Stage Fright Quotes

He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next

I don’t think your problem was stage fright. Or wedding fright. I think your problem was life fright.

I'm always aware of being observed. Always self-conscious. I'm evidently living my life with stage fright.

The absolute contingency of the encounter with someone I didn’t know finally takes on the appearance of destiny. The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny, and that’s why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright.

Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.

Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.

Strange invitations were often dancing lessons from the goddess.

Alan: "I had terrible stage fright." Sin: "I'm not familiar with the concept of 'stage fright.'" A: "It's pretty awful. You end up having to picture the entire audience in their underwear. Phyllis was in that audience, you know." S: "Why, Alan, I had no idea your tastes ran that way." A: "Phyllis is a very nice lady. And I do not consider her so much aged as matured, like a fine wine. But I still think you owe me an archery lesson.

dont wish upon a star reach for one

Students of public speaking continually ask, "How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?" Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer's wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by? How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines? Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle and be "half scared to death." There are a great many "wetless" bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.

Life While-You-Wait. Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation. I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it. I have to guess on the spot just what this play’s all about. Ill-prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands. I improvise, although I loathe improvisation. I trip at every step over my own ignorance. I can’t conceal my hayseed manners. My instincts are for happy histrionics. Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more. Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel. Words and impulses you can’t take back, stars you’ll never get counted, your character like a raincoat you button on the run — the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness. If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance, or repeat a single Thursday that has passed! But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen. Is it fair, I ask (my voice a little hoarse, since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage). You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no. I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is. The props are surprisingly precise. The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere. And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.

Stage fright is very common and could be overcomed through step by step processes, but stuttering is a fright that takes time to conquer.

But for every adult person you look up to in life there is trailing behind them an invisible chain gang of ghosts, all of which, as a child, you are generously spared from meeting. I know now, however, that these ghosts exist, and that other adults can see them. The lost loves, the hurt friends, the dead: they follow their owner forever. Perhaps this is why we feel so crowded around those people who we know have had hard times. Perhaps this is why we find so little to say. We suffer an odd brand of stage fright, I think, before all those dreadful eyes.

Clear your throat and open your eyes. You are on stage. The lights are on. It’s only natural if you’re sweating, because this isn’t make-believe. This is theater for keeps. Yes, it is a massive stage, and there are millions of others on stage with you. Yes, you can try to shake the fright by blending in. But it won’t work. You have the Creator God’s full attention, as much attention as He ever gave Napoleon. Or Churchill. Or even Moses. Or billions of others who lived and died unknown. Or a grain of sand. Or one spike on one snowflake. You are spoken. You are seen. It is your turn to participate in creation. Like a kindergartener shoved out from behind the curtain during his first play, you might not know which scene you are in or what comes next, but God is far less patronizing than we are. You are His art, and He has no trouble stooping. You can even ask Him for your lines.

Starting on time, with everything just right, and the surgical drapes placed in exactly the right way, the instruments tidily laid out, is an important way of calming surgical stage fright.

Nor are introverts necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not. One reason that people confuse the two concepts is that they sometimes overlap (though psychologists debate to what degree). Some psychologists map the two tendencies on vertical and horizontal axes, with the introvert-extrovert spectrum on the horizontal axis, and the anxious-stable spectrum on the vertical. With this model, you end up with four quadrants of personality types: calm extroverts, anxious (or impulsive) extroverts, calm introverts, and anxious introverts. In other words, you can be a shy extrovert, like Barbra Streisand, who has a larger-than-life personality and paralyzing stage fright; or a non-shy introvert, like Bill Gates, who by all accounts keeps to himself but is unfazed by the opinions of others.

They soar, they are somewhere mid-flight, The words of love and liberation And I'm succumbing to stage-fright, My lips – ice cold in trepidation. But soon, where birches, thin and humble, Caress the windows with their leaves, - The voice of the unseen will rumble And roses will be tied in wreaths.

What can I get you? A glass of water? A gun to shoot me with?

She loved him, but sometimes she didn’t like him very much.

He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next. ***

Even the listings of school clubs only emphasized how self-centered we were. The track team—oh, you can’t run? Too bad. The art club—you’re all thumbs? Take a hike. The drama society—you’ve got stage fright? Tough buns. The chess club—no brains? No dice.

While early print ads were straightforward product announcements (“EATON’S HIGHLAND LINEN: THE FRESHEST AND CLEANEST WRITING PAPER”), the new personality-driven ads cast consumers as performers with stage fright from which only the advertiser’s product might rescue them.

And he knew that there would always be the fear before performing, the stage fright, that would never go away, but he also understood that it would be like jumping into a swimming pool—only uncomfortably chill for a few seconds—and then the discomfort would pass and it would be good….

Oh, that is pathetic,” said Mallory to Jessi. “Look at them. They’re going to think the only thing that matters in their lives is beauty and poise. They’ll grow up believing they can only be pretty faces, not doctors or lawyers or authors.” “I am so glad Becca has stage fright,” said Jessi.

Some high-reactives love public speaking and performing, and plenty of extroverts have stage fright; public speaking is the number-one fear in America, far more common than the fear of death. Public speaking phobia has many causes, including early childhood setbacks, that have to do with our unique personal histories, not inborn temperament.

