Too Much Arousal isn’t the problem…
Performing at the top of your game requires an Optimal Level of Arousal, an optimal level of attention, alertness, and energy (check out the last post for a refresher on this).
For this month, let's focus on when we overshoot into Too Much Arousal.
Why? Well, January kicks off audition and pilot season. For a lot of actors, that means racing to and from calls, days of callbacks, putting things on tape, rearranging personal schedules, learning big packets of sides…
It is a marathon and it begins this month. Oh and for my theater actors, this month also begins the return of in-person EPA’s and ECC’s after three years!
So what does this have to do with Too Much Arousal?
Too Much Arousal is where we’ve gone past our Optimal Level, past our ability to tolerate, and into too much energy, alertness, and attention. It’s a stress response where we mobilize either towards or away from the stressor. So if the audition is the stressor, this might look like “attacking” the material, or leaving the audition room/building as quickly as possible.
At auditions, how does too much energy, alertness, and attention show up for you?
In your thoughts? Emotions? Body?
For me, this is the audition where my heart and thoughts are racing, where I can’t slow down. Or I get laser focused, so much so that I completely forget the adjustment casting gives me. And forget about the holding room, someone asking what I’m singing immediately puts me edge…
Okay, hear me out: Too much arousal isn’t the problem.
It’s inconvenient. It’s uncomfortable. It’s exhausting. We might not like it. But having too much energy, attention, and alertness, isn’t the problem at auditions or in performance.
It’s not! Auditions are stressful. Performing is stressful. Not only are we biologically programmed to over-respond to stress (“better safe than sorry”), we actors are also trained to throw more energy and intensity into our performance (“raise the stakes”). And, to add even more nuance, there are some auditions and performances where Too Much Arousal has helped us! Where this response helped us perform or even just helped us make it through.
Because of all this, Too Much Arousal is a response a lot of actors are very familiar with (in my last post I said “comfortable,” but anyone who’s been stuck in Too Much Arousal, knows that it does not feel comfortable in any way).
There’s nothing wrong with you if you find yourself there. It is a normal and natural response to demands of the job. There’s nothing wrong with you or with the response itself.
So if the problem isn’t Too Much Arousal, then what is the problem?
Well, it’s two-fold:
We get stuck in this response! This is due to past experience, adversity, stress, genetics, or even whether we missed breakfast that day. All those micro and macro factors combined can leave us stuck out in Too Much Arousal and make it harder for us to ground and reconnect to ourselves.
We’re constantly overshooting it! Now, it’s not our fault that we’ll respond with at a 10 when a 7 will do, we’re biologically built that way! But consistently over-responding is exhausting us. We have to figure out a way to reassess what level of arousal will help us in this situation, readjust, and reclaim that extra bit of energy fast.
With it being audition and pilot season, the pace of auditions, callbacks, sides, holding rooms, etc…we need a system of bouncing back into ourselves, grounding and reconnecting quickly and effectively. Otherwise, we are going to collapse and burn out by mid-February.
So how do you know when an increase in energy, attention and alertness is helping you?
What do you do when it gets to be Too Much?
And do you have effective tools and practices to help reconnect?
We talk about this and more in Making Auditions Less Stressful. Join me here for a Free Info Session.