stage fright

Ran across this neat article about what yawning does for you, and how it might help a performer.  Thought it was cool because years ago I developed the habit of yawning before going on stage.  I knew it was some kind of coping mechanism, but I didn't really understand how it worked.  Enjoy!

http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/1109/expert.html

The book is called "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  Thanks to Liz Garnett for bringing it to my attention!

I realize that the title of this post has given away my review, but I'm really enthusiastic about this book because at some level I needed to read it. I'm reviewing it here because I think you might need to read it too. This book is amazing and I can not possibly do it justice in a short review. But I will try.

The subtitle of the book is "the psychology of optimal experience" and it is full of wisdom and insights about how to enjoy yourself in every aspect of your life - your work, your hobby, your creative life, your family life and even your solitude. I had a dozen "aha" moments reading it, and I believe it will help me move my own experience of life to a better place, not that it was awful to start with!  And it's relevant to stage performance too: the various modes of stage performance are a powerful way to express your real self and enter into a flow experience, and organizing your stage performance (or any other) activities so that they encourage flow is a great way to make your whole experience more enjoyable and effective, from rehearsal to stage time.

So first things first - "flow" is a state of mind that becomes possible when you are involved in an activity that has:

1. Clear goals - you know what you're trying to do
2. Instant feedback - you can tell if you're making progress towards your goals
3. Challenges matched to your skills - it's not too easy or too hard
4. Action and awareness are merged - your concentration is entirely focused on what you're doing

Playing music, for example, has clear goals and instant feedback.  You know what notes are coming up, and you know if you hit them right or you didn't.  You can also pick music that is appropriate to your level of skill, so you don't get distracted by boredom or anxiety.  The same could be said of any other stage performance mode like acting, singing or dancing.

When your concentration is completely fixed on what you're doing, you will also be excluding irrelevant things from your attention, such as thoughts of your self that may lead to stage fright.  There is no attention spared to worry about failure.  You cease to be conscious of your self.  Often your perception of time will be distorted as well - this is the same as Eckhart Tolle's idea of being in the Now, unconstrained by the past and the future, hence outside of the perception of time.

Being in "flow" also reminds me of how Stanislavski discusses the ideal state of mind for stage performance, where you have immersed yourself in the "given conditions" of a scene so completely that you cease to be conscious of your self as separate from the action, and the subconscious takes over the direction of your activities.

Once you can get into flow with an activity, it becomes enjoyable for its own sake.  Flow is enjoyment, and if you can spend your whole life in a state of enjoyment, regardless of the conditions in which you find yourself, you will have led a wonderful life.  In order to go along with this idea, you first need to admit that your state of mind is completely in your control, and not produced by your circumstances.

Applying flow to stage performance, just like an great art, is partly a matter of staying in the moment rather than executing a plan:

Whereas a conventional artist starts painting a canvas knowing what she wants to pain, and holds to her original intention until the work is finished, an original artist with equal technical training commences with a deeply felt but undefined goal in mind, keeps modifying the picture in response to the unexpected colors and shapes emerging on the canvas, and ends up with a finished work that is responsive to her inner feelings, knows what she likes and does not like, and pays attention to what is happening on the canvas, a good painting is bound to emerge. On the other hand, if she holds on to a preconceived notion of what the painting should look like, without responding to the possibilities suggested by the forms developing before her, the painting is likely to be trite.

In the present day, as it becomes more and more difficult to keep performance and art funded in the school system, it is critically important that we recognize and are able to articulate the value of stage performance and art in our culture.  Otherwise we will quickly lose it, and we will fail to reap its rewards.   The author sees art and culture as the vessel into which we put our hard-earned learning about our own consciousness as a species.  To be successful as a person and find meaning in life, you need to learn from those who have gone before:

The strategy consists in extracting from the order achieved by past generations patterns that will help avoid disorder in one's own mind. There is much knowledge - or well-ordered information - accumulated in culture, ready for this use. Great music, architecture, art, poetry, drama, dance, philosophy, and religion are there for anyone to see as examples of how harmony can be imposed on chaos. yet so many people ignore them, expecting to create meaning in their lives by their own devices.

That paragraph makes the point powerfully for me.  Protecting art and performance in our culture is critical if we are to develop as a species in time to save our world.

I sincerely feel that everyone should read this book, and put its advice into practice as I intend to.  I believe that you should read this book, because as a member of the human race I care about you and I want you to enjoy your life more, for your sake, and for the betterment of our world.