Now I was laughing. I was still scared, but it was somehow comforting to think that maybe stage fright was a trait [even my parents had]... "But seriously, how do you get over the jitters?" Dad was still smiling, but I could tell he had turned serious because he slowed down his speech. "You don't. You just work through it. You hang in there." So I went on.

Skye had been targeted, not cursed.

Like a pinball, she ricocheted off the solid wall of his chest.

She needed to have a good hard look at her priorities because, as of this moment, she’d been racing down the same road as Bessie.

His blood curdles, his scrotum shrinks at the horror.

How’s your speech?” Nico asked, and she rolled her eyes. “Like I’d discuss it with you.” “Why on earth not? I know you get stage fright.” “I do not get—” Another breath. Two breaths, for good measure. “I do not get stage fright,” she managed, more evenly this time, “and even if I did, what exactly would you do to help me?” “Oh, did you think I was offering to help?” Nico asked. “Apologies, I was not.

He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. He says. Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren’t necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.

I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding." "Some people do," he said, "but they're the duds. They are the ones that win prizes at school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It's part of your life from now on. You've got to go through with it. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand.

found out I was singing, and he couldn’t resist the chance to see me embarrass myself. The play was supposed to start at 8: 00, but it got delayed because Rodney James had stage fright. You’d figure that someone whose job it was to sit on the stage and do nothing could just suck it up for one performance. But Rodney wouldn’t budge, and eventually, his mom had to carry him off. The play finally got started around 8: 30. Nobody could remember their lines, just like I predicted, but Mrs. Norton kept things

Going on stage always felt like being shot out of a cannon. My stomach would tighten as I got closer to the backstage area. You wondered why you put yourself through all the stress. Then BOOM! You're on, adrenalin pumping, and thinking: "THIS is why I do it!

Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into the unquenchable and indestructible “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the middle of it. A ghastly stage fright seized him, his legs quaked under him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the house—but he had the house’s silence, too, which was even worse than its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom struggled a while and then retired, utterly defeated.

for every adult person you look up to in life there is trailing behind them an invisible chain gang of ghosts, all of which, as a child, you are generously spared from meeting. I know now, however, that these ghosts exist, and that other adults can see them. The lost loves, the hurt friends, the dead: they follow their owner forever. Perhaps this is why we feel so crowded around those people who we know have had hard times. Perhaps this is why we find so little to say. We suffer an odd brand of stage fright, I think, before all those dreadful eyes. And maybe that’s what my uncle had noticed about Mr. Simpson on the lawn that night of the fight. Maybe in my eyes, a child’s eyes, it was just the three of us squatting in the grass. But, to those two men, the lawn appeared to be full of bodies, full of the people they’d made mistakes with in life now tethered to them and ill-rested and serving no purpose but to remind them of the one awful thing: that life is made up, ever increasingly, of what you cannot change.

In any case, Klossowski, mentioned again during Acéphale's sessional meeting of 25 July 1938, would later return to his opposition between Nietzsche and Bataille in a lecture given in 1941 at the end of a retreat in a Dominican monastery, 'Le Corps du néant', later printed in the first edition of his book Sade my Neighbour (1947) and which Bataille later told him he 'does not like'. Here Klossowski recapitulated the two stages in the evolution of Nietzsche's thought outlined in Löwith's essay 'Nietzsche and the doctrine of the Eternal Return', which he had reviewed in Acéphale 2: 1. Liberation from the Christian YOU MUST to achieve the I WANT of supra-nihilism; 2. Liberation from the I WANT to attain the I AM of superhumanity in the eternal return. It is precisely in this 'cyclical movement', according to Klossowski, that man 'takes on the immeasurable responsibility of the death of God'. Furthermore, he associates Bataille's negation of God with the negation of utility upon which the notion of expenditure was founded, and hence the source of his 'absolute political nihilism'. His conclusion, however, was a little more ambiguous: 'In his desire to relive the Nietzschean experience of the death of God [...] he did not have the privilege [...] of suffering Nietzsche's punishment: the delirium that transfigures the executioner into a victim [...] To be guilty or not to be, that is his dilemma. His acephality expresses only the unease of a guilt in which conscience has become alienated because he has put faith to sleep: and this is to experience God in the manner of demons, as St. Augustine said'. Unlike Nietzsche. who 'accused himself' of causing the death of God 'in the name of all men' and paid for his guilt with madness, unlike Kirillov, the nihilist in Dostoyevsky's Demons who chose to commit suicide so as to kill men's fear of death and thus kill God himself, Bataille shows us this frightful torment of not being able to make his guilt real and so attain that state of responsibility that gives knowledge of the path to absolution.

