1st Edition

Forms of Emotion Human to Nonhuman in Drama, Theatre and Contemporary Performance

By Peta Tait Copyright 2022
    266 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    266 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Forms of Emotion analyses how drama, theatre and contemporary performance present emotion and its human and nonhuman diversity.

    This book explores the emotions, emotional feelings, mood, and affect, which make up a spectrum of ‘emotion’, to illuminate theatrical knowledge and practice and reflect the distinctions and debates in philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and other disciplines. This study asserts that specific forms of emotion are intentionally unified in drama, theatre, and performance to convey meaning, counteract separation and subversively champion emotional freedom. The book progressively shows that the dramatic and theatrical representation of the nonhuman reveals how human dominance is offset by emotional connection with birds, animals, and the natural environment.

    This book will be of great interest to students and researchers interested in the emotions and affect in dramatic literature, theatre studies, performance studies, psychology, and philosophy as well as artists working with emotionally expressive performance.

    List of Figures

    Acknowledgements

    Introduction

    Forms of Emotion

    Chapter Summaries

    Framing the Emotions, Emotional Feelings, Mood and Affect

    Performing Is Not Feeling that Emotion

    Chapter one: Affect Theory and Performance Intention

    Performance Distinctions

    Feeling Divided

    Affect Currents

    Contested Intentions

    Live Performance – In Theory

    Impersonal Affect and Personal Feeling

    Presence and Transmission

    Resistance

    Formless Affect and Aesthetic Form

    Chapter two: Judging Pity, Fear and Humanness

    Pity and Fear in Action

    Fear of Shame

    Opposition Shocks

    Wonder and Catharsis

    Social Obedience

    Mimetic Natures

    Towards Compassion

    Fear and Animalness

     

    Chapter three: Appraising Emotional Feeling

    Talk of Feeling

    Navigating Obstruction

    Substitute Passions

    Appraisal of Emotional Feeling

    Ugly Metaphor

    Inexplicable Feeling

    Cruel Structures of Colonized Feeling

    Chapter four: Performing Moods, Tears and Bodily Phenomena

    Theatrical Exchange

    Modernist Convergence

    Acting an Inner Self

    Imagined spaces of Longing and Happiness

    Doing Bodily Affect

    Performing Freedom

    Unifying Aesthetic Moods

    Chapter five: Political Belief and Social Cognition of Emotions

    Contesting Courage

    Acting Science and the Brain–Body

    Trauma’s Affect

    Unifying Empathy

    Theatre’s Emotional Economy

    Emotional Feeling as Belief

     

     

     

    Chapter six: En/Acting Diverse Emotional Freedoms

    Rule-breaking Paradox

    Love’s Force Fields

    Human Right to Emotional Feeling

    Politics of Fear

    Rage Against Postemotional Denial

    Theatrical Freedoms

    Chapter seven: Animals and Anthropocentric Emotionalism

    Comic Surrogates

    Tragic Symbols

    Sensory Body Insensitivity

    Performing Emotional Connections

    Chapter eight: Enveloping the Nonhuman: Contemporary Indigenous Performance

    Collaborating Traditions

    Continuities in Storytelling

    Bodily Perceiving Movement

    Unity in Bangarra’s Dark Emu

    Enveloping Affect and Emotional Movement

    Feeling Knowledge and Nonhuman Time

    Chapter nine: Prosodies of Affect and Emotional Climates

    Walking

    Weather Worlds

    Motivating

    Talking

    Breathing

    Conclusion: Sharing

    References

    Index

     

     

    Biography

    Peta Tait is Professor of Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University, Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.