Transitions and Transcendence of the Self: Stage Fright and the Paradox of Shy Performativity

Introduction

With its emphasis on frontstage visibility and audience scrutiny, performance art is ostensibly the anathema of shyness. Striding onto stage, demanding the limelight and being the centre of attention must surely be a shy person’s worst nightmare. Yet a curious paradox inspiring this piece is that confidence on stage and shyness in everyday life might be compatible. Some self-defined ‘shy’ people report a love of performing arts (Scott, 2007), while many famous actors, musicians and comedians who seem like flamboyant, exhibitionist characters confess to feeling painfully shy in ‘real life’. The list of self-proclaimed ‘shy celebrities’ includes Michael Stipe, Ella Fitzgerald, Kirsty MacColl, David Jason, Robbie Williams, Tom Cruise, Daniel Day Lewis, Victoria Wood, Robert Smith and Tracey Thorn. This resonates with Zimbardo’s (1977) notion of the ‘shy extrovert’ or Pilkonis’s (1976) ‘privately shy’ individual, who appears socially gregarious in public situations but becomes uncomfortable in intimate encounters.

Shy performativity is a term I introduce to describe this juxtaposition of public confidence and private reticence, which results in a complex love–hate relationship with social (in)visibility. Shyness differs from introversion, a contentment to be quietly alone, for it involves frustrated sociability (Scott, 2007) – an ambivalent longing to be ‘where the action is’ (Goffman, 1967). The struggle to be seen and the need for audience validation vie with anticipated negative evaluation. Simmel (1908) pointed to the delicate balance to be struck between proximity and distance, trust and secrecy, knowing others while protecting oneself from being known.

Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical model of social life as theatre assumes a double hermeneutic here, being both literally and metaphorically applicable. Performance art crystallises, accentuates and magnifies the dilemmas routinely faced by the shy self, its stark contrivance bringing their mundane features into sharper focus. Hyperbole, caricature and parody most vividly convey the intricacies of micro-social action: (performance) art imitates (everyday) life. Thus, this article examines processes of dramaturgical risk-taking in the theatrical realm as an exaggerated reflection of the quotidian. Using Symbolic Interactionist theories of the social self, I explore the ontological transformations actors make as they move on- and off-stage, in and out of character.

First, I unpack the paradox of shy performativity, asking how those who experience everyday shyness manage to give contradictory displays on stage, and what motivates them to do so. Live performance can be understood as voluntary risk-taking action that involves edgework (Lyng, 1990) and flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Following Hardie-Bick (2015), I suggest these existential processes involve a similar transcendent consciousness. The social self splits into its constituent parts of ‘I’ and ‘Me’ (Mead, 1934); the latter disappearing and the former taking over. Role immersion occurs when the Shy ‘Me’ internal critic recedes and the actor becomes lost in his or her character.

Second, I show how moments of self-consciousness disrupt this transcendent potential, jolting the actor into a sudden reflexive awareness of their ‘real’ self as a symbolic object. Through this jarring juxtaposition of person and persona, the self-doubting ‘Me’ reappears at critical moments throughout the performative process: beforehand, in the anticipatory state of stage fright and transitions into character; during, in alienating feelings of self-detachment; and afterwards, when leaving the theatre and re-entering the quotidian realm. In these liminal moments, the actor detaches from and evaluates his or her character. Both the ecstatic thrill of the ‘performing high’ and the nauseating terror of stage fright are states of reflexive consciousness that can only occur in moments outside the dramatic process, not during its unconscious flow. For ‘shy’ actors, this raises interesting questions about where they consider their ‘true’ self to reside, and how performance – paradoxically – holds meanings of authentic self-expression.

Theatricality, Risk and Self-transcendence

The changes in self-consciousness engendered by performance art make it a dramaturgically risky or ‘fateful’ (Goffman, 1967) undertaking. Symbolic Interactionism and dramaturgy retain the notion of a core, authentic ‘real self’ who designs its social action: the player or person concealed behind the persona (Waskul and Lust, 2004). Theatricality, however, demands a process of splitting, fragmentation and merciless self-reflection, which leaves this inner subject vulnerably exposed. As Laing (1960) argued, the phenomenology of the ‘divided self’ creates fundamental dilemmas of existential (in)security. While physically safe, performance art is ontologically dangerous, playing with the boundaries between contrivance and reality (Goffman, 1959). This raises the question of what happens to the social self during dramaturgical risk-taking, and what is its appeal?