My dear, dear ladies,” Sir Francis effused as he hastened forward, “what a long-awaited delight this is!” Courtesy demanded that he acknowledge the older lady first, and so he turned to her. Picking up Berta’s limp hand from her side, he presed his lips to it and said, “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Sir Francis Belhaven.” Lady Berta curtsied, her fear-widened eyes fastened on his face, and continued to press her handkerchief to her lips. To his astonishment, she did not acknowledge him at all; she did not say she was charmed to meet him or inquire after his health. Instead, the woman curtsied again. And once again. “There’s hardly a need for all that,” he said, covering his puzzlement with forced jovially. “I’m only a knight, you know. Not a duke or even an earl.” Lady Berta curtsied again, and Elizabeth nudged her sharply with her elbow. “How do!” burst out the plump lady. “My aunt is a trifle-er-shy with strangers,” Elizabeth managed weakly. The sound of Elizabeth Cameron’s soft, musical voice made Sir Francis’s blood sing. He turned with unhidden eagerness to his future bride and realized that it was a bust of himself that Elizabeth was clutching so protectively, so very affectionately to her bosom. He could scarcely contain his delight. “I knew it would be this way between us-no pretense, no maidenly shyness,” he burst out, beaming at her blank, wary expression as he gently took the bust of himself from Elizabeth’s arms. “But, my lovely, there’s no need for you to caress a hunk of clay when I am here in the flesh.” Momentarily struck dumb, Elizabeth gaped at the bust she’d been holding as he first set it gently upon its stand, then turned expectantly to her, leaving her with the horrifying-and accurate-thought that he now expected her to reach out and draw his balding head to her bosom. She stared at him, her mind in paralyzed chaos. “I-I would ask a favor of you, Sir Francis,” she burst out finally. “Anything, my dear,” he said huskily. “I would like to-to rest before supper.” He stepped back, looking disappointed, but then he recalled his manners and reluctantly nodded. “We don’t keep country hours. Supper is at eight-thirty.” For the first time he took a moment to really look at her. His memories of her exquisite face and delicious body had been so strong, so clear, that until then he’d been seeing the Lady Elizabeth Cameron he’d met long ago. Now he belatedly registered the stark, unattractive gown she wore and the severe way her hair was dressed. His gaze dropped to the ugly iron cross that hung about her neck, and he recoiled in shock. “Oh, and my dear, I’ve invited a few guests,” he added pointedly, his eyes on her unattractive gown. “I thought you would want to know, in order to attire yourself more appropriately.” Elizabeth suffered that insult with the same numb paralysis she’d felt since she set eyes on him. Not until the door closed behind him did she feel able to move. “Berta,” she burst out, flopping disconsolately onto the chair beside her, “how could you curtsy like that-he’ll know you for a lady’s maid before the night is out! We’ll never pull this off.” “Well!” Berta exclaimed, hurt and indignant. “Twasn’t I who was clutching his head to my bosom when he came in.” “We’ll do better after this,” Elizabeth vowed with an apologetic glance over her shoulder, and the trepidation was gone from her voice, replaced by steely determination and urgency. “We have to do better. I want us both out of here tomorrow. The day after at the very latest.” “The butler stared at my bosom,” Berta complained. “I saw him!” Elizabeth sent her a wry, mirthless smile. “The footman stared at mine. No woman is safe in this place. We only had a bit of-of stage fright just now. We’re new to playacting, but tonight I’ll carry it off. You’ll see. No matter what if takes, I’ll do it.

My life has been a disaster on the grand scale - that I'd better make clear from the start. A catalogue of my former ambitions would give a Napoleon stage-fright. Art, Ethics, Theology, the Sciences (both practical and occult), even Perception itself, to say nothing of my later efforts at Empire Building, Commerce and Exploration - each of these were at some stage fields which I intended to master. My personality accepted no limits; all that could be conceived was possible. For me, personally. And now, even when I've come to the point where all personal considerations disgust me, I still realise the sublime inevitability of it all. I wasn't mistaken; I was merely trapped. Born trapped. Condemned for the length of a lifetime to play this buffoon Arthur Rimbaud. Yes, it's true what I always used to think when I was a kid: I is another.

It seems strange that George Burns and Gracie Allen would be discovered, as radio properties, by the British. They were doing a vaudeville tour in England, playing to packed houses everywhere. The British just loved Gracie; her routines became so well known during the six-month trip that the audience would sometimes shout out the punchline in unison. They were aided in this by radio, using the infant medium to promote their stage shows, doing short bits from their act on various BBC stations as they traveled. From the beginning, Gracie had severe mike fright. She never really lost her fear of the microphone, Burns would say in interviews and in his books, but she always coped with it. Returning home, they auditioned for NBC and Grape Nuts in 1930. But the agency executive thought Gracie would be “too squeaky” on the air, and they lost the job. It was an irony: a few years later, the same product would be carrying their radio show, then one of the most successful in the nation.

I was dressed to leave the house, and was crossing the stage on my way out, when he tapped me on the shoulder. Never shall I forget the repulsive sight that met my eye when I turned round. He was dressed for the pantomimes in all the absurdity of a clown’s costume. The spectral figures in the Dance of Death, the most frightful shapes that the ablest painter ever portrayed on canvas, never presented an appearance half so ghastly. His bloated body and shrunken legs — their deformity enhanced a hundredfold by the fantastic dress — the glassy eyes, contrasting fearfully with the thick white paint with which the face was besmeared; the grotesquely-ornamented head, trembling with paralysis, and the long skinny hands, rubbed with white chalk — all gave him a hideous and unnatural appearance, of which no description could convey an adequate idea, and which, to this day, I shudder to think of. His voice was hollow and tremulous as he took me aside, and in broken words recounted a long catalogue of sickness and privations, terminating as usual with an urgent request for the loan of a trifling sum of money. I put a few shillings in his hand, and as I turned away I heard the roar of laughter which followed his first tumble on the stage.

