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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 10/2/03
Time: 8:39:06 AM
Remote Name: 157.182.12.31
Hi Brent,
You describe a fairly common phenomenon: being more fluent in front of an audience while acting than while "being yourself" with friends and family.
I worked with one college student who stuttered--who also was a theatre major--with the same story as you. His *easiest* situation, stuttering-wise, was when he was on stage. Therapy obviously dealt with helping him control his stuttering in one-on-one situations.
I don't know of any research studies on this, although there may well be a few. My guess is that the majority of people who stutter would be less fluent while acting in front of a large group of people, but there would be a substantial minority who are more fluent. A few important confounding variable would no doubt come into play in this situation that would make research rather messy. The researcher would need to control such things as: number of people in the audience, likelihood of audience members responding or "talking back," degree of rehearsal of the lines, degree to which the actor "felt" the part, changes in fluency during the rehearsal/production process, changes in usual accent/voice quality/loudness/etc. during on-stage vs. normal conversation.
Thanks for the interesting question. I hope this helps.
Ken