Copyright 2000 by Edward Willett

I love to perform. Getting up in front of an audience and singing or acting is just about the most fun thing I can think of.

Many people find that hard to imagine. Research shows that what North Americans fear more than anything else--more than snakes, heights, disease, going broke, even death--is public speaking.

You can call this "speech anxiety" if you wish, since that's the formal term for it, but I call it "stage fright"--and with several stage production just past in Regina (Two Gentlemen of Verona and Alice in Wonderland from Do It With Class), one I'm directing hitting the stage at the Centre of the Arts Thursday, April 27 (Love Will Be Our Home), a new Globe Theatre production just getting rolling (A Perfect Ganesh), Regina Lyric Light Opera's production of Fiddler on the Roof coming up at the end of May and a touring production of Annie due before that, it seems like a good opportunity to combine my bent toward science with the arts focus of this column, and explain just what stage fright is.

Its symptoms are well-known: sweaty palms, dry mouth, increased heart rate, shaky hands, weak knees, shortness of breath and butterflies in the stomach. Blood pressure and muscle tension also increase. All of these symptoms have the same cause: confronted with a stressful situation, our bodies prepare us for flight or fight by activating the "HPA axis stress circuit."

HPA stands for the hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal glands. As speech (or curtain) time approaches, the worried brain sends chemical signals to the hypothalamus, telling it to secrete a hormone which causes the pituitary gland to release another hormone which stimulates the adrenal glands to release yet another hormone which prepares the body to (supposedly) deal with any challenge. Except the challenge the body has in mind is fleeing a rampaging water buffalo, not singing If I Were A Rich Man. A case of "nerves" is really just the result of hormonal overkill.

For example, your heart rate speeds up. Starting a few moments before that dreadful moment you must speak, act or sing, your heart rate rises into the 95 to 140 beat-per-minute range, compared to a typical resting heart rate in the 70s. When you actually begin your speech, song or scene, your heart rate jumps clear into the 110 to 190 range--aerobics territory. About 30 seconds after that, however, the heart rate slowly returns to pre-speech levels, or even lower.

With all that blood rushing around, you may find yourself flushing. The hypothalamus interprets the surge of blood as a sign of increased body temperature and responds by routing more blood through the capillaries, tiny blood vessels close to the skin.

Stomach butterflies and knocking knees are another side-effect of this rush of hormone-laced blood. At the same time your body pumps more blood to the brain, it constricts other blood vessels (to prevent you from bleeding to death if you're gored by that non-existent water buffalo). This probably causes that tingly feeling in your gut.

Meanwhile, the flood of hormones can overwhelm the muscles in your legs, which are expecting you to run away. Since running offstage in the middle of your scene is not an acceptable solution, your legs are all fired up with nowhere to go. The overstimulated muscles spasm.

I said that I enjoy performing, and it's true: but I still experience some of these same symptoms. The fact is, there's no difference in physiological reactions between, say, someone who's just fallen off a 10-story building and someone about to step into the spotlight. The difference is that the first person interprets those sensations as fear, while the second person interprets them as "excitement." Which is why, when people ask me if I get scared before I go on stage, I say, no, I get excited. Stage fright is a state of mind as much as a state of body.

Those who interpret those feelings as fear fear the judgment of the audience. They start imagining (usually over-imagining) all the horrible things that will happen if they flub their lines. One of their biggest fears, oddly enough, is betraying their fear to the audience! But studies show that audiences are really bad about judging when a speaker or actor is nervous, so unless you're visibly shaking (or faint) they're unlikely to notice if they're interested in the speech or the scene.

Chances are, a lot of the actors you'll be seeing on stage in the near future in Regina feel just as shaky before they go on stage as you would. But by concentrating on their role rather than on themselves, they get past it...just as the best way for someone afraid of public speaking to overcome that fear is to concentrate on their message, not on their own fear.

If that doesn't work, you can always try that old gimmick of picturing your audience naked...but be warned; it may give you nightmares.

Posted February 3, 2004