Chicago, Illinois 1896 Opening Night Wearing her Brünnhilda costume, complete with padding, breastplate, helm, and false blond braids, and holding a spear as if it were a staff, Sophia Maxwell waited in the wings of the Canfield-Pendegast theatre. The bright stage lighting made it difficult to see the audience filling the seats for opening night of Die Walküre, but she could feel their anticipation build as the time drew near for the appearance of the Songbird of Chicago. She took slow deep breaths, inhaling the smell of the greasepaint she wore on her face. Part of her listened to the music for her cue, and the other part immersed herself in the role of the god Wotan’s favorite daughter. From long practice, Sophia tried to ignore quivers of nervousness. Never before had stage fright made her feel ill. Usually she couldn’t wait to make her appearance. Now, however, nausea churned in her stomach, timpani banged pain-throbs through her head, her muscles ached, and heat made beads of persperation break out on her brow. I feel more like a plucked chicken than a songbird, but I will not let my audience down. Annoyed with herself, Sophia reached for a towel held by her dresser, Nan, standing at her side. She lifted the helm and blotted her forehead, careful not to streak the greasepaint. Nan tisked and pulled out a small brush and a tin of powder from one of the caprious pockets of her apron. She dipped the brush into the powder and wisked it across Sophia’s forehead. “You’re too pale. You need more rouge.” “No time.” A rhythmic sword motif sounded the prelude to Act ll. Sophia pivoted away from Nan and moved to the edge of the wing, looking out to the scene of a rocky mountain pass. Soon the warrior-maiden Brünnhilda would make an appearance with her famous battle cry. She allowed the anticpaptory energy of the audience to fill her body. The trills of the high strings and upward rushing passes in the woodwinds introduced Brünnhilda. Right on cue, Sophia made her entrance and struck a pose. She took a deep breath, preparing to hit the opening notes of her battle call. But as she opened her mouth to sing, nothing came out. Caught off guard, Sophia cleared her throat and tried again. Nothing. Horrified, she glanced around, as if seeking help, her body hot and shaky with shame. Across the stage in the wings, Sophia could see Judith Deal, her understudy and rival, watching. The other singer was clad in a similar costume to Sophia’s for her role as the valkerie Gerhilde. A triumphant expression crossed her face. Warwick Canfield-Pendegast, owner of the theatre, stood next to Judith, his face contorted in fury. He clenched his chubby hands. A wave of dizziness swept through Sophia. The stage lights dimmed. Her knees buckled. As she crumpled to the ground, one final thought followed her into the darkness. I’ve just lost my position as prima dona of the Canfield-Pendegast Opera Company.

Are you jealous?” I told Swann that I had never felt jealousy, that I did not even know what it was. “Well, I congratulate you! When you’re a little bit jealous, it’s not altogether unpleasant, from two points of view. For one thing, because it enables people who are not inquisitive to interest themselves in the lives of other people, or at least of one other person. And then because it gives you quite a good sense of the sweetness of possession, of getting into a carriage with a woman, of not letting her go off alone. But that’s only in the very early stages of the disease, or when the cure is almost complete. In between, it’s the most frightful of tortures. Moreover, I have to say that I’ve seldom experienced even the two forms of sweetness I’m referring to; the first by the fault of my nature, which is incapable of any very prolonged reflection; the second because of circumstances, by the fault of the woman, I mean of the women, of whom I’ve been jealous. But that doesn’t matter. Even when you no longer care about things, it still means something that you did so once, because it was always for reasons that escaped other people. We feel that the memory of those feelings is only in us; it’s into ourselves we must return in order to look at it. Don’t make too much fun of the idealist jargon, but what I mean is that I’ve loved life and have loved the arts. Well, now that I’m a bit too tired to live with other people, these old feelings that I’ve had, so personal to myself, seem very precious to me, which is the obsession of every collector.

Touch me again, Bird Man, I thought urgently. Tell a joke, say anything -- because I was having the convection feeling. As if my skin were rippling, dissolving. Kiwi describes this phenomenon, "convection" {n}, in his Field Notes: the rapid cooling of a body in the absence of all tourists. Even Kiwi, King of Stage Fright, admitted to feeling it on Sunday nights. Convection caused your thoughts to develop an alarming blue tinge and required touch or speech with another human being as its antidote (Seths didn't work, not even my red Seth, I'd tried). Sweating could feel dangerous if you were alone in the swamp, as if droplet by droplet your body might get whisked into the sun.

She tells everyone she’s an introvert.” Cordelia sniffed. “It’s a sad, psychological malady. Comes from reading way too much Kafka.

