The Psychology of Performance

FROM THE INSIDE OUT

By Gregory Daubney & Dr Ally Daubney

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–Jayne is looking worried a lot of the time while Ami, as one of the main actors in the show, has become somewhat withdrawn and is having difficulty remembering her lines.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.

There are a lot of stresses and strains during a term and that can often lead to difficulty in maintaining contact with what you truly value in your teaching. A quick reflection on the values you bring to your teaching can seriously influence your motivation and the motivation of your students. Such reflection enables you to connect, or maybe reconnect, with those values that started you teaching in the first place.

Some questions you might want to consider are:

Why is arts education important? What is important for you when teaching music? What makes learning music enjoyable? What motivates you to teach?

We would guess that most teachers do not start teaching to have students feel nervous or worried about performing. Therefore, looking at whether your teaching is in line with what you value provides a framework for reflection and a means of adapting your teaching to help students enjoy their learning.

Emphasise the process

Reflecting on how you motivate and reward your students can have a massive influence on the presence of performance anxiety. If your teaching focusses on the outcome (good or bad) of the performance more than how to achieve that end result, you could be creating a rich breeding ground for performance anxiety. All students develop at different rates so maintaining a commitment to rewarding effort is worthwhile and is something that can be easily overlooked as performance time nears. Understanding, and emphasising, that feeling nervous before performing is a natural part of the process is a good way of helping your students realise that their nerves may not be a bad thing after all. Indeed, most professional performers readily acknowledge that they get nervous before they perform. In the example above, Hanic’s annoyance may be borne of frustration with Ami’s memory loss, but helping him to understand that her nerves are part of her way of preparing for the performance may help Hanic become less annoyed in the future.

Reframe unhelpful thoughts

As any performance time draws near, the probability of nervousness and physical tension arising increases. This is largely due to the increasing awareness of the potential for things to go wrong. Yet, this is natural and occurs in most performance domains. In the example above, a classic symptom of feeling nervous is being shown by Ami, who keeps forgetting her lines. Memory loss is something that most performers, quite rightly, fear. However, this fear is largely caused by the mind focussing on things going wrong. A discussion with Ami asking her what she is thinking about may reveal some unhelpful thoughts, such as “I don’t want to forget my lines” or “What if I get it wrong? I’ll look really silly?” These thoughts can be reframed to promote confidence in Ami, for example “I won’t forget my lines because I’ve learnt them well” or “I won’t get it wrong and won’t look silly because I’ve worked very hard and love performing” As can be seen, these reframed thoughts are more helpful and will leave Ami feeling more confident, relaxed and excited about performing, taking confidence from her thorough preparation and positive talking to herself!

Body language

When we feel nervous our bodies give us a good indication of what we are feeling often without us knowing it. Our posture tends to shrink whenever we experience nerves and this can make it difficult to perform. This is particularly the case with Jayne in the example above. By worrying about the upcoming performance, it is likely that she will become more withdrawn and will try to hide away from performing. A good way for Jayne to overcome this, while making her feel confident, is to remind her before going on the stage to stand up tall and proud. Try it yourself now. Slouch down into a ‘I don’t want anyone to look at me’ position. Think about how that feels. Now stand up tall, look up, and think about something you are really proud of. Changing our body language can really change the way we think and feel and, for students like Jayne, can have an immediate positive impact on their experience of the upcoming performance.

Good preparation leads to strong and enduring confidence

It is important that the students are familiar with the material. This may sound obvious, but can be a significant cause of stress if students don’t think they know the material well enough. Strong preparation will help your students feel confident and that they are familiar with what they are going to perform and how they will perform it. As a music teacher this means being playful with the material so that they repeat, repeat, repeat without it getting dull and boring.

Another great source of confidence is to also know that every child has everything they need on the day of the performance to avoid the potential stress of forgetting something. This can be easily achieved with a ‘day of performance checklist’ including items such as: particular clothing / costumes; musical instruments; props; water; and snacks

Designing a list with your students in the build up to a performance will promote greater confidence through ownership of the process as the list will be generated with them.

Looking forward

While this article has provided a short insight into some very practical strategies you can embed in preparation for an upcoming performance, it is ultimately more advantageous to embed these, and other strategies outlined in our published resources, into your daily teaching. .

By making these strategies part of your everyday routine, you are providing students with a set of tools which they can draw upon at any time to help them cope with the stresses and strains they encounter not just in performance situations but in everyday life in and out of school.