They’re on the home straight. Thousands of school leavers, post-gappers and post-grads are heading for drama school or drama course in universities. All that tense worry about auditions, recalls and nail biting anxiety while awaiting that letter offering a coveted place (or not) are behind you. A level and other results are due next week but for many they won’t affect anything much. The place is in the bag.
BOOK REVIEW: Facing the Fear, by Bella Merlin
Stage fright – both the dread and the actuality of it – looms very large in the lives of many, if not most, actors. And occasionally it becomes headline news. Remember Stephen Fry and Cell Mates or, more recently, Lenny Henry in Educating Rita at Chichester last year? And it was probably stage fright that lay at the base of Laurence Fox’s recent angry outburst in The Patriotic Traitor at the Park Theatre. That’s the trouble. When something goes wrong for an actor, it’s very public. Hence the terror.