Studies of voluntary risk-taking activities, such as recreational drug use (Reith, 2005), sadomasochism (Newmahr, 2011) and skydiving (Hardie-Bick, 2005), emphasise their positive subjective meanings. Adherents describe shifting into an altered state of consciousness and transcending their ‘ordinary’ selves, the activities serving as ‘escape attempts’ from everyday life (Cohen and Taylor, 1995). Euphoric emotional experiences accompany this, through excitement, thrill and intense pleasure (Katz, 1988). While this may come from an activity’s social deviance and normative transgression (Lippens, 2009), more poignant and fateful challenges arise from tinkering with the dramaturgical boundaries of the self. As Goffman (1961) argued, motives of fun, risk and thrill pervade social action, from the mundane to the remarkable.

The concept of edgework (Lyng, 1990) refers to activities designed to test the limits of human endurance and survival. Extreme sports, such as skydiving and mountaineering, plunge participants into intensely challenging and stressful conditions demanding high levels of skill. Surviving these results in feelings of triumph, joy and a heightened sense of self: participants describe feeling ‘pure’, ‘alive’, and hyper-real, experiencing self-mastery and self-determination. Risk is sought out as an end in itself, the fine line between thrill and danger holding an enticing appeal.

Csikszentmihalyi’s (2002) theory of ‘flow’ presents a less dramatic interpretation. He describes a state of deep immersion and involvement in an activity, resulting from intense focus and concentration and a narrowed perceptual field. Actors perform without self-consciousness, losing track of time and other mundane concerns, no longer observers but only participants in their own action. The self operates automatically, without any reflexive understanding of its own mechanical processes. Unlike Lyng, Csikszentmihalyi argues for the calm and rational assessment of danger and the minimisation of risk: activities are chosen proportionately to one’s level of skill, and involve careful planning. Practitioners strike a balance between boredom and fear – dabbling with danger, but with the aim of taming it. Thus, athletes and musicians practise diligently, surgeons train for years, and skydivers learn how to execute safety manoeuvres (Hardie-Bick, 2005).

Despite their ostensible differences, Hardie-Bick (2015) suggests these two theories have much in common. Drawing on Mead’s (1934) theory of the dialogic social self, he shows how both edgework and flow allow the impulsive, subjective agent (‘I’) to rise to prominence, while the reflective, objectified image of oneself (‘Me’) disappears below the threshold of consciousness (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). Following Sartre (2004[1936]), Hardie-Bick describes this moment as ‘transcendence of the ego’ or ‘annihilation of the self’: a state of ‘non-thetic consciousness’ in which the unreflexive ‘I’ has no awareness of itself as an object (‘Me’). While practitioners report a heightened sense of self and strongly autonomous control, Hardie-Bick points out that these are always retrospective interpretations, cited after the event, when the ‘Me’ returns to consciousness. I would add that similar moments of self-consciousness can occur before and during the activity, as well as in the liminal phases of transition in between.

Theatricality allows a decoupling of ‘I’ and ‘Me’, creating the potential to experience flow and practise edgework. Schechner (2002: 2) defines performance as ‘any action that is framed, presented, highlighted or displayed’ through the conscious enactment of something separate from the self: typically a role or stage persona. This alter ego breaks into the closed loop of I–Me, transgressing its ontological boundaries. Hayman (1969) suggests that actors can stand either ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of their characters; the former implying a blurring of person and persona, and the latter a more self-conscious detachment. He makes a similar distinction between ‘finding the role in oneself’ (identifying with a character through personal experience) and ‘finding oneself in a role’ (feeling uncomfortably aware of its difference or unfamiliarity). Hodgson and Richards (1966), likewise, contrast ‘losing oneself’ with ‘using oneself’ in a performance. Actors may purposely train in these techniques: Stanislavski’s immersive ‘Method’ or Brecht’s ‘alienation effect’, respectively. However, transitions in and out of character can also happen unintentionally, throughout the course of a performance, generating changes in self-consciousness and phenomenological experience.

Methods

The data discussed below come from a small-scale, qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with 10 performing artists: seven British, two Canadian and one Swedish. These included two theatre actors (male), one television actor (male), one singer and ballet dancer (female), one drag king (transgender), two musicians (both male singer-songwriters and band frontmen), two stand-up comedians (one female, one male) and one spoken word poet and teacher (female). Most were white, middle class and aged between 20 and 45 years, though one was 82 and another was mixed race. All performed professionally: six in full-time careers and four fitting the work around other ‘day jobs’. This was unanimously viewed as a passionate vocation, and financial rewards were not mentioned as a motivation.

