RE: Panic Mode

[<mike@michaelplishka.com>]

Great points, Rick.

It's interesting how language reinforces this as well.  For example, in
English(american) when people are hot or cold, they'll often say, "I'm
cold." or "I'm really warm." They also say, "I'm scared."

In other languages, such as, say Ukrainian, one would say, "It's cold to 
me"
or "I feel cold".  (That's how you can tell American born people that learn
Ukrainian, they'll say, in Ukrainian, "I am cold."  It's a give away that
they're thinking in English.)

My point is, to Rick's point, how we feel is not who we are at the deepest
level.  We are and can always be more.  I still get people who come up to 
me
and say they remember this one performance I gave.  I had a brutal cold 
that
day, but people remember the gig and how much emotion was packed into it.

Both my folks were no strangers to the stage from a musical/acting
perspective.  "The show must go on," is something that was part of my
upbringing in many ways. You commit, you do it. (Probably to the
consternation of many, as when in fourth grade, despite feeling sick in the
morning (I actually had the mumps!), I gave  a performance at a puppet show
and then AFTER went to the nurse so she could call my mom. :-) )

Having said that, there is something to the discussion we had on LD that
mentioned, "People can hear when you smile."  Check out this Zappos 
training
video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo3sMaH-h9M  .  I remember in a dance
troupe how we would all remind each other, before going on stage,  to smile
on stage, even when in pain, even when the dance went awry.  It was more
than looking good.  It helped to create the right impression physically.
http://bipolar.about.com/cs/humor/a/000802_smile.htm  Our bodies react to
how are faces look as do others react to our faces.  Acting is indeed what
we do when we flash a smile and fake it till we make it.  That's okay! We
are a curious, evolving mixture of acting and not acting - giving people
what they came to see, yet sharing of who we are at our cores.  

We are all gifts of what we do and what we are.  Being afraid to share that
is normal.  The great news is that regardless of how the gig goes, good or
not so good, we are always way more than what people see and experience, 
and
we always have the potential to share more, another glorious facet, each
time we step on stage.  For that matter, each morning we wake... 



-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Walker [mailto:looppool@cruzio.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:59 AM
To: LOOPERS DELIGHT (posting)
Subject: Re: Re: Panic Mode

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.