STAGE FRIGHT
Actors talk about the anxiety that can afflict performers at any stage of their careers,
Former One Direction singer Zayn Malik, now a solo artist, knows what it means to have it: performance anxiety so bad he recently had to back out of an appearance at the U.K.’s Summertime Ball.
Among actors, singers and other performers, it’s better known as stage fright and it’s common, widespread and something that even age and experience may not conquer.
Antoni Cimolino, artistic director of the Stratford Festival, knows the phenomenon well.
“I’ve watched it over time and careers where the sense of panic is so strong that (actors) just can’t face it. And it doesn’t necessarily happen at any particular moment; it can happen to somebody who’s in mid-career and at the height of confidence,” Cimolino said.
“It’s more pervasive than people know and more people onstage are dealing with it than you recognize.”
Cimolino recalls the late Richard Monette, a revered actor and director who was also the festival’s longest-serving artistic director before his death in 2008.
“In the case of Richard, in the late 1980s, he suddenly just couldn’t face going onstage,” Cimolino recalled.
Cimolino persuaded Monette to return to the stage in a1997 production of Filumena Marturano, which Cimolino directed and in which Monette performed flawlessly. But in 2002, when Monette was directing My Fair Lady, he took on the role of Henry Higgins, alternating with Geraint Wyn Davies and Colm Feore.
During Monette’s first performance, “He got out there and he just lost the lines, and it was such a terrifying thing that he never could go back on again,” Cimolino said.
Cynthia Dale, who’s appearing at Stratford in the Stephen Sondheim musical A Little Night Music, said singing for her is more likely to bring on anxiety than acting.
“In a way, I can perform when I’m a character, when I’m somebody else. But I do a lot of concerts when I’m just me alone and it’s just Cynthia Dale onstage. That’s way scarier for me, that’s when the nerves take over more,” she said.
Dale knows a respected actor, whom she won’t name, who had one disastrous performance and never returned to the stage.
She calls the panic she feels before going onstage “the polar bear plunge.”
“I always get nervous. I always feel like I’m going to throw up onstage. You’ve done months of rehearsal and you’re prepared, and you know your stuff, but that moment of standing backstage waiting for your cue, you’re dying to do it and you’re also dying to run screaming from the theatre at the same time. It doesn’t get any easier as you get older,” Dale added.
Veteran actor Ted Dykstra said any actor’s greatest fear in the parlance of the theatre is to “dry” onstage, i.e., to forget one’s line.
“That’s the terror and it comes in different ways. It’s a blind, irrational fear that you will just seize up, that you won’t be connected to what it is you’re supposed to be doing,” said Dykstra, who’s starring in Coal Mine Theatre’s Instructions to Any Future Socialist Government Wishing to Abolish Christmas.
Ian Lake, who’s playing the lead in Macbethat Stratford, said the profession is filled with stories of legendary actors, such as the late Sir Laurence Olivier, who suffered terribly from stage fright later in his career.
“I’m not one to really deal with stage fright on a very debilitating level, but nerves definitely come into play,” Lake said.
Lake, whose previous work was in classical theatre and plays, found himself having to sing and play a guitar last year for Once at the Ed Mirvish Theatre. The worst moment came before opening night at a promotional event for the show.
“I’ll never forget how many of my faculties left me in that moment. My fingers stopped doing what I wanted them to, my voice stopped sounding like the way I hoped it would sound. If I’d been asked to recite Shakespeare in that moment, I would have been fine,” Lake said.
Ravi Jain, who’s directing Soulpepper Theatre’s production of The 39 Steps, said he nearly quit acting altogether while performing in a production of Spent in India.
“I was literally on the floor. My knees had buckled and I was having an existential crisis of, ‘Maybe I should stop being an actor because this is so not worth it, this feeling that I’m feeling,’ ” Jain said.
But for actors, the risk of going onstage and failing is counterbalanced by the rewards of performance.
“I love it and that rush is like nothing else. I don’t do drugs; I don’t need to, I go onstage,” Dale said.
“I think the very thing that gives actors stage fright is the same thing that drives them to the stage. It’s all part of the thrill of the ride. Courage and doubt and confidence and fear all balled up into one experience,” Lake added.
Reducing jitters onstage is a complicated issue. But there are ways to deal with it, including ensuring you’re well prepared and being open about the problem.
“Everybody knows. You can’t keep something like that a secret,” Dykstra said.
“The only way to deal with it is to put it on the table. The thing is it’s very normal.”
Michelle Monteith, starring in Soulpepper’s production of The Heidi Chronicles, said intense preparation builds the confidence to perform.
“It’s really an issue about trust and trusting that you’ve done the work and it’s in you, and you just have to cross that threshold and hope for the best. For me, it’s really about trying to be present and trying to find ways of relaxing.”
And sometimes, Jain said, it’s just a matter of refusing to give in to the fear.
“You have to talk to yourself and just say, ‘You’ve done this before, you know what you’re doing, it’s going to be great so just suck it up and get out there.’ ”
“It’s a blind, irrational fear that you will just seize up, that you won’t be connected to what it is you’re supposed to be doing.” TED DYKSTRA VETERAN ACTOR