July 14, 2013, by Stephen Mumford
Performance
Hyper-sensitive and irritable. Unable to think of other matters. Waiting for that moment when I am called. My stomach churns every time I think of stepping forward and speaking into the microphone. Around 1,700 people will be in front of me and film cameras are pointing in my face. It is live-streamed around the world. A slip of the tongue will not go unnoticed. If I pass out, it will go on You Tube. If I have a nervous breakdown and flee the stage, it will be news. I have no choice. I have to perform.
My university is in the middle of graduation, which is a special and lovely day for our graduands and their families. The university likes to put on a show and it is all delivered live. That includes the Deans reading around 450 names at each ceremony, which takes about 50 minutes. I used to sit on the stage and see the poor Dean thinking that I could never do that. When I agreed to be Dean I somehow forgot that it involved this duty. A sense of dread dawned on me when I realised.
A number of the arts involve performance, such as music and drama. But we are all required to perform in various contexts and settings form time to time, be it in lectures, speeches, interviews, telling a joke to friends. It certainly seems to be a special kind of skill. Some do their best under the pressure of performance, others don’t do as well and there are some I suspect who cannot face it at all. In my own case, I get very nervous about graduation in particular. My mind fills with scenarios of what could go wrong and there are plenty of butterflies, anxieties and worries.
Yet I would also admit that I seem lucky in that once I begin the pressure of the situation tends to make me deliver my best performance. I can become highly concentrated on the task, almost to the point that I forget where I am. I know it might sound an easy job but I have all sorts of nationalities on my list and some names that could easily trip me up. At the end of one ceremony last week, I indeed suffered a slip of the tongue on a relatively easy name and had to write a humble apology the next day. 50 minutes of reading names leaves me completely drained. When I moved away from the lectern at the end, I realised my legs were completely stiff as they had not moved an inch in all that time.
When we watch a play or go to a concert, it is easy to look upon a good performance and not realise how much work and energy has gone into it. The best performances usually look completely effortless. But the skill is in creating this deceiving appearance. The required concentration can be entirely exhausting. When I sat down this week, after my seemingly simple role in the ceremony, I thought of what I had heard of top-level chess players expending so much energy in a match that some of them lost weight as they played, even though they are relatively motionless. I don’t know if that’s true but I can believe it. It was how I felt.
Having tried it in some form, I will always empathise with live performers. It can be very satisfying when it goes well but terrifying in the run-up. In return, I would ask that anyone at my final ceremony tomorrow will be forgiving if I make a mistake on their name. I have prepared as much as I can. If only I could guarantee that every syllable will be perfectly enunciated. But part of the thrill of a live performance is that it is delivered against a background of human frailty.
Congratulations on your effort and hard work, it doesn’t go unseen. A friend of mine who graduated this year from has a particularly long and name (Actually, I believe it is made up of his name, his Dad’s name, his Grandad’s name and his tribes name). Although it was not at this particular ceremony, it was actually a discussion point before the occasion that it must be extremely hard to read so many names with few mistakes and it was almost expected that some of them would be mispronounced. Sometimes it is the simple ones though which cause the problems, I know my own name (Stephen) was mispronounced at my graduation, but it’s not a big issue and it’s not what the event is about. It’s about celebrating achievements and thanking those who have supported you.
Anyway, just wanted to say congratulations, and I am sure you will be relieved now it’s done!
I think it very brave of you to offer such a candid, frank and open account of your experience of an event/occasion which you may not consider as the most popular event of your year. However it is an important event in the academic calendar and the preparations, rehearsal time and the overall effort that is made behind the scenes really do far exceed that displayed on the day.
Empirical evidence shows that athletes perform optimally with just the right amount of performance anxiety. Getting bodies into peak condition at just the right time for an event is the aim of training regimes. Musicians and dramatic artists read scripts, learn lines, rehearse, dress rehearse, do costumes, makeup and take stage direction all before performing for an audience on an opening night. Stage fright is no trivial matter, understudies are rehearsed and prompters are hidden in the wings. The show must go on despite any broken legs.
Having read your blog; the thread which seems to run through it all is that of confidence. Confidence is the glue that holds everything together. Confidence might be a something/state of mind/attitude/perception which so long as we have it, we might never notice. It is perhaps only when confidence is lacking, threatened or all but gone, that an awareness of it occurs. It takes courage to be vulnerable and to be open to possible mistakes. Preparation, forward planning and practice help to alleviate some of the possible errors, however there are no guarantees and even though we might not always get a given task right 100% of the time, perhaps what is more important is that 100% of the time, we have the confidence to try.
A really great blog post. Thank you.
Thanks for your comment, Nicola. Graduation is my favourite day of the academic year. Paradoxically, it’s also the day I most dread. Once it’s finished, if it’s gone well, I feel very happy for all those involved.