Alexa: [00:00:00] Why do performers experience stage fright even when they love being on stage? 

In this episode, I'm joined by voice coach and breathwork teacher Laura Dumbleton to unpack performance anxiety, fight or flight responses, and practical tools to manage nerves before, during, and after singing or public speaking. Expect honest stories, functional techniques that you can take into the studio, confidence strategies, and advice for singers, performers, vocal coaches, and public speakers navigating stage fright. 

Laura Dumbleton, we're ready for you. 

Laura, what is a memory that springs to mind for you about your own experience with stage fright or something akin to it?  

Laura: My earliest memory of having stage fright is one that is a little bit in my memory and a little bit from being told the story. 

I started doing musical theatre when I was five, and [00:01:00] I did all the rehearsals, and then when it got to the show, I refused to go on stage. I just wouldn't get up there and do it. I do have a slight memory of not wanting to do it, but there is photo evidence of me standing in a doorway and being shoved to go on stage and do it. 

Alexa: Aw. 

Laura: Um, so that's, that's my earliest memory.  

Alexa: I remember the first ship contract I had. We had an Elton John show, and for me, it hadn't gone well in rehearsals from the very beginning. 

And so whenever I had to perform that show, I would stand back to back with one of my castmates, my lovely friend Rachael, and I would hold on to her coattails 'cause we had these lovely leopard print ... And mine was orange, blazing orange coat, and I would hold onto her one of purple and squeeze and squeeze as the stage opened to reveal us. 

And then she'd have to walk on and abandon me and do her thing. [00:02:00] And then I had- just had to turn with confidence and do my bit. And yeah, I ha- hated that show. 

And also, something else has come to mind. I have a recurring dream where I'm in a show of Peter Pan, and I'm about to make my entrance. I don't even know who I'm playing, and I can't remember any of my words. And I did look it up, and I take these things with quite a large pinch of salt, but apparently it's an anxiety dream, and it suggests things like fear of judgement, imposter syndrome, and internal pressure. 

Laura: Oh, funny that.  

Alexa: So that's a lovely, peaceful night's sleep. 

 What actually is stage fright, and is it different from music performance anxiety?  

Laura: I think they're one in the same because the, the activation is the same in your body. When you get stage fright, it's nervous. Music Performance Anxiety is the more clinical, academic term for what we might [00:03:00] term stage fright, and it's that feeling in your body that you go, "Oh, I don't like this very much." 

The adrenaline surge, the wanting to, to stay and fight, everything clenches up or the wanting to run away and you're getting ready to leave. It's the same activation as when you're excited. You get the same surge of adrenaline. "Oh, that's really exciting. I'm gonna do the thing." And it, it's this nervous system state where your body either thinks this is the best thing ever or this is the most terrifying thing ever, and I need to be ready to do something about it. 

Alexa: How can we tell if it's excitement or nerves?  

Laura: You can't. You have to interpret it either way. 

Alexa: So if you're literally filling your pants, you could be like, "I'm so excited about this thing."  

Laura: You, you can try. it's about learning how to interpret it and bringing into context all of the things and why you might be excited or why you might be more scared of the thing. 

Because we go on stage because we like it. We [00:04:00] enjoy ourselves when we get there, and it's these internal narratives that give us the pressure that tends to cause the stage fright or the music performance anxiety. I would prefer to use stage fright because I think that's a, a more colloquial term as opposed to the very academic wording.  

Alexa: Can we just touch upon that? Because it, it seems somewhat of a juxtaposition, doesn't it, on the surface to say, "I absolutely love performing. I really want to do this," to then have that feeling of, "I feel it's gonna harm me in some way," or, "I'm really frightened to do it." So why might we have these feelings then when actually deep down it's really what we want to do? 

Laura: It's all about being vulnerable, and it's about being vulnerable with people you don't know. Normally, when you walk past somebody in a street or you encounter somebody in a shop, it's very surface level. When you are on stage, regardless if you're playing a character or not, you are giving parts of yourself to this role, to this stage. 

And as you are being [00:05:00] vulnerable, it brings up these, am I gonna be accepted? Is everybody gonna like what I do? Do I even like what I do? Am I gonna crack on this high note? And all these doubts and thought processes come through, which then can start to cause that activation of, I'm a little bit nervous for this. What if this doesn't go the way I want it to? What if I get off stage and somebody says, "I hated that. Can you never do that again, please?"  

Even thinking about that, we're, we're both like, "Oh, I don't think I want that to happen, thank you." But as singers, as teachers, as performers, we do it because we enjoy what we do. 

