[Last month, Allegro, the member magazine of
Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians (vol. 119, no. 4 [April 2019],
https://www.local802afm.org/allegro/articles/eight-strategies-for-breaking-out-of-a-performance-slump/), republished an article by a musician- psychologist, Dr. Noa Kageyama, who applies sports psychology to the
work of musicians. Here, he’s providing
guidance for defeating the debilitating sense of being in a performance slump.
[Dr. Kageyama uses the
strategies described by cricketers—you can think baseball for this article; it
fits well enough!—as a model for ways musicians can overcome the same
problems. I maintain that the strategies
he passes on here are just as applicable to actors going through the same
feelings—not moving up in the auditioning process—and, I daresay, probably
dancers as well. I’ll insert comments
within Dr. Kageyama’s article below to draw analogies between his advice to
musicians and equivalent situations auditioning actors may face.
[Truth be told, I’ve
experienced the doubts and questions myself in my brief attempt to become a
working actor, and I can tell you that it’s a discouraging experience. The thoughts and fears Dr. Kageyama and the
athletes he quotes describe also occurred to me after a spate of unsuccessful
auditions. So I’m passing along Dr.
Kageyama’s advice to readers of Rick On Theater in the hope some
of you will find the thoughts useful.]
Whether you’re watching basketball, baseball, or, say,
cricket, broadcasters will often say that an underperforming athlete is in a
“slump.”
I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of this phenomenon in a
musical context, so my ears perked up a bit when I recently heard a few
musicians use this term. Not like, “Oh, I’ve had a few subpar studio classes in
a row; I think I’m in a slump.” But more in the context of orchestral
auditions, where you might go through a few consecutive auditions where things
don’t click, and you don’t advance.
Slumps can be really discouraging. They can make you start
questioning your ability. And worry that perhaps you’ve hit your ceiling. Or
lead you to start “pressing” and trying too hard. None of which is especially
productive, and often just makes the slump last even longer.
[rick: I
don’t recall hearing any actor friends using the word ‘slump’ and I’m not aware
of ever having thought it myself, but I can attest, both from my own experience
in auditions and from anecdotes by my friends and colleagues in the business,
that most of us have had the experience of attending audition after audition
and not getting called back. Even harder
on the delicate psyche of the actor, tyro or vet, is going to interviews and
not even being asked to show our stuff.
A string of these experiences can be very debilitating.]
So how do elite athletes get out of slumps? Are there any
specific techniques or strategies they rely on to stay in a good headspace and
bounce back to their normal level of performance?
Cricket!
In a recent British study, 10 professional cricket players
were interviewed to learn more about their experience of slumps, and what
strategies or techniques athletes at this level might use to manage these dips
in performance (Brown, Butt, & Sarkar, 2019 – see reference at this end of
this article).
Different athletes emphasized different things, but there
were a few key themes that emerged. And all in all, there were eight specific
slump-busting strategies that seemed pretty relevant to performance slumps in
the music world too.
THEME #1: HOW TO
INTERPRET THE SLUMP
The first set of strategies relates to how you interpret the
slump. Which I know sounds pretty abstract, but staying in a productive
headspace is an important part of maintaining the motivation to work your way
through a slump.
1) Explanatory style
Let’s say you advanced in your first few auditions while you
were in school, but after graduation, experience a string of auditions where
you don’t advance out of prelims. Your inner critic might try to explain this
by telling you that you must have just been lucky before. And that you don’t
have what it takes to do any betters.
[When I
was working on my MFA in acting, my graduate acting classmates and I got cast
in every show for which we chose to audition.
(I even had a special advantage: I was nearly 30—I did a stint in the
army before grad school—so I was in demand as the “old man” any time one was needed
in the cast. Directors often asked me to
read for their productions!)
[After my
first year in the program, I began to wonder if I could get cast by directors
who didn’t know me. So that summer, I
started making the rounds in New York City and was cast in a (non-singing) role
in a little Off-Off-Broadway musical.
