Transcripts: House Lights Up Series 1

Episode 1: THE AUDITION

Gabriel: Performing artists are 10 times more likely to suffer anxiety then the general population, five times more likely to suffer depression. And one of the reasons for this is the difficult, unnatural situations, personal, emotional vulnerability that performing artists have to go through. And the audition is the pinnacle. The audition’s actually worse than the performance. It’s the hard bit. The performance is getting on with the job. So let’s just stop and acknowledge that what a bloody awful thing to put someone through!

This is House Light Up – honest conversations with professional performing arts workers about the challenges of forging a career in the arts, and strategies for overcoming them.

In this first episode we’ll be looking at the road to the stage. For plenty of performers – particularly those who aspire to work in mainstage theatre – that road starts with the audition.

You’ve just heard from Gabriel Edwards, a counsellor who specialises in helping people navigate the challenges of working in the performing arts. She says the audition exemplifies the particular vulnerability of the professional performer.  

Here’s Music Director Luke Hunter’s take on the audition process.

Luke: Auditions are awful because they’re foreign, they’re not a performance. They’re in an annoying room somewhere, usually there’s tap dancing going on down the corridor and a stereo that’s too loud, and you’re trying to create a space where people can come in and do their work. But that’s the daunting thing too is the performers are on display in a team of sometimes maybe 20 people in the room, and that’s hard, right? You’re outnumbered, you’re outgunned. You’ve just got to hold your head up high and do the work and hope for the best I guess.

I don’t think there’s a better way to do it, but I wish there was.

And it seems that for the performer based in Australia, the stakes of the audition are particularly high.

Luke: I’ve sat in on auditions on Broadway, and, you know, you turn up to Pearl Studios or New 42nd Street or Ripley Grier or wherever and there are floors, like literally floors full of multiple rooms that have auditions running every day of the week.

So the people that come in to audition for whatever show, they’ve got another audition down the corridor or across the road that day, and another three tomorrow, and they would do multiple auditions a week. And I think the difference for us is that our performers might do five or six major musical auditions a year if they’re lucky. So they’re hungry for the work. It’s a precious thing, it’s a precious commodity to have a job.

Matt: I think the very nature of them is knowing and acknowledging that you are putting yourself up to be judged.

Matt Heyward is a musical theatre performer whose stage credits include titles like Mamma Mia, Les Miserables, The Producers and My Fair Lady. But he notes that a performer’s CV conceals a multitude of unsuccessful auditions.

Matt: I’ve been fortunate enough to have a very wonderful career. And it looks good on paper, but there’s more rejections that have gone a long with that CV than successes cos that’s the very nature of our business.

So how does one make peace with this fact of life as a mainstage performer? Matt Heyward and Luke Hunter both agree that it starts with the performer’s own approach to the entire process of auditioning.

Matt: I try very hard to not give the audition more weight than it deserves as far as the universe and the ether. If I didn’t have the job yesterday and I don’t have the job tomorrow, nothing has changed.

Luke: David Atkins was my first director on Fame, and he said to us – and he’s right – he said, just remember that every audition starts with the perfect premise, and the perfect premise is that every actor that walks in the door wants a job, and the creative team wants to book the best people that there are. So whenever you walk in as a performer into an audition room, just remember that the creative team wants you to be amazing.

Matt: They want you to be good. They want you to be good because it solves a problem for them. If you walk in and you’re exactly what they’re looking for, there’s a piece of the puzzle that’s slotted into place for them.

It’s such a simple idea – that an audition is a transaction and nothing more. Just an impersonal matter of finding the right solution to a given problem. So if the power of the audition setting is purely a matter of perception on the part of the performer, can it really be that simple to strip that power away? It’s happened for Matt Heyward, once or twice.

Matt: There was a show that I really wanted to be a part of, and I wasn’t able to be seen for the part I wanted to be seen for, but they eventually allowed me to come in for one of the ensemble tracks in a dance capacity. And I’m a singer first.

I went into this dance call, and absolutely embarrassed myself. It was mortifying. I was just not of the right standard with the guys I was auditioning with, and I left that audition for some reason I just decided to find that hilarious rather than heartbreaking. And I saw a friend afterwards, she’s like “How did you go?” and I was like, “Oh I got cut straight away” and I was laughing about it. And she’s like, “Are you ok?” And I was like, “Yeah, I really am. I just wasn’t right. It wasn’t me. I can’t do anything about that. So, oh well!”

I met with counsellor Gabrielle Edwards at her work space in Melbourne. Here above busy Little Collins Street, Gabriel helps performing artists work through a range of challenges that sadly seem to come with their territory. This includes managing anxiety and minimising the impact of personal issues on one’s professional work. She also helps performers navigate career choices and develop work-life balance. She lays out for me the approach she would encourage performers to take to the audition process.

Gabrielle: I would help someone to come into that process knowing that this is hard for everyone and don’t look at anyone and think they’ve got it sussed, that you are all shit scared, you’re all feeling those physical reactions, you’re all worried about rejection, you’re putting yourself on the line. Wow.

She says there are three things a performer needs from the very beginning of their career – perspective, a support network, and a deep enough understanding of themselves to anticipate and brace for the inevitable bumps in the road.  

Gabrielle: So what I would suggest for anyone going into this career really is to be mindful of … Part of your training is to get a really good understanding of your life journey to date, and really feed and nurture and build the other parts of your life besides your craft. Often people achieve that through counseling, through journaling, through lots of reading, but I think at some point if you’re going to have a career in performing arts it’s really important to understand, appreciate, honor, and learn about your life’s journey so far. And also for the life that you have, make sure there’s other parts in it other than your performance, so grow and nurture, enjoy and maintain the other parts of your life as well.

Let’s draw a picture of you now in your life. What is in your life at the moment? What’s happening in those areas, what are your goals? Just to get a broader perspective of where the audition sits. And to actually have a look at beforehand what happens if you get it? What does that mean? Great. What does not getting this particular gig mean? It means this, not that. What would be your next step? This.

So in some ways it’s really good to have a very pragmatic look at the whole situation before you go into it to gain perspective.

The last thing I would say on that, I mean there’s lots to say about it, but be great to have a good support network. Your friends and family, whatever form it takes. It’s really essential to have a good support network, it is for all of us, but when you’re in this really lonely, vulnerable space, if possible it’s great to have at least one person waiting to hear how do you feel or to hug you at the end.

But yeah, there’s no way around it, it’s an excruciating process and it’s a real power dynamic and you’re giving your all and the stakes are high. So all of those things that help you gain perspective are worth looking at and undertaking.

So who are the people on the panel judging you at an audition? Music Director Luke Hunter may well be one of them. Here’s his perspective on the audition process, from the other side of the fence.  

Luke: I always remember that I was a performer once. I’ll never forget what that experience is like, so I think I sit on a panel with that as my underlying thought every time someone walks in the room. And also I always try to be respectful of the work that everyone’s put in before they’ve walked in the room in the first place. But then you’ve got to make a decision about what’s right and what you know is going to be needed, and where people fit. Or if they don’t fit.

The inescapable truth according to Luke is that there is always going to be more outside of the performer’s control than within it.

Luke: There’s so much about the show, no matter how much you research it, there’s so much that you’re not know to know. You’re not going to know the real intricacies of the ins and outs of who they’ve cast in various productions, what they’ve found has worked, what they’ve found hasn’t worked, and why. So you, as an actor, you can walk in and think, I am right for this show. I am right. But you might be three centimetres too short, or they’ve found that it’s better to have a true tenor in that role rather than a high baritone. And that might not even be on the casting brief, but suddenly you don’t fit the bill, and you don’t know why. And you might not ever get told, that’s the curse of being a performer as well too. So I think there are some things that we do make very quick judgements on.

So you may just not be the right height, look, pitch, or whatever. But then what does the audition process look like for someone who sits a little closer to the edge of the bell curve?

Rachel Dunham knows.

I asked Rachel what the transition into professional performance was like for her.

A natural performer with a powerful voice and a striking look, it took Rachel some time to become comfortable with herself in the audition room, knowing she was never going to be your typical mainstage musical performer. As a result, Rachel didn’t start auditioning until she was well into her singing career.

Rachel: But I’ve always said that for me in regards to being on stage with big main stage shows, I had to grow into myself because I’m fairly niche. I’m a big girl. I’ve got large features. I’ve got an interesting look, but I’ve got a leading lady voice and that’s fabulous how that screws with directors when you’re in an audition room. It starts like, you’d see them sitting there going, “Really want her. I haven’t gotten anything for her, but I really wanted her. Could we make something?” You can see the brain ticking. And then the musical director and the director will have an argument because the musical director… and it’s like, “Guys look the end of the day, I’m probably not right for anything. Should I say help me sort this out?”

But I did start auditioning and not the funnest thing in the world. I’m sure in most other industries it would probably go against all the anti-discrimination laws, everything that happens in an audition room.

But you grow up knowing that you’ve either got the look or you don’t. And I don’t, but I had to grow into it. And finally in my 40s, I had grown into myself. And people were starting to write roles that were a bit different.

So Rachel landed herself her first big mainstage musical role in her 40s. It was a principle lead she was perfect for – Justice Charlier in Rock of Ages.

But she is someone who has seen first-hand how not looking like your typical mainstage performer can stifle your opportunities in an already overcrowded audition scene.

Rachel: Some performers are the right style of performer that eventually they will go on to do back to back to back once they get their name in the right place, that sort of thing. I was never going to be that performer. So once I realized after a couple of big auditions that, “This isn’t going to happen that easily again.” Because Rock of Ages was incredibly easy for me to get. It was stupid.

So what’s a performer to do when the industry isn’t offering up audition opportunities? For Rachel, the answer was to create her own original work. A few years ago, she wrote and starred in Oprahfication – a one-woman cabaret show about Oprah Winfrey. And when she took the production to New York, she was struck by a marked difference in approach to performers of diverse backgrounds.

Rachel: Musical theatre in Australia have decided that I’m black. And when I performed in New York and I played, an Australian chick playing the most famous Black woman in the world, let alone America. And I was told before I went over, “Don’t worry, no one will question it. They have had such a history of vail racism in their country that they don’t … someone wants to get up there and do a thing if you’re good enough, they won’t even question it.”

And they didn’t. And in fact I got told by people, if I was based in New York, there would be at least four roles that I could go and audition for tomorrow. And they were a mixture of every colored skin tone you could think of- because they just don’t see it. Over here, that’s what I get sent for, the older, mature black woman or similar ethnicity. I get it’s a bit to do with my voice as well. I get that. But yeah, there just aren’t the roles to go and audition for.

But that’s kind of why I just went out and wrote Oprah was because I needed to do something. I’ve always been the outsider. I’ve always not been right. Not been quite right. Been really wrong. Any version of that. But I think that’s why I’ve had a very different journey to most performers as well. I do it for different reasons.

There’s so much more to Rachel’s story – and you’ll hear plenty more from her and other artists in future episodes.  

Back to the audition. In the awful but precious few minutes a performer gets in an audition room – what can they do to regain a bit of the power? What can the performer control?

Musical Director Luke Hunter shares his thoughts.

Luke: You can control how prepared you are, so that is how well you’ve looked over the material and are familiar with it. Doesn’t necessarily mean you have to know it by heart, but you’re really familiar with it. And you have some understanding of the show and the way that the show plays, you know what energy is required, what style of performance it is, the way that the material that you’ve been given is incorporated into that bigger picture. That’s something that you can control. And then if you’re prepared to work in the room.

if you can walk out of an audition room and say, I was listening to what they said, I made the adjustment to the best of my ability that they ask me to do, I was prepared to be flexible and prepared to throw all of the work that I’d done out the window and go on a different track that they were asking me to go on, and attempted to do that – I think that’s what makes a good audition.

And if, as a performer, if you can leave the space and say, I was prepared, I knew the material, I’d done my research, when I walked in the room I was ready to work, and I tried to do what they asked me to do to the best of my ability, then big green tick. That’s a successful audition, whether you get a call-back or not. Because the thing that might not have got you a call back is not that you weren’t talented and not that you weren’t making adjustments the way that they wanted you to. It might just be that they pre-cast the role without telling you, or you’re too short or too tall, or something that you may or may not ever find out about in the future. So I think as long as you can walk out of that room and say that I did those things, then you walk away with your head held high, regardless of the outcome.

So although rejection has no place on the performer’s CV, an unsuccessful audition is not necessarily a failed audition. Creative teams want you to do well in the audition room, and having foundations in place for mental health and wellbeing – like a support network, a good understanding of yourself, and the all-important intangible of perspective – will help you survive the realities of the audition process.

One last thought from counsellor Gabriel Edwards on approaching the audition with a balanced perspective:

Gabriel: Look for stories. Track down authentic stories from other artists. What a great way to demystify and crack myths. But when I say look for stories, be really discerning. There’s a lot of PR out there. Don’t look for the PR story of someone rising through the ranks and the heights that they’re … No. Look for the authentic stories. Look for the artists who are prepared to tell their story.

Authentic stories. That’s what we’ll be uncovering and sharing in the coming episodes.

Episode 2: THE MIND ON STAGE

Rob: Performance anxiety is exactly that in my case. It’s like my anxiety’s time to shine. It’s like my just generalised anxiety goes, “alright, tonight I’m the star!”

This is House Light Up – honest conversations with professional performing arts workers about the challenges of forging a career in the arts, and strategies for overcoming them.

The mind does strange things to the performer on stage. It can take control of the body in that crippling affliction, performance anxiety. Everyone I spoke to for this podcast has had it, or has it, and has found a way to live with it.

You’ve just heard from hip hop artist Rob Tremlett – or Mantra – who says inside an hour leading up to a show, he’s just really bad company.

Here’s Rob again, along with musical theatre actors Matt Heyward and Rachel Dunham describing their personal experiences of performance anxiety.

Matt: Most of the time for me it will probably kind of manifest in my stomach first.

Rachel: The breath for me sort of goes

Rob: And it’s most mild it feels just like a fidgety tense, anxious energy.

Matt: I feel kind of buzzy and tingly all over

Rachel: Everything feels like it’s shaking and it’s not

Matt: Racing, racing brain

Rachel: I can’t speak, I can’t hear thoughts

Rob: You get shaky and your mouth get super dry

Matt: You can get a little bit blurry vision-wise and pretty hot and clammy and sweaty

Rachel: People would be talking to me and I’m not hearing anything

Rob: At its most extreme it’s like full blown dread. You can’t breathe properly. It’s the cruellest joke on the performance poet or spoken word performer ever. And it’s much worse now than when I started performing.

They tell me that the way performance anxiety manifests isn’t always obvious. For Musical Director Luke Hunter, who started out his career as a performer, it snuck up on him.

Luke: I had a very small dose of very concentrated anxiety on a show I was doing. I’d had to learn the show very quickly. The first time I conducted it was in front of 2500 people, and I’d done my work, and it went pretty well, but about a week later, I messed up one bar. One bar, one night, and I went home and I didn’t sleep the entire night. And the next day was my day off, and I went into the theatre on that day off and I practiced that one bar for about eight hours, non-stop. And that was sort of helpful and… but about two months later, I realised that every time that one bar came up, I was flipping out about it, and I mentioned it to my personal trainer, actually and he said, “oh, that’s performance anxiety. You can sort that out.” And I thought, “Oh – yeah it is”.