We like... Well, I'm gonna speak for myself. We like the rush, we like the adrenaline rush. We like to stand on stage and show somebody what we've done. We've learned all this stuff. We've worked really hard on our craft, and now it's time to show off. But that, again, does come with that side dish of, is everybody gonna like this? 

Alexa: This fight, flight, or freeze response is that [00:06:00] evolutionary survival mechanism which makes total sense as an early human in, like, Stone Age times, where they're hunting or being hunted. But why do you think that over time this anxiety to public performance or public speaking hasn't evolved further and sort of become less stress-provoking? 

Laura: I think we first need to look at what the fight or flight is and this activation. We've talked about what it actually is, but there are five different types. You have fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and faint. And these five things are, again, linked right the way back to this evolutionary state of, yes, if we're confronted with a tiger, one of those things is going to save us. 

We're gonna fight it, and it's gonna die. We're gonna run away, and it's not gonna find us. We'll faint, so we play dead. We fawn and we say, "Oh, no, tiger, please don't eat me. You're a nice little cat. Let me stroke you." If we [00:07:00] freeze, it's not gonna see us. We- we're not then predatory because we're frozen and we're not moving. 

So in terms of a saber-toothed tiger coming at us, that works. But if we take that and put it into a societal state, we as humans are built to live in a society. We are built to live in community. It's very difficult for us to live independently without having any other humans in our lives. And we can translate this from being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger to, "Am I gonna be able to live in this community? 

Is this community going to accept me for who I am and what I do?" In our case, if we're talking about stage fright and performance anxiety, when we stand up and speak our truth and share our vulnerability, there are people that will like it, and there are people that won't. And if we go right the way back again, if they didn't like you, there was a very big risk of being cast out of that society and you having to find a new one or build a life on your own without company. 

[00:08:00] And this is where I think we haven't evolved as humans because we are still in that state. Like, if I sing for you right now and like, "Oh, what's she gonna think of what I'm gonna do? Is she going to like it? Am I gonna do the things that I should be doing? What's gonna happen to my voice?" But I also know that as a voice colleague, as a teacher, as a performer, as a singer, you're also probably gonna like what I do, and it's that juxtaposition of, are you gonna like this? Are you gonna accept me? 

I don't know how you would react to that, and that is the problem here. I don't know how you're gonna react.  

Alexa: Is it actually useful to say to a singer, "I'm not judging you. Don't worry, I'm not going to think anything bad"? Like, is, is that actually helpful to settle their nerves? 

Laura: I think it can be for some people. I think you have to judge the person's character. If they're somebody that needs that reassurance of this is a safe space, I am not gonna say X, Y, or Z, I just wanna hear what you do, then yeah, I think that would be helpful. But for some people, [00:09:00] they don't want you to know that they're nervous. 

So the harder they mask, the less useful that is gonna be.  

Alexa: I'd also just like to add another one to the, that list of five, but I think it kind of sort of blankets everything. So it would be fight, flight, freeze, fawn, faint, fuck.  

Laura: I love that. I am gonna keep that. Yes, definitely. Absolutely. Combination of everything. 

Alexa: Yeah, the five fucks. Maybe not to be taken into a professional setting, but you know. 

In your experience, what are some of the more obvious signs of stage fright, and what might be the things we can pick up on in the people who aren't being particularly as open with it?  

Laura: Yeah, okay, this is a really, really interesting question, because if you can, or if you are pretty good at reading people, [00:10:00] it tends to become quite obvious when you know what you're looking for. 

So immediately, when I have students in, or even long-term students, I'm looking at their body language. Are they walking in with their head up? Are they giving me a big smile and saying, "Hi, how are you?" Or are they walking in a bit like this, and they've got their arms crossed, and they're kind of dragging their feet? 

That would signal to me that there's something going on. And then if we get into the session, and their whole body language is closed off, they've got their arms folded, they're like this, they don't want to open up, even if the top of their body is open, but their legs are crossed, that's still another sign that they're not comfortable in what we're doing. 

The other thing that I have noticed quite a lot is shallow breathing. The breathing gets more shallow the more nervous you get. And sweaty hands, actually. Lots of people have sweaty hands, and they sort of wipe their hands on their trousers as they go. Or again, I've some, I have some people that have a physical shake before they can start singing, just to get the energy moving. 

They're the [00:11:00] main things that I would see, but the other thing that I would normally take on board is what they tell me and how they tell me it.  

Alexa: Like what?  

Laura: Like "I've learned this song, but I can't do it with a karaoke track." "I've learned this song, but I'm really nervous to do it in front of you," which is a very outright statement of, "I am nervous," right? 

