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If you’re an actor and you want the audience to be able to see and hear you, there are a number of stage conventions, or guidelines that can help.

Cheating Out: In real life, when you talk to somebody, you probably stand toe-to-to. But when you stand like that on stage, you have your back to a lot of people on the sides of the audience– and it’s hard for them to see you. So instead, on stage you “cheat out”--which just means you angle your body more toward the audience. You can look at the person you’re talking to, but you want to be open to the people watching so they can see more of your front instead of your back.

Staying Open: This term is just what it sounds like. You want your body turned toward the audience–to be open–as much as possible when you’re on stage. For example:
1) when you walk past someone on stage and turn back to talk to them, you want to turn so your face circles toward the audience instead of away.
2) If you point to something on the other side of the stage, you point with your upstage arm–which keeps you open–instead of with your downstage arm which closes you off.
3) When you kneel, try to kneel on your downstage knee which keeps you open, instead of your upstage knee which closes you off.
4) If you have to talk to someone who is upstage from you, you might need to “counter” upstage–which just means you move upstage to their level, so your back is not to the audience when you talk.

Which brings up another important point: When you’re performing, you not only want to be seen and heard, you also want your fellow actors to be seen and heard. This means you should always be aware of the body sizes and positions of the other actors around you. If you’re taller or larger, you’ll want to avoid standing directly downstage from them–which would hide them from the audience. You might need to consider moving to one side or even sitting.

If another actor is downstage from you and you need to talk, you can help them out by countering downstage– which means moving downstage so they won’t have to turn their backs to the audience to converse. In theater games like Scene Setting where the participants play pieces of scenery, each new actor entering the scene needs to be aware of how they will affect the stage picture. Will they hide someone else on stage? Will they force someone to turn their backs when they try to interact with them? For example, if the scene is a grocery store, and an actor wants to be a shelf in the store–standing downstage with his back to the audience and his arms out would be a poor choice since it would hide the actor’s face and everything upstage. Standing upstage facing the audience might seem like a better choice, but that position would force other actors to turn their backs when they interacted with the shelf. One of the best choices would be to stand at a diagonal– which would keep both the actor playing the shelf and the actors playing shoppers open when they interacted. Stage pictures are nearly always more interesting when there are a variety of levels–with actors in different body positions, e.g., standing, sitting, kneeling, lying prone, standing on a chair or a block etc. If you want to stand on a chair, move upstage so you won’t hide anyone, and if you want to lie down, move downstage so you won’t be hidden.

© 2023, Friends of the Groom Theater Company

Curtains Up Curriculum by Friends of the Groom Theater Co. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Curtains Up is a training program designed for young actors sponsored by Friends of the Groom Theater Company.
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