THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERFORMANCE FROM THE INSIDE OUT
By Gregory Daubney & Dr Ally Daubney This article explores some flexible and practical ways which you and your students can work on together in order to make the experience of performing as enjoyable as possible for all of you. The Christmas show at your school is always a fantastic way to end the term. This year, as usual, your class is involved in performing a few different songs, which they have been learning with you over the past few weeks, as part of a mini production. The CD has been playing every morning as they come into class and they are now familiar with the material and most know the words really well too, often singing them spontaneously as they move around the school. As the performance time looms you notice that some of the children in your class are losing concentration. Ben and Heather are jointly playing the role of the camel and you see they are becoming distracted and waste time making each other laugh during the final rehearsals. You also notice that others are not quite their usual bubbly selves – Jayne is looking worried a lot of the time while Ami, as one of the main actors in the show, has become somewhat withdrawn and is having difficulty remembering her lines. Ami’s forgetfulness is impacting negatively on Hanic, who is also a lead role in the show and is becoming annoyed at Ami’s memory loss. You are becoming concerned about what might happen during the actual performance and these worries are leading you to think about things negatively: “what if it all goes wrong? I don’t want my class to make a mess of this – I want this to be a really positive experience for them” and this negative thinking is making your hands sweaty and your heart race. A lot of the symptoms of performance anxiety are contained in the short paragraph described above; generally, these symptoms will be physiological (e.g. sweaty hands), mental (Ami’s memory loss) or behavioural (Heather and Ben’s laughter) in nature. Some common symptoms are indicated in the table below. All of these symptoms can interfere with what should be a hugely enjoyable experience for both you and your class. So, what can we do about it? 8