Or, "Can we use this instead?" "Can we do this other song?" "Oh, I can't do this bit." Even if it's not a full-on stage fright or performance anxiety state, there is a little bit of something that is giving them this nervous feeling. And interpreting how they say it with, "Oh, I can't, I can't really do that," or, " I, I don't, I don't really want to," as opposed to, "I can't really do that, but I'm going to do it anyway." 

Alexa: And what about these people who are masking with, they're coming in with that big smile, they're seemingly very open, but you're detecting something isn't quite as it seems?  

Laura: Yeah. [00:12:00] Mostly that will come from eye contact. If they can't make eye contact with me, there is something going on. Now, we do have to say here that a lot of neurodivergent people don't make eye contact in the studio, especially on a one-to-one. 

And if you don't know that in advance, it may then cloud the judgment of is this person nervous? Is this part of the neurodivergence that I don't know about? But for people that I do know that would normally make eye contact with me, I know that there's a problem there.  

Alexa: And do you then go forth and address it directly, or will you trick them? 

Laura: That's a great question. Probably both in different ways. I do tend to temper my, my voice and my body language to be more open, to invite them to be more open, to make the space feel different to give them the opportunity to open up to me, and to themselves as well. Because sometimes if you, if you hide it, if you mask it, you're masking it from yourself as well as the outside world. 

Alexa: [00:13:00] Sometimes you hear people say, "You know, having some nerves can be helpful," or, "It's good to have a little bit of something bubbling underneath. It means you care." What response do you have to that?  

Laura: Do, do you want the PC response- ... or the not PC response? 

Alexa: I think maybe you've learned that I don't mind either. 

Laura: I, I think that I would probably say that's a load of crap, because some people can perform without an ounce of activation, and some people need the activation to perform. So by activation, I mean that feeling of I'm going to do the thing. I'm really excited/nervous to do the thing. 

And this some nerves means you care. Well, actually no, some nerves might mean that you're not prepared for this. It might mean that you don't know your material. It may mean that you haven't been in this situation before, so you don't know what to expect. There is [00:14:00] something unknown that is causing you a problem, big or small. So yes, yes and no. 

I never use that phrase. I don't like it. I think it's very reductionist, and I don't identify with that phrase at all as something that is useful.  

Alexa: And also, you said the word activation there. Why do you use that instead of the word nerves?  

Laura: Because my whole ethos is about turning nerves into something that's useful for you. 

You can interpret nerves as, as I said before, as nerves or excitement. Making the leap from one to the other is very big. So I don't like to call it nerves because if I say, "Hey, you're nervous," you'll go, "Oh, yeah, actually I am, and that, that's made me more nervous." But if you say, "Oh, you look a bit activated," or, "I can feel that you're a bit activated," they'll be like, "Well, yeah." 

It's less about labelling and more about naming.  

Alexa: In any data or research or anecdotal evidence that you have, is there anything to [00:15:00] suggest that one person might be a little bit more susceptible to stage fright compared to another one?  

Laura: I think that's a definite possibility. Anecdotally, yes. 

I don't have particular studies in the back of my head that I can roll out right now. But anecdotally, yes, I could have two people that know each other in a lesson having a joint lesson one is more nervous than the other because their life experience is different. 

Alexa: You also have something really interesting on one of your blogs, and I think it was an analogy that came from one of your own mentors, Dave Cottrell. 

Is that right?  

Laura: Yes.  

Alexa: And you describe the kettle or the saucepan of water boiling over. So could it be that somebody's had a really stressful day at school and, and therefore their activation levels are therefore just higher in general? But it might not be that they have a general issue or challenge with stage fright. 

It's just circumstantial?  

Laura: Yeah. This is where the boiling point comes in. I see this a lot with teenagers and [00:16:00] with people who are parents a lot actually, and sometimes with teachers as well, like school teachers. You've had a really stressful day, so your stress tolerance is lower. So you come in for a lesson, and I'm asking you to do things that you're not super comfortable with, but you know you want to because it's a stretch through the comfort zone, right, into that learning zone. 

But you, there's just no tolerance for any more stress, and then you start to snap, and then nerves get bigger because you feel like you can't handle any more activation. 

So yeah, this is where the boiling, I think it's a boiling pot analogy, I think I called it. And we would normally simmer at your own level of, "I'm really calm today." That might be 30%, that might be 50%. You add in somebody asking for something, and that might bring you up 10%. You add in a stressful day at work or at school, and that's gonna bring you up another 20%. I'm asking you to do more. That brings you up another 10%, and you've reached 100%. So then you're gonna start boiling over, and anything else I ask to put in there, you're [00:17:00] just not gonna be able to handle to the best of your ability because your nervous system's at capacity.  