The participants were volunteers, recruited via local advertisements, professional agents and personal contacts. I briefed them that the study was about the relationship between stage fright and everyday shyness, inviting responses from anyone who experienced both and had a story to tell. The sample was therefore not systematic and demographically balanced, nor necessarily representative; its limited size was due to the project being unfunded and conducted in my free time.

I conducted and transcribed the interviews, and analysed the data thematically, using the software program ATLAS.ti. My coding scheme was theoretically informed by Symbolic Interactionism, focusing on concepts of selfhood, identity and dramaturgical performativity. Differences of gender, ethnicity, age and class were considered but did not emerge from the data, possibly due to the sample’s size and demographic bias.

Eight interviews were conducted face-to-face: in a coffee shop, university office, or the participant’s home. These took the form of semi-structured ‘conversations with a purpose’ (Burgess, 1984: 102), guided by a schedule of broad topics that could be covered in any order and with flexibility over question wording (Bryman, 2012). I asked participants about their experiences of everyday shyness, decisions to enter the performing arts, experiences of stage fright, reflections on their onstage roles, personae or characters, and the degree of similarity between these and their ‘real’, offstage selves.

Sharing my own experiences of shyness, I tried to build rapport and create a non-hierarchical relationship between interviewer and interviewee (Oakley, 1981; Scott, 2004), making the situation a collaborative venture (Gubrium and Holstein, 2009). Inevitably, the stories told were co-constructed narratives (Brannen, 2013), emerging through the interview as a situated social encounter (Denzin, 1978). They brought present perspectives to bear on past experiences (Schiff, 2012) and depicted ‘negotiated selves’ (Collins, 1998) rather than essential subjects. However, the unhurried pace and length of the discussions (most lasted one and a half to two hours, and one spanned two days) allowed participants more time for self-reflection and thus greater powers of self-authorship.

Two interviews were conducted by email because of one participant’s geographically distant location and another’s expressed preference (cf. Burns, 2010). ‘Shy’ people often choose to communicate in writing rather than speech, saying they feel better able to articulate their views through this medium (Scott, 2004). In addition, the asynchronous nature of such discussions – participants were sent a list of questions in advance, to which they replied at their convenience – can appeal to those who wish to take more time to compose, edit and reconsider their responses (Markham, 1998), thereby giving the data greater validity. Given the project’s topic, it was important to address any concerns about the interview itself as a ‘live’ performance, insofar as this might create feelings of methodological stage fright (nervousness, self-consciousness or inhibition), and to provide opportunities for response ‘rehearsal’.

Escaping Shyness: ‘A “Me” That’s Not There’

My Symbolic Interactionist theory of shyness (Scott, 2007) identified this is a situational state that emerges under conditions of dramaturgical stress. The social actor feels relatively incompetent at managing an identity performance compared to the ‘Competent Other’ they see around them. They anticipate making an embarrassing mistake that will leave them vulnerable to critical audience judgement, while team-mates will not step in to save their face (cf. Goffman, 1959, 1967).

Following Mead (1934), I suggested that the shy social self has two component parts. The Shy ‘I’ is the subjective, phenomenological experience of inhibition and anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere and take over the mind. As the creative, impulsive part of the self, it has agency but not self-consciousness, and reacts to situations seemingly instinctively. By contrast, the Shy ‘Me’ is the reflexively perceived image of oneself as being shy, viewed from the perspective of others. It is similar to Cooley’s (1992[1902]) concept of the Looking Glass Self, whereby the mind can take itself as a symbolic object and imagine others’ judgements of this appearance. There is a strong sense here of vulnerability to exposure. Shyness entails the co-presence of the Shy ‘I’ and Shy ‘Me’ in a cycling, reflexive dialogue: feeling shy makes one aware of appearing and being judged as such, which reinforces that self-image; hence, shy identities can develop over the life course. In everyday life, the noisy chatter of the ‘Me’, with its self-questioning doubts and inadequacies, gets in the way of the (non-Shy) ‘I’ and frustrates its sociability.

By contrast, the theatre represents an escape route and safe haven, wherein the Shy ‘Me’ recedes and the creative, non-Shy ‘I’ can flow, free from inhibition. Taking on a different character offers a liberating release from the perils of everyday shyness. Paradoxically, this is because of the greater levels of planning, control and predictability stage actors have over their self-presentation, which removes the anxiety associated with improvisation. Just as lay actors can occasionally drift out of shyness in situations that provide a clearly defined role, such as the workplace (Scott, 2007), theatrical shows can also be rehearsed, scripts learned, and cast members relied upon, to reduce the likelihood of embarrassing mistakes. This resonates with Csikszentmihalyi’s (2002) idea of careful and calculated risk minimisation as characteristic of flow:

