Multimodal Acting and Performing

This chapter considers how one might understand the work of actors and performers with reference to ideas of multimodality. The actor is not a ‘medium’ in the way of the media types in which she performs (theatre, film, radio drama, etc.). Yet, the actor does have a communicative function. It is argued that the modes of communicative media operate in a contemporary field of modal expansion, interrelation and transposition and that an account of acting and performing that considers such a field amends the longstanding focus on the actor’s ‘intention’ and ‘presence’. Instead, such an account delineates a technical infrastructure that suggests new insights into the actor’s work. Is the actor’s mode of performing expressed, shaped or constrained by the shifting media modalities in which her or his work is conveyed? The chapter examines instances of performances in theatre, in film, in ‘reality trend’ events and online.