Alexa: So what if we're meeting somebody who has had a really rubbish day and they've got things going on, we're aware of that, but we've got an hour lesson to fill, let's say this person is going on to do a performance in two weeks. How do we then approach that lesson in a way that's going to be progressive but not aggressive?  

Laura: Uh, yes. Uh, we need to address that in a way that we calm the person down first. 

You can't add more stress on top of stress and expect a good result at the end. Even if you say, "Hey, how are you?" And they go, "Ah, n-", and then start crying because you've asked them how they are, and nobody's asked them that today. So I would come in with this with some calming exercises first, depending on whether they need to calm down or get rid of the energy. 

So there would be two different ways I would approach that before I even [00:18:00] look at, what are we doing today? What we're gonna sing? Where do we need to go? What do you need?  

Alexa: And then once you've done that exercise, calming or dispelling the energy a bit, how do you then start to invite a little bit of that technical work or whatever you need to be looking at? 

Laura: Depending on the person and how I feel that they have settled, I might just dive straight in. I might do a longer SOVT to bring the breath into balance as well as the voice. I'm not gonna dive straight into, "This is your song, and we're gonna do this today." I might spend more time on a warm-up, a little bit more time on technique. 

I'm not gonna go, "We're gonna change everything," because that goes skyrocketing back up in the stress levels.  

Alexa: I learnt this from my friend Sarah Joyce as a teacher, and I've mentioned it on the podcast before about getting that gauger of where that singer's at when they come in by asking them how many happy tokens they have today, like out of 10. 

And it, it, you know, maybe it's not always, people can mask it. They can say, "Yeah, [00:19:00] I'm a 10," and you then still have to go hunting for the little nuances there. But when you know somebody's regular amount is like a seven, and then they come in and say they're a five, it kind of gives you that automatic, ah, you're not at your normal simmering point today. So then you can, you can change tactic or however you need to start that session. 

What is a piece of generic advice that you would like to squash about stage fright?  

Laura: Just practice more. I hate it with a burning passion because it doesn't work. And you can tell in my voice that I am so passionate about this. 

I, I hate it. It's one of the worst phrases you can absolutely tell anybody that has nerves or stage fright, because if they are at a point and they've put the work in and they're still nervous about doing it, practice isn't the problem. The situation becomes the problem, and that is an entirely different way of [00:20:00] addressing it than you just don't know what you're doing. 

Well, maybe you don't know what you're doing. You've never been in this situation before. Did you practice this situation? Why are we telling singers to just practice more when we don't know what the context is?  

Alexa: And is there anything else us singing teachers might say with the best of intentions but accidentally worsen stage fright? 

Laura: I think sometimes this can come down to sharing personal experiences. I would share mine if somebody asked me, but I wouldn't come straight out with, "Oh, I have stage fright too, and I've overcome it by using these things," because the things that work for me might not work for that person. 

And it then starts to reduce their capacity to hold what they feel, and it can start to introduce the shame cycle of, "Oh, well, mine's not as bad as yours, or mine's so much worse than yours. And if you can do it, why can't I do it?" And we get into this internal narrative. So I would say try not to share your own experiences unless you [00:21:00] are directly asked about it and if you think it will help the student. 

Because I could say when I was 14 I went on stage, I had a solo, it was amazing. I stood up and the band started, and I just blanked. I had nothing for the first two or three lines, and then it kicked back in again. If I have a 14-year-old who has the same fear, I'm not gonna tell them that I experienced it because that could then influence them to experience it in the same way. 

So I would just say, "Well, here's how we can help you get past this." 'Cause their problem is not about me. It's not my problem. It's their problem. 

Alexa: I was cast once as an old crone who had to wear this black garb and a gray wig with a bun, and the dress that I wore had a hump sewn into it, and I had to wear a prosthetic nose, and the makeup that we had made me look positively decomposed. It was a look.[00:22:00]  

And in rehearsals I was finding it difficult to let myself get to a point where I could completely embody that without feeling a sense of judgement or... I had inhibitions that were just there. 

How can we help singers to manage those situations where they are in rehearsals and their director needs to see the piece as it will be when they, they might be in a room that's really uninspiring, they might not be in full costume, they might not be able to relate themselves to that character? 

I mean, I quite liked being the old crone, to be fair. But in that moment, I was just like, "I can't, I can't bring myself to just let go." 

Laura: My process for this is gonna be building the character as soon as you know you are going to play it, and start bringing in some of the information that you might want to use as the character. 