When I wrote my review of the classic performance book The Inner Game of Music, I knew that a lot of people wouldn't like it.  It wasn't the most glowing review, to be sure, and the book itself has a lot of ardent fans around the world of musical performance.  One such ardent fan is Liz Garnett, a friend of mine from the UK who publishes her own performance related blog, focusing mostly on harmony singing.  (Liz is also listed in the OTS Coach Directory)  So in light of her comments, I'd like to clarify some of mine!  Hopefully the back-and-forth will be useful for everyone.

I'll quote a few paragraphs from her article, and respond.  First we talk about Self 1 and Self 2:

[Tom's] first point of contention is the division between Self 1, the nasty inner critic, and Self 2, the honest musician who would do a much better job if Self 1 would only shut up and let them get on with it. Tom finds this device unhelpful, and thinks a more holistic, rather than ‘schizophrenic’ approach will be better for performers. But I think that’s actually the Inner Game’s point: the Self1/Self2 idea is presented as a way to describe an essentially dysfunctional state that the book aims to help us leave behind. Describing the split is necessary if people are to diagnose that they have the problem.

The first thing to realize is that we're discussing models and metaphors here, not hard facts.  Of course there is no Self 1 and no Self 2 - they are inventions of Tim Gallwey, which he defines as everything that works for you, and everything that doesn't.  Everyone has things that work for them and things that do not!  It doesn't take a stroke of brilliance to realize that we want to get rid of the latter.

Having said that, a metaphor has value if it works, and this one has worked for a lot of people.  There are many paths to the promised land!  I just don't find the Self 1/Self 2 breakdown a particularly useful model for me.

Next topic is what should the performer hold in their head.  Inner Game of Music author Green says it doesn't much matter - anything to distract you from your negative self-talk and head games.  And to some extent I think that's fine.  I think it would be better to have something up there that pertains to the purpose of the piece, which I have called the "scene."  Liz takes exception to that term:

The focus on the ‘scene’ betrays a very character-based, verbally-defined performance context. Plays have explicit scenes, songs evoke scenes: the performer has a concrete persona to inhabit in these artworlds. But instrumental performers (who are the ones who might be focusing on their instrument) often have a much more intangible set of musical ideas to communicate to their audience. The soloist who is going to build the long, highly structured stretches of musical time in a Brahms sonata into coherent experience needs focal points that will take them into that abstract imaginative world. It’s not ‘navel-gazing’, it’s an important mental skill for that artistic world, just as the ability to focus creating scenes is an important skill for the singer.

Again, if focusing on your instrument works for you, have at it!

I'm a singer, and hardly an instrumental performer at all (not since high school!), but even so I suspect that the very best instrumental performers have something going on in their heads that is more explicitly about the artistry, and less about simply distracting their Self 1.  If the goal is just to rid yourself of stage anxiety, and that's a worthwhile goal for sure, do what you need to do.  If you want to reach higher, it's not going to happen by itself!  It takes focus on the emotional content of the music.  At least, that's my two cents.

I suggested also that "relaxed concentration" may not be the ideal emotional state for all performances.  Liz kind of disagrees with that, and refers to a book called "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" that I have not read.  So I've ordered it!  I'll read it before I comment on it.  Looking forward to that one.

Finally, in my original article I didn't comment much on the trio of Awareness, Will and Trust, and that's basically because, let's be honest, I just didn't get it.  Liz feels it's very important, and I suspect she is right - I hope she will consent to write a blog article about it that helps me understand it better!

Thanks, Liz, for the lively discussion!

I first learned about the Emotional Freedom Technique from my Dad, Charlie Metzger, but he was using it for health rather than improving performance.  Now I warn you, some dyed-in-the-wool rationalists are going to find that the whole concept of EFT makes them uncomfortable.  To them I have two things to say.

First, just because you can't figure out how something works and can't explain it doesn't mean it's invalid.  Especially when it works as well as EFT seems to work.  I mean come on, explain to me how placebos work!  You're not going to argue that placebos don't work, are you?  The whole FDA approval process is based on a drug performing marginally better than a placebo!  So placebos work, but if you want an explanation of WHY they work you'll have to ask Deepak Chopra, not me.

Second, if you think I'm a young upstart maverick just making this stuff up, talk to my Dad!

So now that we're over the skepticism hurdle, what is EFT?  EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique.  It's related to acupuncture and acupressure, both of which are based on the Eastern concept of Chi.  Chi is like energy that moves through your body, and if your Chi gets blocked, you will develop issues.  The issues can manifest physically, like a backache, or emotionally, like depression.  My Mom gets acupuncture for a soft tissue injury she received in a car accident years ago, and it's the only thing she has found that takes away the pain.  The Chinese have been doing this stuff for thousands of years, and if it didn't work, I think they would have stopped!  (Don't get me started about the irrationality of the Western brand of medicine - oh yes, we have a pill for you!)

