‘Disarming’ Performance Anxiety: Re-engaging the joy of performing by becoming more resilient in our innate vulnerability
Tuesday 29th October 2024, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (London Time)
Dr Mark Seton's overview:
Performance anxiety is a complex and potentially confusing label often used to give meaning to a diverse range of bodily experiences and cognitive beliefs that inhibit our capacity to perform in an optimal manner. However, through my research and coaching on vulnerability and actor wellbeing, I have found that we can reduce the effects of performance anxiety when we choose to move consciously towards greater competency in technique, deeper connection with the audience and vulnerable pleasure in our craft.
In this workshop, I will offer practical, playful and holistic strategies to ‘dis-arm’ three factors of being human that can impact our capacity to perform: doubt, shame and trauma. Firstly, through an awareness of body data, body knowledge and body wisdom, we’ll identify energetic preferences in performers that may undermine performance potential. Secondly, we’ll explore playful ways to allow the body to give ‘voice’ to how it may hold tension and need to find release. Thirdly, we’ll invite both storytelling and playfulness to process moments of past shaming that still disempower us. Overall, I will guide us through three resilient vulnerability phases I have identified – presence, perception and play – that can give us all agency AND connection for optimal performing that brings us joy.
Dr Mark Seton
Dr Mark Seton is an Honorary Research Associate in the Discipline of Theatre and Performance, The University of Sydney and a lecturer in Excelsia University College’s School of Creative and Performing Arts, Australia. He was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2009 to conduct a study tour of actor training healthcare practices in the UK. Arising from this study, the Equity Foundation, in collaboration with the University of Sydney, initiated an internationally ground-breaking Actors’ Wellbeing Study (AWS) in 2013.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
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Friday 10th July 2026
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