Actors and the Art of Performance

Susanne Valerie Granzer

Acting on stage is a mode of performing an action, in the context of which the bodily aspects implicitly at work in acting reveal their own significance and power. This event can actualize a wound incarnated in human beings, because the actor acts and does not act at the same time and hence the concept of being ‘the doer’ unmasks itself as being illusionary. One could call it a kind of ‘symbolic death’ (Mueller), an ‘anthropological mutation’ (Agamben)––an event of great interest because of its highly ethical call.The book “Actors and the Art of Performance. Under Exposure” opens with a cascade of contradictory motives for becoming an actor. But, if theatre is no longer understood as a theatre of representation, then what takes place on stage is a transformation at play with truth, in which ethics are realized by the aesthetic. Insofar the book summarizes the attempt to explore and...