EFT is basically repeating an assertion in the form, "Even though [something you want to fix], I deeply and completely accept myself" as you tap on various meridians around the body.  Some of the points are shown in the diagram to the right.  You can learn exactly where to tap by reading this.  So it's extremely simple to learn.

So as a performer, how does EFT relate to you and your concerns?  How can EFT make you a better performer?  Well in this article, EFT guru Gary Craig discusses a wonderful concept called the "comfort zone."  Whether you are an athlete or a stage performer, your comfort zone is the level of performance where you feel you belong.  It's tied up right at the core of you, in your identity or self-concept.  For a golfer, maybe you feel that you "are a mid-80's golfer."  If you're in a barbershop quartet, you might feel you are a "high 60's" quartet.  This is your comfort zone.  And because you are human, you will tend to behave in ways that will ensure that you stay there.

Yes, once again it seems that you are just getting in your own way.  This concept makes complete sense to me, because time and time again I have seen groups perform "above their level" because of one kind of trick or another.  Often just asking for better tuning, and asserting that they can do it, you will get it.  Get someone to believe they are an effective, engaging public speaker, and they will become so.  It's a very self-fulfilling thing.  We're not talking about telekenesis here - the performance realm is full of head games.

So how does EFT play into this?  Well EFT can remove the emotional barriers that you have, that prevent you from achieving outside your comfort zone.  For example, tap your meridians and say "even though I have never scored high enough to go to the international contest, I deeply and completely accept myself."  Or this one: "Even though I got a lukewarm review out of my last acting job, I deeply and completely accept myself."  The phrase can and should be tailored to your own situation.

One really obvious application of EFT is in the management of stage fright.  It might enable you to bypass weeks of work, and save thousands of dollars on talk-therapy with a highly-paid psychologist.

I would encourage you to read the whole article on EFT and performance.  It should take about five minutes of your time.

One way to explain how we're getting in our own way here is to consider the penalties, real or imagined, involved in achieving above our comfort zone.  Maybe if you started singing better, you would have to stop seeing the vocal instructor you're so fond of.  Maybe if you were able to really commit to a vivid, impactful scenario, your peer group would think you were showing off!  Try to find the penalties that keep you in your comfort zone - just asking yourself the question, "what would happen if...." might bring them quickly to mind.

Have you ever tried EFT in a performance scenario?  Tell us about it!  If you haven't yet, give it a try and report back to the Owning The Stage community.

No I don't mean your metaphorical heart, I mean the blood pumping organ in your chest.

A while back Kari got me a heart monitor.  It's a nifty gadget that has two parts: a strap that goes around your chest, and sends your heart beats via wireless signals to a special wristwatch.  No, I'm not having palpitations - we're doing this extreme workout thing called p90x and they recommend you get a heart monitor to make sure you're in the right exercise zone.

Anyway I've often wondered just what my heart did before, during and after a big performance, and since my a cappella quartet Realtime was in Boise this past weekend for the Evergreen district convention, it was my perfect opportunity.  So I got another volunteer on board, my friend Andry Layarda, and the experiment began.

First let me also say that I wasn't drugged up on beta blockers for this test - I never take them, for several good reasons that I've listed elsewhere.  I couldn't use any other members of Realtime because of course we were on stage at the same time, and I only have one heart monitor!  So Andry stepped in.

Andry sings in a great quartet called West Coast Fusion, and they were competing in the contest.  (Realtime can't compete of course because we are International Champs.)  He is the "calm guy" in the quartet, so he didn't expect his heart to react much.  He was really surprised!  When he checked the results after their contest set, he discovered that his heart hit a maximum rate of 164 beats per minute!  That's where my heart rate gets when I'm riding my bike pretty hard.  He burned more than 200 calories in that fifteen minute period!

I was my own guinea pig on Saturday night.  I turned on the heart monitor about an hour beforehand.

The first surprise was that I had an elevated heart rate, between 90 and 100bpm, for the whole hour before going on stage!  I always have a bit of adrenaline before a show, so now I know what that translates to in terms of my heart rate.

The show itself is posted here if you want to see what I was doing while recording the following results.

When I'm on stage these days, I don't usually feel nervous, and this show was no exception.  I spend my time thinking about the scenes in each song, and of course my attention is on my audience rapport when I'm speaking.  My maximum heart rate on stage was 142bpm, and I burned 404 calories over the 90 minutes I was recording.

I recall reading in Psychology For Performing Artists that many professional performers experience their peak anxiety just before going on stage, and that their heart rate and adrenaline levels decline when they are actually performing to an elevated but not unreasonable value.  I expect that's something like what happens to me.  This also makes sense to me, because before I go on stage I'm often thinking about myself, and while I'm on stage I'm thinking about the performance.  You can't really be nervous unless you're thinking about yourself.  That's a cool fringe benefit of performing in the right state of mind - fewer nerves.

