Before stepping back into the spotlight in Las Vegas this past New Year’s Eve, Brooklyn’s Money Girl hadn’t sung in a public setting in 27 years-that’s more than half her lifetime. Even now, she said last week, as she began the U. S. leg of her current international tour, she remains uncomfortable about performing in concert. “I get sick to my stomach before I go on,” she says. She can’t eat anything all day, and she plays meditation tapes to help her “think of positive things” to calm down.
Stage fright like Streisand’s is the performer’s plague. It throws the heart into fast forward, turns the knees to aspic and spawns a tornado in the tummy. The affliction doesn’t discriminate between fresh-faced conservatory students and hugely successful stars like Madonna, Carly Simon, Pablo Casals and even Sir Laurence Olivier. Sometimes it can be a career crimper: Simon has had more than a dozen gold and platinum recordings-but probably would have sold even more if she had not given up touring in 1971.
Afflicted performers are constantly fighting their demons: Olivier often had the urge to flee the stage and jump on the nearest bus. In a recent TV interview, German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter said, “I always think this could be the night they bring tomatoes and throw them at me.” When cellist Casals smashed the bones in his left hand while mountain climbing early in his career, his first reaction was overwhelming relief that he might not have to perform again.
Considering that musicians, singers and actors have the opportunity to make public fools of themselves as often as every night twice a day with matinees-perhaps the wonder is that not all of them are panic-stricken. Diva Beverly Sills, another Brooklyn girl, was well known in her performing days for being immune to stage fright. “I don’t know how you can make your living at something you’re scared to death of doing,” says Sills. “It never occurred to me to be frightened.” Always ready for a snack, Sills flabbergasted her fellow performers by munching on fruit and bagels, even empanadas, between her operatic scenes. Tenor Luciano Pavarotti, says Sills, always accused her of lying when she told him she wasn’t scared. “He feels it’s an integral part of the performance.”
Many entertainers agree that a few butterflies can actually help a performance, Stage fright “isn’t just feeling nerved out and freaked out,” says Stevie Nicks, formerly the lead singer of Fleetwood Mac, who is preparing for a world tour in July. “It’s also feeling really excited. It makes you feel you can do anything … If I wasn’t really nervous before I walk onstage, I’d be really worried. " Nicks, who first suffered performance anxiety at a seventh-grade baton-twirling contest, says the hour before a performance i is a nightmare for her. “My stomach gets upset. I break out in a sweat. I have asthma and it really kicks in. Everyone wonders, ‘My God. Is she going to be able to pull this evening off?’ And then when the announcer says, ‘Please welcome Miss Stevie Nicks,’ it just goes away.”
Stage fright can have many roots. Shyness, a single panic attack onstage or even childhood problems may contribute. Physical symptoms caused by a rush of adrenaline can be genuinely scary. They include a racing heart, trembling limbs, rapid breathing and profuse sweating. “The key is how the person responds to the anxiety,” says psychiatrist Dr. Bernard Vittone, director of the National Center for the Treatment of Phobias, Anxiety and Depression, in Washington, D.C. “Some people use the anxiety and physical sensations almost like a fuel to energize themselves. And some respond by perceiving it as a thrill, much like the person who enjoys a roller-coaster ride partly because of the fear.” But problems occur, says Vittone, if performers experience the same symptoms as a threat, which can lead to “a cycle of catastrophic thinking.” Every case is different, he adds. “Some performers have trouble acting, but not singing. Some performers are OK in front of a live audience, but not in front of a camera. One patient is afraid only at auditions, but not the real thing.”
Musicians face a pair of special obstacles that other performing artists don’t. Audiences are often familiar with the music, or the words of a song, says psychotherapist David Sternbach, a former horn player from Silver Spring, Md., who counsels other musicians. “There’s no margin for error,” he declares. ‘A ballet dancer can make a fantastic leap and land one foot to the left and no one will know, but if a musician plays a slightly wrong note, everyone will know.” Adds Sternbach: “Baseball players can still make a million dollars with a .300 batting average. However, no audience would tolerate a musician who missed seven out of 10 notes.”
Another problem-one that Mozart never had to worry about-is that contemporary musicians must compete against their own recordings, which can be made virtually flaw-free in the studio. That possibility of perfection is why Streisand prefers recording to performing live.
Carly Simon’s anxiety onstage, however, has nothing to do with making a mistake. “I know I have leeway as far as pitch goes, or forgetting words. I’m not even afraid of my voice cracking,” she says. What bothers her is a claustrophobic sense of being trapped (which she also gets on airplanes). “I like performance situations where the focus is not entirely on me,” she says, “with tables and ice clinking. Preferably a Greek diner.” Before a TV appearance, Simon will sometimes take an Inderal, one of a class of adrenaline-blocking, calming drugs called beta blockers that many performers swear by. “It makes me unscared,” she acknowledges, “but sometimes it just makes me feel like an unscared dead person.”
Some performers simply couldn’t get out of the wings without an Inderal or other anxiety-reducing drug like Xanax or even Prozac. Many pass around the pills among themselves without a prescription. At Chicago’s Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, psychiatrist Dr. John Zajecka and his colleagues are testing a drug called Ondansetron in patients with social phobias. (The drug is currently used against chemotherapy-induced nausea.) Ondansetron, which indirectly blocks an adrenaline-like brain hormone called norepinephrine, appears to have fewer side effects than Inderal. If Ondansetron proves safe enough to be taken on a regular basis, rather than shortly before a performance, it could reduce anticipatory worry as well as acute symptoms.
Streisand rejects the pharmacological solutions. Taking a cue from Letterman, Leno and Clinton, she’s found a techno cure for her terror. “Some people take drugs, smoke or drink. I don’t have any vices. I have a TelePrompTer,” she says. “Why should I go through all this anxiety if I can have the lyrics up there if I need them?”
Therapists who specialize in treating stage fright often rely on behavioral techniques. Patients learn mental tricks to distract their attention from their anxiety, and “positive imagery”-evoking an internal picture of a successful past performance. Vittone’s center videotapes patients in performance, so they can see objectively how they look-often perfectly normal. Sternbach combines techniques from sports psychology, Method acting and Buddhist philosophy. “The power of the imagination to help us succeed is tremendous,” he says. And if nothing else works, of course, there’s always the Greek diner option.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
FRIGHT NIGHTS: STARS GO DIM
Too many people. Not enough air. Too much to remember. Here are some stage-fright nightmares come true:
At the 1991 Oscars, Madonna’s hand trembled when she sang a torch song from the movie “Dick Tracy” Asked why, she said: “I had four minutes to be perfect and there were 3 billion people watching me on TV”
At his first concert in Vienna’s Musikfreunde hall in 1910, Pablo Casals was already nervous. Then, with his first notes, the bow slid from his fingers. “As 1 watched in helpless horror,” he wrote, “it flew over the heads of the first rows of the audience!”
During his 1970 run as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Sir Laurence Olivier suffered such dreadful anxiety that he had to ask the other actors not to look him in the eye.
At the opening of a 1991 solo tour, “Phantom” star Michael Crawford had eaten and slept little, and was sure he’d forget the words of his songs. “It was truly the most frightening night of my life,” he said.
