Expert Offers Pointers On Beating Stage Fright

David Hickman established his credentials right at the start of this master class: He walked onto the stage without fainting dead away.

Hickman was presenting a master class on performance anxiety, better known as stage fright, at Eastern Washington University recently.

Hickman is an internationally known trumpet virtuoso and professor of trumpet at Arizona State University.

Hickman gave the audience three major pieces of advice:

Practice, practice, practice.

Block out everything, even the audience, and concentrate on what you are up there to deliver (pure sound, in the case of a musician).

Imagine yourself up on that stage when all hell breaks loose.

“Once you go through hell and back, nothing will scare you,” said Hickman.

Hickman’s advice is the opposite of the standard visualization advice, in which you imagine a perfect performance. Hickman thinks that technique can backfire.

“For a while, I tried that self-hypnosis where you see yourself playing the perfect part,” said Hickman. “What unnerves people, is you go out there and it’s not perfect.”

Instead, he takes strength from thinking back to his worst stage experiences, such as the time he had to play a recital with an accompanist who had absolutely no idea what he was playing.

“The guy wasn’t just playing badly,” said Hickman. “He was playing the wrong movement at times.”

But Hickman got through it, and actually played well in spite of it. Now when he prepares for a performance he can say to himself, “Hey, throw it at me.”

Hickman teaches his students to focus by actually “practicing distractions.” A student will stand on stage playing, while other students will sneeze loudly, or walk up behind and tickle the musician on the back.

“We might have somebody get right under their face, like they’re looking up their nose,” said Hickman. “Sometimes if the distractions are bad enough, you can shut it all out and concentrate on the sounds you’re playing.”

The goal, he said, is to get to the point where you even forget about yourself. You become nothing but the sounds you are playing.

Still, some people, even extremely talented ones, have trouble losing their self-consciousness. Someone in the audience asked about the beta-blocking drug Inderal, taken by some performers to cut down performance anxiety.

“About 15 years ago, I tried it, and I thought, ‘This stuff works,”’ Hickman said. “But after a while I said, ‘I think it’s going to go fine anyway, so it doesn’t make any difference.”’

He said beta-blockers slow production of adrenaline, which can cause shaking and shallow breath. But he said “adrenaline works for you, too,” by causing your reactions to be sharper and quicker.

Hickman also doled out advice for dealing with the No. 1 anxiety-producing situation: the audition.

Don’t think of it as a competition at all.

“Figure they already know who they want and it’s just a formality,” said Hickman.

, DataTimes