So Luke sought the help of a sports psychologist while on tour.

Luke: Just the act of talking it through and him saying, “yes that’s obvious, that’s why it happened, you went into the show really quickly, you didn’t feel like you had time to be as prepared as you normally are.” And he gave me some reading to read about what’s happening with the flight and fight response. And just reading the science of it I was like, “oh, yeah, ok.” And it went away almost instantly.

For cellist Zoe Knighton, founding member of the Flinders Quartet, the transition from student to professional performer was, like so many classical instrumentalists, paved with two kinds of employment: orchestras and weddings which she says can be some of the most surprisingly stressful performances of an early career.

Zoe: The most important day in a lot of people’s lives, and music plays such an integral role. In actual fact, I think some of the most stressed I remember being early on in my career was in those weddings, where, you know, there is the dead silence…which is always when the anticipation builds – it’s the silence before one starts… And so the silence before the bride actually walks down the aisle can be excruciating. And then I remember this one time when…’cos normally it’s Pachelbel’s Canon that people walk down the aisle to, and the cello only has eight notes, so we never have the music. If you go to a wedding, and you’re employed as a cellist, quite often Pachelbel’s Canon’s not even in the folder because there’s eight notes, you know it, it’s fine. I remember this one time I had a mental blank, and I couldn’t remember how Pachelbel’s canon went. It was atrocious. The rest of the group was looking at me, just… “come on, you can start now” and I just can’t remember how it goes. It was awful.

Everyone I spoke to mentioned the impact of preparation on how comfortable and confident they feel before a performance.

So repetition in the rehearsal room can help guard against being crippled with anxiety on stage or just before a show. But what about repetition on stage? What effect does delivering the same lines, and singing the same songs over and over every week for a couple of years or more have on the performer’s ability to focus, or on their confidence in their performance?

Matt: Eight shows a week can really start to mess with your brain in a way

Matt Heyward is thoroughly experienced in the long-run mainstage musical. His first big professional job was on the original Australian production of Mamma Mia in the early 2000s, a gig that would see him – a fledgling professional – performing eight shows a week for two years.

By the end of that run Matt was well acquainted with the niggling uncertainties that can plague the mainstage musical performer.

Matt: There are shows where you are so in it and lost and are having the best time. There are some days for me where you can be doing something that you know so well and have done so many times, and then a little doubt will creep in to your mind while you’re mid-scene, mid-song, mid-dance, where you question whether you ever knew it at all.

It’s funny how we can for no reason at all build up a real anxiety about something seemingly so small and insignificant. Like…I don’t know, moving a table to the correct spot or something at the right time. It’s like, “you know how to move a table onto that spot. Why are you getting so worked up about this?”

Luke: In music theatre we do things for such extended periods of time on repeat, that the small tiny things can become big concerns for people over time.

Luke Hunter’s work on Jersey Boys won him a Helpmann award for best musical direction. Luke has spent many years helping performers through the challenges repetition can throw up. He’s seen it a lot where things that were easily executed in the rehearsal room suddenly become difficult a few months in to a long run.

Luke: And vice versa. So it’s not uncommon for a singer that was really struggling with something in the rehearsal room because it’s high or complicated for that to become programmed and very easy for them, but the thing that they hadn’t spent so much time on because it was easy in the rehearsal room and they were worried about all the other things, suddenly becomes tricky because it’s at a point in the show when they’re tired or it’s a little lower than the other material and so suddenly that’s harder for some reason or…

And I’ve seen it happen like six months in, that someone’s walk out to start the song, and they for life of them cannot remember the lyrics, and they’ve been doing it eight times a week for months. And that’s always really fascinating to me when it happens, because I think, what happened that they … I thought, “Did they get distracted? Did they become unfocused? Are they not with me? What’s going on?”

But I learnt that we put instructions and memories, we put it over there because we’re using it every day. And so, they’ve come to that song, and they’ve looked in the old filing cabinet, and it’s bare because they’ve forgotten that the brain’s reorganized. And as soon as they get a cue, the brain finds those instructions, and off they go, and they’re fine again. So, even when they’re focused, the brain does these weird and wonderful things in a long run, that just makes things really hard again.

Luke tells me that part of his job as a musical director is being prepared for whatever happens on the night, every night, and accepting the fact that a repetitive process isn’t necessarily a predicable process.

Luke: The show is never the same eight times a week, and it’s never the same from month to month, so it’s about being ok with the flux of what to an outsider is a very, very repetitious thing that happens over and over and over again. It’s not. It’s the minutia of it is moving all the time, and those tiny little changes can become big problems.

Actor and singer Rachel Dunham doesn’t get performance anxiety the way other performers do. She’s always ready to go on stage. She has complete faith in her talent, in the hard work she does to prepare and to deliver on stage.

Rachel: I work very hard. I don’t take for granted the fact that I’m really good at what I do. And I think that’s what most people who are really good at what they do and comfortable in it, they do that. They put in the work as well. That’s because I know that the most satisfying thing for me and an audience member is that when I’m out there, I’m not thinking of how unprepared I am.

But performance anxiety came late in Rachel’s career during the four-year run of her vocally ambitious original one-woman show about the most famous woman on American TV.

Rachel: A couple of years ago now, I did a one woman show called Oprahfication, and that was when I really felt what everyone was talking about. Because you’d think that if you were writing your own show, you’d write songs that were really in your pocket and easy. These songs were in my pocket, but they were in my belting pocket. So 13 because we just couldn’t, it was Oprah of course she’s going to belt everything.

It was me. I was it, there was no, I wouldn’t have, it would be difficult for me to ring up and cancel a pub gig if I couldn’t get to it. But you can’t cancel a whole cabaret show half an hour before. I did put a lot of pressure on myself for that one. I did feel that feeling of, “Will my voice get through this tonight?” That was my time for feeling all those things that I heard other people feel. Just that constant feeling of it all stopped with me. If I didn’t go on, it was a whole band that didn’t go on, the credibility, all this stuff. There was nothing, no buffer in the way of that.

Despite her immense pride in Oprahfication – a show she herself had developed, written and taken to New York – the pressures of performance anxiety led her to take a break from performing four years later.

Rachel: Four years of it also growing from a 10 minute piece to an hour and a half show in interval, still being a one woman, still writing your material, collecting a director along the way, collecting a producer along the way, ending up spending a lot of our savings going to New York for it, things like that. And I didn’t have a good physical reaction when I thought of getting on stage and performing again. I just that knot in my gut, and my chest would get tight.

And that’s when I went, “Okay, I need some space.”

I actually couldn’t bear the thought of that feeling of anxiety and nervousness attached to my performance because I’d never really had it. And all of a sudden, at the ripe old age of my mid-40s and this wonderful show that I’ve written, I’m experiencing all these things that these 20 something year olds telling me about, and I’m like, “Whoa, hang on.”

Greta: Getting up and performing in front of a large bunch of humans would have to be sort of on par with sort of the modern day equivalent of being chased by a tiger.

Greta Bradman is an operatic soprano, broadcaster and clinical psychologist. So she has first-hand understanding both of the experience of performance anxiety and the science.

Greta: You can understand why it does kind of get the anxiety response going, the fight and flight response going. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

These are the two ways Greta generally hears performance anxiety being discussed within the industry, and she says that both are false.

Greta: What I hear in the industry is people talking about performance anxiety either as though it’s sort of a necessity or it’s something that’s really bad and can’t be changed.

Certainly it can change in a big way. So if it’s something that is holding you back as a performer, then absolutely seek help and look for the right sort of help. If something isn’t working for you, if you’re going along and your seeing someone for say six weeks and you’re like, “Nah, I really don’t feel like I’m making much progress.” It’s not you because you should be able to make progress. You need to find someone who is the right fit for you. There are some, and I’m talking about performance anxiety when I’m talking about that time frame for change.

Greta herself is a fan of acceptance and commitment therapy and certain types of cognitive behavioural therapy for treating performance anxiety, but she stresses that the sufferer needs to find what works for them in particular.

Greta: If you’re after a great book, then Russ Harris’s The Happiness Trap is a really great sort of beginning point to sort of start thinking about the way that our relationship with our thoughts can impact on our emotions and that has a big part to play in performance anxiety.

The other way performance anxiety is talked about within the industry according to Greta is as something that is somehow crucial to achieving excellence in performance. Many of the performers I spoke to raised this idea that mental health challenges somehow legitimise the artist, or improve their work. None of them buys into this romantic notion. For Greta, there’s a clear distinction between the adrenaline rush she feels before she walks out on stage and the crippling condition of actual performance anxiety.

Greta: What you get from being highly alert and potentially a bit on edge and ready to really deliver, that’s very different to performance anxiety when you might have a cascade of negative thoughts that impacts on your ability to attend the performance at hand and pay attention to what you’re doing.

I think, actually quite actively sometimes about feeling alert but not alarmed, which is just such a stupid thing to say to yourself. But there you go. So I like feeling alert, just not to the point where I practically shitting my pants and just catching the next cab away from the venue. That would not be good.

So if it’s working for you and you’re just feeling sort of buzzy and a few nerves, that’s not performance anxiety. Performance anxiety is going to be detrimental in some way, shape or form and it absolutely can be helped and on the whole cured.

Counsellor Gabriel Edwards works to address issues like performance anxiety not just with professional performers, but also with CEOs – people in highly visible roles within organisations who find themselves facing many of the same issues as the performance artist does in the course of their work.

Gabriel tells me that performance anxiety is one of the most common reasons professional performers seek her help.

Gabriel: So it is wound up in the bigger picture of what a performing artist hopes to achieve, how connected they are to their work, their relationship with their audience, their identity, a whole lot of issues.

First of all, let’s just look at what’s happening to the person when they’re experiencing it? It’s basically a physiological reaction to a perceived threat, or danger, as we know. So someone’s going to experience a pulse rate that races, rapid shallow breathing, dry mouth, tight throat, trembling of the lips or the voice or the knees, vision changes sometimes. When you think about these particular physical responses, and how disastrous those responses can be for someone who’s actually using their body and their voice to deliver a performance, it is quite scary. It also impacts thoughts, so catastrophizing a situation, negative thoughts, or sometimes what people might describe as being frozen in thought. My mind went blank. Well it kind of went blank but there’s also another part of the mind racing, going, “It’s blank it’s blank.” So it’s quite horrendous for some people.

So performance anxiety is common. It can even get worse with experience.

Composer Fredric Chopin supposedly himself said: “I am not fitted to give concerts. The audience intimidates me, I feel choked by its breath, paralysed by its curious glances, struck dumb by all those strange faces.”  

Barbara Streisand famously quit performing live for almost three decades after forgetting the words to a song during a performance in New York.

And Laurence Oliver was said to once have his manager physically push him onto the stage at London’s National Theatre because of the intense stage fright that struck him late in his career.

So what can actually be done about the icy grip of performance anxiety?

One thing that everyone I spoke to for this series agrees on is the power of counselling to deal with anxiety-related problems.

Take for instance Matt Heyward’s experience performing in Les Mis. That particular job had been on Matt’s dream list all his life. But generally up until then, the productions Matt had been a part of involved at least an element of comedic relief. Not so with Les Mis, and the impact of this surprised him.

Matt: Les Mis ain’t a comedy piece. So I hadn’t even really thought about that going into the show. And it took me a while to just be even aware of that. Getting blown up and dying amongst really loud cannon fire and bright lights and stuff…I know there’s like anthemic music playing and stuff, so it’s not really happening, but I think your body gets a sense of being in a heightened situation I suppose. And for me I found the easiest way…It was easier for me to cope with doing that show to commit to what was going on and the world we were in to get through those 3 hours and 15 minutes rather than coast through them. It was just easier for me to get through the show to just go there. And I guess, yes, I had no way of know what kind of toll that would take on you as a person until I was doing it and experiencing it I suppose. But it was certainly Les Mis where I started seeking outside help. I was like, “oh I’m not coping very well here and I think I need to source some help outside of myself and my friends”. And it was one of the best decisions I ever ever made. Just going to speak to a psych who can just give you some tools and tricks but also some perspective at the same time was certainly, certainly helpful for me.

Gabriel: Counselling is a very strong, important process for anyone wanting to get a handle on any form of anxiety. What it enables you to do is to unpack what’s happening, voice it, get it out of your head, shine a light on it and have someone who’s skilled in this area help you to get a measure of it and then address it.

Something counsellors who specialise in this area will do is help a performer develop strategies that work for them which they can draw on when they start to feel performance anxiety creeping in.

Something else that’s likely to help immensely, says Greta Bradman, is taking control of your breathing. She says that if an anxiety sufferer can take control of their breathing in the right way, they can reign in those upsetting, spiralling, anxiety promoting thoughts.

Greta: …a breathing exercise. Might be for instance, breathing in through your nose, over count of six and then pausing without closing your throat’s or without making sort of a glottis-ised close of your throat, just letting the air remain in your lungs for a count of about eight and then breathing out through your mouth as though you were holding a straw in your lips over account of maybe 10 or so. And doing that for a couple of minutes. And that has the wondrous effect of shifting the autonomic nervous system from a sympathetic nervous system response so the fight and flight. And also in terms of what’s going on in your brain, you tend to be engaged with the Amygdala and with sort of the emotion center and with those parts of your brain that are highly reactive and ready for action and again, keeping yourself safe. So the breathing exercise has the effect of moving from that state into the rest and digest. So – thanks to the reticular formation, which is this sort of bundle of nerves where your brain meets your brain stem so that the medulla oblongata area. And thanks to the impact of breathing on that bundle of nerves, you can actually have an impact on what would ordinarily be involuntary bodily goings on.

So it’s a really effective way of shifting physiologically into a rest and digest state, shifting where your blood is, reducing your heart rate, reducing your blood pressure. And then oftentimes because we are inclined towards a state of homeostasis within our bodies, it means that we then in our thoughts tend to follow. So just as when we’re feeling shit scared, we tend to find thoughts that confirm our fears or that sort of buy into our fears, when we’re feeling more relaxed, so we tend to be more capable of focusing on thoughts that feed into that state of being.

So for me, embracing a focused kind of calm, focused state before a performance is very much to with breathing and just a really subtle breathing exercise that I hardly notice that I’m doing.

Gabriel: Another thing to do if you know that you have a tendency is to identity the rituals and routines that help to calm you and get you in the zone before a show.  Some people use music, some people have a food routine, some people have a physical movement, some people really appreciate a group routine or process. They really appreciate that coming together in a huddle, a particular chant, a hug, something like that works for them.

Another suggestion I would give is if you know you may have a propensity for performance anxiety, is identity a buddy within your crew. Is it the tour manager, is it another cast member, is it someone broader on the crew? But someone who you know you can signal to say, “Yeah, it’s starting to happen.” And they know what to do with you.

Rob Tremlett tells me that before a show, the more control he feels like he has before the show starts, the more comfortable he feels walking out on stage. Pre-performance routines and breathing exercises were a part of this for him.

