The New Yorker, August 28, 2006 P. 38
BACKSTAGE CHRONICLES about stagefright among actors and musicians… Writer tells about British actor Stephen Fry who, during a1995 production of a play called “Cell Mates” by Simon Gray, fled England because of acute stagefright. Fry said he woke up feeling a “sort of clammy horror… It was just a feeling of impossibility.” He considered killing himself, but drove, instead, to Denmark… Actors' stress levels on opening night are equivalent to that of a car accident victim. Stagefright is a traumatic, insidious attack on the performer's expressive instrument: the body. The experience, with the metabolic changes it sets off, is a simulacrum of dying. Instead of being protected by the character he is playing, he suddenly stands helpless before the audience as himself… Writer talks to psychologists who compare an actor's performance to a child's attempt's to keep his mother's attention…. Tells about Ian Holm, who walked off stage during a performance of “The Iceman Cometh” in 1976. “By the time I got back to the dressing room area, I had even lost the ability to walk,” he wrote. The actor's success depends on his ability to conquer the audience, which is why the encounter is so often fraught with excitement and danger… Tells about Barry Humphries who has turned the tables on his audiences by threatening to bring one of them on stage to perform nude cartwheels…. Fry blames his attack of stagefright partly on a scene that he had to perform in his underwear. A bad review in The Financial Times also contributed. Since “the Debacle,” as he calls it, Fry has written six books, appeared in several films, and made a handful of documentaries. He has not, however, returned to the stage… Discusses one of Laurence Olivier's techniques for overcoming stagefright, which was to ask his fellow performers not to look him in the eye… The singer Carly Simon has resorted to lying down on stage during a performance and to having members of her band spank her before a show… Acting coach Susan Batson tells how Nicole Kidman overcame her stage fright when auditioning for a role in Martin Scrosese's “Vegas.”
