Take a minute to go back in your mind to your best ever performance - when you were walking on air, when performing was easy, when you were hitting every note vocally and emotionally. Everything joined up and every fibre of your being was invested in the performance you were giving. You were on fire!!
When you walked off stage, or ended that part of the rehearsal, you could see in the reactions of the people around you, confirming what you knew - you were brilliant. As you made your way home, you were still glowing. Deep down, you always knew you were capable of working to this standard and now you’ve proved it!
Sometime later, a thought pops into your head.
"I need to do that again."
Suddenly, the euphoria starts to fade and a nagging feeling of worry takes over.
"What did I do that was different to usual?"
And now you're trying to figure out how you found the flow. You play it over and over again but the answer doesn't come.
Next time you're singing that bit it just doesn't feel the same, and you know it. You can see it in the faces of the people around you. "Try and recapture what you had last time," is the note you get.
How do you do that when you don’t know what you did?!
Don’t worry. There is a way.
Let's rewind to performance number one, the easy, light, fun and successful performance. There's one key thing you've done brilliantly here, even if you didn’t know it:
You've put your focus outside of yourself.
You're engaged in what's going on around you, your fellow performers, your music, and all the things that make up the world of the performance. Because all of your mental energy is invested in what's going on around you, there is nothing left to power the critical little voice that keeps you head bound and distracted.
Now we move to the next phase. The in-between phase, when the seed of worry is planted and bedded in by you cultivating it with what?
Your focus and attention.
By the time you get to performance number two, the Japanese Knotweed of worry has wound its way around the garden of your mind. As the crucial moment of performance approaches, you're in exactly the opposite place you were in performance number one - apprehensive, constricted and tense. So what happens?
You try to repeat what you did the first time. Same looks, moves, gestures.
This never works. You only end up with a surface imitation of what you did before, which isn't satisfying for you or anyone else.
The way to consistently recreating that killer performance is to consciously learn how to activate the state of focus you stumbled upon in performance one.
That state of focus is pure investment in the present moment – there’s no space here for negativity or playing small. In this place you drink in everything – the twists and turns of the music, the words that are sung to you and the way the other characters treat you affect you so deeply you cannot help but respond with pure and truthful emotion, because none of your energy is invested in maintaining the mask of protection we call self-consciousness. This raw, unfiltered truth is what all performers aspire to experience and audiences long to see and feel.
When you really understand and experience this state of aliveness, you are truly liberated. When you can embrace each and every moment in performance, it will always feel light and joyous, and you will always be sharing your truth with everyone around you.
But, that mental Japanese Knotweed we talked about earlier has been cultivated over a lifetime, and you might need some help to hack it down. That’s what I’m here for. Everything I teach is geared towards making that state a habit – a good habit, which replaces the destructive habits of self-criticism and negativity. The techniques I teach leave you poised, alert and ready to pounce – or if the scene calls for it, when another character pounces on you, all the vulnerability, hurt and despair can freely come tumbling out. All this is within the framework of the world of the performance, set, music and your fellow singers, making you the ultimate asset to the show.
When you walked off stage, or ended that part of the rehearsal, you could see in the reactions of the people around you, confirming what you knew - you were brilliant. As you made your way home, you were still glowing. Deep down, you always knew you were capable of working to this standard and now you’ve proved it!
Sometime later, a thought pops into your head.
"I need to do that again."
Suddenly, the euphoria starts to fade and a nagging feeling of worry takes over.
"What did I do that was different to usual?"
And now you're trying to figure out how you found the flow. You play it over and over again but the answer doesn't come.
Next time you're singing that bit it just doesn't feel the same, and you know it. You can see it in the faces of the people around you. "Try and recapture what you had last time," is the note you get.
How do you do that when you don’t know what you did?!
Don’t worry. There is a way.
Let's rewind to performance number one, the easy, light, fun and successful performance. There's one key thing you've done brilliantly here, even if you didn’t know it:
You've put your focus outside of yourself.
You're engaged in what's going on around you, your fellow performers, your music, and all the things that make up the world of the performance. Because all of your mental energy is invested in what's going on around you, there is nothing left to power the critical little voice that keeps you head bound and distracted.
Now we move to the next phase. The in-between phase, when the seed of worry is planted and bedded in by you cultivating it with what?
Your focus and attention.
By the time you get to performance number two, the Japanese Knotweed of worry has wound its way around the garden of your mind. As the crucial moment of performance approaches, you're in exactly the opposite place you were in performance number one - apprehensive, constricted and tense. So what happens?
You try to repeat what you did the first time. Same looks, moves, gestures.
This never works. You only end up with a surface imitation of what you did before, which isn't satisfying for you or anyone else.
The way to consistently recreating that killer performance is to consciously learn how to activate the state of focus you stumbled upon in performance one.
That state of focus is pure investment in the present moment – there’s no space here for negativity or playing small. In this place you drink in everything – the twists and turns of the music, the words that are sung to you and the way the other characters treat you affect you so deeply you cannot help but respond with pure and truthful emotion, because none of your energy is invested in maintaining the mask of protection we call self-consciousness. This raw, unfiltered truth is what all performers aspire to experience and audiences long to see and feel.
When you really understand and experience this state of aliveness, you are truly liberated. When you can embrace each and every moment in performance, it will always feel light and joyous, and you will always be sharing your truth with everyone around you.
But, that mental Japanese Knotweed we talked about earlier has been cultivated over a lifetime, and you might need some help to hack it down. That’s what I’m here for. Everything I teach is geared towards making that state a habit – a good habit, which replaces the destructive habits of self-criticism and negativity. The techniques I teach leave you poised, alert and ready to pounce – or if the scene calls for it, when another character pounces on you, all the vulnerability, hurt and despair can freely come tumbling out. All this is within the framework of the world of the performance, set, music and your fellow singers, making you the ultimate asset to the show.