Getting upstaged

Like any parent, I thoroughly enjoy watching my child at her Annual Day performance in school. So there she was one day this week, up on the stage, crisscrossed by the strobes, illuminated by the spotlight, bits of her whiter, shinier, more illuminated than other bits of her.

Like any parent, I thoroughly enjoy watching my child at her Annual Day performance in school. So there she was one day this week, up on the stage, crisscrossed by the strobes, illuminated by the spotlight, bits of her whiter, shinier, more illuminated than other bits of her.

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And there we were, down in the darkness of the packed auditorium, a curious, applauding mass of eager-to-be-pleased parents looking up at her.

Perhaps it is the inversion of scale (she seems, up on the stage, huger and bigger than us down below). Perhaps it is a trick of the light. Perhaps it is the unfamiliarity of the clothes and the glittering faux jewellery and the hint of makeup.

Perhaps it is the stage smile that she has, and brings out with her dance steps when she walks out on to the stage every year. Perhaps it is the nature of a performance, of being on stage in front of an admiring audience.

I am not sure what it is, but when I see her there, she seems genuinely transformed. She seems unrecognisable from the daughter with whom we share our lives.

When they go to the Annual Day performances of their kids, they notice in their children the same sense of confidence and the same sense of holding their nerves (of feeling no nerves, rather) in front of a large audience.

Could it be something to do with their generation? I don’t know, of course. (But that could be because there is not one thing about which I can say with any degree of confidence that I do know something — or at least I do know enough to be going on with.) And I am hoping that you, dear reader, might, and will also care to enlighten me.

I used to feel awkward and anxious when on stage as a child. Now, when I enact the role of the writer as performing artist and appear before audiences (usually far smaller than the ones at my daughter’s Annual Day events), I still feel anxious and awkward.

Will they enjoy the excerpts? Will they get the jokes? Will they be able to hear at the back? It all boils down to one thing: Shall I be able to connect with my audience? Will these people like me?

For the children of my daughter’s generation, none of these seem to be relevant questions. It is as though the matter of their not being liked or being unable to communicate has never entered their heads.

But then, who is to say that self-doubt is such a bad thing? Can it be possible that devoid of self-doubt and self-deprecation, many of these children grow up to be cocky adolescents, full of themselves, husks of human beings who think they know about things when they know not, saying things with assurance when they really have nothing to say?

I can’t tell — as usual. Can you?