Research
RAD Arts affiliated research projects include:
Shaking in the Wings: Creating Drama Curriculum to Address Music Performance Anxiety
Researcher: Kara Flanagan
Funding Provided by Mitacs Accelerate Program
Funding Organization: RAD Research
Host organization: University of Victoria
The project goal is to investigate how curriculum derived from actor education can be effective as an educational intervention on how in educating musicians to mitigate music performance anxiety without the use of pharmaceutical and psychological interventions. This project consists of original research in a sub-field of music performance anxiety that is virtually non-existent (i.e., adapting acting education) and has the potential to solve a systemic issue that has a significant and negative impact on the health, wellbeing, and performance of most professional musicians.
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To understand the nature of this work, it is important to discuss music performance anxiety and the negative impacts it has on musicians. Performance anxiety is a subcategory of social anxiety. Music performance anxiety occurs when a performing musician experiences cognitive impairment, and disruptions to behaviour, motor control and/or physiological symptoms. These debilitating impacts interfere with the performer’s body, breathing, control of instrument, and causes stress including shaking, fainting, and nausea. Music performance anxiety often leads to career abandonment and the reliance on pharmaceuticals. In a survey, 98% of 447 professional musicians reported experiences of music performance anxiety (Beder, 2017). In the researcher’s past survey work, she has found little evidence of curriculum in British Columbia on how to manage music performance anxiety. Also, many studies focus on pharmaceutical and psychological intervention methods for students and musicians, rather than curriculum, and these methods require specialist knowledge to facilitate, beyond the scope for most post-secondary teachers.
This research project has a practical solution to this systemic issue: educational interventions using acting education. Acting, as a therapeutic technique, an art form, and an experience, can be transformative—it is a powerful technique that changes the performer into a character and changes the story into an inspiring narrative free of anxiety.
Beder, J. (2017). The 2015 musicians’ health survey results. Senza Sordino, 55(2). International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians. https://www.icsom.org/senzasordino/2017/06/ the-2015-musicians-health-survey-results/
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Shaking in the Wings: Creating a Drama-based Curriculum Derived from Actor Education to Address Music Performance Anxiety by Dr. Kara Flanagan
​Funder: Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
Host organization: University of Victoria
Dr. Flanagan investigated how curriculum derived from actor education can be effective in educating musicians. She developed and workshopped curriculum in a course at the University of Victoria with a group of 16 musicians and examined how this curriculum supported them. Most participants found that the curriculum was effective in mitigating their music performance anxiety and enhancing their performance delivery.
