Say something nice about yourself.
What you are doing is extremely difficult and brave. You are changing yourself in the name of music and then sharing those changes with the world when you perform.
Yes, this process requires self honesty and clear judgment. But it does not require intense self-loathing and public condemnations of you abilities. You must be doing something right or else you wouldn’t have gotten this far.
So find that something and tell yourself about it.
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 have gotten scared in the middle of a performance for all sorts of reasons. It’s a lame feeling, but there are ways of moving away from it.
Though you must not make any big changes once the show is opened, you must go through some rediscovery at every performance. Get involved in this discovery, and try to leave your worries out of it. If you’ve prepared well, then you will respond.
If you’ve ever watched “So You Think You Can Dance”, then surely you’ve heard the judges criticize somebody for not connecting to their partner. Performing is less about you alone and more about the relationships unfolding onstage. So make relationships! By doing this, performing becomes a team effort rather than a Atlas-like struggle.
Begin developing your audience strategy and continue to develop it with every performance. Orson Welles had a fascinating outlook on audiences (thanks to Opera Chic for finding this clip):
Audiences, in the real sense of the word, are disappearing. There are almost none left. It’s an endangered species…This isn’t an audience here (referring to studio audience). No, no, no, wonderful lovely people. And we’re so grateful for you, but you’re not an audience; you got in free. And not only did you get in free, but you know as does every studio audience that you are not here to do anything except be a member of the cast and help us look good. Seriously, have you ever seen a television show where the audience booed and hissed or refused to applaud? It’s always a big hit on television isn’t it? People that come to the show know that they’re part of the cast and have to help us not to look ridiculous. Our real audience is two or three people in a living room scattered all over the place, but that isn’t a real audience.
An audience is a big many-headed-beast crouching out there in the darkness waiting to eat us up or love us or whatever, and it must be either seduced or tamed or raped or whatever, and it must be dealt with because anybody who deals with a real audience as I have — my goodness, think how long I’ve been in show business… I’ve been hissed and booed, I’ve had things thrown at me– until you’ve had that experience, you don’t understand what dealing with an audience is.
So what will you do? Try something and it might work. At the very least it gets you active, which should make you less afraid.
If you get flustered, try concentrating on something small that’s on stage and then slowly widen your attention. Focus on your breathing. Focus on your cast members. Just find something to focus on, and if your mind wanders then bring it back again and again, until it begins to work for you.
After all, this is what you claim to love.
Use it. It is fuel that you normally don’t have. If you’re afraid, then treat it like gasoline and use your dedication as a match to perform real energy.
Have you ever gotten totally frightened during a show? If so, what did you do? How did it affect your enjoyment of performing?
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 reflection, I realized that I didn’t do what I normally do before I sing.
I didn’t focus.
Ideally, your time spent on the day of a major performance will be all sunshine, hammocks, light breezes, and quiet meditation, but if it’s anything like most of my performance days, it’s full of travel, last minute preparations and –I admit it– caffeine. Therefore, a performer must take a few moments and gather up his/her brain into a usable mass.
[This is especially important before a recital because your exposure to the audience is so great, and the format offers you little time to rest and regain composure.]
Try these suggestions:
If you are feeling genuine fear, along with the above suggestions, try these:
What strategies do you employ right before a performance?
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.
Caffeine heightens the physiological effects of stress, lead author Simon Jones says. When someone feels anxiety, the body releases the hormone cortisol, and when people drink plenty of caffeine-infused tea, coffee or soda, their body produces more of the hormone when they encounter stressful events. Researchers have proposed that cortisol may trigger or exaggerate psychotic experiences by increasing the amount of the neurotransmitter dopamine flowing into the brain’s limbic areas, evolutionarily ancient regions involved in emotion, memory and behavior.
I tend to get fearful jitters if I drink a lot of caffeine before a show. It’s usually unnecessary, anyway. The material should be stimulating enough to keep you awake.
Do you have your own ideas about how to stay relaxed on performance day? Do you agree that being relaxed on performance day is necessary? If you have any comments, please leave them below!