How to Act in the Round and on a Thrust Stage

The first rehearsal on the real floor. There’s tape on the ground, chairs on every side, and the director isn’t sitting in row F. She’s walking slowly around the outside of the playing space, stopping every few steps, looking at the scene from a new seat. You turn to face your partner and realize that half the room is now looking at the back of your head.

Everything you learned about cheating out assumed the audience sat on one side. On a thrust stage they sit on three, and in the round they sit on all four. There’s no single front to open up to, and no upstage wall to hide against.

The short version: agree on a new map of the stage, stop trying to face everyone, stand on diagonals, keep moving with a reason, turn your big moments so they travel around the house, look at your partner instead of the faces behind them, and send your voice to the far side when you turn away. Below are the details, then drills to try in a rehearsal room.

Know which stage you’re on, and learn its map

A thrust stage pushes out into the audience, with seats on three sides and a back wall behind the actors. The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis has made one its hallmark since it opened in 1963, and a PBS documentary on its history describes that stage as designed to show off the actors and their costumes, not the sets. In the round, the audience surrounds the stage completely, and actors often enter through the aisles or tunnels under the seats, called vomitories or “voms.”

The difference matters to you. On a thrust there’s still a back wall, so one direction is safe to face for a moment. In the round, there isn’t one.

Either way, the proscenium grid stops working, because “downstage” no longer means one thing. Craig Mason, writing for the drama-teacher site Theatrefolk about a summer show he did in the round, says his company arbitrarily picked a spot and called it downstage, and it worked fine. On a freer show in the same space, everyone in the room, from actors to stage manager, invented their own system; his used a watch face.

A clock face is a common answer: twelve o’clock is one fixed point, and every position is a time. Whatever the room uses, write the key inside the cover of your script on day one. Our guide to stage directions covers the proscenium terms you’ll still hear on a thrust.

Stop trying to face everyone: stand on the diagonal

The first instinct of a proscenium-trained actor is to stand beside a partner and angle both bodies slightly toward an imaginary front. On a thrust or in the round, that flat line leaves part of the house looking at one of you through the other. In Mason’s words, wherever you stand, your back is always to someone. Accept that, then use it.

The fix is the diagonal. Scott Wright, an actor with Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company, wrote about unlearning the proscenium habit of standing in horizontal lines on a thrust. He found that standing on diagonal lines let most spectators see both him and his scene partner. One position he describes: in a downstage corner, looking diagonally up toward a partner.

A diagonal works because it gives each side of the house a different picture. One section sees your face and your partner’s back, the opposite section sees the reverse, and the sides see both profiles.

Act with your back

Wright also describes a note from his director that puzzled him at first: don’t worry about facing upstage, and act with your back, and the backs of your heads. What he worked out was that an audience behind you still sees your gestures, the energy in your posture, a little of your expression, and hears your voice. Your back isn’t blank.

So give it something to do. Let the shoulders take the hit when bad news lands. Let the breath show in your ribs. Turn your head a little toward your partner on the key word, so the people behind you get a cheek and a jaw instead of hair.

Keep moving, and give every move a reason

Even a good diagonal leaves someone with your back for too long if you plant there. Mason reports that one director he knows uses 20 seconds as a rule of thumb: you’re never in the same spot for longer than that. Long speeches move. In a two-hander, both of you move so everyone gets a turn at both faces.

That much movement can feel like pacing. In his companion post on acting in the round, Mason admits that walking in a circle through any line longer than a couple of sentences feels very artificial, and says you have to trust that it doesn’t look artificial to the audience. Watching other shows in the round helps.

It also looks less artificial when every move has a reason. Cross toward the person you’re trying to persuade. Turn away when you’ve been insulted. Step to the person you’re about to address before you address them. A move with a reason reads as behavior; a move without one reads as traffic. Our guide to remembering your blocking shows how to write each move and its reason next to the line where it happens.

There’s an upside, too. Mason points out that movement in the round can be more natural than on a proscenium, because you’re not cheating every move toward one angle. If you want to turn your back on someone, you can turn it fully.

Share the big moments: props, gestures, and the laugh

A small gesture that reads perfectly from the front of a proscenium house disappears for anyone behind you. Mason’s rule is that an important gesture, or the reveal of a prop, happens as you turn, so the whole house sees it. Hold the prop high and bring it around.

The same goes for a comic look. In that PBS documentary, one of the guests explains that the thrust makes a specific demand on a piece of comedy, a look or a gesture: you have to spread it around without looking like you’re spreading the joke around. The laugh then starts in one section and travels, and you have to keep yourself occupied while it moves.

Here’s a scene that puts both ideas to work. In the first act of The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon has Jack’s cigarette case and has read the inscription inside it:

ALGERNON: Yes; but this isn’t your cigarette case. This cigarette case is a present from some one of the name of Cecily, and you said you didn’t know any one of that name.

JACK: Well, if you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt.

ALGERNON: Your aunt!

JACK: Yes. Charming old lady she is, too. Lives at Tunbridge Wells. Just give it back to me, Algy.