Rob: I think I’m worried that things are gonna mess up or whatever, so I try to combat it by kind of going over the things that I feel like I need to be on top of. Maybe preparing myself doing some breathing exercises. I’ll often do like a vocal warmup so that I know that I’m putting things in place to make sure that the show goes well. I think that helps having these tangible things that I can do that alike, “Okay, if I do these things my performance has a higher chance of success” basically.

As we heard earlier from musical director Luke Hunter, just voicing the problem, talking it out with someone you trust can take away its power.

Musical actor Matt Hayward is also someone who has found relief in confiding in a trusted group of peers about his own anxieties when performing on shows like Mamma Mia and Les Mis.

Matt: I kind of learned that I had to be really open about it with some of my trusted cast mates. Just to actually go, “hey you guys, I’m feeling really anx today”. And even just saying it out loud and talking it out takes away its power quite significantly. Those kind of conversations just helped immensely.

Beyond performance anxiety itself, another frequent on-stage struggle for many of the performers I spoke with is focus. In a perfect world, a professional performer is able to focus on command, reliably and predictably. In the real world, the mind can have other plans. It wanders, plays tricks on its owner. It can be too focussed, or not focussed enough. Verbal thought can disrupt a performance simply by virtue of its presence.

I asked Rob Tremlett if he has verbal thought when he’s performing

Rob: Yeah, way too much sometimes. I guess I’m thinking about my performance in so many different ways. I’m going okay so we’re a third of the way through the set now which means I want to be maintaining my energy at this point, but I probably want to be affecting this kind of character for this performance of this song and at this point in the track I’m gonna maybe connect with this part of the crowd, and I’ve got that part in the middle of the track where I’m gonna go back and forth with the DJ and make sure that that’s happening… so you’re thinking about a lot of things.  But then on top of that you’re going like, “That homie in the front row is singing every word so he knows what’s up. This woman over here looks totally bored, she’s not even looking at the stage… I’m running out of breath, I need to make sure I catch my breath on that next line which means that I probably can’t sprints back across the stage…” So you’re thinking about all these things. Even to the point where like if you’re really in charge of the performance you’re probably thinking like, “yo, I think I’m going to get a martini after the show. This bartender looks like he knows what he’s doing, so I’m going to hit him up for a nice drink. I hope they throw that on the rider though because martinis are expensive man. In fact, I should invoice for this show when I get home because I don’t know how long it’s going to take…” like so your mind just starts wondering and so the amount of times that has screwed up my performance for me is like, I can’t even tell you. I’ll literally be thinking these things about an audience or about my performance and that will be why I screw up a whole part of a verse.

For Greta Bradman, verbal thought during a performance can send her down a spiral of awareness.

Greta: I’ve certainly had moments and it’s funny because if on the occasion that this happens, you’re like, fuckity fuck this is not a good thing. I’m just going to get into a loop now and if you think, oh, maybe it’ll have some Vietnamese for dinner tonight. And then you’re like, what are you doing? You shouldn’t be thinking about Vietnamese, you should be thinking about the music. And then you get into this loop where it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and you start realizing that you’re falling asleep and then that wakes you up, that sort of like, yes, I’m falling, ah shit.

So when it comes to tackling focus-related issues in performance, two skills in particular seem to do the trick for our performers. The first is the ability to remain present. Cultivating a capacity to bring your attention back to what is happening right in front of you, in that moment. These days they call it mindfulness.

Zoe: Everybody has their own path towards a quietness, I think. And one thing that helps me is to as much as possible remind myself to focus on just one thing at a time. Cos I know with kids and emails and practice and getting dinner done and school bags packed and unpacked and homework attended to and then just sort of maintaining one’s life, there’s 1001 thoughts going through my head. But if I can as much as possible remind myself to focus on the thing that I’m going at that point in time, that really helps because that means that when you come to focussing on music, the idea that you’ve got one focus is not a foreign one.

Matt: Something I picked up along the way is to try to stay really present in the space. Try to stay present in the room, which is being on the stage, but for me that would be just like, looking around and taking in different things and actually just acknowledging them and seeing them and just going, “Ok – that’s Simon Gleeson over there, that’s a barricade…” Just bringing myself back into the present and exactly where I am has helped me quite a bit.

According to Greta Bradman, a default internal setting of gratitude, as opposed to judgement, goes hand in hand with her ability to stay in the here and now and release

Greta: Gratitude is an interesting thing. When you’re grateful it is impossible to be judgmental essentially. So it’s a really powerful state to sort of try and occupy as much as you can.

The gratitude Greta talks about isn’t just to be directed towards fellow performers, but also towards oneself – especially when anxiety or nerves or a lack of focus threatens to derail a performance.

Greta: That’s where sort of suspending judgment is really helpful and just noticing what’s happening and… most of the time, I do manage to sort of bring myself back to the music. I try to really focus on like if I’m feeling a little kind of, I don’t know, discombobulated, out of my body, just focus on sort of the bodily, the sensation of making the music and trying to be spontaneous.

The other thing that seems to help the performers I spoke to with both focus and anxiety is a clear and present appreciation of why it is that they do what they do.

Zoe Knighton had to have one such difficult conversation with herself early on in her career with the Finders Quartet, on stage, mid-performance, inside her head.

Zoe: A big turning point for me I think was when I was on stage with the quartet performing Schuberts G Major Quartet, and it was the second movement which has the most beautiful cello melody, and I was pretty paralysed by nerves, it was all I could do to keep the bow moving from one direction to the next. And to be honest I was pretty miserable on stage.

I had this conversation with myself in my head which sort of went along the lines of: “This is awful, I don’t…I’m not enjoying this.”

And the other little voice in my head saying, “nobody’s got a gun to your head. You can walk off stage right now…you have that option open to you.”

And the other little voice in my head going, “but I can’t do that, and I don’t want to do that.”

And the other little voice going, “Well if you’re not going to walk off stage you might as well start enjoying yourself then.”

And that conversation with the two little people in my head, y’know – what am I doing here? Why am I doing this? And it was answering that question why am I doing this, and putting myself through this anxiety, why am I doing it. And over the next probably 3 or 4 years it took for me to really become comfortable with the answer to that question.

The answer to that question, Zoe says, is going to be different for every performer. So I asked them – how do you convince yourself to just keep going?

Rachel: The thing I know that always gets me through is that I’m a performer. I can perform my way out of anything.

Rob: When I go onstage, I don’t feel like I’ve got anything to be nervous about. I’ve done it 1000 times, I really really enjoy doing it, and it’s actually where I kinda feel the most comfortable, Because I’m there to execute the thing that I’m best at in the world and most experienced with an most prepared for in that moment. And you also realise it’s also bad there’s just 1000 people here that are having a really good time listening to my music. That’s awesome.

Zoe: What music brings to me, apart from the sensation of resonance going through the body, there’s also the sense that I get when I’m quite literally speaking through the instrument. Through allowing the music to destroy any verbal thought that’s going through my head, that that’s actually something that’s pretty close to meditation to me. And if I can share that with the audience, that’s what has kept me going and that’s something that music gives that nothing else can.

So the stage can be all things from frightening and discombobulating to meditative, gratifying, and just fun.

But there’s no doubt that when a performer takes the stage, they’re taking a risk. But what exactly is at stake? What is the threat within performance that the body perceives when it throws itself into flight-or-fight mode? That’s what we’ll be exploring next time on House Lights Up.

Episode 3: VULNERABILITY

Gabriel: I think because artists and creatives are more vulnerable because our filters are different. We’re good at our art, we’re good at observation and creating because we have a different filter to the world. We’re taking more in. But we’re moving into an industry that’s actually really harsh. The stakes are so high.

This is House Lights Up – honest conversations with performing arts workers about the challenges of forging a career in the arts, and strategies for overcoming them.

In this episode, we’re going to look at vulnerability. We’ll consider some of the features of being a performer, as well as features of the industry in general, that make performing arts workers a particularly vulnerable population when it comes to mental health and wellbeing challenges.

In the last episode we heard hip hop artist Rob Tremlett explain that his experience of performance anxiety is much worse now than it was early in his career. I asked him why that is.

Rob: I’m just a smarter person now. I’m wiser, smarter person so I actually know what’s going on. And if you know what’s going on then you should be worried at least some of the time. If you know what’s at stake and you know what’s riding on your performances, then of course you’re going to worry and you’re gonna be nervous.

So what’s going on? What is at stake? What does a performer risk when they take the stage?

I put the question to counsellor Gabriel Edwards, whose voice was the first you heard off the top of the episode. Gabriel specialises in working with performers to address the particular challenges of life in their industry – including the performer’s heightened vulnerability.

Gabriel: Artists create from the heart. When you create a piece of art, when you perform your craft, you’re putting yourself out there to an audience who are sitting there with expectations of being entertained or enjoying themselves. You’re using your body and you’re using your voice and because you’re in an industry that expects high performance consistently, and because your employer expects that as well because it’s a commercial imperative, because many performing artists started practicing their craft or were recognized as talented from childhood, the focus has been on that all their life and sometimes to the detriment of other social and emotional development.

So when you’re going out on stage, it feels like it’s everything. It feels like you are the performance, the stakes are so high, the stakes for your identity, the stakes for your survival in this bizarre industry where careers aren’t that long sometimes, where the work is limited. The stakes are high for your ego.

There’s a lot of big issues wrapped up in what Gabriel is saying here.

First there’s little security and lots of uncertainty plaguing many if not most careers in the arts and entertainment industries – both for those on-stage or on camera, and those behind the scenes. There’s often no clear career path, no obvious next steps. Work overload and underload are both significant stressors, with career anxiety often resulting from the latter.

Then there’s the reported harshness of the industry itself. A landmark study undertaken in 2016 by Entertainment Assist and Victoria University titled Working in the Australian Entertainment Industry, uncovered accounts of a “toxic, bruising work environment, extremely competitive, evidence of bullying, sexual assault, sexism and racism which is ignored or dealt with inadequately”.

There is also the relationship of the performing arts worker to the work itself. Many of the almost 3000 arts and entertainment industry workers who participated in the Entertainment Assist study describe their career as a calling – a notion bound up with a focus on personal fulfilment and identity. The same sentiment was uttered many times during my own conversations with performing artists for this podcast. And while this dedication to the call may result in the high levels of passion and commitment observed in the 2016 study, it does leave the performer exposed to the harshness of the industry.

Operatic soprano and clinical psychologist Greta Bradman says that for her, entering the industry as a performer has meant consciously embracing vulnerability. 

Greta: Deciding to pursue a full time career in the performing arts … I actually had to, because I was so terrified about the prospect of performing and speaking in front of an audience… So the thing for me was making a commitment to be vulnerable. Actually deciding that I would be vulnerable and do anything and give everything when I’m on that stage. So I’m actually fairly private individual. But when I’m on that stage, I will just give everything. My dress could literally fall off me and I would totally go with it.

Zoe: One of the things about playing music is that it’s so intensely personal

Cellist and founding member of the Flinders Quartet, Zoe Knighton, tells me that playing music can expose the performer’s inner life in that moment.

Zoe: I can often tell how my students are feeling just from the way that they’re playing. And I remember back when I was learning from my dear teacher in Tassie, Christian, and I would send him cassette tapes and put them in the post, and he would phone me up and give me feedback on these cassette tapes that I would record. And I was always astounded…and I was going through the formative late teenage/early 20s years… I was astounded at how he just seemed to know what was going on in my life just by how I was playing. And I think that that is one of the things that makes it really hard. Because we worry that if the audience don’t like it, that they don’t like us as people. There is that sort of subconscious fear.

The performer’s closeness to their work can make judgement and criticism difficult to take. And the vulnerability that comes from presenting one’s talents for judgement and evaluation is not limited to performers. I asked music director Luke Hunter if he generally feels confident starting out on a new show.

Luke: No, not at all. I never go into any show with heaps of confidence at all… It’s not that I think that I’m a fraud, but I get the new score and a lot of it is not immediately playable so you know, ok I’ve got some work ahead of me to become competent in the work that I have to do so, I often do the first day of rehearsal and you finish the first day of rehearsal – particularly if the American music supervisor’s out and you might not know them so well – and I think, oh well, everything seemed to be ok, I guess I’m turning up again tomorrow. That kind of inferiority complex – I have a bit of that. And then sort of by the end of the week you’re like, oh, ok I think this job’s mine and it’s all fine. It’s all going well.

I was certainly doing that a lot early on in my career. And I still do that a bit to some extent, but I think I’ve got better at thinking, ok, I have a CV behind me and it’s proven and I do know what I’m going, I just don’t know this show so well, so I can transfer these skills and things are going to be ok. But I think we all go through that to some extent. Certainly other musicians that I know who are some of the best players in Melbourne come up at the end of the first rehearsal and say, “is that ok? Is everything alright?” and you say, “yes, everything’s great. You sound great. See you tomorrow.”

Exposure to judgement and criticism is a constant theme in the performing arts worker’s life, and we’ll be exploring that further in our next episode.

As a counsellor, Gabriel Edwards has seen the compromises people make to be part of this industry – chief amongst which is denying their own humanness, and all the vulnerability that entails.

Gabriel: Look, something that I see in this industry, performing arts industry, is that unfortunately there’s not enough space within organizations, within a performing ensemble or that whole production team for human beings to actually be human beings, to be the whole human. So if you put together a production which is made up of an ensemble of human beings, a crew, all the different staff and people involved, you are going to have a whole maelstrom of human issues.

Providing far more space than we do now for individuals to say, “I’m struggling with something at the moment, I just need to put that on the table.” That in itself helps people get on with their job when they’re struggling with something.

Here’s a thought. Imagine you’ve landed your dream job – a lead role in a mainstage musical, and it’s come later in your career than it does for most. But at a moment when you should be focussing all your energy on nailing the opportunity you’ve work so hard for so long to receive, your personal life begins to fall apart. It happened to Rachel Dunham.

Rachel: So, I landed myself a principle lead in Rock of Ages. And at the same time, our entire family was falling apart. My niece was diagnosed with a very rare terminal leukemia. People, they’re all so excited in Brisbane. “Yeah. Brisbane kid gets a gig, it’s pretty …” we have a public holiday when that happens in Brisbane.

And I kept getting told your dream job, you’ve waited so long for this, isn’t this wonderful? And in the back of my head I’m like, “I’m saying goodbye to my niece through a plate glass window in isolation in the ICU ward in oncology and none of this is equating to being right. To shoot ahead, she’s now 23 and amazing and fought the fight of her life. But back then, we didn’t know. We honestly did not know.

So it was a case of trying to navigate this big new job as a first timer, which instinct might suggest means nailing it at every turn and showing no weakness – while dealing with acute and ongoing personal heartbreak. Rachel says it was a hell of a learning curve.

Rachel: I had one of the greatest lessons, I’ve had a lot of really good ones, but this was a really amazing one. And it’s that lesson of the strength in vulnerability. So for the entire rehearsal period right up to like day two in the theater, I was like so cool and together and miss thing and all over this. I was so green as well. What I know now is that every … nearly, it was a fairly young cast, but most of the people in these cast it wasn’t their first rodeo. It was my first rodeo, and I was older than all of them. None of it added up.

Day two in tech I think it was and we’re doing spacing on stage of a dance number. I’m not a dancer, but they worked really hard with me and I got it. But this day I just couldn’t. They would tell me to walk through a door and turn left. I’d walk through the door and turn right. It was like I was a deer in the headlights. I was a mess.

