Watch a psychologically realist production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and chart some of the changes in the emotional dynamics from when Nora tries to please Torvald at the beginning of the play to their exchanges about female shame and male honour towards the end.
Consider how the visual scale, proportions, and use of pantomime and melodrama in Mabou Mines’s nonrealistic Dollhouse reveal emotional imbalances and distortions in the characters’ relationships. Can you explain why this production suggests the theoretical separation of emotional feeling and affect?
Locate images of Stelarc’s live performance. Consider whether you respond bodily to viewing the artist’s body.
Discuss how Anna Deavere Smith’s unique physical and vocal mimicry of completely different personae in Fires in the Mirror invites understanding of opposing, emotionally inflected perspectives.
What are the narrative circumstances that evoke empathy for each character in Jane Harrison’s Stolen, a play about Australian Aboriginal children taken from their families?
Discuss why productions without psychological components, such as Cirque du Soleil’s Toruk, might invite affect, while Stolen elicits personal emotional feeling and empathy. Compare these with the effects created by productions that combine technological imagery and biographical narrative, such as those of Robert Lepage, which might arouse both physiological affect and emotional feeling.
