Re: Re: Panic Mode

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

I've heard it said,

"A good Shakespearean actor does a really good job of portraying Hamlet 
during each show.

A truly great Shakespearean actor will come to the theater on a day 
where the
IRS has audited them,  their lover of several years has just left them 
and they have a really bad cold
and still do a version of Hamlet that feels like you've never seen the 
play before.

I have finally learned this about our work and our performance:

     We are NOT our emotions.    We have emotions and they flow through
us.      To say one day that we feel cold and on another day that we 
feel hot................are we hot
or are we cold as a human being?     If one day we feel afraid and 30 
minutes after walking on stage
we don't feel afraid at all.............are we intrinsically afraid or 
confident as human beings?

The thing that is true is that human beings mistakenly associate their 
feelings with their
existential state on a constant basis.

What also seems to be true is that when we clinch up and 'white knuckle' 
it that our emotions have
much more power over us than if we relax,  breathe deeply and let the 
emotions flow through us.

The great Shakespearean actor doesn't 'feel' great necessarily, but they 
have the ability
to make people think that they 'are' feeling great.

I've come to regard performing on stage as acting.

I used to think that if I didn't feel inspired that it was somehow 
cheating if I played in such
a way that the audience thought I was inspired.

After dozens and dozens of performances that I felt horrible about only 
to be confronted by
either reports from the audience that I was having a really good 
performance or even
listening to the tapes afterwards and being favorably impressed with the 
results despite how
I felt,  I finally got that I just needed to act confident when I walked 
on stage whether I felt
that way or not.

Personally,  I"m frightened almost every single time I get onstage,  but 
I heard someone say
that you can call that adrenalated state, 'stage fright' or you can 
think of it as 'stage energy'.

With the latter,  it's just a manipulative condition that we can use to 
our advantage and to the
advantage of the audience's perception of our performance.