People talk about stage fright, but what scares me is not so much the going on as the going off. I only come to life when people are watching. - Red Skelton

Two hours later, the drawing room converted, the costumes wrapped, the electric-kerosene lamps flickering in a semicircle at their feet, the performers enacted the thirty-minute ode to love and the Mediterranean, Home by the Sea. Miss Charming kept a ferocious grip on her script and gave oily air kisses to Colonel Andrews. Amelia was calm and sweet, melting into her dialogue with Captain East as though into his arms. Jane knelt beside Mr. Nobley, the wounded war captain, as he nearly died, and did her best to sound earnest. Old Jane would’ve run away or laughed self-consciously throughout. New Jane decided to feel as enchanting as Miss Charming and performed each line with relish and passion. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a very good actress. Mr. Nobley’s character miraculously recovered all the same, leading to the part where he stood and took her hands. They were still cold. He paused, as though trying to remember what came next. He looked. Looked at her. At her and into her. Into her eyes as though he couldn’t bear to look away. And there was a delicious curl in his smile. “I love you,” he said. Zing, thought Jane. It was his line, more or less, though simplified. Stripped of similes and farms and rain and moon and all, it pierced her. She opened her mouth to say her own line but couldn’t remember a single word. And she didn’t want to. He leaned. She leaned. Then Aunt Saffronia, who’d been laughing encouragingly during the parts that were supposed to be sad and clapping gleefully whenever a new character came onstage, now cleared her throat as though intensely uncomfortable. Mr. Nobley hesitated, then kissed Jane’s cheek. His lips were warm, his cheek slightly scratchy. She smiled and breathed him in. At length, the six actors stood side by side, pretending the bright yellow wall of the drawing room opened to a view of the Mediterranean Sea, and said their closing lines. Jane: Trying to sound actress-y. “At last, we are all truly happy.” Miss Charming: Pause. Crinkling of paper. Frantic searching for line. “Indeed.” Amelia: With a shy smile for the tall man beside her. “Our travels are ended.” Captain East: With a manly smile for his lady. “We can rest peacefully in each other’s arms.” Colonel Andrews: As always, with panache! “And no matter where we may roam…” Mr. Nobley: A sigh. “This will always be our home.” His voice unhappy with the line. “By the sea.” And, silence as the audience waited for who knows what--a better ending line? A better play? Colonel Andrews cleared his throat, and Jane inclined her head in a hurried curtsy. “Oh,” Aunt Saffronia said and started the applause. The audience clapped enthusiastically and arhythmically, and the cast bowed, Miss Charming giggling. Jane squinted past the lamps to get her first good look at the audience, now that the play was over and stage fright couldn’t prickle her. Aunt Saffronia, beaming. Mrs. Wattlesbrook, looking for all the world like a proud schoolmarm. Matilda, bored, and a few other servants, equally bored.

Be the dress, she told herself. Be the bonnet, Jane. Stage fright, that’s all this is. I’m just afraid of looking like a fool. So stop it. Admit that you are a fool already and do this so you can let it go.

Sewall smiled. “Somehow this strikes me as the bigger one,” said he. “The wisest of my old professors used to say that the further you got into the country the less it mattered about your clothes but the more about your sermon. I’ve been wondering, all the way up, if I knew enough to preach that sermon. Isn’t there any minister in town, not even a visiting one?” “Not a one. You can’t get out of it, Billy Sewall, if you have got an attack of stage-fright—which we don’t believe.

gentlemen who were desirous of going with us, we all started westward, and after a pleasant trip arrived at Fort McPherson." Before he arrived at Fort McPherson, Cody was interviewed by the local press. Cody allowed, surely with tongue in cheek, that We have played New York until we forced Edwin Booth to go West. He said it would not do for him to try to buck against us, and he was right. I propose to [be] ... playing Shakespeare right through, from beginning to end, with Ned Buntline and Texas Jack to support me. I shall do Hamlet in a buckskin suit and when my father's ghost appears "doomed for a certain time," &c., I shall say to Jack, "Rope the cuss in, Jack!!" and unless the lasso breaks, the ghost will have to come. As Richard the Third I shall fight with pistols and hunting knives. In "Romeo and Juliet" I will put a half-breed squaw on the balcony, and make various interpretations of Shakespeare's words to suit myself. Shakespeare has had to endure many indignities over the years: bowdlerizations, bizarre directorial concepts, and costume choices of all kinds, but theatergoers, fortunately, were spared Hamlet in buckskin or the balcony scene in a Western saloon. On the other hand, it is possible that Cody, with his genius for showmanship, might have won over a whole new audience to the plays. During the run of The Scouts of the Prairie, Cody had not only overcome his initial stage fright but had developed enough self-confidence to feel comfortable onstage. Moreover, he knew that audiences responded favorably to him. Although he still did not consider himself an actor, he had begun to wear the more becoming mantle of "showman." Ned Buntline had all kinds

His little voice piped up, Are you nervous, Wyvern? Holy shit, are you scared? Vern answered back under his breath, "I ain't scared, asshole. I'm prudent, is all. It's been awhile, and I'm the last dragon, so far as I know. The world can't stand to lose me." But Vern was nervous, and possibly a smidge scared, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though he wouldn't admit it to his little voice. Even Adele gets stage fright, he told himself. Be like Adele and use the energy.

Several performers have told me that they do the following brief lovingkindness meditation if they have stage fright: Standing in front of an audience, before they start acting, playing music, or reciting a poem, they send out wishes for the well-being of everyone in the room. 'When I do that,' one singer told me, 'I no longer have a sense of the audience as a group of hostile people out there waiting to judge me. I feel, okay, here we all are together.

