Customer Reviews

Performance Success : Performing Your Best Under Pressure (Theatre Arts)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

After spending my teens and twenties playing rock and roll, I began playing the cello at 29 and a decade later now play at a professional level. Along the way I have experienced plenty of psychological bruises in performance situations--which, thanks to this book, I learned were self-inflicted. "Performance Success" has provided me with plenty of "right-mind" ideas for dealing with performance anxiety, which I have tried out successfully on stage. If you've ever dealt with nerves before performances or auditions, this book is a must-read!

I believe strongly that the key to winning an audition lies in identifying the stresses that affect all musicians and performing artists, and learning how to become more comfortable with your abilities by accepting both your strenths and weaknesses. Winning an audition is a game, and whatever you can do to prepare yourself psychologically is a help. This book categorises the psychological activity that accompanies the lead up to an audition or performance, and allows you to set up a regime of positive thinking and relaxation that will inspire you to achieve more from each of your successive performances. I think it is an absolutely essential addition to any serious musician who really is determined to pursue their dreams. Too many of us engage in "doomsday thinking", and don't allow ourselves to find out what we could really achieve if we just gave ourselves a fighting chance. Obviously you don't have to use everything in the book, but as a professional violinist, i highly recommend it to any of my colleagues who have problems focusing on achieving a good performance in the meager ten munites that we often have to prove ourselves.

This is a very good book for performance artists, not only for musicians. The strategies and exercises for performing at your optimal under situations of high pressure are effective. Nonetheless, sometimes I thought they were oversimplified. The exercises explained in the book DO work, however, I thought that the lenght of time proposed in the book to practice and master them are unrealistic. I don't think that after practicing and performing without an intense focus for many years I could just make it happen in one week by just practicing it a couple of minutes a day. I know it takes (at least to myself) many months even a couple of years to train my mind to be in the "here and now" every single minute I play. What this book did for me was to create a new awareness of how should I approach my practice time, what kind of exercises to do to be better prepared for a big event and what kind of mental state I should be pursuing in the moments leading to and during performance.

This book empnasizes on how to manage your fear, stress, emotion and all situations that will not let you perform adequately. Mr.Greene gives some good examples on how to use your right side of the brain, the place where everybody would love to be. Also there is a series of questions that will let you know at what level of performace you are at that moment, and according to the score, he tells you how to improve on it. So all you people out there looking for a book on self control in front of an audience, this is it!

I'm giving this 5 stars for the sake of the author. I couldn't give this book an adequate summary. I just think every student and teacher needs it. Get it from your local library if you're doubtful.

I wish I could give the publisher 2 or 3 stars though. The author has written this book as if its a workbook. It has questionnaires and a lot of fill-in-the-blank exercises to help you figure out where you're at and what you need to work on. But the publisher has given us NO space to write unless you have micro handwriting, which I don't. I'd like this book a whole lot more if it was printed in a spiral binding with at least an inch of writing space to respond to the activities.

Don Greene is good at explaining how to utilize your "right brain" for performance purposes. It's harder to work through the material in book form, but if you can't get his CD or work with him personally, the book is great. I would definitely recommend it.