How do they walk? How do they move? How do they stand? And start practicing [00:23:00] that in a room by yourself so you can start to get over the, the cringe level, especially for this type of character we're talking about, right? It's so outwith you as a person to play this crone that you have to step into an entirely different body to be able to do it. 

I would bring in, how do you walk? If you're gonna have a hump can you walk like you've got a hump? If you've got this prosthetic nose, can you get one from a joke shop and wear it to get yourself into this space? And in terms of not being able to do it in front of other people, it's the, a- hmm, the simple answer is get over yourself. 

Alexa: Yeah, right. 

Laura: Right. The slightly longer answer is, who else is in this situation? Who else is not able to do the thing? Can you be stupid together? Can you pull out really silly things out of the bag? Now, that's on a personal level. 

But if I was directing, I would get everybody to act silly. I [00:24:00] would bring in lots of different things to pull the cast or the characters into this space of, it's okay to not be myself right now. It's okay to embody this character. 

My favourite thing for that just now is Shake It Off by Taylor Swift. And you get everybody to dance around, shaking and doing really silly moves, and just getting the energy moving so everybody looks silly 'cause there's no audience at this point, right? 

You don't have a, you don't have a costume. You don't have makeup. You don't have an audience. It is just the cast and directing team. And getting into that space of, everybody's here, everybody's doing the same thing. I am not singling you out.  

Alexa: So when it's not a character and it's not like a, a caricature, let's say, like I described, and it really is a meaningful ballad and it's very personable, how would you go about it that way when it's, when it's not about silliness? 

Laura: Very similar, to be [00:25:00] fair. I work a lot with musical theatre and I have mostly a 90% musical theatre student base right now. So I can always find them something, some form of character to pull in the emotional side, to pull in the things that they might embody without it being so overwhelmingly big that we're not talking caricature. 

Say we're talking, She Used to Be Mine from Waitress. We're gonna find something in this person's life or life experience that they can relate to in terms of the emotion in the song. We're gonna bring a little bit of that in for them in terms of memory, and then we're gonna go into what we're doing as a song. 

And that helps some of the nerves, again, because you're relating to something you know about. Now, that works really well for teens and adults. When we're talking about kids, not quite so well. You have to bring in characters that they might know from the telly, from- they've watched on stage. 

You know if somebody's going off to play Little Cosette I've had two or three girls play that role. [00:26:00] They have never seen Les Mis because they're too young for it. We have to find something they can relate to so they can actually sing Castle on a Cloud without feeling like it's completely fake for them. 

Alexa: Let's say then that we are working with a singer or a, a person about to go on and do a presentation at a conference, and it's the week before. 

So they've still got quite a few days, and, you know, that's just brewing and brewing. What can we do then to help that person feel a little bit more settled or managed in the days to come?  

Laura: Yeah, this is where I would say know what you're gonna talk about. Or if you're gonna sit on a panel and be asked questions that you don't know, be prepared for that. 

This is not just practice more. This is do you have everything you need? Are you prepared? Are you gonna use cue cards? Are they colour-coordinated? How do you work best? Do you need a piece of paper with your prompts on? Do you need cards? Do you need them in different colours? [00:27:00] How can we best prepare you for doing what you're going to do? 

I like to also get them, especially this for the ladies, to get them, or people presenting as female, if you're gonna wear heels, I'm gonna get you in a lesson in your heels to stand and deliver what you're delivering. 

When you wear heels, your centre of gravity shifts. So then if you were feeling more grounded when you're wearing flats, you may not when you're wearing heels. So pulling all of these variables in so nothing is a surprise, so nothing is unknown. 

I would probably also give them some breathing exercises to do when you're laying in bed at 3:00 in the morning and you're overthinking, "What's gonna happen at this conference that I'm speaking at?" 

Alexa: So then we are at the day of the performance or the day of the speech, we're about to go on, just like you explained at the beginning, where there are pictures of you trying to be pushed onto the stage. What can we do right before we go on?  

Laura: Rewind it to about five [00:28:00] minutes before. 

So five minutes before, depending on how you are as a person, I'm either gonna tell you to put Taylor Swift on and literally shake it off, standing in the toilet, standing in a conference room by yourself in your hotel room, or even in your car. You can shake things when you're in your car, right? Or I'm gonna give you a breathing exercise to give you that calm, to give you that state of feeling so you know that you can stand up and walk onto that stage confidently. 

As we get through, and we're moving forward, and you're putting the mic on, and you're watching the other speaker, and everybody's clapping after the other speaker, and you're getting ready to go on, I am going to tell you to breathe. Breathing is the quickest way to settle your nervous system, to settle your brain, and to bring everything back into coherence. 