Black the Knife, down without a fight A termite, a flea bite, Got stage fright, no right to life Boy’s an absentee, a detainee, no number on his caller ID Nobody home at the addressee His time is passed, miscast, outta gas, second class In foreclosure, never sober, I’m in clover, I’m taking over. “Makes

How did you know? How did you know who I was as soon as you saw me come out of the trapdoor in the museum?” “You’re so like your father. The eyes, the way your voice is pitched. He wasn’t much older than you are now when he ran away from Westwood. And I knew he’d married an Indian woman and had a son; we kept in touch. So when I saw that the crows had caught you, I realized your plan had gone wrong.” “You mean you knew what we were planning?” said Maia--not at all pleased. “More or less. Your acting skills are not very great,” said Miss Minton, “And as a liar you are bottom of the class. I made friends with old Lila, and when she realized that I knew Bernard, she told me about this place. But you seemed to know what you were doing, so I left you to it.” “We did know what we were doing,” said Finn. “But Clovis just went berserk when he got down to the cellar. Some skulls came tumbling out of a packing case, and he saw these eye sockets staring at him. Then he fell over a throwing spear and the lamp kept going out. There was a weird moaning noise, too--it was only the water pipes--but he got hysterical and said he felt sick and he couldn’t go through with it. I suppose it was sort of stage fright--he really thought the crows were going to hurt him. I’d promised Maia I wouldn’t let him get too scared, so I stayed. I meant to make a dash for it when the crows opened the door and lead them away from him. When the sloth fell over he thought it was a bomb!” “Poor Clovis,” said Maia. “She’s always sticking up for him,” said Finn. “Still, he gave a fine performance at the end, you must admit,” said Miss Minton.

He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between. He says. Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to act in next.

We are the kind of Love Story that keeps souls awake at night and causes hearts to have stage fright.

His Message at a High School Commencement “You guys are programmed to succeed. The hardest thing you’re ever going to do in your life is fail at something, and if you don’t start failing at things, you will not live a full life. You’ll be living a cautious life on a path that you know is pretty much guaranteed to more or less work. That’s not getting the most out of this amazing world we live in. You have to do the hardest thing that you have not been prepared for in this school or any school: You have to be prepared to fail. That’s how you’re going to expand yourself and grow. As you work through that process of failure and learning, you will really deepen into the human being you’re capable of being.” * What advice would you give your younger self? “I would say to myself, ‘The public is not a threat.’ When you realize that we all need each other, and that we can all learn from each other, your stage fright goes away.

William Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616. He wrote thirty-seven plays and many sonnets and other poems. Many people think he was the greatest writer who ever lived.

You see, I know that you were expecting my TED talk on the path to success. But the truth is that success is a delusion. It’s all a delusion. I mean, yes, there are things we can overcome. For instance, I am someone who gets stage fright and yet, here I am, on a stage. Look at me . . . on a stage! And someone told me recently, they told me that my problem isn’t actually stage fright. My problem is life fright. And you know what? They’re fucking right. Because life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesn’t matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree. I wanted to be many things in my life. All kinds of things. But if your life is rotten, it will be rotten no matter what you do. The damp rots the whole useless thing . . .’ Joe

It has been my extraordinary good fortune to find work that makes use of my strengths and doesn’t test my weaknesses. To this day, if you put me behind a busy sales counter, a meltdown would be imminent, for I can’t easily read new faces and shifting attention rapidly from one unfamiliar person to another overwhelms me. If I could choose to have one supernatural power, it would undoubtedly be invisibility, and yet I want and need public acknowledgment of my work. I suffer little stage fright when it comes to public speaking or appearances on radio or television—I’ve got those particular acts figured out—but unstructured participation in social gatherings remains agonizing, unless I know exactly what is expected from me. It would be easier for me to improvise an epic poem before a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden than to approach an attractive stranger across the room and strike up a conversation.

History has taught us that it must be served more frequently with lies than with the truth, because its human material is by nature sluggish: before every new stage of development the people must first be led through the wilderness for forty years—driven on with threats and enticements, with false frights and feigned consolation, so that they do not stop to rest and entertain themselves with the worship of golden calves.

The many faces of fear are familiar to us all. We have felt free-floating anxiety and panic. We have been paralyzed and frozen by fear, with its accompanying palpitations and apprehension. Worries are chronic fears. Paranoia is its extreme. In milder forms of fear, we are merely uneasy. When it is more severe, we become scared, cautious, blocked, tense, shy, speechless, superstitious, defensive, distrustful, threatened, insecure, dreading, suspicious, timid, trapped, guilty, and full of stage fright.

These mechs—rays—stim—have been used always as the forbidden fruit of life, the last treasure in the temple of secrecy which has consumed the ancient science. The orgies which the uses of such stimulants inspire have been going on secretly since the earliest times—beneath the temples and in the secret pleasure palaces of the world. (Shaver here seems to be talking of our modern world, not of ancient Mu. —Ed.) These orgies still go on, and are more deadly than before—more filled with de accumulated in the apparatus, the stim itself concealing the deadly rays whose effect is explained as the sad results of overindulgence; which is untrue—the stim is a beneficial of great virtue and leaves one stronger and wiser after use. “The legend of the sirens is an example of ancient mechs which no one could resist—in the hands of evil degenerates it became a deadly attraction—drawing shiploads of men to death and the ships to looting. “The course of history, the battles, the decisions of tyrants and kings—was almost invariably decided by interfering control from the caverns and their hidden apparatus. This interference, this use of the apparatus in a prankish, evil, destructive way, is the source of god worship, the thrill of divinity, the sensing of the invisible, the prostration of the will before the stronger will of the ray gen (hidden and unknown as it was). “The remarkable part of it all is that it still goes on today. Emotional and mental stim—unsuspected by such as you and the average citizen—used in mad prankishness, all come from the ancient apparatus. If you will remember your stage fright in the school play, the many other times when your emotions seem to have gone awry without sufficient reason—were these natural? “The dero of the caves are the greatest menace to our happiness and progress; the cause of many mad things that happen to us, even so far as murder. Many people know something of it, but they say they do not. They are lying. They fear to be called mad, or to be held up to ridicule. Examine your own memory carefully. You will find many evidences of outside stim, some good, some evil—but mostly evil.

