Classical Gaslighting

Trust Fall, part two.

He’s right there when I turn around at the break, and we exchange smiles. I think how great it is to have a colleague who actually comes to observe rehearsal. He really cares. 

“Good day?”

“Yes. I mean, step by step, you know? But everybody’s so engaged.”

“Fantastic.” 

He claps a hand on my shoulder, looks away, looks back to meet my gaze. His hand is still there. He lowers his voice a little.

“How’s M doing?”

“Fine. Great, especially for his first time with the role.”

“Really.” His eyes get just a bit wider. “That’s good. Really good to hear.”

“Anything I should know?”

“Absolutely not.” He smiles. “I’m glad to hear it. Good news. Well, you workhorses keep at it, I’m going home. Dinner awaits!”

I watch him head out the door. I wonder why he asked about M. Am I missing something? 

---

All artists - visual, musical, literary, physical - work endless hours to build technique and hone their craft. So “excellence” is not a meaningless term to them. There are real, concrete ways in which their performance can be measured. And they must continually strive to improve and maintain those measurable skills. Those skills are not separate from their individual creative impulses: they are like highways, rivers, conduits through which those impulses can flow. 

And yet, that work, both individual and collective, is greater than the sum of those hard-won parts. The impact that artists have on audiences isn’t the simple result of talent plus work. There are so many other factors involved, many intangible. The minds and hearts of the audience have as much to do with this as the achievement of the performers. 

How do you measure which performances are the best? By ticket revenue or critical acclaim? Audience applause or tears? Swag purchases or Spotify follows? Obviously there’s no answer to that question. But ponder the complexity of this reality. In order to have a chance as a performer, there’s no choice but to work endlessly on measurable excellence. And yet the results of that work, audience engagement and professional achievement, are almost impossible to measure and explain. 

Put simply, opinion rules. It’s such a mindbend! Every day we deal with elements of our practice that are based in objective reality, but subjective reaction to what we offer is what determines our possibilities. Our mentors may tell us: turn inward, forge ahead, don’t read the reviews, stay true to your practice, trust your body and muscle memory, have confidence in your creative gifts. But how can we keep from spending significant energy on what everyone else thinks of us? It can feel like all the power to grow our careers resides outside of us, and that’s not really untrue. 

Shaping intertwined personal and professional narratives in order to sway the public is a part of any artist’s job. That’s always been true, from Robert and Clara Schumann keeping a daily “diary” that they knew would be read as part of their legacy, to modern social media accounts that combine performance clips, study tips, and glimpses of family life. This work is often incredibly inspiring. I find myself uplifted every day by colleagues who share their dreams, offer great advice, and shout out the achievements of others. It’s real and it’s calculated. The line between personal and purposeful can be pretty blurry.

This professional storytelling can also be weaponized. Then, discernment is even trickier. 

In Shakespeare’s play Othello, a great general wins over a woman with stories of his most dangerous battles. Later, he is taken apart psychologically by someone he considers an honest friend. The flimsiest evidence convinces him of his wife’s infidelity and his compatriot’s betrayal. How can this happen? 

I’d say that, in addition to his prowess and bravery, that general knows some other truths of his story. He knows about the times he got lucky, when the wind shifted or the reinforcements arrived. He knows when the other side made mistakes or when his soldiers made uncredited, inspired decisions. He knows that not everyone is happy to see him in his current position. He knows that not much needs to change in order for everything to come crashing down.

N.B: the actor playing Othello knows all the same things about his own career.  

When the trusted friend reluctantly points out the wife’s handkerchief in the hands of another soldier, Othello fills in the blanks with no prompting, the expected betrayal having arrived. He doesn’t even consider other possibilities before killing his wife. Of course, the handkerchief was a plant. And a whole cast of characters was involved, most without suspecting a thing. 

Years ago, leaving a performance of Verdi’s opera based on this same story, my husband turned to me and said, “A few more questions about that handkerchief and you wouldn’t have a show.”

The truth is: we’re all vulnerable.

First of all, every set of honed physical responses will degrade with time. Constant practice keeps us fresh, but it doesn’t keep us from aging, changing, shifting. A body that once read as youthful (in a certain culture, at a certain time) begins to express maturity. A sound once coded as powerful begins to sound risky. The razor edge of virtuosity begins to soften. Not all artists have the confidence, support, or opportunity to navigate these changes, to move into other personas, other repertoire. Especially in the highly gendered, deeply conservative world of opera, those other personas and repertoire don’t always exist. 

Add to this the facts of every human life. Stress with a spouse, worry over a child, a health scare, water in the basement, the recall on the car, the wreck on the freeway, the smoke from the wildfires, the anxiety all around - what threatens to make you trip over your text, forget when to walk stage left, let the pitch of a phrase sag southward, rob you of the 15 minutes in the practice room that will anchor your fingers and mind? 

Imagine a rehearsal room full of artists, each obsessed with their technique, their craft, their last good performance, and all the worries they have surrounding the next one. Theater folk refer to the beginning of a rehearsal process as “the first day of school” for good reason. We are wondering if the others will like us. We’re also wondering if the group leaders will have our back. 

Auditioning and casting are never the perfect equations some might imagine them to be. The people making those calls are also looking over their shoulders, especially in the US where there’s so little public support for the arts. A disappointing production can be a financial disaster for a company because in a season of relatively few major performances, each one has an unreasonably significant impact. So chances are good that the people in charge will be anxious about their decisions and any problems that might develop. And often, they are also trained artists, formed in the same highly critical, competitive, and paranoid culture as the people they’ve hired.

