I am learning something through this class--although I love the concepts and processes of our class and our art time, I hate performing. Ever since I was little, stepping in front of a crowd terrified me. During piano recitals my entire body would shake and I would forget to breath. With a poor performance I would only fear my next performance, and my associations with performing only spiraled downward. Even now giving presentations in class my body shakes and I forget what I know, stumbling over my words and dreading anyone asking a question which would only prolong my painful performance.
Although I thought I could be over this, the performance in the Caf Monday only solidified my feeling that performance is a difficult thing for me. Starting by fumbling for the matches, my whole body shook as I moved my puppets around the stage, casting a bumpy shadow. Luckily my character was angry, so I think it worked well... But it wasn't ideal to say the least. With an adrenaline rush and a heavy focus I made it through the rest of the performance, but only to crash with exasperation afterwards--I felt I had represented myself poorly and overanalyzed every component of the performance from a negative standpoint.
At this point I wasn't even concerned with the larger aspects of the spectacle--how the performance had looked to all the sitters in the caf, with moving spectacles all around them. The music creeping into their ears, their eyes unable to see except for shadows created by candle light. I'm sure as a whole the performance was spectacular, exquisite, exciting. The moments of applause from around the caf demonstrated that clearly.
My own hiccups are merely a lesson--that maybe to be convinced in the spectacle and the derive is to be more concerned with messing up with people's daily routine than to be bogged down by the intricacies of one's own performance.
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