Getting over stage fright is not as easy as imagining your audience in their underwear… it means producing a sea change in yourself.
For those of you who don’t know, I once had paralysingly bad stage fright. (I know paralysingly isn’t a word. Don’t write in, I like making words up…) It wasn’t enough to make me vomit, thank goodness. But I used to shake so hard I was in danger of falling over. And being onstage felt like a surreal dream where any awful thing was possible. For instance, offstage I was as rational as you are. But onstage, I consistently feared that an assassin in the audience would stab me if I sang a wrong note. All the advice I received was pretty useless – and I found myself feeling that I’d failed. What I didn’t realise was, that the advice was just plain wrong…
Stage fright – silence and myths
Some people assume that stage fright is inevitable or even desirable, and others that it’s not something you can do anything about. Many performers suffer in silence, dimly aware that they are more badly affected than those who just feel a healthy dose of nervous excitement before they perform, but at a loss to know what to do about it. They may feel inadequate and frustrated that they cannot give of their best. Others resort to beta blockers or alcohol or drugs to help them ‘loosen up’. As a near teetotaller who got over paralysing stage fright and loved performing (before physical issues stopped me doing it) I can tell you that no artificial substances are necessary.
Stage fright or ‘nerves’?
Some nervous excitement is normal. If you didn’t get a few butterflies in your stomach just before you’re on, you might give a very flat and low energy performance, but this shouldn’t last more than a few minutes and shouldn’t stop you giving of your best. If it does, you have a problem. If this is you, what you feel will vary on a continuum from ‘a bit hampered’ to ‘vomiting beforehand’ or ‘unable to breathe or stand up onstage’. The problem is, it is a continuum and therefore easy to ignore if it is getting worse. It is also easy to think, once you do have stage fright that you are only ‘cured’ once you never feel nervous, but this isn’t the case.
The first thing you should do
If you are experiencing a level of nerves which hamper you as a performer, the very first thing to do is to stop giving yourself a hard time about it. Just because you possess a great deal of technical skill, knowledge or a wonderful tone to your instrument, does not mean that you will be or should be a ‘natural’ who loves it onstage. The two are entirely separate and unrelated. So being nervous doesn’t negate your talent as a performer. That is the first thing to remember.
Onstage fright is normal – psychologically
Secondly, it is entirely normal for you to experience ‘fright’ in a situation which most human beings will never face in the course of their lifetimes. The condition of being given one shot at displaying an international level of skill in front of thousands, and sometimes recorded on media which can be played back forever, at a given and predetermined time and place, which is not necessarily purpose built, regardless of how you are feeling physically or emotionally, can hardly be called natural. Or even reasonable!
Onstage you’re in ‘dreamtime’
One particular frustration is that fears which seem silly offstage show up like assassins to ambush you once you’re onstage. My own personal belief is that the experience of being onstage, (under powerful lights with hundreds or even thousands of anonymous people staring at you alone, in silence, giving nothing away about themselves and their humanity and with the power at any moment to shame or ridicule you) is a situation in which any normal being would feel justifiably frightened unless they have been able to arm themselves in some way.
Put like that it starts to sound like an interrogation doesn’t it? Or some form of psychological torture. On a gut level, most people in supporting roles in the industry recognise the madness of the situation. And that is where their almost mystical sense of admiration for performers who can deliver in those circumstances comes from, and in turn, their unreasonable disappointment and sometimes a selfish panic when a performer is truly frightened. Their unconscious and faulty reasoning is that anyone who can face the live situation (as we have defined it) and thrive is superhuman. Therefore performers are superhuman. Therefore anyone that is talented but can’t conquer their nerves is not a ‘proper performer’. The idea that ‘naturals’ have an unconscious set of factors helping them to do their job, which can be learned and applied, doesn’t usually occur to them.
Performers enter a form of ‘dreamtime’ when they are onstage, whether they are performing competently or not. The factors I have described, not only resemble a police interrogation, but also the therapist’s couch. Most people know that therapy is deliberately set up to enable the client to project their worst fears or fantasies onto the emotionally anonymous analyst, enabling them to voice them in hopes of a ‘cure’. However, it doesn’t seem to occur to most people that the same thing is happening onstage, only with hundreds of emotionally anonymous ‘analysts’ and none of them offering help or bound by an ethical code! What seems to happen to the psychologically unprepared performer in that ‘silence’ and scrutiny, is that the fears in their psyche come to life, and are as ‘real’ and as keenly felt as any of us feel the horrors of our nightmares whilst we are dreaming.
Part 2 to follow soon!
If you’re dreading an upcoming public event, such as a board presentation, keynote speech, wedding speech or even an upcoming performance, get in touch. I can coach you through the process, of reclaiming your natural stage presence. Use the contact page or email me at