Knowing It and Doing It: What Returning to Performance Has Reminded Me About Teaching

I spend a lot of my professional life advising, teaching and mentoring other performers. I help singers navigate vocal challenges, prepare for performance, make choices, solve problems and deal with those inevitable moments when something that worked perfectly well in the practice room suddenly disappears under pressure.

I talk about preparation and confidence, the vulnerability of trying something new in front of a room full of people, what happens when a big acting choice starts to interfere with vocal efficiency, and how nerves and self-consciousness can begin to change the way we use our instrument.

These are things I understand deeply. And somewhere along the way, I may have forgotten something rather important: just because you understand these things, even if you teach them every day, doesn't mean they won't happen to you.

For the past few weeks, I've been back in the rehearsal room as the Witch in State Opera South Australia's Into the Woods. It's the first time in a number of years that I've stepped into a role of this size, and it has been humbling.

Not because I've discovered that everything I teach is wrong. Quite the opposite. I've been reminded how hard it actually is to do, to take the knowledge, preparation and technical skills you've developed and keep accessing them when you add character, music, staging, other performers, an unfamiliar room, expectation, pressure and your own very human desire to do well.

I've been reminded that knowing it and doing it are very different things and I think being reminded of that is going to make me a better teacher.

Knowing it and doing it

I underestimated how exposed I would feel stepping back into the performer’s shoes. Over the last several years, I’ve become very comfortable in my role as an educator. I trust my knowledge and experience, and people come to me to help them solve problems. Then suddenly I was the one standing in the middle of the room.

Underneath the enormous excitement of playing this extraordinary role was a feeling I hadn’t entirely anticipated: What if I’m not good enough? What if, after spending all these years teaching other people how to do this, I can’t do it myself?

There was a strange sense that I had to measure up to my own words.

Some of my own singing students were in the rehearsal room too. People accustomed to seeing me as their teacher were now watching me wrestle with a role, receive notes, experiment, adjust and work through some of the very things I talk to them about in lessons. That added another layer to the vulnerability I was already feeling and made me very aware of the expectations I was placing on myself.

Because surely if I teach this stuff, I should be able to do it?

Except that isn’t how performing works. Teaching something doesn’t make you immune to its challenges.

We are human instruments

As singers, our instrument isn’t something we pick up and play. We are the instrument, which means we bring everything with us - excitement, fear, self-consciousness, expectation, the desire to impress and the fear of getting it wrong.

I’d done a great deal of preparation at home in my own little studio. I knew the acoustic and I knew how my voice felt and sounded in that space. Then I walked into a large rehearsal room and suddenly I didn’t know how my voice lived there. The acoustic feedback was different and my perception of my own sound was different.

I was already feeling exposed, so it was very easy to respond by doing more - more sound, more effort, more acting, more everything. That became particularly apparent when we did our first studio run. We’d had two weeks working through scenes, music, character and staging, gradually putting all the pieces together. Then we ran the show, and I overshot almost everything.

I didn’t trust the work. I pushed the acting choices further, gave things more energy than they needed and tried to make sure everything landed. In doing so, some of the vocal choices I’d already established became harder to access.

The irony was not lost on me. There I was doing exactly the thing I spend so much time helping other singers recognise. Looking back, the problem wasn’t that I hadn’t prepared enough. It was that, when it mattered, I didn’t trust the preparation. Some part of me felt that because this was now a run, I had to produce something more. I had to prove I could do it. But the work was already there. I didn’t need to manufacture more of it. I needed to trust it.

Trust the preparation.

Sometimes it gets messy

Of course, trusting the preparation doesn't mean everything suddenly works. Sometimes an acting choice changes the vocal coordination. Sometimes we add more effort than we need. Sometimes we know exactly what we should be doing and still can't access it in that moment. I've experienced all of those things over the past few weeks.

Perhaps what I'm thinking about differently now is how we respond when that happens. It's very easy, particularly when we care deeply about doing good work, to interpret those moments as failure: I should be better than this. Why can't I do this? I know better.

But we're trying to make voice, body, music, text, character, emotion, other actors, a new space and our own expectations of ourselves all coexist. Of course it takes time, and of course we don't get it right every time. That negotiation is the process and perhaps we need to give ourselves a little more grace while we're in it.

Something else happened during those first couple of weeks that helped me realise this. We started talking, those little conversations that happen around the dinner table in the green room reminded me that I wasn't the only person walking into rehearsal carrying doubt.

Other performers were questioning themselves too. They were wondering whether they were getting it right, feeling vulnerable and having days where things weren't quite working. I even found myself chatting in the ABC Studios café with some State Theatre actors rehearsing next door, and they were doubting themselves too.

When you're inside those feelings, they can feel incredibly personal. Everyone else seems to be getting on with the job while you're having some private crisis of confidence and wondering whether you've somehow been found out.

But experience doesn't make us immune to vulnerability, and expertise doesn't make us immune to self-doubt. We're human beings trying to make something, and being human comes into the room with us.

Curiosity rather than judgement

Knowing that doesn't magically make self-doubt disappear, but perhaps it changes what happens next. Instead of meeting a difficult moment with Come on, you should be better than this, I'm trying to be more curious: Okay, that didn't work. What happened? What changed? What do I need? Can I trust the preparation a little more next time?

And then I try again.

That doesn't mean lowering the standard or letting myself off the hook. I still want to do excellent work. I still want to refine, question and improve, but self-compassion and high standards don't have to be opposites. This is also where knowledge still matters enormously. Knowledge doesn't mean I never get it wrong; it gives me somewhere to go when something isn't working. Instead of I can't sing this, I can ask What changed? That's a very different conversation.

Knowledge gives us the tools to understand the problem. Self-compassion gives us the space to solve it.

Back in the student’s shoes

Perhaps the greatest gift of this experience has been finding myself firmly back in the student’s shoes. Teaching can make complex things sound deceptively simple. Performing reminds me that they aren't.

This work is hard.

It takes knowledge, certainly, but it also takes strategies, skills, repetition, experience and, eventually, a bit of wisdom about how to navigate yourself through the difficult days. Sometimes we know exactly what we should do and still don't manage to do it. Sometimes the answer isn't to work harder or add more; sometimes it's to trust the work we've already done. Sometimes a difficult day doesn't mean anything more than we're still figuring it out - we're still rehearsing.

I don't think I've ever lacked empathy for the performers I teach, but I do think this experience has deepened it. When a student loses a technical adjustment once we add text, movement or emotion, I'll remember how hard it can be to hold onto all those pieces at once. When somebody knows what they want to do but can't quite access it yet, I'll remember that knowing and doing are different things. When somebody feels exposed trying something new in front of me, I'll remember what it felt like to stand in that rehearsal room myself. Not simply because I've studied it or because I teach it, but because I've felt it again.

This industry asks a lot of performers. None of it is particularly easy, and perhaps it isn't supposed to be. We learn, prepare, build skills and strategies, accumulate experience, get things wrong and try again. Hopefully, over time, we develop the wisdom to navigate all of it with a little more trust and a little more kindness towards ourselves.

There is something incredibly grounding about being reminded that I'm still a student of the very things I teach, and I'm very grateful to have been reminded..