Playing Scared (28 page)

Sport psychologist Noa Kageyama was incredibly generous, coaching me in weekly sessions that went on for months. Don Greene emerged in the final stages of my journey and
gave me a mysterious boost that I still wonder at. Other psychologists, notably John Beebe, Susan Raeburn, and Ron Thompson, gave freely of their time and insights. And I benefited from the wisdom of several concert pianists: Frederic Chiu, Gwendolyn Mok, and Ruth Slenczynska, who shared their thoughts and stories about the act of performing. I’m also grateful to John Orlando, whose fearless reflections on a lifetime of performance anxiety touched me deeply.

Many friends and family read the manuscript in its various permutations. My gratitude goes to Amy Beddoe, Irene Borger, Jennifer Eberhardt, Donka Farkas, and Jill Wolfson. A big thank-you to Mary Offermann, who not only read every word and questioned every comma, but also listened to me expound on my latest piano discovery on our weekly rain-or-shine trip to the Santa Cruz farmers’ market. Thanks also to Jim LaMarche and Christine Z. Mason for being willing to step in and help at a minute’s notice. Debbie Katz appeared at a critical juncture and gave enormous support and encouragement. And a special thank-you to Kit Seelye, whose critical eye and sound judgment have kept me honest for the past thirty years.

Thanks to my agent, Michael Bourrett, who shepherded this book from the initial query, and my editor, Jacqueline Johnson, whose judgments about style and organization have proven correct time and again. Every author should have an editor like her.

Thank you to my sister, Syma Solovitch, who read, laughed, and assured me that “Mummy would have loved it.” Her caring, intelligence, and rapier wit nurtured me throughout the final
stages. My brother, Joseph—always an anchor—helped me recall details of childhood. A big thank-you to my sons, Ben, Max, and Jesse, whose self-aplomb onstage set a high standard. My favorite music making has always been with them. As an editor, Max has an eye for detail that is as sharp and nuanced as his aptitude for memorizing a Bach partita.

And last, but most of all, to Rich, for whom there are no words. He knows.

1
     Hugh Grant interview,
Entertainment Weekly
, August 14, 2009; Paul McCartney interview,
NME
, November 25, 2009; Adele interview,
Rolling Stone
, April 28, 2011; Christopher Nupen,
Andrés Segovia: In Portrait
(Guildford, UK: Allegro Films, 2012); Elizabeth Silverthorne,
Sarah Bernhardt
(Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003), 47; David Amos, “Horowitz, Other Greats, Suffered from Stage Fright,”
San Diego Jewish World
, May 23, 2014.

2
     Anne Edwards,
Streisand: A Biography
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1997); Laurence Olivier,
Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985); Richard David Story, Nightlife,
New York Magazine
, September 13, 1993; Marianne Bahmann,
Coping with the Limelight: A Manual on Stage Fright
(n.p.: BookSurge, 2009); John Lahr, “Petrified,”
New Yorker
, August 28, 2006, 38–42; Phillip D. Atteberry, “Remembering Ella,”
Mississippi Rag
, April 1996; Alan Zilberman, “Interview: Jesse Eisenberg Talks About ‘Now You See Me’ and Never Watching Movies,”
Washington City Paper
, May 23, 2013; Joseph Murphy,
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
(Radford, Va.: Wilder Publications, 2008); NBC News, September 12, 2007,
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20727420/ns/health-mental_health/t/even-stars-get-stage-fright/
; “About This Person: Movies & TV,”
http://www.nytimes.com/movies/person/91479/Mel-Gibson/biography
; Ronald Blum, “Luciano Pavarotti: A Tenor Like No Other,”
USA Today
, September 6, 2007; Alexis Petridis, “The Astonishing Genius of Brian Wilson,”
Guardian
, June 24, 2011
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/24/brian-wilson-interview
; Carol Burnett,
This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection
(New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2010).

3
     “What Are Americans Afraid Of?,”
Bruskin Report
53 (July 1973).

1
     Exodus 4:10–16.

2
     Carl Gustav Jung,
Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934
, vol. 1, ed. Claire Douglas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).

3
     Mark Twain,
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(New York: Scholastic Paperbacks, 1999), 196.

4
     Jay-Z,
Fresh Air
, NPR, November 16, 2010,
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/16/131334322/the-fresh-air-interview-jay-z-decoded
.

5
     Jon McKenzie,
Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance
(New York: Routledge, 2001), 3.

6
     Glen O. Gabbard, “Stage Fright,”
International Journal of Psychoanalysis
60 (1979): 383.

7
     Susan Dominus, “What Happened to the Girls in Le Roy,”
New York Times Magazine
, March 7, 2012.

8
     Quentin Letts, “The Terror That Turns Our Acting Giants to Jelly,”
Daily Mail
, August 27, 2013.

9
     Harry Lee Poe and Rebecca Whitten Poe, eds.,
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful: Meditations
(St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 2008).

10
   Nicholas Ridout,
Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 52.

11
   Constantin Stanislavski,
An Actor Prepares
, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1973).

12
   Stephen Aaron,
Stage Fright: Its Role in Acting
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 122–23.

1
     Lahr, “Petrified,” 36–42.

2
     Arthur Golden,
Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel
(New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 144.