And the shallower your breath gets, the more nervous you get. They feed each other. So if you can pull your breath down even a little bit, it's gonna invite a little bit more calm and a little bit more confidence every time you manage to get a deeper breath in.  

Alexa: And how do you help people do that? [00:29:00] Like, breathing is something that we're doing all the time. So when people say, "Let's, let's put some breathing exercises in," what are we specifically aiming at?  

Laura: My two specific breathing exercises that I like to give, uh, one is called a coherence breath and one is called a box breath. 

So a coherence breath is going to be a very almost controlled breath to a specific count, where you're gonna breathe in for five counts and you're gonna breathe out for five counts. You're not gonna pause at the top or bottom. So I will walk you through it so everybody can have a go if you want to have a go. 

So you're gonna get rid of all your air first and breathe all the way out. And you're gonna breathe in for one, two, three, four, five. And then exhale, two, three, four, five. 

Do it again, in, two, three, four, five. Then out, two, three, four, [00:30:00] five. And then in, two, three, four, five. Then out, two, three, four, five. 

One more, in, two, three, four, five. And out, two, three, four, five. And just go back to normal breathing. 

Alexa: I need a nap.  

Laura: Yeah, exactly. This is, this is how it works. 

It brings your brain, your breath, and your heart into coherence. So you may have found that your heart rate slowed down. Even if you were calm anyway, your breathing will get slower and deeper the more you do it, and your brain starts to focus on the count as opposed to whatever feelings you're feeling. 

Now you have this five count, you can do it to your own pace. If I'm feeling really activated, I like to do it to my heartbeats, because as I breathe in for five heartbeats and then out again, I can feel my heart rate slowing the more I focus on my [00:31:00] breathing, and then the count gets slower and slower, and then I get to a slightly more relaxed state after I've done five rounds of it, essentially. 

Alexa: And box breathing we might know as singing teachers anyway. I, I see that as, like, a 360 expansion. Can you tell us how you see that, breathing in a box or box breathing?  

Laura: Box breathing is like coherence breathing on steroids. The breath hold invites more rest and relaxation because you can't be activated if you're holding your breath. 

Now, yes, we know some people when they do get activated, their breath goes really shallow, but it's very unusual for somebody to be nervous and go and stop breathing. You may stop for a second or two, but you're not actually gonna pause. When we put the pauses in, it gives your system a chance to go, "Oh, I'm gonna relax a little bit now." 

So box breathing I would do on a shorter count because you've got to do the breath holds on it. So you would breathe in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four, and [00:32:00] repeat four times or more, depending what you're gonna do with it. It just brings everything back into that rest relaxation state and helps you to switch that from, "I'm really nervous," to, "I'm a little bit more calm." 

Or, "I'm really nervous, I'm still feeling this activation, but I can now reinterpret this as excitement because I'm really happy doing the thing that I'm doing."  

Alexa: Let's say that you have entered stage in that state where you feel pretty calm, you feel ready. There's nothing that's sort of feeling unfamiliar. 

But halfway through the performance or the speech, you start to feel the nerves coming in randomly. How can we help ourselves or help singers to manage it in that moment when they're actually on stage performing as these feelings are bubbling?  

Laura: Depending where you are in the performance or in the speech, if you're doing public speaking, this is a great time to take a pause. 

It's okay to pause. Not everybody can [00:33:00] talk for 20 minutes without stopping, and it resets you and it resets your audience. So you can stop and take two, a breath, two or three even, to recentre yourself.  

If we're talking about performing and you're mid-song, that's where it gets a little bit more complicated because you're in this space of performance. And sometimes it is a little bit about fake it till you make it instead of, "I'm really good at doing this," depending where you are in your journey with this, you can start to think differently. I might crack here, but that's okay. 

Alexa: I think it was back in March that Jessie J put up a post on her Instagram with the caption of, "Watch me work through a panic on stage." 

I think that's really brave, but also so useful for somebody who is out there, inspiring young singers to know how it can be worked through in the moment.  

Laura: Yeah, I've, I haven't seen it, so I don't know what she did to get herself through that. 

I believe it was Adele that did this [00:34:00] previously. She started a song, was not happy with how it started, and she wa- she knew she wouldn't be able to finish it in the way she wanted, so she stopped everything and had them restart it.  

I mean, we are, we are talking about big name singers here. That's not always possible for, other performers that maybe aren't quite so well known, or you're in the middle of a show, or, you know, wherever you are. Depending on the situation, if you're dancing as well as singing, then you, you may want to breathe a little bit. If you have the opportunity to pause and to take a deeper breath, do it because this, again, this deeper breath is what's gonna help your nervous system settle a little bit more. 

