What do you do when you are under a lot of pressure, or stress and you shut down? Your thoughts are a constant flow of negativity, your nerves are on high, and you cannot breathe. we have all encountered this at some point of our lives, in many forms, from test anxiety to stage fright, and we all know it is not a fun experience. So what can we do to help us get grounded again? To bring us back to the present? Focus. Get your focus together. Get some positivity, either by forcing it upon yourself or by a friend. But most of all, do not forget to breathe.
It was late in the afternoon of day two of the One Act trip. It had finally hit me – we were going to be performing in front of more than 400 people. Not just any group of people. We are talking a panel of judges plus hundreds of critical drama kids. Let’s just say I had a lot reasons to feel nervous.
I have never done well in front of large group of people, and acting and going through this process helped with that. But the problem was I had never performed for such a large and intimidating audience before, so as we were making our way to the theater I was trying to keep my mind off the sudden eruption of butterflies in my stomach that this realization had caused. “We’re going to do fine”, I kept telling myself. We had spent countless hours of rehearsal perfecting our movements and getting ourselves perfectly in sync with each other and getting used to our energy as a cast. We had even gone through two previous performances, the last one earning us this opportunity to perform here at Red Deer College. Still, I could not shake the nerves and they just got worse as entered the theater.
We were now going into the depths of the theater, down a staircase lit only with an eerie green light, our footsteps and voices echoing off the cement. In my state they seemed to go on forever, though in reality it nothing more than 3 minutes to get down the entire flight. I could the air getting cooler as we descended further beneath the stage and the butterflies in my stomach increasing in number.
Then we were shrouded in the cold of the basement – the room before us was furnished like a little lounge with blue and red couches and chairs that that stood out in the completely gray basement. There was a narrow, dimly lit hallway dotted with the doors of the dressing rooms, the kind of hallway you see in horror movies, the kind that seem to go on forever to the left. At this point I was trying to keep a brave exterior – smiling and laughing at and with my cast-mates, keeping my nervousness to myself, trying to remember to breathe. Doing all this just so I could convince myself and everyone else I was doing just fine, even though I felt like I could burst at any minute from my nerves.
In total there were 16 cast and crew members down there and the dressing room was small. Really small. So, needless to say it got very cramped, hot, and chaotic as we were running around getting ready for the show. There was nowhere in that room that you could be just within yourself. Every inch was taken up with hot bodies, costumes, makeup. The air was thick with hairspray and the scent of the makeup.
Getting ready was going smoothly; focusing on the mechanic of this task helped me put my nervousness on the back burner. That is until it came to my makeup. The white face paint that was going to make look, well, dead, was not working. Much to the distress of the two people who doing my makeup, it just wouldn’t stick to my face. It was not working and it finally came to the point where I had to wash all of the work that was done so far off and start again.
This incident, though looking back at it was really just a small problem, was when I finally lost it. It was when I had to constantly remind myself to breathe, when the panic sunk in. It felt like I just could not get enough air into my lungs. All of this was happening on the inside. On the outside I was trying desperately to keep my composer and appear calm for the sake of those around me. I did not want to worry them further and cause more distress. But by the time my face makeup was finished, I felt like I was running out of air. Suddenly it was too loud and too cramped in the room. I just needed to get out and breathe.
When I finally got out of that room I leaned against the wall, appreciating the coolness it gave to my skin. I could not calm my thoughts though. All I kept thinking was that I was going to royally screw up, or something would go terribly wrong. I could not stop this flow negativity and I was on the verge of tears when one of my fellow cast members came out to check on me. My guard was down and my expressions finally matched what was going on in my head. He took notice on this asked if I was okay. I lied, not very well, and said yes. Still he stayed out with me, feeding me the positive energy I desperately needed, even making me laugh at one point. This is what finally brought me back down, get ahold of my thoughts, my energy, and my focus and made me ready enough to go back inside and finish getting ready. My nerves were still there, but they were not overwhelmingly bearing down on me anymore.
Once we had all finished getting ready, we flooded into the lounge area, where our director guided us through a meditation and characterization exercise. We did our usual routine – imagery, honing in on our character, reminding ourselves of what we had accomplished up until that point. And finally we worked on how to breathe. Taking the air in, feeling it fill up our lungs, bringing it all the way down to our diaphragm. Holding it there. Releasing it slowly. Breathing in positivity, breathing out negativity. Breathing. This is what finally got me fully grounded. I was calm, in character, and focused. We then made our way back up the eerie staircase, to the backstage. Once we were cleared to get on behind the curtains, we got into position. I lied down right next to the curtain, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes as the curtain rose.
This experience was a peak for me. I have never experienced such anxiety after that as I had in that moment. But it was a learning curve. I have never felt like that again because that day I found out what I needed to do to bring me down from that state into a healthier way of thinking. Staying focused on the present and staying positive play role in this. But the most important thing I took away from this is learning to breathe. This seems silly because it is something we all do naturally. But in those moments of stress and anxiety, it can be hard to remember to not only breathe, but to breathe deeply. Just stopping and taking a few moments to get your breath under control is vital to calming down and getting a hold of yourself.