I was always known as the quiet one. But it’s different when you’re on stage – you can be somebody else. … I played a lot of comic characters, and foreigners! … I was very confident on stage, because it was taking on a character. That was why I liked acting, you see. You left your real self behind, and just forgot about it. You just became the character. (Martin, television actor)

Theatre provides a retreat from the social gaze, protecting the ‘real’, private self from critical scrutiny. While, of course, performers demand and desire audience attention, this is restricted to their frontstage personae and is carefully regulated. Self-consciousness arises from unwanted, not wanted social attention (Leary, 1996), and so should not occur in a ‘flowing’ performance. Hiding behind a character, role and script reduces the sense of exposure and vulnerability a ‘shy’ person would normally feel. If the audience response is critical, this is directed towards the character or script, rather than towards the actor-as-person who inhabits that role. The present, objectified image of self-under-scrutiny is only alter ego, not ego. Taking on a different character thus allows the Shy ‘Me’ to take a blissfully welcome vacation:

There is a ‘me’ that’s not there … there are moments where I feel that I’m very much not me. It’s not a kind of presence; it’s more as if I’ve been displaced. (Martha, spoken word poet and teacher)

When you’re acting, it’s not you, it’s your character, so it’s so much easier … it’s a chance to be someone else. It’s like going in fancy dress to a party … you get to be someone else for the evening. And you can almost become something that you would never be. If you were quite a shy and retiring person, you could become the most arrogant, macho arsehole bastard, because you know it’s not you and it’s just play-acting. And on that level it’s empowering. (Cory, drag king)

However, this liberating effect is only precariously sustained. I now consider some moments of unwitting self-consciousness that plague the shy performance artist before, during and after a show. When the flow of the ‘I’ is interrupted and the self-doubting, critically evaluative Shy ‘Me’ reappears, the actor is jolted back into reflexive awareness of the theatrical scene as a social situation, wherein his or her ‘real’ self is under scrutiny.

Before the Performance

During the Performance

The second trigger of stage fright, according to Lyman and Scott, is disruption of the social frame. A successful stage performance relies on the audience being willing to suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in the fantasy before them (Schechner, 2002). The ‘fourth wall’ is a figurative barrier between actors and audience, which contains the performance as a bounded piece of artwork. In a successful show, the audience form the fourth wall: the drama is so convincing that they feel immersed as if part of the scene. Similarly, in everyday life, social actors use ‘mystification’ to conceal the backstage construction of their self-presentation (Goffman, 1959). ‘Breaking the fourth wall’, to acknowledge the audience’s presence and the show’s contrivance, can be done deliberately, but more often occurs accidentally, through lapsed concentration and distracted focus. A sudden jolt into awareness of the theatrical scene as a social encounter means that the carefully constructed fictional frame comes crashing down. Noah recalled an unsettling experience during a play, when he ‘broke character’ (came out of role):

It was such a tiny studio, and I looked at a woman dead in the eye, at one time, and I thought, ‘Fuck! What have I just …?’ And – because you’re trying to look into the middle distance, but if the audience is the middle distance, sometimes it’s impossible … you have to stare at their chests or stare at their legs or their feet. … When I looked at this woman, I think I instantly looked up, or did something, and that broke me. (Noah, theatre actor)

Disruptions of the dramatic frame impede flow by causing a split between actor and character. The ‘Me’, who had slipped under the threshold of consciousness, suddenly reappears with a brutal force, casting a withering gaze upon its own image. Now it is the ‘I’ who disappears, because the very act of regarding, indicating and reflecting on oneself as a subject makes it turn into an object. As Mead (1934: 174) put it, ‘I cannot turn around fast enough to catch myself’.

The self-conscious awareness of this happening evokes a strange feeling of detachment. In Hayman’s (1969) terms, actors ‘finds themselves in a role’, confronting it as alien, rather than ‘finding the role in themselves’. ‘Standing outside of’ their character, actors reflect upon it as a symbolic object (a ‘Me’) that has not been successfully communicated (cf. Blumer, 1969). Stephen recalled realising that his comedy routine was ‘not working’ and ‘not going down very well’ with the audience:

I had weird experiences. I mean when we did the Oxford Revue we got heckled, and we got booed off late at night one night, by all the stand-up comedians – that really made me lose my confidence a bit more, and also just worry a lot more about stuff. … I don’t know how much I was nervous, as much as just humiliated when it went wrong. … [In one gig], there was a kind of feeling of not really going down very well, plus knowing I hadn’t really got that far in the show. And I got that kind of dry mouth … you can just hear your voice rising … and feel that prickly heat. And embarrassment, and feeling it’s not working. (Stephen, stand-up comedian)

After the Performance

Will the Real Self Please Stand Up?