And finally in one of the 15 minute tea breaks, it wasn’t even a let’s go to your dressing room moment. The director came up and she took me aside in the wing and just said to me, “Where’s my justice? Where’s my warrior woman?” And warrior woman just left the building because she could see there was something in the way. And I just told her, I said, “I don’t deserve to be here. This is what’s going on with my family. I shouldn’t be here. I haven’t told anybody. I can’t think straight. I know I’m letting you down,” and I’m talking ugly crying.

And all she did was listen and tell me that it’s okay. And that if she doesn’t see nearly everyone have their version of a little crack during tech week then she gets worried. Even the store people who get what it’s all about. And I said, “Okay.” And I wiped the tears away, took a deep breath, and I went out and we started the spacing again, and I never got a dance step wrong ever again.

And it was just like, I just needed to let them know I’m not okay.

I’m just not. And as soon as I did that, I got out of the way of myself.

Unfortunately, performing arts workers are not always prepared to say, “I’m not ok”.

Gabriel Edwards knows how dangerous and damaging a reluctance to voice these issues can be.

Gabriel: So a story I heard recently, which absolutely broke my heart was someone in a global theatre production, touring around the world, who was one of the main cast members, highly revered, was going through some personal issues off to the side.

Instead of actually letting someone know and seeking support, when that person finished their job what was found, in their dressing room, was a pile of empty wine bottles that was huge. So that individual was suffering, a human being was suffering on their own, self-medicating and doing themselves great physical and mental damage. Rather than feel that they’re in an industry or a workplace where they could say, “I’m committed to doing my job but this is happening in my life at the moment,” and having a workplace that can say, “Right, we’ve clocked that. We hear you. Thanks for letting us know, this is what we’re going to do.”

Instead we have someone going on every night, giving their all, and absolutely destroying themselves off to the side and privately, because there’s no space to be a human being in that setting.

I asked Gabriel what she sees as the main drivers of a workplace culture that doesn’t allow for vulnerability.

Gabriel: I think because of the industry and this particular career where work is intermittent there’s a lot of people who are underemployed, where income is sporadic, and therefore competition is really, really high, yeah. Showing vulnerability is seen as weakness, or it’s felt as a weakness.

So I think the industry needs to start giving a different message and saying that, “If you’re chosen for a job it’s because you have the skills and talent and we want to do everything we can do to ensure you give the best performance you can. That also means supporting you as a human being.” Other industries are able to do it, I think the performing arts industry needs to start to show they can do it as well.

So this industry really needs an intervention and is getting one. This is a process that’s washed over corporate and public sector organizations over the last 20 years. So it’s not just about the bottom line. The people are also a massive resource and we need to look after them. So there does need to be a change and a circuit breaker.

Here Gabriel touches on another frequent theme in the performing arts worker’s life – the intense competition and employment uncertainty that characterises the industry.

In examining the work patterns of London-based male musicians in the late 80s, a couple of UK-based psychology professors by the names of Cary Cooper and Geoffrey Wills found that work for the men came in sporadic bursts – intensive when it was there, but when it wasn’t, this would often result in career anxiety, and a belief for many that the work was going to someone better than them, leading to self-doubt and depression.  

This constant competition makes the performer’s position ever more tenuous, as Gabriel Edwards explains.

Gabriel: There’s under-employment, a wealth of talent. And so in a world where there’s intense competition, and then the feature of some of our… the conditions of touring, often. That can all point to a certain amount of isolation.

Musical theatre actor Matt Heyward sees a particular risk for people in his part of the industry to define themselves by whether or not they have a job.

Matt: I think if you live for music theatre or acting and the only way you’re going to be satisfied and happy in life is if you get work in that field, I think you’re destined to never be fulfilled. I think it’s really important to have a life and an identity outside of what we do, because it’s what we do, it’s not who we are. Y’know, we’re humans that have partners and brothers and sisters and friends and all of that stuff. That’s who we are, performing is what we do.

Matt is clearly aware that when you identify what you do as your calling in life, the distinction between who you are and what you do is harder to hold onto. That same 2016 Entertainment Assist and Victoria University study cites some of its respondents as saying “their work was the purpose of their lives, they could not do any other kind of work, and their work was who they were”.

For Greta Bradman each performer needs to discover and establish their identity as a performer, but this shouldn’t come at the cost of their understanding of themselves outside of their work.

Greta: I think the aspect of blending your identity with your performance as a performer of any sort is really fraught. It’s important in that in a way because you need to put some thought into your voice. And I don’t mean voice as in singing voice, but I mean, your voice as an artist. but at the same time, you need to transcend who you are as a performer and understand yourself beyond that. It’s one of the reasons why with the Arts Wellbeing Collective, there’s a lot of talk about what are your hobbies, what are your interests? Where are you engaged outside of your craft as a musician or as a performer or even as a technician or whatever it is because that’s just as creative and just as much a performance if you’re engaged in that performance moment.

But there’s no doubt that when the work is there, it can be intense and all-engrossing. As counsellor Gabriel Edwards points out, you can neglect those other parts of your life only for so long. Here she relates a conversation she had recently had with one of her CEO clients.

Gabriel: You can kind of get by if you ignore your health, your relationships and your piece of mind for a little while. You’ve got a big project, the business is going through a merger, you’re in the media. You kind of know you’re ignoring those things and you can get away with it for a little while. But eventually it’s going to kick you in the arse if you don’t actually nurture and grow and maintain those things.

I actually think the stakes are even higher for performing artists. That if you don’t nurture those its, they’re going to … Well, it’s like anything, pressure will build, something will explode or you’ll lose them. And you won’t have those beautiful things in your life to balance out your job. And it means that all of that focus is on your job.

And there’s another trap performing arts workers can fall into during bouts of intense employment – an overreliance on the work to replace intimacy in other parts of their lives.

Gabriel: When they’re so busy or they’re focused so much on their craft or spent years and years on a project, what sometimes happens is that they tie intimacy, which we all need, it’s a human need, they actually get their need for intimacy through their performance. Which is quite a dangerous thing to do, that you miss out on that intimacy with other human beings but you replace it with that feeling you get on stage. And it really makes for some tricky relationships, and some pretty troubling and challenging thoughts and feelings. So balance is the key and there is a way to get balance. There’s a lot spoken about balance, work life balance, and it all seems a bit cliché but it is really rooted in truth, and our survival.

An example of when this might be a risk is during touring – particularly where a tour takes place over a long period of time. And if so, the transition back to non-touring life might be fraught if not properly prepared for. I asked Matt Heyward what he thinks a healthy return to post-tour life looks like.

Matt: You can get lost in this little tour bubble and show bubble. So I think when you know that it’s coming to an end, I think it’s super important to start reaching out to your friends that aren’t in the show. Reaching out to people back home, wherever back home is going to be. Start to put little things in place for yourself so that when you get back, you’re not just arriving back to nothing. And whether that is booking in some classes, or going back to a singing teacher or like even if there’s a casual job that you have… if you can start to put some of those steps in place before you finish so that you come back and you’re not just instantly dropped in the abyss of unemployment, that you actually have a sense of purpose. Because that is the hardest thing to navigate is when you finish, it’s having that sense of purpose everyday of, what do I do?

According to Gabriel Edwards, a strong support network is a crucial part of the performing arts worker’s arsenal to combat the risk of isolation that accompanies touring life, and other challenges that come with a career as a performing arts worker.

Gabriel: If you’ve got good family that support you, foster that and nurture it. If you’ve got friends who are in the industry, do your best to support each other and look out for each other, and it’s really important to have friends and contacts outside the industry to get perspective on life in general, on what’s happening in the world, in how you’re presenting.

Someone who knows the importance of the support network is actress and singer Rachel Dunham. On a trip back to her mother’s 20 acre farm in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, at a time when Rachel’s career was characterised by toxicity, the strength and support of Rachel’s family helped her to recognise that she was spiralling into a breakdown. Or as she prefers to call it – a breakthrough.

Rachel: A breakdown isn’t the thing that happens when you end up in tears and rocking under the kitchen table. It’s a big, long buildup through that process. And I was in a very toxic business/friendship relationship. And it just took its toll on me and I’d been trying to get out for a long time and couldn’t.

And finally I found myself around my family. And they all just bunked it down and went, “Rachel’s not going anywhere.” They could see and I’m sort of bubbling along, “Everything’s great, everything’s great.” And as soon as they sort of helped me lift the veil up so I could see that I was not happy and this was not a good environment for me to be in. It was the strength of having them there, protecting me and holding me. And you know, I could sit on my mum’s veranda in paradise for as long as I needed to, to lick my wounds.

My mum’s very smart though. When I was sort of in the depression phase of it and couldn’t get out of bed, after about a couple of weeks, mum came and sat on the bed and said, “Look,” this is going to sound very strange to people… “I’ve got a sick goat down in the sheds, and I was wondering if you’d be able to like take care of her. Like just make sure she got fed because I’m not managing all the chores at the moment.

If you could just like feed her in the morning and the afternoon, that’s all you need to do. That would be great.” Which is my mum’s very clever way of saying, “I just need to get you out of bed for five minutes a day, and I know that you’ll do it for an animal.” And I did.

And then slowly I would get up and I would stay up. And then slowly I got my strength back.

So in this environment, the people immediately surrounding the performers are a crucial source of support and vigilance. Luke Hunter has been a music director for almost two decades. This work sees him providing singers and musicians with direction, feedback and coaching during a rehearsal period and throughout a show’s run, as well as conducting the orchestra during each performance. Luke is clearly aware that supporting his performers is a key part of his role.

Luke: I think a conductor is absolutely a problem solver, and sometimes a counsellor, and sometimes a confidant. I think that’s what we have to do because we’re not the ones who are putting ourselves out on the deck. Really we’re there to serve the piece and to serve the performers. So I think someone that’s working with the voice and singers are going to see the strains and the stresses and the anxiety probably before the dance department or the acting department might because the voice is… a difficult thing to manage. People are scared about what will happen to their voice. And so little niggles or little strains or fatigue or illness can affect that quite dramatically.

Hip hop artist Rob Tremlett has been working with young performers for a number of years, and he says that it’s important to be honest with budding performers about his own vulnerability, to normalise discussions about the scary aspects of performing.

Rob: I’ve been performing for like 13 years now, and I still get nervous. Like I said I probably get more nervous now than I used to get when I started. Which I tell young people, I’m very honest about that. I think it’s important that they know. It’s like – yo, we don’t just get up there holding our dicks like some kind of like crazy rock star, you know. We’re nervous, we’re scared to go and do it. Every time. Every single time. And it’s because you’re worried, you know, you want to do a good job. You want to make sure that it goes right. You’re nervous. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it and it doesn’t mean that the performance is going to suffer. But then when we’re actually performing with young people, if they’re doing a show or whatever and if we’re there, I think it’s just about keeping the vibe really high, making sure that everyone’s having a good time and remembering that essentially the reason we’re doing this is just to have a good time.

I asked Rob if anxiety and mental health issues are discussed much within the music industry.

Rob: I think so, but I think just like outside of the music industry, probably not enough. You know I think a lot of people are comfortable having conversations around anxiety and mental health issues but there’s more people that aren’t comfortable with it. And I think it just needs to be something that we’re able to talk about more. I think you should be able to tell a close friend, I’ve been having a real shitty time lately, and I’ve been feeling this and this and this. Not like, yeah I been good thanks, how about you? I think we do that a lot.

And it’s no secret, like talking to anyone about those things makes them easier. And makes them easier to process, and makes the person experiencing them feel far less alone in those feelings, which is half of what kind of kills you in the end.

So what about the myth of great art being born of painful experience? According to Rob, this romantic idea that the artist needs suffering in order to be creative is out there – and while there may be truth to it, it’s just not a healthy way to view personal suffering.

Rob: If I’m creating music and I’m being creative and I’m able to be productive musically, that gives me a lot of strength and stability and resilience in my life. It helps me kind of stay sane I suppose, but also… everything that I go through, the harder things I go through, I definitely start to really fully process when I put them into music, and that is a way that I can really, really start to come to terms with things, and get them out of me.

It’s happened so many times. The guy who got me into rhyming, he died not long after that. He was attacked and killed in an unprovoked attack a matter of years later. And writing that song about him was the moment where I started to finally start to process that and come to terms with it. But it didn’t happen until years after the fact.

When I go through those events, I’m not creating music, I’m not writing music, I don’t feel creative, cos I just feel sad, or I feel stressed or I feel angry, or I feel any number of those things. Which is why I kind of get really resentful of people who say, “you’re going through some tough times I know that, but just think about all the ammunition this is going to give you as a writer, and just think about all the stuff you’ll have to write about when you come through it”.

I appreciate where that comes from. There’s no ill intent in that sentiment. But I don’t think it’s helpful to think about those really hard parts of life, those struggles and those challenges, I don’t think it’s good to look at them as like writing fodder or ammunition cos I feel like that maybe means that you’re like alright well my writing depends on me being unhappy or having challenges with mental health, or whatever it is. Or even worse – thinking, oh well these mental health issues or these struggles in my life and this drama and this stress is actually good for my art. I don’t think that’s a healthy way to look at it.

So the working conditions of the industry, and the industry itself, are often unkind to the professional performing arts worker. Isolation, criticism, competition and worse have been observed as characteristic of this industry, and performing arts workers themselves have been identified as already more exposed than the general population to risk of conditions like depression and anxiety.

In fact, the 2016 Entertainment Assist and Victoria University study found that performing arts and entertainment industry workers suffer moderate to severe anxiety at a rate 12 times that of the general population. They were also five times more likely to suffer moderate to severe depression. And even more worrying are the findings relating to suicide – where suicide ideation is 6 times greater than the general population, suicide planning more than 4 times greater, and suicide attempts more than double.

And here’s the kicker – the competitiveness and harshness of the environment tends to drive individuals to carefully hide anything that might be considered weakness.   

And all this begs the question – how then does one not only survive this industry, but thrive within it?

According to counsellor Gabriel Edwards, there are certain things every performing arts worker should do. She calls it building a solid emotional foundation – a setting up process that allows the person to look after their mind and their body through the bumps in the road. A lot of these things, she says, really apply to everyone – no matter their profession. But as we know so many people who work in the entertainment industry and the arts (not just performers) have particular challenges to overcome just to maintain a healthy body and mind, and therefore need to take more deliberate strides towards building and fostering their healthy foundation.

The first thing Gabriel recommends is simple – making sure you’re incorporating some kind of physical exercise into your daily life.

Gabriel: So what’s some physical activity in your life that increases your heart rate and moves your body. Number two is, how can you build a more intimate knowledge of how your body and mind work together?

This Gabriel says is about having a really strong awareness of the relationship between your brain function and your body function – including your breathing, your muscles, your skeleton, between movement and posture and psychological state.

Gabriel: We can achieve this through perhaps processes like yoga, Tai chi, some actors or performing artists might know, the Alexander Technique or the Feldenkrais Method, which is all about really understanding how your muscle, breath, skeleton, your body works so that you have greater control and mindfulness over your body

The third component of a healthy emotional foundation as Gabriel sees it is so simple, but so easily ignored – the way you fuel your body.   

