From Anxiety to Confidence: Lesson from the Crazy Frog

E284: 🎙️ Welcome to a special bonus episode of The English Like Native Podcast! As we dive into today's discussion, let's explore a topic that many of us can relate to: fear and anxiety in social settings.

😬 Join me as we unravel strategies to conquer the daunting barriers of social anxiety, particularly when navigating conversations in a second or third language. Drawing from personal anecdotes and shared experiences, we'll delve into the gripping world of stage fright and the unexpected mishaps that can unfold during live performances.

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Transcript

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Hello. Welcome to this bonus episode of The English Like Native Podcast. I hope that you've been having a wonderful week. If you're listening to this at the point of release, then it's a Sunday. I hope that you've had a productive or at least positive week. And I hope that you've had a chance to relax and recharge your batteries over the weekend. Now, I was talking to someone recently about fear and anxiety within a social setting. We were talking about different strategies for trying to overcome the barrier that is our own anxiety about what could possibly go wrong when speaking within a group. Some people will bury their head in the sand and run away from a situation in a kind of group setting because of fear. And I think if you're an anxious person already, if social gatherings make you feel a bit uncomfortable. Then adding to that, interacting within your second language or your third language, I can imagine that it really impacts the issue. It really makes it 10 times worse. And that's definitely what I hear from the majority of my students, that they are already quite anxious, but then when they're in an English-speaking environment, it feels a lot worse. And that's what I was talking to this particular student about, is how to deal with that. Now, I don't have experience or enough experience of that myself, but what I do have experience of, and lots and lots of stories of, are things going wrong when you are stood on a stage in front of hundreds of paying customers. So people have paid to come and watch you perform. When things go wrong, all eyes are literally on you. They've come to watch you. I feel like it's a little bit more pressured than when you're in a social environment, because there are many people there. In a social environment, it's a cooperative interaction. But when you are a performer on the stage, it's your sole responsibility to, to entertain. That's the point. That's what people are there for. And things do go wrong. Things have gone wrong for me in my professional life as a performer and actress and singer. How do you deal with that? Because this was always my anxiety as a younger performer. I used to get terrible stage fright and my fear was forgetting my lines or an actor forgetting to come on stage. And then what do you do? What do you do in that moment? It's a terrifying prospect to be stood in front of people. and suddenly everything's gone wrong or your mind's gone blank. I remember watching someone perform in a Shakespearean play and everything was going well and then suddenly she stopped talking and just stood there and there was this long pause, which slowly but surely started to become uncomfortable. And then she repeated her previous line. And we all wondered if this was all part of the show, but we didn't really understand it. It didn't seem to make sense. After her repeated line again, she stood there in complete silence. And the audience started to shift and become uncomfortable and look around and make eye contact with other members of the audience to try and get some answers about what was going on. Eventually, after the longest pause that I've ever, ever experienced, another actor came on stage, seemingly having trouble with her dress. What had happened was, the other actor was doing a costume change, and while doing the costume change, a zip had broken on the dress, and so it wouldn't go on or something. She was basically left in a position where she couldn't come on because she was half naked. And so it wasn't that she could just come on with her garments not quite fastened properly. It's she, she was not in a fit state to come on stage and this was the reason that there was this long delay. And I think about that scenario quite often because I often put myself in that position and think, well, what would I have done? Now I know I would have improvised. I would have done something. To make it seem like the show is just going along fine, because the audience don't know what the show is. The audience have no clue what's supposed to happen and what's not supposed to happen. So whatever comes out of your mouth, it doesn't really matter. You just improvise. But it was a Shakespeare play and improvising is hard. In the language associated with Shakespearean acting, it's much harder to do. Now, I said that I've experienced many occasions of things going wrong. You do just have to get on with it. And it's the same in social situations. It's the same when you are presenting in a board meeting. The fear makes things seem much worse. The anxiety that you are sensing, what you are going through, makes it seem much worse than it's perceived by the audience, by your listeners. So, keep calm and carry on. I remember one of my very first professional jobs was in a pantomime in the UK down on the coast in Weymouth and I was playing a skin character and a skin character is