Briefly summarize the story of Euripides’s Medea. Identify the key elements of the story that make it compelling and for you to retell. What theory of emotion are you drawing on with this retelling?
Discuss why Aristotle contends that the most important element of theatre is the plot or story, which he argues can create a strong emotional response regardless of the theatre production or an actor’s emotional delivery in performance. Can you think of an experience that contradicts Aristotle in which a performer’s emotional expression was crucial to your understanding of what happened?
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night contrasts comic romantic scenarios that range from poetic words and falling in love at first sight to the promise of higher social status through marriage. Identify the ways in which romantic partnerships in Twelfth Night are complicated by the casting within historical and contemporary versions. Taking into account Hamlet’s advice against the display of excessive passion, discuss how love between characters in Twelfth Night might be enacted.
Consider some ways in which Stanislavski staged lifelike emotional expression in his 1898 production of The Seagull.
Brecht rejects the acting of emotional feeling and advocates techniques for physically showing ideas about the emotions. Discuss how emotional relationships in The Caucasian Chalk Circle are physically demonstrated. How does the play show the emotions of social and political hierarchies?
Discuss the variable approaches of leading theatre practitioners to the acting of emotions within theatrical performance.