Gabriel: To eat protein and carbs and good veggies, to have low sugar in your diet, low caffeine and to drink lots of water really sets you up for surviving a whole lot of stuff. It’s really good for your brain, it’s good for your emotions and it keeps your body going. That’s a really basic thing but it’s fundamental.

The fourth and final part of a healthy emotional foundation may be the hardest one of all to achieve.

Gabriel: And I think performing artists need this more than anyone really, is to have self-knowledge and life perspective, where you understand your emotional landscape. Where you come to a point where you realize you’re more than the art that you create, you’re more than last night’s performance.

My conversation with Gabriel then turned to resilience. Is the solid emotional foundation about building resilience? And what is resilience anyway?

Gabriel: When I read about resilience, I had a really fun search through the internet the other day and you come across these seven ways to develop resilience. Bounce back! Be confident! Don’t wallow! That kind of thing. What I know in my work as a counselor is that resilience isn’t as you would be led to believe. It’s not returning back to your pre-crisis state. It’s not bouncing back quickly. It’s not holding your head up while dealing with challenges.

If you are in need of resilience because you faced a crisis, you’ve had a failure, you are going to be changed by that.

Resilience comes with knowledge and compassion for yourself. And acknowledgement of your previous life experiences. You’re going to keep moving forward if you have a fair amount of compassion for yourself, if you acknowledge what’s happened and how you can learn from it. If you have a good support network.

Resilience is not about leaving that thing that happened behind and returning to the state you were in before it. It’s actually being strong enough to know that you’re capable of surviving it. Being strong enough to embrace what’s happened, take it on, learn from it, and then move forward.

It’s not returning to your pre-crisis state. That’s like saying to someone who’s grieving that you need closure. When someone dies, and you’re grieving, there’s not a box to close. You just now have grief. It’s what you do with it and how you bring it along with you, that’s what resilience is about. It’s a positive thing but it’s hard.

So next time you hear resilience know that it’s about self-knowledge, it’s actually about self-love and compassion for yourself. It’s about getting perspective, seeking counseling, reflecting. It’s about being aware of your goals, going back to what was my goal, why did I do this in the first place, can I recapture that and refocus on it?

It’s about seeing your crisis as part of the journey that you’re on, and a failure is just as much a part of the journey as a win.

So to be a performing artist is to risk one’s ego, one’s identity, reputation, and usually, one’s financial security – with every performance. Embracing vulnerability is part of this equation, but this often comes at significant cost.

While some performing arts workers may have the strength to voice their vulnerabilities to their employers, others are suffering in silence. Because speaking up could mean the end of their employment, and jobs in this industry are hard to come by. Because careers are long fought for and hard-won in an industry that at present doesn’t allow enough space for the humanness of its workers. Because the show must go on.

But a career in the performing arts doesn’t need to be that way. Setting up a healthy emotional foundation, nurturing a support network and developing the compassion and self-knowledge that enables resilience will help you roll with the punches that likely come with the journey. Strength in this context, means seeking, and sometimes fighting, for help.

Episode 4: VALIDATION

Zoe: We live our lives as people generally really looking for external validation. And I see that with my children, that they’re looking to me and my husband and teachers for external validation. And in a sense that’s beneficial to them. But as a performer really, performing solely for that external validation – whether it is colleagues or the audience, or a critic – for me, that’s really dangerous.

This is House Light Up – honest conversations with performing arts workers about the challenges of forging a career in the arts, and strategies for overcoming them.

In this episode we’ll be looking at judgement and validation – two prominent features of the professional performer’s working life.

Judgement is something all performing artists must learn to navigate. And how a performer approaches judgement and criticism can have a lot to do with their ideas about validation and their individual definition of success.

You’ve just heard cellist Zoe Knighton talking about the human desire for external validation and approval, and the dangers this can present for a performer.

Theories abound as to where this need comes from – with some tracing its origins back to our primal survival instincts born of a time where rejection by a group could spell an end to our survival by way of sabre tooth tiger.

And although an individual’s physical survival no longer hinges on being part of a pack, the theory goes that this primal need to be accepted by the group remains wired into our brains as the physical threat of predators has transformed into the relational and emotional frailties that come with being a social creature.

So what does an innate need for approval mean for the performing artist? Inevitably, that the promise of external validation looms large in the minds of many performers.

Gabriel: Look, it’s perfectly natural and healthy to want to need external validation

Counsellor Gabriel Edwards says that while sources of validation for the performer can vary widely, not all are beneficial to the individual or their work.

Gabriel: So that validation can come from … The number one is your audience or critics, other colleagues, might be from your mum and dad. It may also be the media and social media.

External validation’s a bit like happiness. It’s really nice, it’s fleeting, it doesn’t endure, but it’s really nice and it’s great to strive for it but we also must balance that with seeking and getting validation from internal source, from yourself.

For cellist Zoe Knighton, an overreliance on external validation can compromise the performer’s individual voice.

Zoe: My dear teacher Christian Voidevich said to me one time when I was struggling with something. He said, “Zoe, you’re never going to be Rostrapovich. And thank god. We don’t need another Rostrapovich. We’ve had him, he was marvellous. He’s gone. We need you now”.

And that was something that came at a crucial time, and something that I come back to again and again, is that when we’re looking for external validation sometimes we’re morphing into somebody who’s not us, and that’s for me what paralyses me on stage it’s when I lose sight of what I have to say.

Zoe Knighton tells me that for her, navigating criticism, anxiety and self-doubt is largely about maintaining perspective – remembering what success in music means, and just as importantly, what it doesn’t mean.

Zoe: But it does actually help me to remind myself that the reason that I’m doing what I’m doing is not purely so that people thing that I’m an amazing cellist. I mean, what’s the point of that if you’re only doing it to be the best in the world. That’s not what art is about. That’s what being an Olympic athlete is about. Being the best and winning. What is winning in music?

What is winning in music? What does success in the arts look like? Naturally, it depends who you ask.

For the mainstage theatre performer, simply having a job can be the singular definition of success. But there are dangers in subscribing to this view.

Musical theatre actor Matt Heyward says it’s crucial that performers don’t mistake being unemployed for being unworthy.

Matt: For me it’s absolutely not tying up all your self-worth into whether you’re employed or not. You’re a valid, wonderful human being regardless of whether you’ve managed to land a musical. I’ve done a lot of mental health advocacy work, and one of the psychologists that I worked with, Lucinda Sharp, she kind of said to try and look at it like if one of your really dear friends is a performer and wants it really bad and is working really hard and never managing to land a job, would you feel any different about them as a person if they’re not working. And the answer is no of course you wouldn’t. You love them and support them unconditionally and work is work. And she then posed the question, well why would you not allow yourself the same luxury? And for me that was a little lightbulb moment where I was like, “oh, sure”.

I think if you’re looking to that job to define your success as a person, potentially you might be doing it for the wrong reasons.

Some performers have very little thought of success when they take their craft to the stage for the first time. Take for instance hip hop artist Rob Tremlett. I asked Rob what it was like for him making the leap from writing rhymes in his bedroom to presenting them on stage to a crowd full strangers.

Rob: I was probably 15 when I started making beats, and maybe 16 when I started writing lyrics and rhymes. But it took me like a good year before anyone outside of my close, close-knit crew of friends ever heard anything that I did. So I had no idea if they were good or not. I had no one telling me whether what I was doing was at all decent. I knew that I was improving, but I didn’t know if it was any good. So it was kind of nice to be able to share it with some strangers and get objective feedback.

Rob tells me that seeing himself as somewhat of an outsider to the genre has helped to cap his expectations about what his audience might think of him.

Rob: Those first shows went surprisingly well. And that was really interesting to me, because I never expected that anyone would say that any of the music that I made was any good. I certainly never expected to be looked at in the same way that I looked at my heroes and my influences. Particularly being a white kid from Australia, I was a devotee and a scholar of a culture that didn’t belong to me. Hip hop is not mine, and hip hop was not created by people like me. So I knew that if I was going to be involved in it I had to really, really work hard, but I was also had to play a humble and grateful role in the culture which I still feel today. I still feel humble and grateful to be a part of it. And I think going at it like that meant I was destined to not be disappointed, because I was expecting that I wouldn’t be good enough, or I wouldn’t be worthy of participating in this beautiful culture full of so many talented artists. So when people actually said, yo that was the standout of the night, that was huge for me. Our crew put on this performance, and me and my boy got some loud props from the crowd, and we had no idea of knowing, like we were just making this music in our bedroom, and we were vibing on it, we liked it. But when I heard other people loudly proclaim, like, it’s good and we don’t know you. I was blown away that that happened. So that filled me with heaps of confidence in terms of moving forward, it was like ok, maybe there’s something legitimately valid in it.

For the performer, the audience is one of the most prominent sources of external validation. But the prospect of facing a judging audience must surely be one of the most intimidating aspects of performance.

When I spoke with actor Matt Heyward, he had just finished performing in the comedy musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. And he says that – particularly with comedy – the presence of the audience is keenly felt, but the way an audience vocalises its enjoyment of a performance can’t always be trusted.

Matt: In a way with a comedy like Gentleman’s Guide, the audience is actually a part of the show. You kind of feed off their energy and ride with their energy…The hard part about that is if they’re a quieter audience, how do you navigate that. And that’s something you kind of have to learn on the fly. And I think when that happens you just kind of have to know that you’ve just got to do your job. You can’t let it affect your performance. In theory you’ve done your work and you’ve done your prep, and you know what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to do it. And how they respond to that I suppose is up to them. Because every audience is different, the way they react is different. If you take that on board for every show, I think that can take you out of the work that you’re supposed to be doing.

Hip hop artist Rob Tremlett tells me that the way an audience responds to a performance can have a perilous subtext for the lyricist.

Rob: I’ve often joked about this with my musician friends and stuff, and I’ve played with a lot of live bands, and it’s kind of interesting, cos if you’re a bass player and people are watching you, and you screw up, they’ll be like, “oh, man that guy sucks at bass – you know. If you’re a drummer and you mess up your solo, everyone will be like, “ah that solo was kinda whack”. But if you’re a MC and a lyricist, and you get up there, and your rhymes don’t hit the mark, people are like, “that guy’s an idiot”. You know, like “that guy’s unintelligent”, or “that guy”… cos it’s your ideas. It’s not just your facility or your technique or your skill that’s being looked at, it’s your ideas, it’s your persona, it’s who you are. And so that can be a really scary thing, particularly for people starting out I think. Cos it’s like “yo, I’ve got all this stuff that I wanna say but, like, I’m going to stand on stage in front of a room full of strangers and say it? You know, like these are my ideas. What if my ideas suck? If my ideas suck, that doesn’t mean I’m a bad rapper, that means, like, I’m an inferior person. So like I think it can be terrifying for young hip hop artists. It’s like, a bass player goes home and it’s like, “we’ll at least my political ideals are intact”. You know what I mean? It’s like, “I didn’t fuck that up when I hit G flat instead of B minor, you know?” Pretty sure I said “G flat instead of B minor”. I don’t even think they’re both notes, I think…I think B minor is a chord. I’m an idiot. See this is what I’m talking about!

So audiences can be scary, but they’re also human.

Greta Bradman, who as well as being an operatic soprano holds a masters in clinical psychology, says that it’s not part of the performer’s job description to interpret what an audience is thinking.

Greta: I remember Dr. Jo Mitchell, a wonderful friend and colleague of in the psychology world, I remember her once saying, you have no business getting inside someone else’s head. Don’t try and mind read. If you think that someone’s thinking negative things about you, it’s not going to do you any good to sort of riff on that or to think, take it further or to engage with that. They’re not doing anything directly so just draw your attention elsewhere. Notice that you’re doing it, afford yourself compassion for doing it because everybody does that. And then just draw your attention elsewhere and do what you need to do. To do that, you might have to do it heaps of times cause we can’t control our thoughts. All we can do is focus our attention and as I say, you might need to just keep on focusing your attention away from that when it comes up.

For actress and singer Rachel Dunham, performing has never been about being liked, but rather it has been about empowerment. In fact, Rachel’s unwavering belief in her abilities as a performer have been instrumental in the development of her sense of self-worth and internal validation.

Rachel: I just assume people are going to like me.  You see I have really good self-esteem and really crap self-worth, and there’s a big difference.

My mission in life from a very young age has always been, “I’ve got to freaking workout how to like this thing I’ve been given because it’s crazy what the universe gave me to deal with. I had to learn how to love this. And singing was the very first thing I loved about myself. It was my safe place. When the kids were bullying me at school, and I got up and sang, that all shut up and all of a sudden I became the fat chick that sang rather than the one to stay away from.

The way a performer approaches this idea of the audience can have significant baring on how they deal with judgement and criticism.

Operatic soprano Greta Bradman approaches the audience from a perspective of compassion. Here she tells me about a conversation she had recently with her son about the importance of holding on to the audience’s humanity.

Greta: He has a beautiful voice and plays viola and few things and he really enjoys making music, but he’s terrified of performing because of this amorphous beast known as the audience. And I was saying to him sweetie, all you’re doing is you are making music for one person, one person and one person and one person and one person. And there might be a whole heap of one person but essentially what you’re doing is you’re appealing and you’re reaching out and you’re looking to touch or heal or confront or whatever it is, challenge or move one person in that audience and as soon as you lose that, you lose that part of your own humanity, which can be so potent in that environment. And I think it’s another way of looking at the whole, just imagine the audience naked kind of a thing. Like you’re just remembering their humanity and their sort of individual intent.

Rob Tremlett tells me that something learned quite early on in his career as a performer was to trust that the intention of the audience is genuine. If you can achieve this, then you can focus on holding up your end of the entertainment bargain.

Rob: I think the reason you get so nervous going up on stage is because you figure that they’re standing there waiting for you to mess up and they’re waiting for you to get it wrong and waiting for you to sound terrible. But no one is ever in that situation. Like, there might be some sociopaths out there that go to shows just hoping someone’s going to fail. But I think the vast majority of people they’re at a live music event – especially one where it’s just a night where they’ve gone to see whoever is playing – they’re standing there waiting to have a good time with you. They’re not standing there waiting to hate you. And so as long as you do what you can to give them that experience I think they’re happy.

For Rachel Dunham, the validation that comes from connecting with an audience has been a constant in her life. She was aware from a young age that she had the capacity to move people with her voice.

Rachel: Because I used to sing in church and there was some pretty powerful rooms when they were in the right space. And no one else my age in my world could do what I could do. And when I could see that I was moving people in a room, adults, I’m talking eight, 10 years old and it wasn’t them coming up and saying that was really cute and sweet. It was them coming up, and the tears in their eyes saying thank you so much. That moved me. I realized that what I have here is a lot bigger than just … And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been on stage singing and bit had the most miserable time of my life. I’ve come home from many gigs crying my eyes out because I was so unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

[Interviewer: And is that just because of the way that you’ve judged your own performance or…]

No, I was fabulous. That’s the problem. It’s like … I don’t mean that in a conceited way. I mean that in that I am singing my bits off here. You’ve got no idea. You’re sitting in a café, schlepping on your coffee, and scratch your chair across the floor and out you go. For me, it’s like I give so much when I sing, it’s really nice to get a little bit back.

