Clare Dunne

You basically get to use your big fat empathy muscle in a safe way.

You know, you're not getting battered by your, you know, the way sometimes you can be a very empathetic person, but get a bit burnt out.

As an actor, it's like you get to use that muscle to the nth degree in a safe environment and be this other person and experience what their world is like and what it must be like to be them stepping into their shoes.

Yeah.

And it's such a buzz, you know, and actually the trick is to completely step out of yourself and step into them.

Inevitably, you're the vessel.

So it's still, you know, you are the avatar, you are the thing.

Like, you know, there is elements of you in there, but you don't go in with an intention.

Well, I don't anyway, going like, I'm going to bring...

it's going to speak to aspects of yourself, whether you like it or not, because you're an actor playing a human.

You're a human playing a human.

You know, there'll be things that awaken in you as you do it.

But what it feels like is sort of like...

It's like surfing, like, you know what I mean?

It's like you just jump on the board and you go and every take you do might be a bit different.

But I'm always aiming to get to this place of such flow that I'm, you become a witness to yourself.

Like you kind of, you're witnessing yourself do something at the same time as be that person doing it.

Yeah.

Sometimes like there's something really technical that has to be done that is like you do have to be a very present and, you know, it's this very boring technical stuff that you have to match and hit sometimes and whatever.

And that happens in theatre as well with your voice and whatever it might be.