[I
returned to school for the second year of the MFA program and after graduating
and participating in a semi-pro summer rep the university produced, mixing grad
students and Equity pros, I went out into the world of New York theater with
confidence. I soon faced the
disheartening awakening Dr. Kageyama describes above.]
This is called a pessimistic “explanatory style.” And it’s
the kind of story that could prolong the slump, because it provides an internal and stable (i.e.
fixed and unchanging) explanation for why you’re not advancing. Because if
failing to advance is a talent issue (internal), and talent can’t be changed
(stable), how motivated will you be to work harder or try new things?
Conversely, an optimistic explanatory style is where you
might say to yourself that performance is cyclical. That there are natural ups
and downs from one audition or performance to the next (unstable), and that
slumps will happen through no fault of your own (external). External and unstable
explanations like this are less discouraging, and can help you stay
confident and motivated in the face of disappointing results.
Of course, the danger here is that if you take this too far,
you could find yourself making excuses and explaining away everything instead
of taking ownership of the adjustments you could make to your preparation.
Which is where the growth mindset kicks in.
2) Growth mindset
Some of the athletes noted that slumps represent an
opportunity to grow, learn, and become an even better player. Or at least, get
better at handling inevitable future slumps. As one athlete noted:
“Rough patches are just as good as your better patches in
a way, because it’s teaching you the game . . . because you’re not thinking
about your game when you’re doing well.”
I love that last sentence. Indeed, when things are going
well, we’re less inclined to pick apart our weaknesses and work as diligently
at getting better. But the feedback we get when we run into problems can be
invaluable, and make it much easier to pinpoint those sneaky hidden things that
we most need to work on.
[One of
my acting teachers admonished us that we learn more from our failures than we
do from our successes. As Dr. Kageyama
observes of musicians, actors seldom examine what we did when a performance
goes well. Sometimes we’re just
satisfied with the positive outcome (and, when it comes, the reception) and
don’t think about it further. Other
times, we don’t want to mess with the magic by analyzing it to look at how the
parts worked. When a scene, a gesture,
or a line doesn’t work—then we pull apart the performance to try to see why.
[In a
late rehearsal for a Revolutionary War play—one of the final dress run-throughs
at which there was an invited audience—I nailed a moment when my character is
mortally wounded in a battle scene. It’s
virtually a death scene—except that the character comes back briefly as a dying
captive—and he’s shot, his sword drawn and raised in the air, in the midst of rallying
his soldiers.
[I was
high above the audience on a bridge spanning the auditorium and the spectators
burst into thunderous applause at the moment I fell to my knees, my sword
falling from my hand. It was a heady
experience and everyone, including the other member of the large cast, was
astonished. ‘I got this scene.’ I
assured myself. ‘I killed it!’ Opening night—nothing. ‘What
did I do wrong?’ I wondered, crestfallen. I tried and tried to figure out what I did at
that rehearsal that I failed to do later: timing, line reading, gesture, substitution,
endowment, inner object, or some other overlooked technique? I kept trying, analyzing—but I never got back
that moment.]
THEME #2: MAINTAINING
A POSITIVE MENTAL STATE DURING COMPETITION
Looking at our slumps in the larger context of lifelong
growth and development can help us maintain the motivation we need to keep
putting in the work.
But a slump can affect our experience during performances
as well. Because sometimes a string of subpar performances can lead to more
doubts and negative internal chatter when we’re on stage. Or, we might feel
additional pressure to prove ourselves, and end up trying too hard to avoid
mistakes, which paradoxically, can lead to more mistakes.
So how did these athletes stay in a good headspace during
their slumps?
3) “Best performance”
imagery
Under pressure, our thoughts can easily veer towards
memories of times when we cracked a note, or when our bow shook in a quiet
exposed passage. Or, we might start worrying about having a memory slip, as we
sit and stew backstage.