Here Rachel’s talking about the years she spent doing gigs and residencies in cafes, bars and restaurants before she started auditioning for mainstage shows. But she tells me it’s not about an audience response validating her talent, but rather she needs to feel that her performance has had some kind of impact. She says it has to matter.  

Rachel: I don’t need to be under the spotlight in the middle of the main stage performing for 3000 people. I’ve had some of the most incredible experiences sitting in someone’s lounge room, standing around their piano, telling stories with people and singing songs all night.

It sounds morbid, but one of the most precious moments I have was singing at a best friend’s funeral because it was of course incredibly hard, but an incredible honor to be asked, and then an incredible energy to sing into and to receive that back from what was going on in that room at that time. It’s got to matter.

When it comes to judgement and criticism, some challenges for the performer are specific to their artform and to their time in history. Today’s social media takes the audience out of the venue and transforms it into a faceless omnipresence. And when the nature of some artforms enables judgement and criticism to become more personal, dealing with these endless sources of feedback gets even harder.

For hip hop artist Rob Tremlett, the social and political context for much of his music, and the dialogue with fans that stems from this, has exposed him to judgement directed beyond his music, and towards his morals and beliefs.

Rob: I’ll say something that I consider to be completely not controversial like, y’know, same sex couples deserve equal rights, or women deserve equal rights, or violence towards women should be challenged. And it’s always pretty mind-blowing to see the aggression of the responses. And that’s actually had a real negative effect on my mental health at times, even though I receive a very mild dose of that negative feedback and that backlash compared to some of my contemporaries.

But what always confused me was that… if I said, yo I think maybe we could change the date of Australia Day to a date that’s less disrespectful to indigenous Australians, people would come out and say – well this guy just lost a fan.

And I was just always amazed cos it’s like, yo I didn’t lose a fan. If you’re a fan of my music, that should not have surprised you. I’ve never made any secret of my political beliefs, my moral values. In fact, my music is full of me speaking my mind on these different issues. Even if you hadn’t heard me show solidarity towards that particular group of people in my music, I think you could probably piece together from my music that that would be something that I would believe in.

So it always amazed me, these people coming through like, yo I didn’t know that you were on this side of the fence. Like, how did you not know that?! Then people coming at you going, “yo keep your politics out of your music”. Keep my politics out of my music?! I’m a hip hop artist! What kind of hip hop artist are you listening to that you’re telling me to keep politics out of music. I mean the answer is clear, I know what kind of hip hop artist y’all are listening to. If you are standing there making racist comments, and you’re standing there abusing someone for maybe speaking up for a vulnerable portion of our society, I know the kind of music you’re listening to and it sucks balls. You are listening to the worst kind of hip hop there is.

I asked Rob how he deals with these kinds of interactions.

Rob: Well it’s hard, y’know. Everything logical in your brain just says, well, this person’s an idiot. This person’s an arsehole. So you don’t have to entertain his point of view. If you’ve put up a post saying, yo I think this is probably an example of someone being mistreated in our society, and I think we should challenge that, if someone responds to a post like that with a bunch of profanity and a bunch of aggressive language, and a bunch of derogatory terms aimed at that marginalised person in society that maybe you were sticking up for, if that’s the response it’s like, alright, well I don’t need to hear your argument because you’re a hateful person. So whatever logical argument you have to present it going to be tainted by the fact that I know that you actually do just have hate for this type of person, and therefore you’re just justifying why you hate somebody, and that’s not an argument that I need to entertain.

But I’m still being called those names. I’m still getting that violence and aggression thrown at me after already making yourself somewhat vulnerably by speaking super honestly in front of anyone who cares to see it. You feel attacked personally, and so again I’ve got it in very mild doses. So when I think about what’s been thrown at some of my female friends, my indigenous Australian friends, my friends from other countries when they’re speaking out about these things – or even not speaking out about these things – just the level of aggression and abuse that comes their way, it makes me really fearful for their mental health, cos I just don’t know how you would deal with it.

Obviously, the performer is subject to sources of judgement and feedback beyond the audience. In fact it’s the job of directors and their creative teams to be giving feedback on their performers work – both positive and negative. Importantly, this feedback is intended to be positive and productive in growing the performer’s capacity and talent, and improving and enhancing their work.

This is a huge part of Luke Hunter’s job as a music director. And Luke keenly aware that when he’s giving direction and feedback to his performers, he’s dealing with human beings.  

Luke: It took me a while to figure this out, but performers and different people like everyone in a workplace is different to each other. And my job is to help them be the best that they can be. And so when I figured out that different performers like to receive information and direction in different ways, that was really enlightening to me as a music director. Because you can give the same group of people the same note, and people will take it in very different ways. Some people sometimes take direction as a personal criticism or an attack, which is never how I ever intend it to be, but sometimes it can get taken that way, so you have to find ways of giving direction to people that they will understand and respond to and then empower them in their own way to go and implement the change that you’re asking them to make.

One performer that I worked with – it was a major role and he sang a lot, so I was always going to be giving him more notes than any other person in the building just purely because he had more to sing. And so I thought that – I didn’t want to overwhelm him – so I thought that I would just give him one or two little things every day and not inundate him.

And so I thought I was being very helpful by doing that, and about two or three weeks into that, he came and sat me down and said, I can’t do this anymore. I just need to do a show where I’m not thinking about trying to make something better that you’re giving me, and it’s too much. I’m being swamped and it’s affecting my performance. And I sort of explained, I was trying to make this better for you cos I’ve got lots of notes but I don’t want to swamp you. And he said, no can we just sit down and can you give me 50 notes or whatever you need, and then give me a week to think about them and process them. And so that’s the way that we worked, him and I for the rest of the run. That was a real learning curve for me as a conductor. The longer I’ve done this the more I realise that sometimes when you think you’re really being helpful – or purely you need something done and you need it to change – you think that you’re doing it the best possible way, but you might actually be making something worse.

So for the mainstage musical, it’s necessary to have someone who is standing back from individual contributions to a performance, and is instead seeing the show as a complete work. Feedback on how individuals can improve their contribution to that work is crucial in this process. The job of the performer in know how to manage their own responses to that feedback.

I asked Luke how in a perfect world creative teams would like their performers to approach their feedback.

Luke: Yeah, so I hope performers see that we all turn up to work, and we create the same picture every night for the audience that’s there for the first time. That we all have the same job, from the person that is ironing the shirts during the day before the performance, to the follow spot operator, to the musicians, and the performers. We’re all there to make that one event happen, the best it can.

Like a sports team, I guess, we’ve all got positions on the field to play. And mine is the annoying person that comes up and says, “Have a look at this, and have a look at that, and have a think about this.” But taken in the context of, “You’re great, and I think you’re doing a great job. I probably don’t say that enough.

Counsellor Gabriel Edwards says that it’s often a challenging job for those who have to provide feedback on a performance. And it’s important that performers understand this.

Gabriel: That anyone who’s going to give you feedback is actually stepping up and using skills and using empathy and compassion and it’s a hard job. It’s the job of the artist to know their own emotional landscape, what does this trigger for me? Just get to know it and get rid of that baggage so that you can enter into that great exchange with someone who’s investing in you. When a tour manager or a producer or director gives you feedback, they’re investing in you, they’re appreciating you. And how good to be in a space where you’re capable of feeling gratitude.

One really compelling reason to be open to receiving feedback from Directors and creative teams is that it can be really challenging finding trusted and reliable sources of feedback within the industry, as Greta Bradman explains.

Greta: Within the performing arts, most of us like to be liked. So if you go up to someone and say, was that okay? Or what do you think? Most likely you’re going to get them saying, Oh yeah, that was good and here and here and they want to validate, they want to make you feel okay. Equally, you don’t just want someone pointing out how it was really shit either because you know that’s not going to necessarily be constructive and build you for the next performance. It might derail and be counterproductive as opposed to being helpful.

So finding your ways, given the people around you, given their personalities and what you need of getting that balance right between constructive feedback and validation and really thinking for yourself what you need, in order to grow as a performer and to support you.

I asked Gabriel Edwards what someone should do if they’re just not good and taking feedback on their work and she said – if a performer is aware that they’re not good at taking negative feedback, that’s a fantastic thing.

Gabriel: Because as soon as you put something like that on the table, something messy and painful, like “I feel like I’m broken whenever I get negative feedback.” I’ve heard this: “When someone gives me negative feedback I feel like something breaks, and then what happens is I’m in so much turmoil I don’t actually hear what I’m being told”.

If you can actually get to a point where you’re acknowledging that and putting it on the table, it’s there to be worked on. It’s there to be worked on with compassion and respect. And I can absolutely guarantee that if you’re at that point and prepared to do that, you will solve it. It doesn’t mean that these things disappear forever, but it means that you will gain power over that, you will understand it, you will know what it is and you will be able to work through it.

So a healthy approach to judgement and criticism is a skill that performers can and should cultivate.

Because it’s a frequent feature of life in the performing arts, and while it’s no picnic hearing negative feedback, it can be really a difficult job to be the one giving it.

How successfully you incorporate judgement into your working life can depend on your sources of validation, your expectations and goals for your work and your career, your approach to the audience, your peers and directors, and your readiness to afford compassion to yourself and to others.

Here’s one last thought on the subject from operatic soprano and clinical psychologist Greta Bradman.

Greta: If you have a sense of purpose in what you do and in your performing, then you need to believe in yourself. You need to listen to the people who you trust and you need to learn how to let criticism go. There’s constructive feedback, which is fine, but again, seek that out from people you trust in environments where you know that you can be safe with that and use it constructively. And other than that, just like back away because there’s just no point. You know, there’s no point

Backing away from judgement and criticism – sounds simple, but it must take some will power, and the ability to detach and let it go.

Episode 5: COMPROMISE

Greta: I like to think of myself as a I guess a maladaptive perfectionist in remission. I don’t think perfectionism is a bad thing. I just think that when you buy into the idea that there can be a thing called perfect, that’s when you’re in trouble.

This is House Light Up – honest conversations with performing arts workers about the challenges of forging a career in the arts, and strategies for overcoming them.

In this episode we’ll be looking at the insidious condition of perfectionism – how it can cripple a performing artist, and ways in which it can be overcome.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m a perfectionist”. It’s usually declared with pride – as a measure of how much that person cares about their work, and the level of quality to which they hold themselves. But say you hold the view, as many people do, that perfection is impossible. Perfection doesn’t exist. Does that mean the pursuit of perfection is pointless? Or worse, that it’s dangerous?

Here’s counsellor Gabriel Edwards’ take on the subject.

Gabriel: There’s no such thing as perfect. So perfectionism – it’s just a losing battle; it’s a handicap. Perfectionism drives anxiety, the most worrying, most prevalent condition and challenge that performing artists face. Perfectionism drives it. There’s no such thing as perfection. So you’re pursuing something that doesn’t exist, if you get caught up in that.

The most successful people in any given field are less likely to be perfectionists because the anxiety about making mistakes gets in your way.

The voice you heard off the top of the episode was that of operatic soprano, clinical psychologist and maladaptive perfectionist in remission Greta Bradman.  Here’s a bit more about her view on perfection.

Greta: It’s like certainty. Certainty is a big part of anxiety disorders for instance. And it’s sort of a discomfort with uncertainty. And I think perfectionism and anxiety can go hand in hand, but particularly the sort of maladaptive perfectionism where you feel like everything has to be just right and you know what it means for things to be just right. And if they don’t live up to that, then that’s kind of, it’s all over. That’s not helpful. One of the things that really helped me was Carol Dweck. she’s a Stanford professor. She pioneered research and then the, idea of growth versus fixed mindset. So the idea that when you’re in a fixed mindset, you’re really thinking about ability, performance to date and what that reflects about sort of your underlying proficiency and capabilities. Whereas a growth mindset you’re really looking at everything as an opportunity for learning and for improvement and you’re looking at effort. And she and her team of researchers have looked at so many different kinds of populations from student populations through to performing populations in business and sporting populations and so forth, and without exception has found that those who take a growth mindset, they overtake those with a fixed mindset regardless of what you would call sort of baseline proficiency or ability… but across the board, which is the fascinating thing.

So rather than seeing your performance as the definitive display of your abilities, one could approach each performance as an opportunity for learning.

Cellist Zoe Knighton takes this approach. For her, a performance is not the conclusion of something, but simply the next step in an ongoing journey.

Zoe: I think it’s a good philosophy to have with one’s self that each performance is practice for the next one. And I know that when I was a student it felt like every performance was so definitive, and quite often I would only have really one major performance of something. You do little practice performances and practice exams I guess, but really thought there was only one concert to which you were working. And it took me a little while to realise that each concert was practice for the next. And I realised that when I started coming around to repertoire for the second and third time was that, fantastic, I can understand it more deeply now, and feel more comfortable with this piece for the next time that it comes around. And that takes the pressure off a little bit, in terms of even those big performances.

In fact, Zoe tells me that her experience with the Flinders Quartet has taught her that there is no such thing as enough preparation, and coming to terms with that helps her and her quartet colleagues maintain perspective.

Zoe: It doesn’t matter how many rehearsals we have, we will always want another week before that first performance. We’re ok with that now. We’ve gone through having a gazillion rehearsals for something, and still wanting another week. And that’s one of the things that keeps us coming back to the repertoire and keeps us going as musicians is that the journey is endless.

The journey is endless. And an important but challenging part of that journey is reflecting upon and assessing one’s own work.

As a music director, Luke Hunter has seen a fair amount of disconnect between an individual’s evaluation of their own performance, and the perspective of someone out the front watching and assessing the bigger picture.

Luke: If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been out the front and watched a show, and walked back at interval at the end of the show and knocked on a singer’s door and said, “that was the best that you’ve ever done that number tonight,” and they’ve looked at me like I’m a crazy person, and said, “it felt awful. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know what I was doing. That was definitely not one of my best.” That happens a lot. And then the other way too. I’ve gone to give notes and sat down and had five or six notes in a song for a particular person on whatever given night. And the performer’s looked at me and they’ve said, “I thought that was the best that I’d ever done it.”

So we’re not necessarily able as performers to see when we think we’re struggling, it doesn’t necessarily show, and it’s not as big a problem as we think it is. And vice versa – we think sometimes that because we gave so much effort, put so much effort into it that we felt like we worked really hard, therefore it must have been a good performance, but sometimes all that effort was getting in the way and it was causing more problems, and it was showing, and that’s not what we want, we don’t want it to show. So we’re not our own best critics, and we can’t ever be. So performers…that’s another bit of control that they have to give up in a way, is that they have to put their faith in the people that are sitting out the front, and seeing the big picture of what they’re doing and say, “yeah, that stuff isn’t working as well and we need to work on that, but conversely, those five things that you’re really worried about, you can let go because you sound great out there, and did you hear the audience cheer for you at the end of the song? They’re having a perfectly good time in the theatre. I think we can all relax.

If a performer is being overly critical of their work, it may be because they’re assuming their audience is doing the same.

But as hip hop artist Rob Tremlett tells me, in his experience an audience tends to approach a performance with far more kindness than the performer ever shows him or herself.

