ABSTRACT
Drawing from in-depth interviews with 22 highly regarded professional actors from New York, London, Berlin, Paris and Stuttgart, this chapter considers the questions: Who is the actor while onstage and what is the actor’s perspective of the audience? The actor’s view from the stage is both visual (the audience they see) and relational (the audience they feel). The subjects under discussion are very much informed by the content of the interviews. The above-cited question “who are you onstage” prompted a large discussion of double consciousness. A further question “how do you feel onstage” elicited, among other feeling states, considerations of actor insecurity and their experience of stage fright. This chapter follows the actor’s journey from their security backstage to their insecurity onstage. Stage fright, in particular, is inextricably linked to an actor’s relationship with an audience. The actor’s presence, defined in terms of Gernot Böhme’s radiation of ekstases, and the actor’s encounter with the audience, emerge as important undercurrents that work to create electric air experiences for actors. Actor comments about their craft and their emotional and psychological conversations with audiences are discussed throughout the chapter.