I have often heard that singing is healthy for you, and now perhaps I know part of the reason why.  I burn more calories singing than I do jogging!  Maybe doctors should be sending people to singing lessons instead of Jenny Craig.

Have you ever left it in the green room?  Most performers have felt that way - that they could have done better, and that what they actually brought to the stage was not up to their own standards.  Here's how one reader put it to me recently:

The obstacle that currently vexes me is the "level drop" that occurs between a quartet performance in a rehearsal or informal setting versus the one that happens in front of a large audience.

When we rehearse or sing out in an informal or relaxed setting (e.g. after chorus rehearsal, or to our chorus-mates at retreat, or on a street-corner after a fun evening out ~ the product astounds us. We are so proud of it, and it matches our expectations. We have fun producing the sound, and are truly performers.

When we get in front of a formal live audience, I feel a significant level drop. Chords we always sing in tune are suddenly faltering. The strong resonant sound we always produce is intermittent. The product lacks the "pride" and the performance doesn't feel "fun" like it does in the informal setting. Video and audio recordings reveal some evidence of nerves, but nothing unexpected.

I am left feeling disappointed after a public performance, thinking that it "could have been so much better". My initial solution to this is to just keep doing it. The more audiences, the more exposure to this, the better we can learn and adjust to keep the level up.

And so, my question to you: what is your advice on how to help the level of rehearsal translate to performance?

Everyone situation is different, so face-to-face I would always ask more questions and dig a little deeper before offering advice.  But going by what this reader has written, here's what I would say.

First, it's quite possible that there isn't a problem!  Because it's not about how you feel when you perform, it's about how other people perceive it, and what it does for them.  I bet that a group like this leaves behind a lot of happy audience members, even if they feel like they didn't do their absolute best.  Find some people that you trust for their perception and their honesty, and get them to watch your performance.  Then ask them for their opinion, which is 100% more objective than yours!  You might be surprised.

There was a big study done about this perception gap, and I read about it in Psychology for Performing Artists, an excellent book that is listed here on my resources page.  After viewing a sequence of five performances, the audience often disagreed with the performers about how good each one was.  Sometimes when the performers thought they were exhibiting nerves, the audience perceived more passion!

However, assuming that there are some real things "going wrong" then we're looking for interference, as in the Inner Game concept P=p-i (Performance = potential - interference).  So what's getting in the way?

The reader does talk about nerves, and that's a biggie, even if they aren't any worse than expected.  And there are some great methods of dealing with them head-on.  I've tried to give a summary of those methods in my series on stage fright, which might be worth a read in this case.

Ultimately, I feel that the reader's intuitions are correct - performing more will probably lead to closing the gap between the mastery of technique in rehearsal vs. performance.  That's kind of how it works!  There's no better way to get better at something than to just do it!  Do it, notice what happened, and do it again.

There's an important point buried in there - you want to "notice" what goes wrong, and not to try and correct it in real time.  That, however, is a topic for another day.

Back in the good old days, life was simpler, and stage fright was treated primarily with bourbon.  I doubt that it was very effective, but without the (very mixed) blessing called “modern medicine” performers just didn’t have access to the plethora of chemical options we have today.

Many people manage their stage fright with drugs that suppress the symptoms, chiefly “beta-blockers” that prevent the heart from going too fast.  Quickly, before we go on, I’d like to present the list of known side effects:

• Loss of Sexual Potency (wow, anything for the glory of the stage…)
• Trouble sleeping
• Baldness
• Nausea
• Fatigue
• and last but not least, Death (mostly if you are asthmatic)

Still interested?

Personally I have chosen to avoid the chemical options, and I’ve been pretty successful in learning how to cope with stage fright over the years, just through trial and error.  It’s not a religious issue for me.  But I do take some pride in my nerves of steel.  ☺

I will say that if you’re terrified of stage fright itself, this helps to prevent a nasty vicious circle where nervousness is triggered and leads to even more nervousness.  And I will admit that I know an awful lot of people who swear by these drugs.  I suspect the placebo effect is at work, at least partly.  I’ve never asked about their sex lives.

I will also say that since beta-blockers don’t seem to affect the performance itself, they are a more useful option than alcohol, pot or Valium, which do.  Then again if you’re in a rock band, the drugs might be an indispensable part of the act!

My advice if you're already hooked?  You probably don't need the drugs as much as you think you do.  Read the previous articles in this series and you will probably find a more sustainable, hassle-free way to get the same result.