Collective Consciousness

But it took Mr. Rylance’s appearing before and connecting with a live audience, and the “collective consciousness” it brought to bear, for his Olivia to come fully into being.

“I learnt so much wit, really, from the Globe audiences,” he said. “If you can make a circle, even in a proscenium theater, if you can get a circular energy going, so that all these people are involved with it and present, then there is something curious that happens with the imagination. And I swear, as a performer, you get ideas from the collective, from the audience, much as I expect a jazz musician, like Charlie Parker, did.”

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