To combat this, some of the athletes engaged in “best
performance” imagery. Meaning, they made an effort to visualize times in the
past when they were playing at their best. Which sounds straightforward enough,
but here’s a quick test – how many specific auditions or performances can you
think of, right now, off the top of your head, when you were having one of
those awesome days where everything works?
Maybe 1? 2? Perhaps none? It often takes a couple minutes
(if not much longer!) to recall performances like this from your past. But if
you can’t see them vividly in your head now, imagine how much tougher it’ll be
under pressure!
Not to worry though, because if you practice remembering
these moments and visualizing them a tiny bit every day, these will be much
more “top of mind” when you need something to shield you from those little
doubts and fears that start creeping in on audition day.
[The parallels
with an actor’s situation are obvious here.
Every actor has “gone up” on a line, missed an entrance cue, or reached
for a prop that wasn’t there. Those are
the pitfalls of live performance as all performing artists know. I’m sure it’s the same for dancers and
musicians, but actors know they are the ones out there under a spotlight and
when they screw up, it’s in front of God and everybody. The psychological repercussions are huge, and
hard to shake—especially when that particular moment comes around again.
[Dr.
Kageyama’s probably right, though I’ve never tried it: flash on one of the good
moments you’ve had. One of my best came
in a scene-study class. I’d been working
for a while but decided I needed to go back to class (for reasons I’ll mention
later). This was an audition class, practice
for cold readings. I was assigned a
scene from Tennessee Williams’s The Rose
Tattoo, a scene between a young man and a young girl whom he loves with a very protective mother.
[In the
reading, I instinctively reached to caress the actress’s arm—but I stopped
short and pulled back, afraid to be too forward. The class actually gasped. I don’t even remember what the teacher said to
me in his critique—I was still lost in that moment that seemed so perfectly
right. I don’t think I could ever have
created that moment if I’d planned it, and I doubt I could have repeated it if
I did that scene again. But at that reading,
in that moment, I got it. And obviously,
I haven’t forgotten it even after . . . well, a lot of years. I still take pleasure in reliving that brief moment
in class; it can make up for a lot of mistakes.]
4) Attention control
Another strategy the athletes relied on was attention
control. And the ability to focus only on what was in front of them in the
moment. As one athlete said:
“You break it down to each ball, and each ball you say
I’m going to deliver my skills here, just concentrate on every ball and just
compete, just compete and think what does this team need right now, that’s the
most important thing.”
For a musician, this might involve focusing on maintaining
an internal pulse, shaping each phrase, or hearing the sound you want in your
head as you play, instead of looking ahead, critiquing what just happened, or
worrying about what people will think.
[Actors
often refer to this as ‘being in the moment.’
It means believing in the circumstances of the scene you’re in and
accepting it all as real and not concerning yourself with what happened during
the performance of the previous
scenes or worrying about what’s coming up.
It also means playing your role and responding to the other actors on stage
with you and not thinking about how your costume or hair looks or that guy in
the second row having a coughing jag.
[I once thought I was fully engaged in
a scene, sitting at a small table down front with a young woman, when I was
pulled out because I heard snoring. I
thought an audience member in the front row had fallen asleep and was sawing
away at a log! I was actually at the
point of saying something when I realized just in time that it was my scene
partner, whose character had dozed off.
Never mind that she’d never done that before (that I’d noticed), but I
was obviously not really in the scene or I’d have seen my “lady friend” nod
off.]
5) Regulating arousal
Most of the athletes also noted the importance of learning
how to stay calm and slow things down, instead of getting overexcited and
magnifying the importance of every play.
This is easier said than done, but learning how to regulate
your physical state is a skill that we can get better at with practice. How?
Well, techniques like diaphragmatic breathing can give us more control over the
physical part of our stress response (even though yes, telling people to
breathe when they’re stressed is a total cliche).
The only problem, of course, is that this is a skill, and
requires practice, just like anything else (you can learn more about how this
kind of breathing affects us, and how do it correctly at bulletproofmusician.com.)
