“What is in Your Heart?” A Scripted Transcription of an In-Role Post-Show Conversation

Abstract

Dialoguing with an audience following a theatre performance with actors remaining inrole is a practice that has generally been limited to the area of theatre in education. This study is interested in investigating how this technique might usefully be transferred into applied theatre practice. In the resulting experiment, post-show conversations during the tour of No Particular Place to Go were split into two parts; the first ten minutes were spent speaking with the actors in-role, and the second ten minutes were spent speaking to the actors themselves. These dialogues were audio-recorded and transcribed. The composite script generated from these transcripts suggests audience members may take greater personal risks and disclose more personal responses to the play when engaged with characters in the world of a play than with the actors out of role.