If you're mid-performance and you are walking around as part of the ensemble or your character doesn't have any lines or song right now, again, the breathing or grounding yourself as well, that's another really useful tool for a singer to have. The simplest way to explain that is to have your, when your feet are flat on the floor, to imagine roots growing out [00:35:00] of your feet and anchoring yourself through the stage, through the floor, right into the earth. 

And that can really help to ground somebody from feeling like they're floating up here with all this stress to bringing it all down and, and pulling themselves back into their body.  

Alexa: I can't remember if, if somebody said it to me or I was talking to someone or I read it somewhere, but I came across something at some point which said, "If you're feeling that in the moment, is to imagine yourself drawing an outline of your big toe," or thinking of something completely random, like how does your heel feel or your ankle? What does that look like in your sock or whatever? Because it's sort of taking it away from what else is going on. But, but not very helpful for people who don't like feet.  

Laura: Well, yeah, this is the other thing, isn't it? If you are feeling this and you're performing and you feel like you're having an out-of-body experience, or you're disassociating, I think that's the clinical term, bringing yourself back to how do my feet feel in my shoes? How does my dress feel on [00:36:00] my body? Can I feel the mic in my hands? Bringing yourself back to something that is completely physical brings you back into your body. We would do maybe the five things. What can you see? What can you touch? What can you smell? What can you taste? What can you hear? 

That's great when you have stage fright or nerves or anxiety when you are not performing. When you're performing, you've gotta find the things that you can do. If you have castmates, if you have a band, can you look them in the eye? Can you look at them and they will know that you need reassurance, and they can give you that reassurance. It's okay to rely on other people as well as yourself when you're in these moments.  

Alexa: Earlier you mentioned about things after a performance. So if you've just done a performance and you weren't necessarily happy with it, or you're worried about how it settled with the audience, how can we help in those moments because the performance is done? 

Laura: Yeah, this is where I find a lot of people start overthinking, myself [00:37:00] included. 

Did I do a good job? Was that the right thing to do? Did I do all the things that I should have done? How are people gonna take this on board? And you can do various different things here. One of my things that I like is to brain dump into a journal, or also called free association journaling, where you either have the notes app on your phone and you type it out, or you have paper and pen, and get all the thoughts out onto the paper and let them exist on the paper until you're ready to go back and look at them without feeling like you are so activated. 

Because something that you think, "Oh my gosh, did I do a good job?" when you come straight off a stage, at, the next day you might think, "Actually yeah, I did a really great job of that," and it was just that emotion in the moment that caused you to have that doubt. 

The other thing I really like is talking to people afterwards, not for external validation, but for, "What do you think? Can you give me some feedback on what I've done?" And most people will give you either a compliment sandwich, so a good thing, something to work on, and [00:38:00] then another compliment, or they're gonna tell you that you did great. And you then can choose to believe them, because most people won't lie to you. If you ask the right people, they will tell you what they think if you're ready for it. 

I know I have two or three people that I can say, "What do you think?" And they'll tell me it straight. There are some people I will ask that and they'll go, "You did a great job. Well done," and then move on. But I will say nobody cares about your performance as much as you do And that's a hard truth to hear, but you are the person that cares the most about what you do. 

And the audience, other people may have 50% of that emotion of caring about what you've just done because, to be honest, most audiences have moved on by the time the show's finished. You've done your curtain call, the curtain's gone back down, they've gone off to the bar. They may even have left. They've gone off to get trains, and they've gone, "That was a really great show. I really enjoyed [00:39:00] that." And they've Instagrammed it, and then they're back on the way home and like, "Shall I have a cup of tea before I go to bed?" They're, they've moved on. 

I don't want to be cliche, but sometimes it's just not that deep. 

Alexa: And also, it's always a yes to a cup of tea before bed for me.  

Laura: I think that's, that's very true for most of us. Some people might prefer wine, but... 

Alexa: do you have any anecdotes that you could share where you've sort of implemented this with a singer and you've seen that it's had a really positive effect? 

Laura: Yeah. So I've just finished running a four-week musical theatre voice course and the four people on the course, we have finished it, last night, so just before we've actually finished up today. And we've been talking through lots of different things. We've looked at stage fright, we've looked at vocal technique, we've looked at performance style, we've looked at mic technique. We've looked at all the different things that you would probably, well, that you would need for a musical theatre performance. 

And we did little, or they did little performances for each other of one [00:40:00] song, and they gave each other feedback. And I could see all of the things that we've worked on, especially the stage fright things, come to fruition in their performances from last night. 