where you wear a full body costume so you've got a big costume on including a huge costume head. So I was playing the Crazy Frog. Do you remember the Crazy Frog? Were you ever aware of the Crazy Frog? He had a song out at one point and it was kind of gobbledygook. It was like, bing bing bing duh ding ding ding duh ding. It was a bit weird, but it was very popular. And this Crazy Frog song was included in the pantomime because at the time it was very, very popular. It was in the charts. So my job, I was part stage manager, but also part performer. So I had to deal with all the stage manager duties. making sure all the props were in place. I had to call the show. But at one point I had to put on this skin costume and hand over my cans. Cans is the stage term for headphones with a little microphone, which you use to call the show. And I had to put on this skin costume and hand over my cans to the assistant stage manager and go to the stage to dance around in my giant skin. Now, I couldn't see very well. There weren't eye holes in which you could see through. There was a little bit of mesh that was covering the mouth of the skin. And that was kind of an eye level, not completely, but kind of when the lights were shining on the stage, I could see it was dark mesh. So when the light was coming through, I could see enough to make sure I didn't walk off the stage. And so I dance around and do my absolute physical best to make sure that this character was animated. And then at the end of the dance, we all struck a pose and the lights went off. And in that dark moment, it was a scene change. So I had to exit stage left. I had to go off stage to the left very quickly in between the curtains that hang making up the wings, the wings of the side of stage. And so there's lots of curtains there to mask backstage. So I would head off into the wings and someone would then help me to get out of the costume because the fingers were twice as long as my fingers. So I couldn't use my hands in the gloves. My feet were like flippers. They were twice the size of my actual feet. And I had this huge head on and I couldn't get the costume off by myself. This one particular day, I must have positioned myself badly. Something happened. Then the lights went off and I went to make my exit stage left as I always did. But then I seemed to get caught by the big curtain that was coming across the front of the stage, which knocked me over. Now I could not get up once I was down on my back because of this huge heavy head, these massive feet, and it was pitch black. So I'd been hit by a curtain. The curtain had taken me down to the ground. I was laid on the floor. I was on the stage. So half on stage, half off stage. So my head was on stage, but my feet were off stage and I couldn't do anything. So the scene change happens within 10 seconds, not even that five seconds, the lights come back up and all the actors are starting their next scene. And there's a frog, a giant frog laid on the floor, looking like I'd passed out on the floor, half on the stage, half off the stage and, and to top it off, the assistant stage manager saw what happened, realised I wasn't there for my costume change, saw what happened and came and grabbed my legs and then just dragged me the rest of the way into the wings before then assisting me in getting off my giant head and giant gloves, but it must have looked hilarious to the audience. This frog laying there being dragged off at the top of a scene. Now, you can't get upset about things like that. You have to just laugh it off. I mean, that was a much more light hearted, silly, it was a pantomime, so it's all about fun. You actually, you know, you enjoy the moments that go wrong, particularly in pantomime, because everyone has a laugh with you rather than at you. But there have been other occasions where it's been a lot more stressful and lines have been forgotten. Props have broken. I had one particular show where the entire electricity running to the stage lighting board, just went out. We lost all the lights and all the music, sound equipment, everything. It all went off. It just went dark. The whole theatre went dark, which is very dangerous. That was a very scary situation. I've been performing on cruise ships where you've been in a quite a severe storm and you can't stand up straight. And people are falling all over the place and glasses are falling over and yet you're still standing on the stage having to do your thing. The moral of the story, the reason that I'm talking about this, is if you carry on regardless of things that you believe have gone wrong, if you carry on regardless of the mistakes, regardless of what you think other people are thinking of you, often the mistake, won't even be noticed. Most of the time people magnify what's going on inside their own head. People are more concerned with themselves. Some people, when they're listening to other people, are concerned about how they're being perceived when they're listening. People are so much more concerned with themselves that they will rarely notice an issue or a mistake, unless you point to it, unless you make a big deal out of it so that they do notice something. So that's my long winded way of saying keep calm and carry on and you never know. The things that you thought went wrong may not even have been noticed. Okay. I do hope that you enjoyed this little bonus chit chat and please don't tell anyone about my Crazy Frog falling over incident! It's very embarrassing. Okay. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Take care and goodbye.