Flopping, Sweating, And Coasting on Rollers
By Shane

There's been much talk online recently about that bane of all performers, that emotional millstone -- or albatross -- hanging around the necks of those that take to the limelight. Here's one of the few times you'll see me use the phrase commonly given to that emotional reaction to performing:

Stage fright.

"Stage fright" is that feeling some folks get when they realize that they are on, that there are expectant, waiting eyes focused entirely on every slight show of action, every minute inflection of voice, every single, solitary thing they do, just waiting for them to make a mistake.Well, at least that's what it feels like.

Stage fright is, technically speaking, a social anxiety disorder. The symptoms of this state are usually an uncomfortable feeling in the stomach (some call these "butterflies"), nervous movements of the hands or feet (some people refer to these as "jitters"), uncontrollable perspiration ("flop sweat"), a feeling of impending disaster, and a general sense of your mortality as a performer.

It's also very, very common. Oh, sure, while you're standing there five minutes before your show, cracking your knuckles for the seventeenth time, drowning in sweat and wondering if you should have eaten that chicken burrito for lunch, you'll tell yourself that other famous performers never get stage fright. And you'd be wrong. Mahatma Ghandi fainted from anxiety the first time he presented a case as a young lawyer in South Africa. Barbara Striesand suffers from anxiety that is so debilitating it sometimes keeps her performing or making public appearances. Stage fright -- from now on, let's call it what it really is: performance anxiety -- is not something that only affects a few people; it hits us all, regardless of our skill, our fame (or noteriety), or our experience.

Performance anxiety is really a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy. Studies have shown that performance anxiety progresses in stages:

1. You fear that something will go wrong during the performance. Usually this fear is slight, such as you'll be boring, or forget something, or say something wrong.
2. You become anxious, and physical symptoms like the jitters or butterflies or the flop sweats come into play because you're scared. Remember: if your mind focuses on problems, your body responds with nervousness.
3. You begin thinking that those physical feelings are a confirmation that something really is wrong, which increases your fear. At this point, you begin to think about all the technical things that can go wrong: you'll blow the sleights, your gimmicks won't work, the staging is incorrect, the music not synched properly.
4. Now your mind starts focusing on the anxiety. But the brain, as fabulous as it is, has its limits: it can only concentrate on one complex mental task at a time. Because you're now focusing on the anxiety and the fear, your performance will begin to suffer. Mistakes are made. You've begun realizing the thing you feared. At this point, the vicious cycle has begun; you now concentrate on the mistakes, causing more anxiety, which causes more mistakes, and so it goes, sometimes to the point of total freezing where you literally cannot continue.

Okay, so I went into a bit of detail on what performance anxiety is, what causes it, and how it works against us. Chances are you're bored beyond the point of redemption, but to solve the problem, we have to know what causes the problem -- and avoid the myriad of "tips" we run into for dealing with it (you know the ones I'm talking about: "imagine the audience in their underwear", "drink warm water", "walk around barefooted", "sacrifice a black pullet under a full moon", etc). To really get to a solution, we need to think about two more things.

The first is an experiment conducted back in 1992 on performance anxiety among a group of singers who were all competing in a contest. The results of the study showed that there was no significant relationship found between the feeling of performance anxiety and the outcome of the contest. However, there was a strong relationship between the outcome and the amount of preparation time the individual singers devoted to their act.

The second is the sage advice I received from my teacher many moons ago: "Practice everything a hundred times or a thousand, then, when you get nervous, tell yourself that you've done everything so many times that this is just one more time."

Yeah, it really is that simple: rehearse, rehearse well, and tell yourself that you've done the best job you can of rehearsing.

Forget going for long walks, forget not eating four hours before a performance, forget about practicing and rehearsing up to the last minute.

Just... rehearse. Nothing will ever replace the simple rehearsal, not even herbal supplements.

The root cause of performance anxiety is confidence, either in the choice of material or the presentation you're giving that material. Confidence is gained during rehearsal. When you've reached a high level of confidence in your material and your presentation, your anxiety level goes down. Way down.

And you can take it down even further. Remember, your audience wants you to succeed. They are not against you. There is no "you against the world" conspiracy going on. Your audience wants more than anything to enjoy your show. This makes them your most powerful ally. That's why imagining them in their underwear (or anything just as silly, and designed, I suspect, to help the nervous performer spread out some of the anxiety a bit) fails miserably. Think of friends and family in the audience, and imagine how full of pride they are in what you're doing. That will help much more than imaging the three-hundred pound guy in the front row in a thong.

Also, if you can, scope out the venue before you have to perform. Stand in the exact spot where you'll be performing. Walk around, look around, get used to your surroundings now. Familiarity breeds comfort, and that comfort gets rid of a bit more anxiety.

