A QUT Creative Industries drama lecturer has landed a contract with a London publisher Routledge to write a book on the intoxicating atmosphere that exists between the stage and audience members and how star actors are creating an even more charged experience.
Dr Caroline Heim will travel to London, Paris, New York, Stuttgart and Sydney later this year to conduct interviews with internationally acclaimed stage and screen actors for Actors and Audiences: Conversations in Electric Air which will be published in 2018.
“I have always been enthralled by the magnetic electricity in the air as an audience member and as an actor,” said Dr Heim, a former professional stage actor in New York and winner of a Drama League Award.
“It is one of the reasons why live performances are still so popular. People have actually been capturing the air in bags at rock concerts and selling it on eBay. Despite the popularity of screens there is still a hunger for the live experience.
“It also explains the resurgence in Hollywood actors taking on stage roles. There is nothing quite like that live interaction and the experience of the theatre; of the audience, which changes and becomes even more charged in the proximity of celebrity.
“I will interview high-profile actors and audience members, asking them to describe the electricity and what makes a live performance such a heady experience. I want to document their views on what makes that spark happen.”
Dr Heim received a QUT Woman in Research grant to research and write her last book - Audience as Performer: The Changing Role of Theatre Audiences in the Twenty-First Century – which was published by Routledge in 2015 and will be the subject of a Brisbane Writer’s Festival panel discussion on audience participation in September.
QUT is part of a national collaborative group of five major Australian universities that form the ATN (Australian Technology Network of Universities).
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Amanda Weaver, QUT Media, 07 3138 1841, amanda.weaver@qut.edu.au
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