diarrhea, facial nerve tics, dry mouth.” It feels awful, and it might ruin your fun or, at it’s worst, you might run away from a good