Even though we were in a room, there's five of us, we had a mic set up and, and a, and a speaker PA system, and they all stood up and they all sang. Four weeks ago, I could barely get them through half a song because they were so unsure about themselves and what they were doing. But they got up and did it and pulled in all of the information that we've been teaching. 

I know some of them were chatting outside of the group as well and bolstering each other and giving each other the support that they were looking for. And they were actually able to stand up last night and give really good performances of the of their chosen songs.  

Alexa: Aw, nice. Well done.  

Laura: Yeah, thanks. Well done to them too, to be fair. 

Alexa: Oh, absolutely. All round, well done. 

Other than the things that you have shared with us today in terms of [00:41:00] tools, have you got a favourite that you like to pull out the bag?  

Laura: That's a good question. Um, I will probably always return to different breathing techniques. 

I am also a breathwork teacher as well as a voice teacher, so bringing that in really fits my ethos and what I do. I also really like getting people into rooms with each other. If I have two students that I know are gonna be a little bit nervy, I'm gonna suggest that they come for a joint lesson, even if they don't know each other, and they can then perform for each other and start to build evidence and experience of performing for somebody else that they don't know, and then have each other give them feedback as well, so that they're not then guessing, "What does this person think of what I'm doing?" 

They're actually getting honest feedback, I don't like these empty, "Oh, you did really well. That was really good." No, I want you to be specific. What did you do well?  

Alexa: I'd love your opinion actually on something because [00:42:00] I've been thinking about like progressive ways to move somebody from feeling quite frightened to perform, particularly in front of family and friends, especially when they mean something to you. 

And so I've been thinking about like what if we were to say, "Well, why don't we voice record a verse and then we'll get Mum to listen to in her own time?" Or what about then we video record you doing it so you're not doing it live, and then can you sing like a verse? 

Like does that sort of progressive thing, like slowly exposing the singer to more live performance work?  

Laura: Yeah, I think there's two different tracks here. If you're going down the live performance track and then you've got the video performance track because they're both very different. So yes, I like the progressive overload essentially, that progressive movement from the comfort zone into the learning space without pushing into the panic zone. 

So I was very similar to you. I did not like practicing when I was younger. I hated it 'cause I knew people could hear me, and I knew that I wasn't sounding very good. [00:43:00] I was quite happy for them to come and watch a performance, but the practice I didn't like them hearing. 

So building somebody up in, in this day and age essentially, can you practice when nobody's in the house? Can you practice in your car? Can you then practice in the car when somebody else is in the car with you? And building on like that. When we bring in voice recording and, and, uh, video recording, I find that's an entirely different situation because they might actually want to sing and do like, you know, when we did as kids and you stand in the living room and you put a show on for your parents, or at least I used to, they, they might prefer that because it's live and it's in the moment and it's done and it's gone. A voice recording and a video recording last a lot longer because you are recording the moment. 

So I think it depends on the goal of the singer, but yes, this progressive, "Okay, this is really good. How can we make this more of a challenge for you? How can we then keep challenging you so that you get to the point of I am ready to go on this stage. I'm still [00:44:00] feeling this activation, but I know that I've done this before in whatever scenario that I've done it before in." 

Alexa: What's the rest of 2026 looking like for you, Laura?  

Laura: Uh, the rest of 2026 is looking quite busy for me at the moment. 

I've got two courses that I'm launching locally. We're gonna do belting course, and we're gonna do another musical theatre course. My studio is very busy right now, so I'll be teaching a lot of private lessons. And there'll be some breathwork in there too. I host a breathwork every month so there'll be a lot of different things coming up for me, I think.  

Alexa: Yeah. And you'll probably need that a bit yourself if you're like, "Oh, gosh, I've got one student and then another one. No time for a wee."  

Laura: We have to build that in. We have to build that into a schedule.  

Alexa: Yeah, we do. We do. Yeah. That is bathroom time, I'm afraid. 

Laura: And a cup of tea time too.  

Alexa: Oh, yeah. It's like sometimes I think I'm going on a train for a really long time. Am I gonna pack a book [00:45:00] or am I gonna pack a snack? And I always go for the book.  

Laura: Both.  

Alexa: Yeah. Get a bloody different bag. That's the answer. Get a bigger bag, love. 

Where can people, listeners and watchers of this podcast, where can they find out more about you and get in touch with their questions?  

Laura: Uh, you can find me on Instagram, it's @lauradumbleton, or you can find my website, which is, uh, lauradumbleton.co.uk. 

Alexa: Amazing. Thank you, Laura. It's been such a pleasure to chat with you today.  

Laura: Thank you. That was really fun. I enjoyed that.