Stage Fright? It's all about the Stalls Fright
After playing the part of nervous drama student for the best part of a year, hearing someone invite me to watch a third-year student devised production at my university was like drinking a mug of tea through my ears. No more sleepless nights and frantic spontaneous line-runs to terrified students in the corridors. Now was the time, as ridiculously clichéd as it sounds, to sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Or so I thought.
Having been part of the performance side of things for so long, I had completely forgotten all about life on the other side of the curtain. I’m not joking. Maybe it’s just my stupendously self-conscious nature and this is all hugely exaggerated in my head, but I am still constantly aware of every tiny movement and inaudible breath that I take, so as to not distract the performers.
There are a number of aspects that make up what I have termed ‘stalls fright’. All of them combine to make the audience member feel like the spotlight is on them, and all of them strike us at one moment or another. I hope.
Getting it right
For me, this is definitely the worst. The thought of emerging as clueless from the darkness as to what went on, as when I entered, fills me with a sense of horror… and so I try desperately to observe and analyse every gesture and irrelevant blink, in order to assure myself that I am understanding the “deeper meaning behind the piece. Yah.”
Illness
Coughing, sneezing and even itching. With this factor at least I know that I’m not alone. The last time I saw an opera, as soon as the first applause came, with it arrived a torrent of coughs that had been held in by the polite spectators. Too far? Or just polite?
Laughter
…at the right moment. And hand-in-hand with this comes the patronising fear that others will choose the wrong moment, because they don’t really ‘get it’. It’s an awful vicious circle.
And then there’s the dreaded Micro-sleep.
When the micro-sleep strikes in the theatre it’s just the worst. That moment where you open your eyes and have no idea how long you were asleep for. Your eyes dart around the stage, searching for clues (was he wearing that before?) but you just can’t tell. Could be 30 seconds, could be 30 minutes. You’ll never know.
I’m not saying ‘stalls fright’ is anywhere near as nerve-wracking as stage fright. But it’s interesting to consider the pressures we (or I?) put ourselves (most probably just myself) under. And yet, with so many amazing productions on at the moment, I’m lucky that this doesn’t occur often at all. It’s usually exclusive to lectures.
August 25th, 2010 at 10:54 am
My worst stalls fright is because of my tendency to burst into tears in the theatre. I know in many cases moving an audience to tears would probably please an actor, but I always think I might put them off with ny sniffling. I started crying before War Horse even started, frequently cry simply because of the clapping at the end of a performance, and left every single Belt Up show I saw at the Fringe with tears in my eyes. For some reason it feels sillier in the theatre than at the cinema.
August 25th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Ah no that’s good I’m sure! I’ve somehow acquired an annoying inability to cry at anything, and I mean anything. The last film and only film I cried in was Star Wars, DON’T ask me why.
And yeah, in the cinema you can use the darkness to maybe pretend it’s hayfever…
August 25th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
When I read this, I couldn’t help but to think just how true it was. I mean to say, performers/actors aren’t the only ones to go through an ordeal for the sake of theatre.
I can recount many a time being an audience member when something goes wrong in my body. A tickle in my throat, or by god my breathing is louder than the actors speaking their lines. Or even better – that horrible feeling that your stomach is going to rumble.
Half the problem appears to be that audiences around us get so caught up in the action that they seem to forget that the person near them is a human – and sometimes as humans we do have an attack of a cough, and there is nothing that can be done about it.
I guess it goes back to the notion of theatre as a live event. You can’t pause the show whilst your companion has a sneezing fit, you just have to hope they shut up quickly so you can get lost in the magic of the theatre again.
August 30th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
The people sitting in front of me when I went to the theatre last week could have done with taking a leaf out of your (paranoid) book…it took them so long to settle down and goodness knows how many times they tried to crack jokes throughout the first scene. About 5 minutes in, they decided to – and I would brace yourself for this – got up…yes, GOT UP and moved a few seats across, much to the disgust of the elderly couple sitting next to me who aptly tutted at them and shook their fists. All in all, although I have never been on stage since the time my drama teacher referred to a performance of mine as ‘crap’, I really think you have a point.