If all of this still leads to becoming drowned by anxiety during your performance, don't panic. It's not over yet, and all is not lost. Take a second to collect your thoughts, to gather yourself back up. Here's a little secret. How many performers have you seen with a glass of water handy? Ever notice how many, many times the water goes untouched? There's a reason for that: the water is not there just to moisten a dry throat or quench a sneaky thirst -- it's also there as a prop to relieve anxiety. It's that second or two or five, when the performer stops and drinks, that they are collecting their thoughts in a natural way that doesn't cry out to the audience that they are nervous wrecks.

Other performers will even admit their anxiety to the audience in a casual, off-handed way. Remember, the audience is on your side, and they have the same anxieties you do -- most of them wouldn't do what you're doing for any amount of money. By admitting to your own fears, without drawing it out into pitiful whining of course, you give voice to your anxiety and get it out of your system. And it may just result in encouragement from your audience.

The big key is that you don't abandon what you rehearsed. Don't let your fears disrupt what you rehearsed so well. Remember that your foundation is in that rehearsal time, and don't deviate from that. Try to re-start your act logically and carefully from where you stopped and go from there.

Now, all of that is the traditional way of dealing with performance anxiety. As you go through it, cope with it, put it behind you, you're likely to find your own ways of getting past those feelings.

Or you may be like me, and decide that you're never going to get past it, but that's okay to. Personal anecdote time.

When I was eleven, I did my initiation for the local IBM ring. What a nightmare. I had decided to go with an effect from Lorayne's Close-Up Card Magic ("The Little Card That Wasn't There", if you're curious). I had practiced and rehearsed that little ditty all summer while at my grandmother's on vacation. And I mean all summer. That was the only thing I practiced, the only trick I touched. I was as prepared for performing that before a room full of people I loved and respected as I could possibly be. And waiting to perform it was the worst hour of my life. I was physically ill -- my stomach was in knots. My hands were cold and clammy, while I was sweating like a pig everywhere else. When it came time, I performed and can truthfully tell you that it was done, over with, and I was accepted in less time than it takes for you to read this paragraph. I put myself through a personal hell for nothing.

When I was nineteen, I was working at a hotel. My friends, who knew of my little avocation, told me that Kreskin was checking into the hotel and maybe I'd get a chance to meet him. As it turns out, I had no choice but to meet him -- one of the front desk people called in sick and I would be checking him in. Now, say what you like, but Kreskin has always been one of my heroes. For the next three hours, I was miserable in my excitement. I felt like I had eaten a brick and my stomach was protesting that decision. My hands were shaking. My concentration was shot. When I met the man (an incredibly friendly, charming person), I happily shook his hand, got his autograph, and chatted brightly with him for about five minutes. I had worked myself into such a fit of excitement that I couldn't believe I didn't welcome him by saying "Good evening, Mr. Gellar."

It was a few years later, when I was out of magic entirely and giving lectures on business, that I put those two instances together. I had the exact same response to "stage fright" as I did to excitement. I would notice how I felt before giving a lecture, and I would compare that to the way I felt going to a concert I dearly wanted to see. The results? Identical. I was going through the same physiological changes under both emotions -- one I was seeing as a negative emotion, one a definite positive. Could they have been related?

I should have asked my mom.

A big fan of Elvis Presley, my beloved, gray-haired mother had the answer all the time. She read it in a biography somewhere, I imagine. But the long and short of it was this: when Elvis got performance anxiety, he just told himself that it was because he was excited. He convinced himself that his anxiety was really expectation, altering the context of the biological problems entirely. Come to find out, Frank Sinatra appraoched it the same way.

Both these legends, suffering from "stage fright", told themselves over and over that it was nothing but the fact they were excited. They weren't "scared", they were thrilled! And the mind, being as powerful as it is, actually started believing itself. So, while the physical aspects of performance anxiety manifested itself, their psychological takes on the feelings were now drastically distant from the original -- and actual -- cause. It's hard to believe that outlook and self-examination didn't make a difference in their capabilities as performers.

So, needless to say, I began putting that same connection together. I began approaching the feeling of anxiety as a feeling of excitement. I am going on a ride at the state fair. But it's not a trip through the "Chamber of Horrors"; it's a ride on a fast, sleek rollercoaster. It's a ride with thrills but no terror; excitement, but no horror. And, with that revelation firmly in hand, I haven't looked back

Go way back to the beginning of this article, and you'll see that I say I rarely use the term "stage fright"; now you see why. I don't see that experience before a show (or a lecture, for that matter) as an expression of fear, of some ominous foreboding rivalled only by cheap '70s horror films. I see it as part of my own excitement over what is about to happen, of the thrills I'm about to experience doing what I know I'm capable of and something I love.

I get ready for the rollercoaster ride.

Shane