Secrets of Performing Confidence

For musicians, singers, actors and dancers

Andrew Evans

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781408154205
• eBook ISBN: 9781408159545
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

What does it take to control your performance nerves, to feel confident when facing audiences, and to acquire mastery of your talent? How can you feel secure in the knowledge that you are giving your best? This second edition of Secrets of Performing Confidence helps you to find solutions to these questions, and shows you skills and techniques for improving your motivation, confidence, creativity and peak performance. It also gives you a range of effective strategies for dealing with auditions, stress, burnout, fame and performance anxiety. The authors draw on a wealth of knowledge that comes from working closely with leading performers in the fields of music, acting and dance. Throughout, they emphasise practical steps that can be easily assimilated and used for all kinds of performance situations. Featuring a wealth of new material for a modern world of new media and technology, Secrets of Performing Confidence helps to sharpen all the skills you need to survive and flourish in an increasingly competitive performing environment.

Part One

The Performer

1

The Performer’s Personality

Understanding our personality and values as performing artists helps us identify strengths we can rely on. Performers have always been thought of as something of a race apart, and their personality profiles do show them as different from the norm in some key ways.

The key values of performers

We can tell a lot from the values we rate highly. They show our ambitions and aspirations, what we need to feel fulfilled, and where we operate in our comfort zone. Look at the list of job values below and choose your top three and bottom three. You can then compare yourself with the profile of typical performers:

A predictable routineChance of promotionCreativity

Artistic workCommunicationExcitement

A well-knownCommunity workExpertise

companyCompetitionFast pace

ChallengeContact with othersFriendship at work

Helping othersPersuading peopleStatus and respect

Ideal workplacePhysical challengeTaking risks

IndependencePrecision workTeamwork

Learning new thingsPressureTime freedom

Making decisionsRecognitionVariety

MoneyResponsibilityWorking alone

PeaceSecurity

The figure below shows the top and bottom values of performers.

Look at the top values of creativity and artistic work, and also at the constant need to learn new things. These show performers’ intense focus on the quality of their work. Communication is vital – how well our message comes across. Variety is the lifeblood of the performer and creative artist. Challenging oneself to do better is also a crucial part of peak performance.

Values etc., like friendship at work and time freedom are high in the performer’s lifestyle. We value personal independence but within a context of friendly and supportive colleagues. Money and recognition are top ten values, but are not as important as the love of doing a job well. These are secondary motivations rather than the primary motivation of an artistically rewarding career.

The bottom values confirm our need for variety, challenge and time freedom. Far and away the lowest value is a predictable routine, which is universally disliked. Performers get around this in different ways. Musicians put in deputies for their regular jobs to take on more interesting gigs and actors try to get time off TV soaps to do theatre work. Dancers in the major companies and actors in long runs are the worst sufferers from a predictable routine, though their job security is a consolation.

Pressure situations are generally disliked – physical effort and fast pace. Ironically for a group of competitive people, competition is listed as a low value. Maybe this reflects the camaraderie in the profession, or maybe we don’t appreciate having to compete with others for choice jobs!

The honest, forthright nature of performers stands out – we really dislike persuading people. We are also ill at ease with large organisations and their values, and we may clash with ‘people in suits’ over artistic integrity. The whole management personality is quite weak here – risk management is weak and responsibility is also a lower value. There is also a general lack of interest in community work, despite a genuine interest in people and communicating.

Differences between professions

A more detailed breakdown of values shows the following:

•Actors scored highest on excitement, independence and – not surprisingly – recognition. They put money lower than all the other performers, maybe through being resigned to not having much of it. They dislike precision work and also peace, no doubt wanting more action in their lives.

•Dancers scored highest on challenge and money. They are the most organised and practical of performers.

•Classical musicians scored high on friendship at work. Orchestral trials lasting several months are held for new members to see how they fit in. The classical repertoire becomes predictable over time, and so variety is important, as is supplementing orchestral work with solo and chamber concerts. Physical challenge is disliked, though they are aware of posture techniques such as yoga and Alexander.

•Popular musicians valued friendship at work as well. They are concerned with money and rate competition as a particularly disliked value. They also seem to dislike responsibility, though a greater sense of responsibility would benefit their ability to organise their careers and run their bands.

Scores for actors, dancers and musicians are shown in the Appendices.

Personality types of performers

The values of performers are echoed in their personalities. There are several systems for profiling this and a popular one is based on the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who wrote Psychological Types in 1921. In the 1960s Isabel Briggs Myers and Katherine Briggs incorporated his theories into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI®, which is now a widely used personality test.

Jung’s original theories on Types contained extensive theory and the MBTI reflects this, but in more simple terms it can be used to give four main personality dimensions. Each has opposite poles, like Introvert and Extravert. We have a natural preference for the stronger function such as for Feeling rather than Thinking. We also use the opposing function where appropriate, as a right-handed person might use the left hand for many tasks.

The profile card below gives the preferences for all performers, and further scores are shown in the Appendices.

The first of the MBTI functions is Extravert-Introvert, and describes our natural orientation. Extraverts tend to focus outwards towards the world, introverts inwards into thoughts and feelings.

The life of a performer embraces both the inner world of intense concentration and the outer world of audiences, fellow performers and socialising on tour. Dancers and classical musicians are more introverted, actors more outgoing.

The second function, Sensing-Intuition, describes how we gather information about the world.

Sensing types trust what they see, hear, feel, taste and touch – their environment is important to them. Intuitive types are more abstract and look beyond the obvious. Imagination is great for art but less good fo...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One The Performer
• 1 The Performer’s Personality
• 2 Profiles of Performers
• 3 Confidence
• 4 Creativity
• Part Two  Performing
• 5 Peak Performance and the Zone
• 6 Preparing for Performances and Auditions
• 7 Managing Performance Anxiety
• Part Three  The Performer’s Career
• 8 Motivation
• 9 Social Skills for Performers
• 10 Fame and the Media
• 11 Healthcare for Performers
• References
• Appendices
• Index
• Copyright