THEME #3: PROTECTIVE
FACTORS
Lastly, the researchers described several “protective
factors” that seemed to help athletes deal with the stress of poor performances
and bounce back more effectively.
6) Enjoyment
Remembering that they enjoyed playing cricket, despite it
also being their livelihood, was one protective factor.
“I just enjoy playing cricket, it’s something I’ve been
brought up on and it’s something I would like to be involved in for as long as
possible. If that means dragging myself down the nets or improving my fitness
to get me through a bad run, then so be it.”
When was the last time you took a piece out of your music
drawer, just to play through for fun? I’m not sure why that seems like such an
unusual thing to do, but sometimes putting your audition repertoire aside for a
moment, and taking a few minutes to play something you enjoy (a.k.a.
“deliberate play”), might be an absolutely worthwhile use of your time.
Especially if it helps you reconnect to the reason why you’re practicing and
working so hard in the first place.
[This is
one of the instances in Dr. Kageyama’s thesis that is different for musicians
and actors. A musician can pull out her
instrument and a sheet of music and play for her own pleasure. An actor can’t really just do a little acting
in his living room. (It’s one reason
many actors keep taking classes all through their careers, even after they’ve
become established—so they can keep their acting muscles limber between shows
and movies and work on material they don’t get to do otherwise.)
[But some actors do put together or join
play-reading groups so they can get together with other actors and read scripts
they love, especially plays or parts they don’t get to do in their professional
lives. It’s recreational and voluntary,
not something that they have to do to make a living or advance their
careers. It’s not as easy for an actor
to do this as it is for a musician, but the benefit is the same: you’re doing
what makes you love your profession.]
7) Linking confidence
to effort, not performance
One of the more intriguing observations was how many of the
athletes deliberately worked to separate confidence from performance.
“I try to link my confidence to my effort, not my
performance. So I’m doing everything I can to give myself the best chance of
performing, and effort being the measure of your confidence level would give
you more stability, because with the best will in the world, if you just base
your confidence on your performance, it’s just the nature of the game, you
could be in the best “nick” [form] of your life and still get nought if you get
a good ball.”
Indeed, you can play a great audition and get cut.
Conversely, you can play a mediocre round and still advance. Getting too caught
up in results can therefore not only be pretty confusing, but is a rather
unstable way to build confidence.
Meanwhile, the one thing you do have complete control over
is your preparation. And so if you feel really good about the quality of your
daily practice, and know you’ve thoughtfully incorporated run-throughs, recordings,
and mocks into your process, etc., etc., it’s easier to trust and take
confidence from the work you’ve put in, and stay in a good headspace on
audition day.
[This is
another reason actors continue to take classes or work with a coach. We don’t do “daily practice” like musicians
and dancers. (Although Uta Hagen did invent
her “Object Exercises” for this purpose.) It’s also a way to keep abreast of your
technique, which, if taken for granted, can evaporate just when you need it in
a performance or an audition.
[The
ultimate result of practicing an acting technique, whosever system you follow,
is that it becomes an autonomic response to an acting situation, no longer a
conscious effort that an actor has to contemplate separate from her or his
inspiration. But every now and then, it
needs to be exercised willfully just to remind you that it’s there, waiting to
be used. Once you learn to trust it,
have confidence in it, however, it becomes part of you, part of your art.
[But Dr.
Kageyama is right as far as actors are concerned as well when he advises the
they use all the available resources to backstop their prep for a performance or
an audition. One of my acting teachers
recommended, among other, more obvious materials, plays of the era in which the
one you’re preparing is set and portraits—yes, in art museums—of people from
the period, locale, and class from which your character comes. He also suggested songs and dances of the
period as useful clues.]
