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Actors provoke horror in political philosophers: from Plato's flamboyant poet corrupting the youth of Athens, to the early Christian theologians equating theatricality with sodomy and satanic debauchery, all the way to the Enlightenment thinkers suspecting the licentious actors of working in secret to subvert the public fraternity. It seems that at the very heart of political philosophy there lies the figure of a perverted jester perpetually working to undermine the entire social order with his artful wiles. Is the political ideal of deliberative democracy permanently bedeviled by the phantasm of a cunning histrionic bogeyman turning our public debates into theatrical spectacles and inciting our reasonable citizens to degenerate into impassioned fools? Considering the various contemporary articulations of identity politics, inviting us to cast off our masks and to take pride in our authentic selves, could it be the case that, rather than ridding ourselves of this naive political fiction, we are merely reliving an extension of a two millennia old horror story of theatricality? Are we still subconsciously terrified of actors? Sign up to find out.