Rob: They’re standing there waiting to have a good time with you. They’re not standing there waiting to hate you. They’re certainly not there waiting to see you screw it up or to question every little detail. You’re doing that, though. You do that as a performer and you do that as an artist.  You stand there going,” oh man this has got to be perfect,” or “man I fudged that lyric,” or “I ran out of breath on that line, that sounded kinda whack”. You do that and you go home and you criticise yourself. It’s so much worse what you do to yourself. That’s why I think I was always blown away by the positive feedback that I got, because I probably wasn’t expecting to ever get any. And I certainly didn’t give it to myself. I was just criticising constantly.

Greta: The way that you speak with yourself about other people or with other people about other people is probably a fraction of how you speak to yourself about yourself.

Greta Bradman says that cultivating the discipline to have compassion for other people will help you have compassion for yourself as a performer.

Greta: So if you find yourself being really super judgment about other people, then just take a step back and really think about how am I treating myself and what am I putting on myself and how do I feel and what do I need to do to improve that. Because I think that we can be our most creative, our most freely creative be that musically or otherwise when we aren’t judgmental.

Gabriel Edwards says it’s important that performers are aware of their inner critic, which she says can be far more diabolical than the professional in print or the amateur on social media. This is because of the situation discussed in earlier episodes which sees performing artists in a particularly vulnerable situation.

Gabriel: Being a performance artist is a unique path to take. It makes people incredibly vulnerable, people who are creatives and artistic who open themselves up to the world more than others, whose filters aren’t as thick and strong as non-artists and creatives.

You really need to have a greater sense of your own inner world and your inner critic. What path have you taken to get here? What are your injuries or triggers? Where are you at emotionally, and is there anything in there, any themes around judgment and criticism? And if there are, really become aware of them and work with them.

No one can do a perfect job 100% of the time. So how can you move on from a less-than-ideal performance.  According to Zoe Knighton, the way in which you process and move forward from a sub-par performance can be instrumental in developing your confidence on stage.

Zoe: I often tell students a story about a golfer called Jack Nicklaus. Jack Nicklaus is one of the most legendary golfers that history has produced. There’s a lovely story about him giving a talk to college students about his career. And if you don’t know anything about golf, all you need to know is that three-putting is bad. You don’t want to three-putt.

And he said in this talk to college students, “I have never three-putted in the finals of a majors tournament”. And one of the students put up their hand and said, “Mr Nicholas, but I saw you! You three-putted in the final of one of the majors!” And he just repeated, “I have never three-putted in the finals of a majors tournament” His point being that at the end of one of these important rounds of golf, the way he remembers it is how he wanted it to go. And so what that means is that he’s crafting his memories, he’s not changing the scoreboard, he’s just changing his memories.

So what that means is that he has this bank of real positive memories so that when he comes to the finals of a majors tournament as far as he’s concerned he’s never three-putted. And also I imagine that, he knows he’s not going to beat himself up about it that night, he’s not going to re-live all the shots that he missed, he can live with himself.

So promoting memories of successful and satisfying performance experiences can help you to approach the stage with confidence, even though we know it won’t be perfect every time we’re up there. Embracing kindness, compassion and little bit of self-deception can help us to consciously let go of times when a performance didn’t go our way.

Zoe: What can sometimes happen when we walk on stage is that when we get up to a passage perhaps that we’ve been worrying about, we remember all the times that we’ve stuffed it up in rehearsal or in the practice room, and that’s something that we can really learn from in terms of when we walk on stage, for all intents and purposes what we’re replaying is the best possible version of ourselves. That’s what is going through our heads.

Recent research examining creative work environments has found that creative workers tend to hold different workplace ideologies than the general population. Within these ideologies, it’s considered the norm to strive for perfection. But in the harsh and competitive environment of the arts and entertainment industries, internalised ideals about perfection have the potential to be destructive.

Consider for example the consequences for a performing arts worker’s ability to recognise and seek help for mental health and wellbeing issues. Music director Luke Hunter sees the need to achieve perfection as a barrier to performers admitting they’re suffering from issues like anxiety.

Luke: Performers want everything to be right all the time, and they want to the audience to be on their side and they want a rapturous applause at the end of the night and they want to sing perfectly and so that… admitting that you’re suffering from some anxiety is admitting that things aren’t going perfectly.

In some areas of the industry, compromise is necessary in order to simply survive a gruelling performance schedule. Musical theatre actor Matt Heyward says there’s a delicate balance every mainstage performer needs to learn when delivering eight shows a week for an extended period of time. It’s a lesson he learned on his first professional job – two years in the original Australian cast of Mamma Mia.

Matt: When I first…like the first few times that I went on, because I just want to get it right, I would really beat myself up about if I got a few things wrong, for the first time I ever went on for a track (someone’s ensemble part) I would really beat myself up about it. But the reality is if you’ve never been on stage before, you’ve never been in those positions, in those costumes, in those lights, doing those lifts with people, you can’t get it right. You can’t get it 100% right. So I had to learn that lesson along the way, I had to be ok with that, which I got better at.

And another thing that I learned along the way is that if you operate at 100% eight times a week, it isn’t achievable. It’s demanding. Your body gets sore and your voice gets sore. If you self-reflect on every performance you do, you could drive yourself crazy. So you just have to learn how to pace yourself at a smart 90, but make it look like 100.

Rachel: There is a phrase of sometimes someone will come off stage and someone will go, “They just dialed it in. Didn’t they? Should have stayed in your dressing room, made a phone call.” But I don’t know that anyone who’s seeing the show for the first time will ever see that. Interestingly enough, I think that it’s a skill you have to learn when you’re doing eight shows a week. You have to learn to pull it back if you’re not going to make it through the week, and it’s from just exhaustion. And I see it in a lot of younger performers. They just don’t know how to go anything but 100%.

Actress and singer Rachel Dunham has recently taken a break from performing to become head chaperone on the stage musical adaptation of Matilda, which saw her working closely with a group of exceptional child performers for three years.

Rachel: In fact with kids, kids are of prime example, especially these kids that are in dance schools. And you know, as the mothers used to horrifically tell me, if you’re not in hospital on a drip, you’re on stage dancing. I’m like, “You need to stop talking now.” I’ve seen kids that you tell them every five minutes you say, “It’s just a rehearsal. You can calm it down.”

So they’re doing rehearsals of the show, the show will be going on, we’ll have another team of kids doing rehearsal. And some of these kids, it’s like, it’s 42 degrees. We’ve got the air con cranking and they’re drilling you with dance numbers, you need to pull it back and they just have no concept. And a lot of these kids won’t learn it until they’re in their 20s about how do you dial that back? They didn’t know what the term just mark it meant.

Cellist Zoe Knighton tells me that early on in her career, she had to face the idea that she was trying to achieve the impossible with her performance.  

Zoe: I remember Bill Hennessey saying to me one time in a performance class at university, “Zoe, you’re trying to change the world with every performance that you do. Just get it in tune, get it in time, and every once in a while you might change the world.” And I remember just walking off, “But I want to change the world!” And there is something to be said for playing what’s on the page and just crafting it as an instrumentalist would.

Something Zoe finds helpful to keep in mind is an approach by sports psychologist and author Don Greene who breaks achievement in performance into three levels – suboptimal, optimal, and elite.

Zoe: Most of the time we’re all striving to have those elite performances where everything goes the way we wanted it to and magic is made, and we…everybody says that’s the best performance they’ve ever been to. But actually to focus on just having an optimal performance which is just, you go in and you stick to your performance plan, and that’s that. And from there, you build up that wonderful bank of good memories, and also what happens then is your own definition of an optimal performance will change and grow over time so that we do continue to improve, I guess.

One thing about perfection is that it’s simple and absolute. We may not be able to describe it, but we’ll know it when we see it, which makes it an easy mark to aim for if not achieve. But Gabriel Edwards has some advice for how to replace this idea of perfection with something far more meaningful and constructive.

Gabriel: Come up with your own vision of what perfection actually looks like. Let’s replace the term with “excellence”. So nut it out. What does excellence mean to you? What does it look like? What are you seeing and hearing and feeling when you imagine excellence? That’s what you’re striving for.

And reject the myths of perfection that are all around us. Hollywood started way back in the Hollywood Studio System, where they perpetrated the myths of perfection of their stars. We can look at that now and see it was very obvious, but it’s still happening. And unfortunately, through social media, a lot of performing artists are, they’re kind of using social media and Instagram to build a profile, which is part of your profession, but a lot of it is focused on looking perfect and being perfect, so it’s perpetuating that, it’s not showing reality.

Gabriel says the 80/20 rule is a useful one to incorporate into most aspects of your life, where your accepts from the outset that 80 per cent of the time you’re going to get it right, and the other 20 per cent you won’t. Aside from the relief that can come with accepting the 20 per cent that you will get wrong, this allows you to focus on how you respond to getting it wrong, rather than fixating on the failure.  

For the creative teams that support performers, being open to the flux of what can happen during a performance is something one has to embrace as part of the job.

I asked music director Luke Hunter whether he ever finds it difficult relying on his performers to execute his direction.

Luke: I think I used to get really frustrated, if people weren’t doing something that I knew that they should be doing. I think, I still probably do a little bit, but… If anything, I think the older I’ve got, the more I think I’m going to give them all the information that I can, and be available whenever I can to help them. But ultimately, it’s up to them to do what they do. It’s not on me whether they…how they perform their show. They’ve got to have ownership on their own performance.

In an earlier episode, Greta Bradman spoke about how, for her, committing to a career as a performer was about committing to being vulnerable. And for Greta, this vulnerability involves accepting imperfection.

Greta: Accepting that stuff can happen, that stuff can go wrong and that it’s more important to be vulnerable and imperfect on that stage and authentic and connect, than try and pursue some elusive completely impossible version of perfect that doesn’t exist because beauty and art is in the eye of the beholder after all. And that can completely derail sort of a really transcendent performance moment.

So performing arts workers tend to subscribe to a philosophy of consistent high performance. They bring to their work self-imposed standards that must be maintained. The pursuit of perfection is the norm, and any deficit is on show for colleagues, employers and paying audience members all to see.

But striving instead for compassion, and a vision of success which you yourself have defined will see you achieve so much more than someone shackled to the myth of the perfect.

One last thought from Rachel Dunham on judging your own work.

Rachel: One thing I know is that I’m really, really good at what I do, and I encourage people to get to a place in their life where they can just make that statement without apologizing and without putting in 10 disclaimers climbers, it’s okay to be really good at what you do, especially if you’ve worked as freaking hard as I have.

Episode 6: THE PERFORMER’S JOB

[Interviewer: What do you reckon makes a great performer?]

Rob: Ah… yeah I don’t know.

[Interviewer: OK – next question…]

Here on House Lights Up we’ve been exploring some of the challenges of being a professional performing arts worker.

Greta: Getting up and performing in front of a large bunch of humans would have to be sort of the modern day equivalent of being chased by a tiger.

We’ve considered the strange things the mind can do when we’re in performance mode…

Matt: It’s funny how we can for no reason at all build up a real anxiety about something seemingly so small and insignificant

Zoe: …and I couldn’t remember how Pachelbel’s canon went. It was atrocious!

Luke: …so even when they’re focused, the brain does these weird and wonderful things in a long run, that just makes things really hard again.

And we’ve looked at the difficulties of navigating things like judgement, vulnerability and isolation, all of which make performing arts workers particularly vulnerable to mental health and wellbeing challenges.

Rachel: I’ve come home from many gigs crying my eyes out because I was so unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

Rob: Then people coming at you going, “yo keep your politics out of your music”. It’s like, keep my politics out of my music?! I’m a hip hop artist bra!

We’ve also looked at the some of the sources of validation, definitions of success, and roads to self-knowledge and compassion that can make all the difference.

So balance is the key. There’s a lot spoken about balance – work-life balance – and it all sort of seems a bit cliché, but it is really rooted in truth and in our survival.

In this final episode of House Lights Up, we’ll be taking a step back and considering the job of the professional performer more broadly – what they do, who they do it for and why.

From the audience, to fellow performers, back-stage colleagues, creators and the work itself, the duty of the performer extends across and beyond the stage.

Sometimes, a performing artist’s impact reaches so far as to question, challenge and expose the shameful aspects of society that otherwise enjoy tacit acceptance. In doing so, the work of the performing artist can influence history.

The past century is full of examples of the arts predicting, documenting and fuelling social change. Protest songs like Billie Holiday’s 1939 Strange Fruit forced American audiences to face the racially-fuelled violence of its south, and Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddamn 25 years later fanned the flames of that nation’s civil rights movement. The musical West Side Story brought issues like racism, gang violence and death to a stage until then reserved for light entertainment. Then there’s the feminist anthems that fuelled the second wave and beyond, like Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman and Lesley Gore’s You Don’t Own Me.

Performing artists with household names, and countless more without, all ahead of their time, harnessing their craft to document and drive change, unapologetic and unafraid.

I spoke to counsellor Gabriel Edwards about this cross over between performer and activist.

Gabriel: There are many performing artists generally who, because of their makeup and their perspective in the world, and their creativity and their filters, they’re there to comment on society, to shine a light on injustice or inequality. Our artists do that and we need them for that… So for some performing artists, a life’s work is a campaign, is a genuine connection and campaign to make the world a better place and to fight injustice and they’re doing it because of their own lived experience, so it’s incredibly authentic, and because they want to make the world better.

Gabriel notes that such artists are often themselves marginalised in some way, and the deeply felt personal connection and importance of their work leaves them particularly vulnerable to all of the challenges of being a part of this industry which we’ve explored in earlier episodes.

Gabriel: That person needs perspective and time out. That person needs, a lot of the things I’ve talked about, the process of standing back and looking at yourself in this world and what are the other parts that make up your world, and how do you find nurturing and where do you find a safe place and what are your other interests and what are your relationships and that foundation helps you to continue that fight.

Hip hop artist Rob Tremlett tells me that, although hip hop culture originated from a place of conscious social, economic and political disadvantage, it’s not necessarily the job of the hip hop artist to challenge the status quo.

Rob: So I’ve always prided myself on putting those political messages and those strong personal messages into my music, but that’s because I want to do that and that’s because I have the ability to do that. I don’t think that that’s hip hop’s job, and I don’t think it’s a hip hop artist’s job. There are plenty of hip hop artists that I’m listening to and they’re not at all politicising their music, and that’s fine. Because I don’t think it’s the job of art or music or movies or anything to question and challenge society. I don’t think that’s the job. Cause that’s putting a job on an individual artist who might just want to draw a picture, and might just want to write a song and that’s fine. Because the world is a better place for having that picture in it regardless of whether it’s challenging the status quo or not.

So I don’t think artists or hip hop artists have a responsibility to do that. But I think that hip hop gives you the ability to do that and hip hop artists are able to so powerfully, so accessibly and so eloquently challenge these political ideals, and not only voice these things but literally change them in a lot of cases. We’ve seen it happen so I think it’s an important part of our culture and I think it’s an important part of hip hop music, but I don’t think it’s every artist’s responsibility. Some people just want to write songs. And that’s alright.

Whether breaking new ground, exploring the novel or breathing new life into established works, the performer’s sense of duty is obvious. As we considered in our episode on vulnerability, the performing arts worker’s approach to their career as calling has the dual effect of fuelling high levels of passion and commitment, while also exposing individuals to the harshness of the industry. And participants in the 2016 study by Entertainment Assist and Victoria University, titled Working in the Australian Entertainment Industry, described this harshness, which included the isolation and anxiety that can come from being in constant competition with peers.

