as if they were real

"It came to you to be yourself. Your fellow-actors' courage failed; as if they had been caged with a pantheress, they crept along the wings and spoke what they had to, only not to irritate you. But you drew them forward, and you posed them and dealt with them as if they were real. Those limp doors, those simulated curtains, those objects that had no reverse side, drove you to protest. You felt how your heart intensified unceasingly toward an immense reality and, frightened, you tried once more to take people's gaze off you like long gossamer threads-: but now, in their fear of the worst, they were already breaking into applause: as though at the last moment to ward off something that would compel them to change their life."
-Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge