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Razzle dazzle ’em

by
September 2009, no. 314

Stage Presence by Jane Goodall

Routledge $65 pb, 223 pp

Razzle dazzle ’em

by
September 2009, no. 314

What is it that endows an actor or performer with stage presence? Jane Goodall introduces her exploration of this phenomenon with three disparate examples: Maria Callas commanding an audience of 20,000 at Epidauros, including a ten-year-old girl who would never forget the experience; Bob Dylan recalling the professional wrestler Gorgeous George making an entrance ‘in all his magnificent glory’; and a young Simon Callow, who, employed in the box office at the Old Vic, sneaks into the empty theatre and, setting foot on the stage and declaiming a few lines from Hamlet, is shocked by the ‘physical, or even psychical, power released, a small earthquake’.

Stage Presence

Stage Presence

by Jane Goodall

Routledge $65 pb, 223 pp

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