Have you ever considered the role of the stage door? That strange portal upon which’s threshold character becomes actor or perhaps actor becomes public figure. Once you step through that door you are public property, no longer safe from everyone but those involved in your production. Usually actors enjoy that process, the opportunity to engage with fans. But what if you are unable to create that outward facing persona? What if on that particular night you are exhausted and would rather sleep in your dressing room than brave the hoards outside?

While it is nice sometimes to receive praise for what you have done, not everyone is a fan. Some would rather not engage with their audiences. Perhaps from the outside that looks haughty, but that is an unfair assumption. In my 15+ years in theatre I have met some of the most quiet and introverted creatives, whose work speaks for itself. Why should it correlate that a confident and skilled actor is also a confident and skilled socialiser? Why should they have to be? As a writer or artist, one is able to hide behind their work. There is no reason why the creative’s face should ever be known and that introversion suits a lot of them. However, we often forget this, forget that actors/performers are also creatives separate from their work. The actor is not the character. The actor’s paintbrush is their own body, which makes them the most exposed of all creatives. The relationship between audience and performance is an intricate one.

Once considering this perspective, does your idea of actors change? The stage is a safe space, the place where many actors feel most at home. But that does not mean to say that it is where they are most themselves. In fact, it is exactly there where they are furthest from themselves. But once they step off the boards the actor is themselves again and they do not necessarily want to engage with the world around them. Take it from an introvert, that does not make them haughty. Some of the best performers I know would rather slip off quietly than hear their audiences praise them, and that should be perfectly acceptable, shouldn’t it? As a reviewer, that may sound hypocritical of me. As someone who stood outside the stage door a matter of days ago to congratulate my friends, it may sound hypocritical. But I stand by my beliefs. For, at the end of the day, as someone said to me just the other day, the only opinion that matters during a run is the director’s.