But there’s another dynamic at play between performing arts colleagues, and that is one of responsibility. All of the performing artists I spoke to told me about the duty they feel to their fellow performers when they’re on stage.

As one part of the Flinders Quartet, Zoe Knighton tells me that this sense of responsibility to her colleagues is as clear and present as any other duty she feels as a performer.

Zoe: When the Flinders Quartet did some international competitions, it was a very intense rehearsal and lead-up to the competitions, but I remember that sense of responsibility to my friends and my colleagues, and that being almost harder than walking on stage and doing a concerto, because if it’s a concerto it’s just me that I have to live with, whereas playing in a quartet, y’know you have your friends and colleagues that you could potentially let down.

Rob Tremlett started out his career as part of a duo with Melbourne-based MC and producer Whisper. I asked Rob if there was ever an element of competition or antagonism within this kind of performing relationship.

Rob: On stage, definitely not. I was lucky because Whisper’s a really naturally talented performer and actually really prides himself on putting on a good show. I feel like both of us are kind of old fashioned in the way that we look at performing where it’s like, yo it’s your job to make sure the crowd is having a good time. It’s not their job to be vocal and giving you good feedback. It’s your job to make sure that they’re vibing, and you do that by vibing out yourself…

So I think he actually taught me a lot of that. Seeing him perform before we formed that crew, he was one of those dudes that I met where I was like, wow, it’s rare that there’s other people doing this and that’s what I want to be doing. So there was no competition for us on stage. If anything it was more like our energies really fed off each other. And we developed this really super organic way of performing together, and I think that’s why we had a lot of success in those early days, because our live shows probably kind of felt really natural and free-flowing and exciting.

In fact, Rob says that the diverse nature of hip hop culture meant that upcoming artists were generally well supported by their peers.

Rob: Certainly when I was coming up the crew was super supportive of new and upcoming artists. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that it’s acknowledged that you’re meant to be different. You’re not meant to sound like everybody else. So there’s not this pre-existing yardstick by which everybody’s measured… That’s the greatest thing about hip-hop is that you’re not expected to get up there and be as good as someone else. You’re meant to get up there and be more like yourself.

Once cast, theatre performers generally become part of a company environment which can be a ready-made source of support as well as responsibility.

Musical theatre actor Matt Heyward tells me that on his first professional job, which was in the original Australian cast of Mamma Mia, the camaraderie and shared sense of work ethic helped him to adapt to the gruelling eight show a week performance schedule.

Matt: Work ethic is super important to me anyway but I did learn a lot about work ethic from my peers and people that have been in the industry for longer than me. And I think that got me through. That and the fact that, y’know, just the very nature of that show. It’s so joyous. Think what you want of Mamma Mia as a piece, but it’s so joyous. And we had fun every day. We laughed every day. There’s many, many stories of things happening in the wedding scene that I probably shouldn’t put down to be recorded for all time, but yes, I think that got us all through as well.

Operatic soprano Greta Bradman says that some of the most fulfilling experiences of her career have come about because of her openness to making authentic connections with fellow performers, and she encourages others to do the same as they develop their careers.

Greta: When you’re in front of someone and you love what they’re doing, then you connect with them artistically and with a sense of gratitude just because you think they’re fricking awesome… I love making connections with people who I come across. And that’s how some of the great collaborations that I have had and that I continue to have, have started out. You just meet incredible people who you really admire and you just want to do things together because you enjoy each other’s company and you enjoy each other’s artistic potential.

So although relationships between performing arts workers can be framed by competition, they often involve a high degree of responsibility and respect.

And as music director Luke Hunter tells me, now more than ever, a performer’s reputation for how they treat their colleagues can be their greatest asset – or their biggest liability.

Luke: More and more people want to work with people that are good to work with. Back in the day, even when I was performing, I worked with some directors and choreographers that were old school, I guess, for want of a better word, but kind of tyrannical, and people were generally terrified of, and that’s the way that they operated.

You can’t be a creative, and be that kind of person anymore. Because, you’re going to be breaching harassment guidelines, or work-safety guidelines for a start. But also as a performer, your reputation counts for more and more. You can’t be … I’ll be clean. You can’t be a nasty person backstage for long, before people don’t really want you around anymore. And it’s a small industry, and people talk.

And I’ve seen it happen on multiple occasions, where we’ve been in the audition room, and we’ve really liked somebody. And somebody else on the panel, or in casting, or on the piano, or the producer says, “They were a nightmare on show X. And no one ever wanted to work with them ever again”. And that person’s CV goes on the no pile. Despite the fact that they would’ve got a call back, or they probably would’ve got cast. I’ve seen that happen a lot.

And so, people need to want to work with you, because if we’re booking a show that’s going to run for 14 months, and we know that that person is going to get people off side in week two. Well, then that’s going to create bigger problems down the track.

Because, suddenly you’ve got an unhappy company that don’t like spending time together. So, that suddenly translates on stage, and then we’ve got a problem, right.

The relationship between a performer and the work they’re performing can be complicated. We’ve heard in earlier episodes from performers that a piece of music, or dialogue or choreography they’re performing can be an anchor, helping the performer to steady an unsettled mind during performance. It can also be a horizon never to be reached, only approached, never to be mastered, only understood by degrees with each performance a single step in an endless journey of discovery.

According to musical theatre actor Matt Heyward, the most important thing the performer brings to the work is new life.

Matt: It isn’t a movie, and I think that’s what makes live theatre exciting, is that it’s fresh and alive. So I think within the creative vision, the best creative teams that I’ve worked with are the ones that give you a little bit of creative license within their creative vision to take ownership of it and keep it fresh and exciting. I did My Fair Lady last year – yes, I’m going to name drop – directed by Dame Julie Andrews, which was incredible, but also choreographed by Christopher Gitelli who’s an incredible choreographer from the states. Tony award winning, just an incredible person to work with. And the way he choreographed that show – particularly a number like Get Me to the Church on Time – he kind of created it and choreographed it with us and with us in mind. So that the piece was kind of shaped around who was in it and what we could do and what we had. So that he gave us ownership of that number, but at the same time wanted a sense of play within that and gave us the permission for that sense of play within that number. And as a consequence it was always a joy to perform it. It was always fresh, I never ever dreaded it because I knew that we were allowed to play and have fun and own it because we helped create it. I think that’s the best framework to be given from a creative team as a performer.

Luke Hunter tells me that the cast and creative team have a shared duty to bring the audience as close to the work as possible.

Luke: You want the performance to be accessible, and be inviting to an audience, so that they go on the journey with you. And if there are little things that happen that are pushing them away, or not making a lyric as understandable, or relatable, or not hearing the emotional content of what’s being delivered because there’s too much vibrato, or not enough. That, that detail adds up to mean something.

Which brings us to the performer’s duty to their audience.

Hip hop artist Rob Tremlett likes to think of the performer’s promise to the audience as an invisible contract.

Rob: My old man was a performer, and we used to talk about it all the time. He was like super proud that I was now a performer, and so he would often talk to me about the idea of the contract. And the contract is not the one that you sign with the promoter or with the touring peeps or with the venue. It’s the one that you sign with the audience whereby they’re paying money to come and see you perform and you are performing. So that means if you’ve had a shitty day, or if there’s not enough people in the crowd… if you’ve broken up with your girlfriend that day, if you’re feeling kind of under the weather – these are not reasons to not go out there and perform. Like don’t get me wrong, if some shit has really gone down for you and you need to pull the plug on that performance please do. I have done it I’ve done it one time in my life. I cancelled a show when I was on tour and that was because I had completely lost my voice. Like, I’m not talking about like it was hoarse. I’m saying if I talked I didn’t make any noise. And I have four more shows that weekend, and so I pull the plug on the first one so I could repair. Shit happens, right? Sometimes you can’t make it.

But sometimes you’ve just got to say, “yeah man this is a shitty time, but I’m going onstage and I’m gonna give it to these people, because these people are not responsible for those things. They’re not responsible for that. What they are responsible though is for you taking home thousands of dollars later based on the fact that you will perform. So they deserve show. I like that idea of the contract, man. If you’re going to be a performer, then you go out there and perform.

Music director Luke Hunter often conducts performances from an orchestra pit right in front of the audience. So although his role is largely behind the scenes, he often finds himself up close and personal with the audience before, during and after a performance.

Luke: You’re the first person that people can come and talk to before the show starts, and you’re the last person visible. Because, usually the curtains in, and the cast have gone, and the orchestra play the play out.

And if someone wants to come and tell someone about what they thought about the show, then they’ll usually come to the conductor. And you get very unfiltered feedback sometimes about … But sometimes, it’s beautiful too.

I’ve had really lovely exchanges with audience members, who have been incredibly moved by something, or it’s changed the way they’ve thought about people, and they’ve wanted to come and tell you that. And that’s really, really special.

And if you do a show that’s for kids, and the kids, just seeing them wide eyed at the orchestra playing at the end, that’s pretty exciting. That’s one of the great privileges and perks of the job.

We heard in an earlier episode that for many performing artists their work is their calling. So I asked some of them if they’d ever considered giving it away.

Here’s Matt Heyward. 

Matt: Every day [laughs]. Yes, of course I have. The grind and the hustle can take its toll. But at the same time if you have that calling from when you were a kid, it’s hard to shut off that creative aspect of yourself unless you find some other kind of creative outlet or substitute for that. I’ve done a little bit of that transition this year. I did a lot more teaching and deliberately stepped away from performing for a minute. And then I was drawn back to the dark side by A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, and then I was like, “Damnit I still really enjoy this”. But I think that’s actually a really nice discovery for me because it will help me just keep everything in check and in balance.

For Rachel Dunham, there’s a few different ways the performing itch can be satisfied.

Rachel: As performers, we often think that I’m not skilled enough in anything else that I could ever leave this industry, but oh my God you’re just … so, like I said it’s where I’ve said the other day becoming a celebrant is where all cabaret singers go to die. You know, because you’re still performing, you still got all that love around you, you’re still making people feel good, and you’re still part of a really special moment. And if you break all those things down, that’s really what performing and singing and music is all about.

In an earlier episode of House Lights Up we heard Rachel talk about the anxiety she experienced during her one-woman show Oprahfication, in part because it all rested on her to ensure the show would go on.

Rachel: It was me. I was it. It would be difficult for me to ring up and cancel a pub gig if I couldn’t get to it. But you can’t cancel a whole cabaret show half an hour before. I did put a lot of pressure on myself for that one… Just that constant feeling of it all stopped with me. If I didn’t go on, it was a whole band that didn’t go on, the credibility, all this stuff. There was nothing, no buffer in the way of that.

This idea that the show must go on looms large over the performing arts worker. It’s the key to the performer honouring the invisible contract with the audience that Rob Tremlett explained earlier.

But where does this “show must go on” ethos come from?

The term itself is believed to come from the tradition of circus – where catastrophes can, have and do happen. This is where the where live bands and clowns had the job of distracting the audience from drama taking place in the ring – a loose animal, perhaps, or in the worst of cases, an injured performer.

Granville’s Dictionary of Theatrical Terms expands on this maxim to say, quote, “Whatever tragedy may enter the life of a player, or however ill he may feel, it is a point of honour not to let the other players down by deserting them when no understudy is available.”

So the performer’s duties to their audience and to their fellow performers converge in this mantra – the show must go on.

For Rob Tremlett the combination of being thoroughly prepared for a performance, and having capacity for spontaneity, can make all the difference when his ability to deliver a show comes under threat.

Rob: We did this one show, and this was like one of my first big solo shows. And so there was this big crowd of people, and like you know we been paid all this money because we had this new booking agent and we just had Triple J feature album, and all of these things were happening that meant that the value was getting bigger. And I’d never really done that, so I was already kind of nervous. And that that show, my DJ, his hard drive stopped working before we got on stage, and it had all of our music on it. It had all the instrumentals that he was gonna play, it had all the record drops that he would scratch in over the track. Like it had our whole set on it and every time we had performed I would have my laptop there, just like as a backup. And that one day I didn’t have it with me.

And so 20 minutes away from going onstage for the most money we’d ever been paid, and like probably one of the bigger crowds with ever played in front of, we had no music to play, and we had like a 45 minute set. So not only did we not have my music, we didn’t have any music that we could play. And so luckily there were some other hip-hop acts on the bill and we knew them, and so we ran around chasing them and like jacked a bunch of instrumentals from the various DJs that were playing. They hooked us up with a bunch of instrumental tracks, and we basically just freestyled the whole 40 minute set. Like I kind of made up choruses over the tracks and just freestyled verses and tried to make it as engaging performance as possible. Cos we also didn’t want to come through to the organisers and be like, “ yo we done fucked up. We don’t have our music.” We didn’t want to say that because they might be like, “yo well we’re not paying you.”  So we just blagged it and freestyle the whole thing. But that came off awesome. One of my homies who was there said that that was one of his favourite shows of mine. I mean he knew what happened so it probably would have been more interesting to him. Most people probably didn’t know the difference. They were probably just like, “ yo Mantra, yeah he takes a lot of pauses in his verses and doesn’t have many original beats. But hey, he’s alright.”  So that spontaneity definitely helps out sometimes.”

So with all of this in mind, I was curious to know from some of our artists – what makes a great performer?

Here’s Rob Tremlett, Zoe Knighton and music director Luke Hunter describing what they see makes up a great performer.

Rob: I just think there’s so many different things make a great performer

Zoe: It’s an interesting question because I think that the definition of a great performer is and should be really fluid

Rob: The thing that first came to my mind is like honesty. I think I can smell it when a performer isn’t being authentic.

Luke: a great performer is someone that you believe, and you follow, and you are moved by in some way.

Rob: Like if I’m going to see jazz musician play standards I don’t want it to just sound like some cocktail music where someone is getting it perfectly right for no fucking reason.

Zoe: For me, what makes a great performer is somebody who I almost forget that they’re there.

Luke: That the edifice of on an audience member and you’re an actor disappears, and melts away, and you’re with them, and sucked into their world.

Rob: There’s no point if it doesn’t feel like you’ve given some part of yourself to it

So a performing artist – and every other person involved in creating a performance moment – is celebrating a creator’s vision, breathing new life into an otherwise static work, honouring the efforts of their peers on stage and off, and creating an experience for whoever happens to be on the other side of that proscenium arch.

And whether the aim of the work is to comment on society’s ills, challenge injustice, or simply to take an audience on a journey away from their daily lives for a moment, the world is a better place for that performance having been brought about.

One last thought from actor and singer Rachel Dunham on the challenges and privileges of performing, and what it’s really all about.

Rachal: Because you know, there’s nothing a performer love more than a whinge, and I found that my job occasionally was reminding people that, you know, you don’t know who’s out in that audience.

We actually received a card from a beautiful girl who I still am in touch with who…She fell under the umbrella of the super fan, but I found out that she was actually waiting for a liver transplant and this was her happy place. And she sent us a beautiful card one day and I made sure that everyone read it because I’m like, “Guys, this is why we’re here. This one person. It doesn’t matter if there’s 1400 people out there, there could just be one person that really needs to see what we do tonight.”