How Stress Impacts Creativity…

For as many times as a performer has felt gloriously connected and creatively alive while auditioning, we’ve also bombed, felt icky, gone on autopilot, or just haven’t felt anything at all. The auditions that feel great and not-so-great are both a valid part of the creative process.

But why do we feel so creative and connected one day, and out-to-lunch the next?

One reason is how we perceive and respond to stress. Let’s start with how we respond to stress.

“Stress is our body’s natural response to dealing with the demands of our environment.” -Lumos Transforms

And that could be our external environment (like who’s in the audition room that day) or our internal environment (did I hydrate before that dance call).  Our stress responses are normal, natural, and designed to protect us.

How do our stress responses show up in the body?

A whole lot of different ways and intensities! Our stress responses vary person to person, situation to situation. For how they show up specific to you, think of a “bad” audition, you know the one. What did that feel like?

At the highest intensity, stress can make us feel unsafe, overwhelmed, completely disconnected from the material, our thinking becomes binary (there only one way to do this side), we tune out the sound of the human voice, or even completely shut down…

How we respond to stress can impact our ability to connect with ourselves, the audience, our scene partners, or the story itself.

If we are locked in binary thinking, it’s really hard to read the side a different way. If we cannot hear the note a director gave us, it’s really hard to make an effective adjustment. If we cannot move from a spot on the floor, it’s really hard to express the story physically. 

And when we cannot connect as actors, this is where we have to rely on our training and preparation to get us through that stressful audition (which at those really stressful auditions, sometimes that worked for me, sometimes it didn’t).

Here’s the thing: Performing will always be stressful.

It is a physically, emotionally, and mentally demanding job. Not only because of the intense stories that we tell, but also just the business of acting. There will always be a certain amount of stress involved in this profession.

Which brings me to how we perceive stress:

Not all stress is “bad” for you.

Don’t believe me? Think about a great audition that you nailed. What did it feel like? Was someone intimidating in the room? Was there an amount of effort there? Were you scared but excited to perform the material?

Those great auditions might feel physically effortful or emotionally intense, but it’s in a “good” way, it’s in a way that is helping us connect. These are the auditions where the material itself feels fresh and new (even if we’ve done it 90+ times). Where we dive deeply and easily into the emotional life of the character. And any artistic risks or adjustments that we're given feel like a fun challenge, not an hindrance!

Whether we perceive stress as “good” or “bad” depends on a myriad of factors in our external and internal environments. From the macro, like a global pandemic, to the micro, like our genetics.

No matter the intensity of our stress response, we can actually retrain how we perceive and respond to stress. We can use tools to connect to curiosity and play (even just a little bit), and in the moment open up our creativity. Done over time with practice, this can give us more agency while stressed, deepen our relationship with our artistry, and help us feel more fully ourselves in the room.

Sign up for February’s Free Info Session to learn more about what this looks like in practice.