Some participants commented on the broader relationship between their onstage personae and offstage selves, and what this meant in terms of managing their ‘shy’ identities. Two strikingly different accounts emerged, locating ideas of authenticity in one or other of these agents. In both versions, shyness resided in the backstage, non-performing self, but this could be interpreted positively or negatively, as evidence of the ‘true’ self or its phoney alter. Performance art then represented a strategy of, respectively, protection or liberation from shyness.

In the first case, the shy backstage self was perceived as more authentic. Hiding under the mask, script and costume of a contrived character gave space for playing with alternate selves without jeopardising personal integrity. The shy self remained safely in its protective shell. However, this discrepancy between private self-image and public persona meant that the latter could seem quite alien. Performing evoked feelings of role conflict and self-estrangement when its reach encroached into the everyday realm. Tomas spoke of his onstage persona with a mixture of affection, fascination and frustrated dislike:

When I started performing live I decided there was only one way forward – to become a full-on entertainer and put on an act. By creating a role or persona I can do it more confidently. It’s still me but it’s a distorted version of me. Many people who know me get a bit confused when they see me live: they don’t recognise me or the way I speak and act. … I’m not sure which one is which anymore; they’ve started blending together. Sometimes I’m disgusted by my stage persona and how he follows me into my real life. He can be such a clown. (Tomas, singer-songwriter/musician)

In the second case, the onstage persona was felt to be a more authentic reflection of the ‘true’ self. Performing gave confident expression to ideas that would normally be inhibited by shyness, allowing more honest communication than was possible in the polite, rule-governed interaction order (Goffman, 1983) of everyday life. These actors found roles in themselves, rather than finding themselves in roles (Hayman, 1969). Lara spoke of her stand-up comedy as a liberating release, which finally gave her the chance to be ‘the real me’. Personifying this agent as ‘The Jokes’, she said:

I always knew that just because I was shy and quiet, that didn’t mean I shouldn’t have a voice. So what better place to go to, than a stage where everyone has to listen to you? … Part of my shyness comes from the idea that some of the things I say or think might be inappropriate for day-to-day conversations, and I will say the wrong thing and accidentally upset someone. In my daily life I feel I have to be polite to the status quo. On stage I can spell out everything that annoys me about the status quo, and as long as it’s funny, I can say anything … The jokes are the real me, not what a character would say … I am myself on stage. More myself than [in] other areas of my life. … I often wish I could be that verbose and forthright in my real life. (Lara, stand-up comedian)

Curtain Call

Dramaturgical risk-taking, on stage and in everyday life, is highly fateful for identity and social selfhood. The paradox of shy performativity can be explained by the transformations of consciousness that take place when an erstwhile ‘shy’ person takes to the stage. Frustrated and constrained by dramaturgical stress in everyday life, the actor finds sanctuary and freedom in a safely prescribed role. Presenting not the ‘real’ self but an alter ego to the audience means that performance art offers a liberating release from feelings of exposure and vulnerability. Theories of edgework and flow make sense of this process as a splitting of the Meadian social self, whereby the objectified, self-critical Shy ‘Me’ disappears from consciousness and the subjective, agentic, non-Shy ‘I’ takes over. Live performance is an ontologically risky activity, in toying with the boundaries between contrivance and reality, but is simultaneously thrilling in its implications for the shy self.

However, the Shy ‘Me’ reappears at certain moments throughout the performative process, disrupting the flow of the ‘I’ and jolting the actor back into self-awareness. Beforehand, stage fright involves fearfully anticipating one’s own incompetence and imagining a discredited identity. Making the transition into character demands a nervous leap of faith that the ‘I’ will give a convincing appearance that the audience will accept. During the performance, actors may make mistakes, fall out of character or break the fourth wall, creating a sudden realisation of the theatre as a social interaction context. After the show, transitioning back into the quotidian realm lets actors stand outside of their characters, evaluating their success or failure.

Although it is cruelly ironic that the intended escape route out of shyness leads back into the trap, this does not seem to deter performing artists from pursuing such risky action. The various occasions when self-consciousness may re-emerge are regarded as challenges to be tackled, but potentially overcome, in order to accomplish feelings of autonomy, integrity and authenticity. These otherwise rare and thus deeply rewarding self-attributions are reflectively interpreted as the results of theatrical flow, giving the experience a tantalising allure. Beyond the immediate context of the show, therefore, edgework is involved in navigating the risks and managing the boundaries of the ‘shy performer’ identity, making performance art a dangerously delightful undertaking.