The road to recovery had been riddled with potholes.

…she’d been plagued with feelings of being watched or followed, but on each occasion, she’d been proved wrong—talk about being a drama queen. 

When her bottom lip quivered, the ice around his heart instantly melted.

Sometimes she thought Murphy’s Law applied to her and her alone.

I’ve seen enough death and destruction to last a lifetime. Besides, all you did was mortally wound my pride.” 

Every time the woman touched his arm, the instant heat made him think he’d been prodded with a hot poker.

The headstones were like soldiers and roll call—uniform and straight, row upon row of fallen heroes.

Only tyrants want power for its own sake, and parenthood is the closest most people get to an opportunity for tyranny. Was I a tyrant, wielding shapeless power without authority? What I felt a lot of the time was a sort of stage fright, the way I imagine inexperienced teachers must feel when they stand at the front of the class looking at a sea of expectant faces.

So interesting that Shore decided there might be a book in it. He set out to find fertile pairs—people who had been together for at least five years and produced interesting work. By the time he was done he had interviewed a comedy duo; two concert pianists who had started performing together because one of them had stage fright; two women who wrote mysteries under the name “Emma Lathen”; and a famous pair of British nutritionists, McCance and Widdowson, who were so tightly linked that they’d dropped their first names from the jackets of their books. “They were very huffy about the idea that dark bread was more nutritious than white bread,” recalled Shore. “They had produced the research that it wasn’t so in 1934—so why didn’t people stop fooling around with the idea?” Just about every work couple that Shore called were intrigued enough by their own relationships to want to talk about them. The only exceptions were “a mean pair of physicists” and, after flirting with participating, the British ice dancers Torvill and Dean. Among those who agreed to sit down with Miles Shore were Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.

When you fall in love with someone and your life is remade, you know instinctively that you must take great care of this delicate new world the two of you are building. There is infrastructure to be dealt with, dams and bridges and town halls to be planned. The high-stakes precarity of what you are doing will frequently bring tears to your eyes, both from fright and from exquisite pleasure. One wrong move and the whole thing could collapse before you have even finished construction. Couples will often disappear together for months in their beginning stages, which is not just about lust but also about building.

Put a Stop to Stage Fright With Self Hypnosis

I've always got stage fright,' he says. 'There's always a level of fright. If I can just make it manageable rather than overwhelming then I've won.

Stage footlights have sent many tumbling, the prepared and unprepared, to suckle at the bosom of Madame Obscurité.

When we are uncertain, undecided, embarrassed, or have stage fright, we lose the sensation of self. We sometimes say after an embarrassing moment, “I was completely at sea, I was lost, I was out of my mind.” and so on. If the uncertainty is great then feelings of anxiety, fear, or panic can flood in. So we develop strategies to cope with the anxiety by restoring the sensation of self. Men stroke their chins using the stubble as a kind of sandpaper. Women touch their hair.

If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?

Move. Once you stop, you never start again: there is a special stage-fright that can make you dry up and walk away, that burns your fingers when you touch the goods and turns your stomach to water. Move.

He turned on a radio station, current stuff, loud, repetitious; he wouldn’t have liked it if he were listening—he wasn’t.

I love playing the piano, though, and I wanted to try and make it work. It’s the only thing that really makes me happy, but it turns out I never got over the extreme stage fright that I was sure I’d outgrow. It’s only gotten worse, and now I can’t play in front of anyone, let alone figure out a way to make money doing it.

I’ve never known anyone to actually wet their pants from stage fright, by the way. Puke, maybe.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable cases is one cited by F. W. H. Myers in his chapter on hypnotism in Human Personality: a young actress, an understudy, called upon suddenly to replace the star of her company, was sick with apprehension and stage-fright. Under light hypnosis she performed with competence and brilliance, and won great applause; but it was long before she was able to act her parts without the aid of the hypnotist, who stationed himself in her dressing-room. (Later in this same case the phenomenon of “post-hypnotic suggestion” began to be observed, and the foundations of the Nancy School of autosuggestion, of which Coué is the most famous contemporary associate, were laid.) In the same chapter in which he quotes the remarkable case of the actress, Myers made a theorizing comment which is of immense value to everyone who hopes to free himself of his bondage to failure. He points out that the ordinary shyness and tentativeness with which we all approach novel action is entirely removed from the hypnotized subject, who consequently acts instead with precision and self-confidence. Now the removal of shyness, or mauvaise honte (he wrote), which hypnotic suggestion can effect, is in fact a purgation of memory—inhibiting the recollection of previous failures, and setting free whatever group of aptitudes is for the moment required.

You need to trust that your art, once created, has a value apart from you, just as a child, come into the world, has a value separate from the parents who gave it life. When you give in to self-loathing, insecurity, or stage fright, you are looking at your work from the outside, and the outside is a shapeless darkness that contains all your self-doubt and fears.

