How to Put Performance Anxiety to Good Use
By Wyatt Elling
No matter how much you love performing, or how much experience you have as an actor, you're going to get stage fright at some point in your career. Polls have found that public speaking is the number one fear of Americans, and just because you're an actor doesn't mean you're immune. The truth is that most working actors are very familiar with stage fright. They know that you can feel totally fine in front of a 500 person audience one day, and have a near-panic attack the next day in front of a handful of casting directors. It's important to remember that stage fright isn't something you can overcome, it's a natural response that you can use to your advantage as a stage actor.
A lot of people mistake performance anxiety with actual "stage fright." It's natural to feel nervous and excited before a performance, and if you don't, you're probably not cut out to be an actor anyway. This is performance anxiety, and it is a natural response to prep your mind and body for acting. True stage fright, however, can be paralyzing. This happens when a normal fear of public appearance develops unnaturally, and you start taking short, shallow breaths. If this continues, your diaphragm becomes rigid, and you nervous system triggers a "fight or flight" response. You start sweating, you feel like you can't breathe all the way, and you become flushed. Once this happens, it's hard to do much of anything besides panic, much less act in front of an audience. A small amount of adrenaline from normal performance anxiety can actually boost your abilities, allowing you to channel nervous energy into a sharper, more energetic performance. Once you reach "fight or flight" mode, your thoughts are clouded and all those lines you spent hours memorizing fly out the window.
The worst feeling you can have as an actor is freezing in front of a live audience, and the fear of this feeds heavily into stage fright. So what can you do to prevent it? On a basic level, stage fright is caused by shallow breathing, which triggers a response from your whole body. If you feel an attack of stage fright coming on, the first thing you should do is breath deeply and slowly. This will calm your heart rate and hold off a panic attack. It can be very useful as an actor to take yoga classes that concentrate on breathing techniques. Properly performed yoga has the opposite effect of stress on your body and mind, and many exercises are extremely simple and easy to perform.
Before you get to the point where you need breathing exercises to calm down, there are a number of things you can do before a performance or audition to stay calm. Experts agree that you should avoid caffeine, alcohol, and processed sugar in the days before a big event. Many people respond to nervous feelings by self-medicating with food and substances, and while this has a short-term comforting effect it will hurt you in the long run. As soon as you take away the comfort, the nervousness comes back, and you can't eat a bag of Cheetos or drink a Cosmo backstage while waiting for your entrance. The refined sugars and stimulants that come with junk food and soft drinks can also contribute to crashes and mood swings that can make normal anxiety much worse. It's much better to channel the urge to eat and drink into healthy exercise, which releases toxins and creates calming endorphins.
You can also approach stage fright from a psychological perspective. The biggest panic problems come from self-absorbed thought and fear of personal criticism. In reality, no one is going to judge you as harshly as you judge yourself. Most of the audience would be far too terrified to even consider acting in the first place. Concentrate on your character and the audience. After all, you're performing for them, not for yourself. Listen carefully to the scene before you enter, and let yourself get caught up in the fiction and attitudes of the performance. Your character has no reason to be nervous, and you need to be that character before you step into view. One thing to avoid is over-rehearsing the day of your performance and running through lines while the show is running. This will only shake your confidence, and if you haven't already got your lines down then you've got bigger problems to worry about.
If you're prepared, confident, and ready to channel nervous energy into a great performance then you've got nothing to fear from stage fright. It's a much a part of the theater as the stage or the costumes. The more you develop as an actor the more you should treat stage fright as an old friend there to give you the extra boost you need to knock the socks of the audience.
Have a question? Ask our experts!
