Terror on Stage

In this exceptional book, unique in the international psychoanalytic literature, Stephen Aaron explores the theme of the terror that overwhelms actors on stage. He is very familiar with the subject, having himself been, for many years, a theatre director, psychoanalyst and professor at the renowned Juilliard School. Although his psychoanalytic approach leads him to explore the dark, childhood and repressed fears that are triggered, Stephen Aaron takes seriously into account the specific moment when stage fright manifests itself in the actor. He considers this to be a convergence of the existential anxieties he experienced as an adult, his anxieties regarding his competence in the art of acting, and the particularities of the role he is called upon to confront and embody. Stephen Aaron argues, and illustrates this with numerous examples, that stage fright is an essential crisis in an actor’s career (which is why it often occurs mid-career) which, once overcome, elevates their acting craft and self-awareness, and thus the art of living.