ALGERNON: [Retreating to back of sofa.] But why does she call herself little Cecily if she is your aunt and lives at Tunbridge Wells? [Reading.] ‘From little Cecily with her fondest love.’

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1 (Project Gutenberg text)

The stage directions already put the scene in motion. Algernon retreats behind the sofa, and a few lines later Jack follows Algernon round the room. If you’re playing Algernon, the case is the star of the scene, so lift it as you read the inscription and let it travel with you as you circle. If you’re Jack, the chase is your move: each time Algernon turns, you get a new section of the house.

On “Your aunt!” the laugh may start on one side. Don’t rush into “Charming old lady” before it reaches the other side. Keep Jack busy, reaching for the case, while it travels. You can read the whole play on our page for The Importance of Being Earnest.

Watch the furniture

Sitting is harder than it looks. Simon Higlett, who designed Chichester Festival Theatre’s first production in the round, wrote that furniture there had a maximum height of about 60cm. “Chair backs must be see-through,” he added. Mason adds that you can’t sit for long, because your back is to someone the whole time. If the director sits you down, expect to stand, shift, or turn the chair before long.

Where to look when you can see every face

On a proscenium stage the lights usually hide the house. On a thrust or in the round they often don’t. Isabel Monk O’Connor, a veteran Guthrie actor, told MPR News that on the thrust, 90 percent of the time, you can see every face. She called that closeness thrilling, because each audience makes each performance different, and added, “There’s nowhere to hide.”

Mason found the same in the round: when you look your scene partner in the eyes, you also see the audience in your peripheral vision. You’ll see someone loving the show, someone bored, someone unwrapping a candy. Mason calls it one of the hardest adjustments.

The answer is to keep your focus where the scene is. Look at your partner’s eyes, not past them at the row behind. If your eyes drift to a face in the house, bring them back to your partner, the way you’d bring your attention back in a conversation. Our guide on how to listen on stage helps here: an actor who is really listening has somewhere to look.

Asides and direct address are different. When you speak to the audience, you can actually see them, so share the line around the sections instead of locking onto one person. Pick a few people in different sections and give each one a thought.

Send your voice to the people behind you

When you turn to face your partner, part of the house loses your face. That makes your voice and your words work harder for them, because they can’t read your lips or your expression.

Don’t fix it by shouting. Keep the breath steady, finish the ends of your lines, and land the consonants, especially on the words that carry the meaning. On a long speech, aim one thought at the far side of the circle before you turn to the next section. Our guide to projecting your voice on stage has a warm-up that works for any configuration.

Ask a castmate to sit behind you during a run and tell you which lines they lost. Often it’s the last word of a line, said as you turn away.

Drills to try in a rehearsal room

You don’t need the real theater to practice. Put chairs on three or four sides of any room and try these:

1. The clock walk. Mark twelve o’clock with tape. Have someone call times while you move to each one without stopping. The map should be in your body before blocking starts.
2. Back to the room. Say a short speech with your back to a castmate. Ask what they understood from your shoulders, head, and voice alone. Then do it again and give your back more to say.
3. The 20-second rule. Run a speech and move to a new spot, with a new reason, at least every 20 seconds. Then cut the moves that don’t have a reason.
4. The prop turn. Reveal a letter, a ring, or a phone while turning through a half circle. Check from each side that everyone saw it.
5. Watch from every seat. Mason notes that his director watched rehearsals from different spots around the room. When you’re not in a scene, do the same, and notice who you’d lose from each seat.

Know the lines well enough to watch the room

All of this asks for spare attention: where your partner is, which section has had your back for too long, whether a laugh is still traveling. You won’t have any to spare if you’re hunting for the next line.

Offbook helps you get the words solid before you walk the circle. Upload your script and pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character, listen while you say your line, and play the next cue when you finish. Rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen, and listen to your scenes on your phone with your own lines left as silent gaps, so you can walk your blocking around the living room and fill each gap from memory. For a quick start on one speech, our free first-letter memorizer turns your lines into first-letter cues.

Questions actors ask

Is it bad to turn your back to the audience in the round?

No. It’s unavoidable, and audiences in the round expect it. What hurts a show is turning your back to the same section for a long time. Use diagonals, keep moving with a reason, and turn your head toward your partner on the important words.

What’s the difference between acting on a thrust and in the round?

A thrust has audience on three sides and a back wall, so one direction is safe to face for a moment, and some entrances come from that wall. In the round, the audience is on all sides, entrances often come through the aisles or voms, and there’s no safe direction at all. The techniques are the same; in the round you use them all the time.

Do I need to be louder in the round?

Not usually louder, but clearer. The bigger challenge in the round is often the people behind you, not the distance. Keep the breath steady, finish your line endings, and let your consonants land, especially as you turn away.

How do I write blocking when there’s no downstage?

Use whatever system the room agrees on, often a clock face or landmarks such as a named vom or aisle. Write the key inside your script cover, then note each move next to the word where it happens, the same way you would on any stage.