PLAYING SCARED

PLAYING SCARED explores the deepest of human fears, whether you call it stage fright, performance anxiety, or social phobia. The narrative relies on a double arc, moving between the personal and the universal, exploring the science of fear and Sara’s own quest to overcome it.

Journalist Sara Solovitch suffers from terrible stage fright—has since she was a child. A talented pianist, she was driven away from performance by her overwhelming anxiety. But now, as an adult, she’s tackling both the piano and her fear again, not just taking lessons, but preparing to perform. Along the way, she’s consulting biologists, evolutionary anthropologists, and neuroscientists, as well as performance coaches, psychologists and music teachers, in order to find the root causes and possible cures. Sara Solovitch is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Wired, and Outside, among others. She is a medical writer at Stanford University and a former health columnist for the San Jose Mercury News.