So you’re on stage, ready to speak. You’ve prepared for so long for this moment. You’ve practiced. You know what you’re going to say. Then you step out on stage…and it feels like someone rebooted your brain.   You’re blank. You’ve got nothing, no idea what to say.   Sooner or later, stage fright comes for us all, but don’t worry! There are on-the-spot ways to not panic.   Since you can’t run away from the public speaking engagement, here are a few ways to calm your mind and bring you back to focusing on the task at hand.

Stage fright occurs when a knowledge of the work being performed is replaced with a self-conscious awareness of the staring crowd and their expectations. Once it supersedes a performer’s confidence, it is difficult if not impossible for them to perform live again. Then the crippling flight response we’re all aware of comes into play.

Jack opened his eyes. They were wearing their own clothes again. A lightning bug blinked inside the growing darkness of the tree house. Annie picked up Morgan’s note. She repeated the rhyme: To find a special magic, You must

It’s Important to Try to Make Your Friends Feel Good About Themselves as Often as Possible. Then They’ll Like You Better

GEORGE.  Well, forget it, Liz. The answer is no! Not after last year (Laughter gets the better of him.) LIZ.  That wasn’t my fault. GEORGE.  Well, you’re supposed to feel at ease on the stage.  Move around. Oh, I almost died when that fellow came bounding in and called “RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, THE DAM HAS BROKEN” and you just sat there.  I know how you felt.  I’ve had stage fright, too. LIZ.  I didn’t have stage fright. GEORGE.  Then why didn’t you get up when the dam broke?

You gave your inaugural lecture on 24 June 1959. The lecture hall was crowded. Stage fright? No, I had written a good lecture. You were remarkably self-confident. Perhaps that’s overstating it, but I knew the lecture was fine; in that sense I didn’t need to be nervous.

I teach artists that the key to overcoming stage fright, the fear of bombing at a live show, is to understand that the stage is a place where you are honored to present your audience a gift. You are there to love and serve your audience, not just to receive their adoration and affirmation. Your voice and music is a creative gift that you are serving your audience to offer them joy, and hope, and love. Something that can transform them. It's about the audience. It's not about you as the artist. See the "power" of that gift and make that your focus--not finding your identity in the applause--then the spotlight becomes a place of love instead of place of fear with the risk of failure.

But for every adult person you look up to in life there is trailing behind them an invisible chain gang of ghosts, all of which, asa child you are generously spared from meeting. I know now, however, that these ghosts exist, and that other adults can see them. The lost loves, the hurt friends, the dead: they follow their owner forever. Perhaps this is why we feel so crowded around those people who we know have had hard times. Perhaps this is why we find so little to say. We suffer an odd brand of stage fright, I think, before all those dreadful eyes. And maybe that’s what my uncle had noticed about Mr. Simpson on the lawn that night of the fight. Maybe in my eyes, a child’s eye, it was just the three of us squatting in the grass. But, to those two men, the lawn appeared to be full of bodies, full of the people they’d made mistakes with in life now tethered to them and ill-rested and serving no purpose but to remind them of the one awful things: that life is made up, ever increasingly, of what you cannot change.

Creation is light and shadow both, else no picture is possible. The good and evil of maya must ever alternate in supremacy. If joy were ceaseless here in this world, would man ever desire another? Without suffering, he scarcely cares to recall that he has forsaken his eternal home. Pain is a prod to remembrance. The way of escape is through wisdom. The tragedy of death is unreal; those who shudder at it are like an ignorant actor who dies of fright on the stage when nothing more has been fired at him than a blank cartridge. My sons are children of light; they will not sleep forever in delusion.

When you fall in love with someone and your life is remade, you know instinctively that you must take great care of this delicate new world the two of you are building. There is infrastructure to be dealt with, dams and bridges and town halls to be planned. The high-stakes precarity of what you are doing will frequently bring tears to your eyes, both from fright and from exquisite pleasure. One wrong move and the whole thing could collapse before you have even finished construction. Couples will often disappear together for months in their beginning stages, which is not just about lust but also about building

fellow colleagues who are temporarily short of time, and also speakers, singers (with stage fright), and examination candidates. . . . One lady likes to use the medication (c. 2 x 2 tablets) before parties; another successfully on particularly demanding working days (up to 3 x 2 tablets daily).

If loss is the point and not the problem - and this doesn't stop us caring for and about each other - we may be less terrorized by it, and so less obsessed and impressed by it. We may then be able to understand and use Picasso's wonderful boast, 'I don't seek, I find.' Finding would be the point, and not losing. Loss would no longer be, as it were, an end in itself. When loss is not catastrophic loss, it is a form of stage fright.

The reason my stage fright eventually vanished – to the point that now I feel 99.9 per cent less nervous when speaking in a packed arena or live on TV – is simply because I carried on speaking on stage. And doing so gradually gave me new, positive, first-party evidence that replaced the existing evidence I had about my on-stage abilities – the more I spoke on stage, the stronger my confidence in this new evidence became, and with it, the belief in my inability and the fear it created diminished.

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I am emptied through shallow breaths. Muscles tighten in my chest. I think I am a fool dressed up in king’s chamber, holding a four-leaf clover.