Acting, Props, and Intimacy

Acting experience has been connected to the development of social skills and social emotional processes (Goldstein, 2009). This study investigates actors' feelings of closeness with scene partners and the role prop work plays in the development of interpersonal relationships and socioemotional understanding of others. For this study, pairs of strangers prepared a short performance of a script that required different degrees of pretense in how props were used. Subject pairs were randomly assigned to act out the scene with either the props referenced in the script, objects meant to replace the props, e.g., a banana for a telephone, or no props and instructed to use pantomime. Participants reported increased feelings of closeness, trust and empathic concern towards their partners across all prop conditions.