This time we get down to some very practical experience to gradually build your confidence onstage. If you’ve missed the first three parts of this blog series, you can catch up here.
Experiential approaches to dealing with stage fright
Once you are armed with these basic bits of knowledge about the nature of audiences, you can make the experience you get work harder for you. As you move from being audience member to performer, there are some more things for you to understand about the change in focus that needs to take place.
Remember you need to ‘transition’
Knowing how to be an audience member is automatic. When you are in the audience watching your favourite performer, you mustn’t succumb to that state to the degree that you believe that you can’t do it yourself. It is very tempting because you are playing being an audience member for all you are worth. You are silent and helpless as the action unfolds in front of you. Knowing this is particularly important if you are guesting with a band or at an open mic night, and are in the audience until your number comes up. Understand that you will feel that you can’t sing and could never sing and you don’t know why you ever promised to sing because it’s patently something you just can’t do. I always used to feel like this at that point. Don’t worry. When you cross that line that divides audience from performers, your abilities will be magically restored.
Next, get some experience of performing where learning how to be, in front of people, is all you have to concentrate on
There is no need to make your learning curve harder than it is by giving yourself 50 things to get right at once. I recommend speaking circles as a way of learning to feel comfortable without script or props or any pressure to be an expert or to entertain. You can find them at www.speakingcircles.com . They develop your capacity for what they term ‘relational presence’ with an audience. This is a very low stress but high impact way to move forward especially if your stage fright is serious, but I also recommend it as a way of going back to basics and building a very firm foundation to your whole stage persona. Essentially, what you will learn is that your audience likes you, and wants to see you, even if you aren’t doing very much at all. That will stop you being inauthentic or trying too hard later on. I think this is important even if you seem to be a ‘born entertainer’ and habitually use lots of showy or noisy ways of getting your audience’s attention. There is no substitute for experiencing this and knowing it in your gut, for the rest of your life. It will give you confidence in social situations too.
Be yourself
Get over the worry that comes from being able to ‘hide’ behind songs or a ‘diva’ or ‘rock and roll’ persona, and fearing that you can never show the real you. All of us are about seven years old inside. Sometimes we are much younger than that. This vulnerable little person we carry around inside is someone we must come to trust and love. Because however old you get, this is who you truly are, and you are never going to grow up. If you were raised with a very intellectual, perfectionist or even abusive model of the world, then loving and trusting this inner you will be very hard, and you will fear showing it onstage more than anything. What you must come to understand is that this inner you is the source of all your passion and energy and inspiration. That is why you cannot afford to ignore it. For this I recommend clowning or fooling courses. And therapy if necessary of course.
The clown particularly (but also the fool) trains so that they can regress back to a much younger self. The ‘stupid’ clown is typically about three years old. The ‘naughty’ clown perhaps about four, and the ‘know it all’ clown about six. In order to walk around onstage without a clue what you’re going to say or do next, truly being three years old, you have to have learned to be comfortable with that vulnerable self. The fool allows you to be inner selves of all ages, and is useful if you fear what will happen if you just let yourself go. If you don’t know ‘who is in there’ or fear what will come out of your mouth, this is the place to make peace with all those darker selves and to give them acceptance.
My own stage persona was very serene and almost spiritual. It was disconcerting to find parts of my inner self that wanted to leap around onstage, yelling four letter words and laughing… But if I hadn’t learned to accept them, I’d have been afraid to be myself onstage and I’d be very ‘tight’ and inhibited as a performer. It takes only moments to write this, but years to learn it well. So get out there and make a start! Do it on a course or in private with a clowning buddy in a confidential setting, and not with your core audience. No one will ever know and it will make your stage presence much richer, freer and deeper. Don’t forget that you can practice singing as various characters in this setting too. This will help you when you get to the next step.
Practice being onstage
Try to find non-pressured places to practice where you get some emotional support. This could be a poetry night, writer’s group or folk club. Talk to people in the clubs and make a few friends especially amongst the regular performers. Knowing they are there when you finally face that ‘rabbit in headlights’ moment is going to help. Eventually it will be your turn and to begin with, you will feel horribly nervous and not be able to do your best. Never mind. Keep going to the clubs regularly and getting up and doing something. Eventually, the novelty of the experience will wear off and your subconscious mind will decide that it’s no big deal. If your problem has been serious, this is only likely to happen if you have done all the foundation work though.
Gather up the feelings
My final tip, for when you can face your local folk club audience or whatever, with your eyes open and no nerves and really show them what you love about what you’re doing is this. Memorise exactly how they look. Remember the good feeling coming off them. Store away the feeling of how it is to be sharing what you love with people that want you to do well, support you, compliment you, and feel like your stage friends. Now carry them away with you in your heart, and whenever you face a large or even a hostile crowd, as you walk onstage, close your eyes and see them out there in the auditorium (or field, or whatever). Call up their faces and their goodwill, and perform for them. They will give you strength, and remind you that this is what you were born to do. It will fill that huge ‘silence’ of the audience you are faced with and haven’t had a chance to get to know yet, and enable you to see the vulnerable, transported beings that they are, nevertheless.