[Editorial
note: I wasn’t sure what “mocks” means in Dr. Kageyama’s use here, and
trying to look it up led nowhere. The
closest I came on my own was “mockery,” meaning a parody of a piece of music,
but when I turned to my friend Kirk
Woodward, who’s my go-to guy for most things musical, he suggested that
Kageyama means “mock-up,” which he defines as “a preliminary recording, not for
release but kind of a ‘proof of concept’—kind of like a ‘demo tape’ or ‘demo
recording,’ but for internal use, so they can listen to it and figure out what
the real recording will need.”
[Kirk added that “if I’m correct,
the article is saying that one way you’d prepare for a musical audition or a
musical job interview is to do a recording more or less the way you’d do it for
real, but not worrying about production quality, etc.—just on getting the
basics down, so you have confidence in what you’ll be doing later for real. (If anyone has a different idea what “mocks”
means in this context, please let me know.
~Rick)]
8) Support
Nearly all of the athletes also noted the importance of
having a supportive, trusting relationship in their lives, that helped them
maintain perspective during the difficult times. Sometimes it was a coach or
more experienced teammate, but often, it was someone outside of cricket, who
helped to remind them that they weren’t just a cricket player, but a son, a
friend, and a human being with value and worth regardless of what happened in
their last match.
“If I’m not performing well, then I speak to my father,
family time. It doesn’t have to be cricket related . . . I will just go and
speak to my dad just about life or other things…It’s important to have someone
you can go to when you are going through bad form, whether that’s a family
member, a friend, someone that you are very close to that you trust . . . My
dad will just talk to me and give me a lot of confidence . . . he just says to
me you know “keep going,” “you’re good enough,” . . . it gives me that inner
confidence because he knows me, he’s known me all my life.”
[There came a time, after I’d been chasing the
rainbow’s end for several years, when I was so discouraged that I was ready to
quit. My parents had been very
supportive from the moment I started down the road in pursuit of a life in the
theater. (They came up to New York from Washington,
D.C., to see everything I did, including plays I directed with middle-schoolers
in Brooklyn and high-schoolers in New Jersey!)
[When I told my folks what I was contemplating—I had gotten my MFA in acting
and by this time had joined Actors’ Equity, SAG, and AFTRA, the principal
actors’ unions—my dad said something that I will never forget: “Don’t quit. You’re too good. Give it more time.” It was what I needed someone to say to me at
that time.]
Takeaways
Every slump is probably a little different, of course. And
sometimes one strategy might be more relevant and useful than another.
But many of these strategies and mindset tweaks sound like
pretty healthy habits to adopt anyway, whether you’re experiencing a slump or
not. And I’d like to think that in the same way that eating your veggies,
sleeping well, and washing your hands after you’ve been in the subway can help
protect you from the flu, maybe cultivating these habits could help you become
more slump-resistant too!
Reference
Christopher
J. Brown, Joanne Butt, and Mustafa Sarkar, “Overcoming Performance Slumps:
Psychological Resilience in Expert Cricket Batsmen,” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 2019, 1-20.
[Performance
psychologist Dr. Noa Kageyama serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School and
the New World Symphony, where he specializes in teaching performing artists how
to utilize sport psychology principles to perform up to their abilities under
pressure. Also a conservatory-trained violinist with degrees from Juilliard and
Oberlin College, Dr. Kageyama’s understanding of performance pressure and
excellence come from his own experiences on the concert stage from the age of
two.
[Through
23 years of training, complete with television and radio appearances, solo
performances with orchestra, and international competitions, he experienced
first-hand the discipline, hard work, and perseverance it takes to reach an
expert level of performance—as well as the frustration of performing poorly at
the worst possible moments. Dr. Kageyama’s writing has been featured in media
outlets ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Lifehacker,
and he has provided seminars for institutions and organizations such as the New
England Conservatory of Music, U.S. Armed Forces School of Music, Perlman Music
Program, Starling-Delay Symposium, Music Teachers’ National Association, and
the National Association for Teachers of Singing.
[Send
feedback to Dr. Kageyama at bulletproofmusician.com, where this piece
originated. Reprinted in Allegro with permission from the author.]
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