3
     Charles Rosen,
Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 9–10.

1
     Robert D. Richardson,
William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 237.

2
     William James, “What Is an Emotion?,”
Mind
, vol. 9, (1884): 188–205.

3
     Joseph LeDoux,
The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 154.

4
     James McGaugh,
Memory and Emotion: The Making of Lasting Memories
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

5
     LeDoux,
Emotional Brain
, 180–81.

6
     Richard A. Gabriel,
No More Heroes: Madness and Psychiatry in War
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1987), 137.

7
     Ibid., 139.

8
     Nicolas Rasmussen, “Medical Science and the Military: The Allies’ Use of Amphetamine During World War II,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
42, no. 2 (Autumn 2011): 205–33.

9
     C. O. Brantigan, T. A. Brantigan, and N. Joseph, “Beta-Blockade and Musical Performance,”
Lancet
2 (October 21, 1978): 896.

10
   C. O. Brantigan, T. A. Brantigan, and N. Joseph, “Effect of Beta Blockade and Beta Stimulation on Stage Fright,”
American Journal of Medicine
72 (January 1982).

1
     Bruno Monsaingeon,
Mademoiselle: Conversations with Nadia Boulanger
(Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1985), 35.

2
     Richard J. Davidson and Sharon Begley,
The Emotional Life of Your Brain
(New York: Hudson Street Press, 2012), 11.

3
     Dianna T. Kenny,
The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 268.

4
     Davidson and Begley,
Emotional Life of Your Brain
, 167.

5
     Ibid., 162.

1
     Jung,
Visions
, 1306.

2
     Dorsha Hayes, “The Archetypal Nature of Stage Fright,”
Art Psychotherapy
2, nos. 3–4 (1975): 279–81.

3
     Ruth Slenczynska and Louis Biancolli,
Forbidden Childhood
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1957), 11.

4
     Ibid., 48–49.

5
     Ibid., 43.

6
     Ibid., 58.

7
     Ibid., 148.

8
     Ibid., 202.

1
     Charles Nordhoff,
The Communistic Societies of the United States from Personal Visit and Observation
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875), 259–301.

2
     Pierrepont Noyes,
My Father’s House: An Oneida Boyhood
(New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937), 136.

3
     Paul L. Hewitt and Gordon L. Flett, “When Does Conscientiousness Become Perfectionism?,”
Current Psychiatry
6, no. 7 (July 2007).

4
     Jennifer Sey,
Chalked Up: My Life in Elite Gymnastics
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009).

5
     Bonnie E. Robson, “Competition in Sport, Music and Dance,”
Medical Problems of Performing Artists
19, no. 4 (December 2004).

6
     Donna Krasnow, Lynda Mainwaring, and Gretchen Kerr, “Injury, Stress, and Perfectionism in Young Dancers and Gymnasts,”
Journal of Dance Medicine & Science
3, no. 2 (1999): 51–58.

1
     Karen Kangas Dwyer and Marlina M. Davidson, “Is Public Speaking Really More Feared Than Death?,”
Communication Research Reports
29, no. 2 (April–June 2012): 99–107.

2
     James C. McCroskey, “Communication Apprehension: What Have We Learned in the Last Four Decades,”
Human Communication
12, no. 2 (n.d.): 157–71.

3
     Henry Shukman, “The Art of Being Wrong,”
Tricycle
, Spring 2013.

1
     David Greenberg, Ariel Stravynski, and Yoram Bilu, “Social Phobia in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Males; Culture-Bound Syndrome or Virtue?,”
Mental Health, Religion & Culture
7, no. 4 (2004): 289–305.

2
     Stefan G. Hofmann, Anu Asnaani, and Devon E. Hinton, “Cultural Aspects in Social Anxiety and Social Anxiety Disorder,”
Depression and Anxiety
27, no. 12 (December 2010): 1117–27.

1
     Sian Beilock,
Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To
(New York: Free Press, 2010), 185.

1
     Gary Graffman,
I Really Should Be Practicing
(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1981), 145.

Aaron, Stephen,
(1)

Aaron (Biblical),
(1)

An Actor Prepares
(Stanislavski),
(1)

actors and performance anxiety,
(1)
,
(2)
,
(3)
,
(4)
.

Adderley, Cannonball,
(1)

Adele,
(1)

Adler, Alfred,
(1)

adrenaline,
(1)
,
(2)
,
(3)
,
(4)
,
(5)
,
(6)
,
(7)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(Twain),
(1)

The Age of Innocence
(Wharton),
(1)

Alcibiades,
(1)
,
(2)

alcohol,
(1)
,
(2)
,
(3)
,
(4)

Alexander technique,
(1)
,
(2)

alpha waves,
(1)

Alzheimer’s disease,
(1)

Amanita muscaria
,
(1)

amphetamines,
(1)

amygdala,
(1)
,
(2)
,
(3)
,
(4)
,
(5)
,
(6)
,
(7)

amygdala retraining,
(1)

anagnorisis,
(1)

Anderson, Chris,
(1)

animal baths,
(1)

announcers and performance anxiety,
(1)

anxiety.
See also
fear; stage fright

culture-specific.
See
culture-specific variants of performance anxiety

drugs used to control.
See
drugs used to control anxiety