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

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

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