Sometimes, all this fear comes together in a place of compassion and support. It’s easier for this to happen when we have the luxury of time. Humans need time to shake off anxiety, mess up on the first try before fixing things, gain a little trust with their colleagues, and find how best to move forward together. Unfortunately, more time is usually not what we get: rehearsal periods have only gotten shorter in the last few decades. 

Even groups dedicated to supporting one another can experience difficulty when their processes coalesce around old-school hierarchies. When it’s not okay for members of the group to openly speak with the group leaders, rumors can have greater power, and performative behavior, especially around expressions of competency, enthusiasm, and obedience, can be encouraged or emphasized. Many industry leaders are intentionally modeling different behaviors, but change is slow - I write that on the basis of personal observation and many reports from across the industry over the last few months. 

Given the combination of high pressure and social insecurity baked into our personal and communal processes, it’s not hard to understand why artists are often reluctant to be forthcoming about the difficulties they face, leadership is often skittish about supporting those with difficulties, and cohorts therefore often do not function in an atmosphere of transparency and trust. Our industry struggles in these areas even when people have the best intentions. And, unfortunately, people don’t always have the best intentions. 

---

This text I got from a colleague could be from a few weeks or a few decades ago. 

“When there’s a problem, why do they talk to everyone else except the person involved? Why can’t we be honest with each other?”

Here’s a common scenario. Someone begins asking about one member of an ensemble. 

How do you think they’re doing? Good? Ah, okay. Great.

Is there a problem? Not that you’ve noticed. But in a room that values expertise - where everyone’s greatest fear is that they might not realize that they’re slipping - you may start listening differently. 

Have they made that little mistake before? Is that a change in their sound? 

What aren’t you noticing? Are you the only person who doesn’t notice? Maybe it’s your place to say something and maybe it’s not, but soon you realize you’re not alone in speculating. The room starts to get ready for trouble. And then the object of the whispers begins to really struggle. 

I knew they were struggling from the beginning. 

Weren’t they? 

Was the group dealing with a problem or causing one? 

When it’s over, and the artist has withdrawn, or been replaced, or white-knuckled it through the run, can anyone really remember how it all started? Who started it?

Fun fact: there’s an actual aria about this from an opera written in 1816. It’s called “La calunnia,” or “Slander.” In it, one man suggests to another that he get a romantic rival out of the way by damaging the man’s reputation, because it takes such little effort to make a big result:

“Slander is a little breath, a very gentle breeze that, unheard, subtly, lightly and sweetly begins to whisper…In the end it spills over and blows up, it spreads, it doubles and produces an explosion like a cannon shot…and the poor defamed guy, defeated and downtrodden, has the good fortune to just die.”

Oh, and the character who sings this is a music teacher. Rossini had our number two centuries ago. 

I’ve been mobbed like this. It just about brought me to my knees. 

I don’t mean that people didn’t like me or my work, or that there was conflict over decisions or procedures. All those uncomfortable things show up in the normal course of working life. I’ve had a very decent run in this business, with a lot of good fortune and strong support. But in one workplace, I faced a concerted, covert attempt to take apart my confidence and get me to leave. I had watched it happen to others many times, and I always stayed quiet to protect myself. It’s no surprise, then, that when it happened to me, no one came to my defense. Karma’s harsh. 

Consider the following: I’m a serious practitioner who made it a years-long daily practice to put aside my own reactions in order to consider outside feedback. I accepted the idea that I should constantly do so in order to keep my skills sharp, and continue to improve. I had evidence over many years that people don’t always know the ways in which they are falling short. So when people started dogging my work, I had to consider what they said seriously - I had to let it in. This is frightening under the most supportive circumstances, and dangerous when there are ill intentions afoot. It affected me deeply and shook my confidence hard; I couldn’t find a way to avoid that. 

Fortunately, I had plenty of professional activity outside of this particular workplace, and I had good support in life outside of work. Ultimately, it was to my advantage to consider criticism, even that offered in bad faith. I didn’t lose by analyzing my situation, re-evaluating my work, or reaching out for help. I came out stronger, eventually, but at no small psychic cost. 

Had I been less well established and supported, the damage might well have been much greater. I’ve seen budding artists stifled by this kind of treatment, and I’ve seen established artists wall themselves off from everyone to protect their psyches. All of us who work in such environments learn to deny what’s right in front of us, because we’re so trained to demonstrate obedience to authority, show that we’re okay, and prove that we’re ready to forge ahead and not be replaced. We may tell ourselves that this behavior is just par for the course in any industry (it’s not). We might feel proud or relieved if we can avoid being the target (this time). 

It doesn’t have to be this way. We might start with compassion for why these poor practices are so baked into our industry, and that might help us use our collective power to build each other up even in difficult situations. We can’t get in the practice room and do each other’s work, but we can act to keep the conduits of our rooms and stages clear so that each of us has the chance to do our best. I’ve seen that happen over and over again; positive action doesn’t tend to be hidden. 

What if we made it possible in our spaces to offer both support and criticism transparently, right out in the open, without fear of reprisal? 

We can’t be bulletproof. That’s impossible. None of us is perfect. But every single one of us is precious. So, same question as last week. What if we treated one another as though we were irreplaceable?

---

“Any notes, Maestra?” 

He asks every night. I wonder if I’ve been misreading his conscientiousness. Maybe something’s up.  

“You’re solid. Thanks for a good rehearsal.”

“Because you can tell me anything! I just want to do the best job I possibly can.”

“That’s great, M. See you tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

He does seem anxious. Maybe I should ask around. 

Thank goodness for that earlier conversation.

Nothing like a colleague who really wants to help.