The EM Poll

Playing Scared

Mar 14, 2008 5:19 PM, By Robin Poultney

           

Despite her success Joan Armatrading has never fully gotten over her stage fright.

Photo: Kate Garner

Focusing on the Emotion

Les Taylor has been a classical musician for 30 years. He experienced performance anxiety for the first 15. “I got nauseated and shook like a leaf before, during, and after nearly every performance,” Taylor says. Ultimately, he realized that the harder he tried to be perfect, the worse the stage fright became. “If I tried to achieve perfection, I was scared half to death and a poor performance followed. If, on the other hand, I concentrated on the message or the feeling that the composer intended to convey, I was sometimes transported into realms of ecstasy. If I tried to share what I loved in the music with the audience — without getting my ego involved — all was well.”

Some performers develop stage fright after they've been playing for a while. Occasionally it can creep up after they've had career success, even though initial experiences have been nothing but positive. It can also occur in specific performing situations. Julian Carter, a U.K. guitarist and vocalist, never experienced problems when he started out. He has only recently realized that nerves undermine him when playing with “more-talented people or in front of knowledgeable audiences” — for instance, when demonstrating gear in a solo performance at a trade show such as the Frankfurt Musik Messe, where the audience is composed of industry pros. Like Taylor, Carter found that the key to alleviating his nerves lay in changing his way of thinking about the audience and about making musical mistakes.

The Audience is Your Friend

Music, like any art form, is all about uninhibited self-expression and entertainment, so it's easy to see why stage fright is such a soul-destroying problem. Many choose to keep under wraps so they won't risk tarnishing their reputations. How can sufferers be helped? With so much at stake, it's surprising that so few music education programs give formal guidance on the psychological aspects of performance. Art Nefsky spotted a need for a dedicated advice service, so in 1987 he opened the Stage Fright Help Centre in Toronto. Although Nefsky advocates individually tailored help, general advice is apparent in his approach. He emphasizes the importance of learning how to communicate with an audience. He instructs his students to get into the people, not the art.

“Focus less on what you're doing and more on who you're doing it for” is one of Nefsky's concise tips. A case study on his Web site advises: “Don't hide behind your talent. Don't put yourself under the pressure of having to perform. Look at the people and concentrate on making as many friends as possible.” Nefsky highlights the importance of eye contact. “There's a difference between looking at someone and watching them watch you back,” he says. “You have to acknowledge their existence. It could be a smile, a wink, or a nod. Even if only mentally, you are saying, ‘How's it going? What's happening? Having a good time?’” Those things are meant to help performers forget themselves and, in the process, feel less like the center of attention. They become more attuned to emotional feedback from the audience.

Nefsky's approach resembles cognitive-therapy techniques, which concentrate on changing how anxiety-provoking situations are perceived. Most stage-fright sufferers have unrealistic expectations — both positive and negative — before a performance. They might have grand visions of total perfection or pessimistic thoughts of absolute doom.

The best strategy to combat such fear, says psychological wisdom, is to be positive and realistic at the same time. For example, recognize the likelihood of minor mistakes but don't exaggerate their importance. How do you do that? The key is to create simple, memorable statements that reinforce that belief. Remind yourself that even your favorite artists make mistakes. In the mental fog of panic, a fixation on errors (What if I play in the wrong key? What if I get lost in the middle of a tune?) often goes hand-in-hand with a fear of audience ridicule. Anxious performers should think again about what an audience is and why the people in it are there. Always remember: these people have gone out to enjoy themselves and be entertained. They want you to do well, not badly.

An audience should also be perceived not as a single mass, but as a collection of diverse individuals with varied tastes. “They” are not an “it,” but a group of people. Apart from the fact that audiences are more forgiving than we think, Carter says, “Performers should be aware that most mistakes go unnoticed by the audience unless the audience is full of musicians. But most of us play only to nonplayers and can get away with more than we think.”

Breathe Easy

Another key to overcoming fear lies in the way you interpret the physical symptoms of nervousness. Remember that people can't see your heart pounding. And that surge of anxiety just before a performance does not signal imminent disaster; it's just a perfectly natural peak that will ease once you hit the stage. Remind yourself of these facts daily until they're ingrained in your thought processes. Writing them down or playing them back to yourself on a recording will also help make them stick.

Another effective way to counteract stress is through exercise, which helps develop deep-breathing skills and stimulates the production of certain brain chemicals that help to reduce tension. It's obviously not practical to engage in vigorous aerobic activity when symptoms occur onstage — unless perhaps you're Angus Young — but it is a good idea to spend some time limbering up or doing a little light exercise during the build-up to a performance. Singer-songwriter Nerina Pallot strategically places pieces of paper around the stage emblazoned with the word breathe in capital letters. That helps her avoid the shallow breathing patterns that are characteristic of the stress response.