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Catharsis and the Actor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Ian Watson
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Abstract

‘Catharsis’ remains one of the several concepts employed by Aristotle in the Poetics whose precise meaning and implications have tantalized critics over the centuries. But all too often ‘catharsis’ has largely been discussed as a process which occurs to the audience of a tragedy: in this article, Ian Watson looks instead at the different forms it may take (and the differences in underlying intentions) so far as performers are concerned. He relates his ideas to forms of dramatic experience as discrete as psychodrama, and to schools of acting from Stanislavski to Grotowski.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 16 , November 1988 , pp. 306 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

Notes and References

1. Fergusson, Francis, ed., Aristotle's Poetics (New York: Hill and Wang, 1961), p. 61.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 34.

3. Ibid., p. 35.

4. Ibid., p. 78.

5. For a succinct description of psychodrama and its techniques see Yablonsky, Lewis, Psychodrama (New York: Basic Books, 1976).Google Scholar

6. Transported is a term used by Richard Schechner referring to a temporary change of consciousness in performers or spectators as they are caught up in the flow of a particular performance. See Schechner, Richard, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), p. 125–6.Google Scholar

7. For a good brief explanation of the Stanislavski system, see Magarshack, David, ‘Stanislavski’, The Theory of the Modern Stage, ed. Bentley, Eric (New York: Penguin Books, 1968).Google Scholar

8. Schechner, Richard, Environmental Theater (New York: Hawthorm Books, 1973), p. 166.Google Scholar

9. Some theorists refer to this duality in negative rather than positive terms. The ancient Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta anticipated Schechner, for example, in viewing the actor during performance as being neither himself nor not-not himself. See Gnoli, Raniero, The Aesthetic Experience According to Abhinavagupta (Rome: Serie Orientale Roma, Vol. XI), p. 80–1Google Scholar; and Schechner, Richard, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), p. 109–13.Google Scholar

10. David Magarshack, op. cit., p. 266.

11. Mitgang, Herbert, ‘When Actors Review the Audience’, New York Times, 21 04 1983, Sec. C, p. 15.Google Scholar

12. Grotowski's theatre changed its name several times during the 1960s, and moved to Wroclaw, Poland, in January 1965. In January 1966 the theatre gained official status as an institute and changed its name for the last time to Theatre Laboratory ‘13 Rows’ – Institute of Research into Acting Method. For the best histories of the theatre see Osinski, Zbigniew, Grotowski and His Laboratory (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1968)Google Scholar; and Osinski, Zbigniew and Burzynski, Tadeusz, Grotowski's Laboratory (Warsaw: Interpress, 1979).Google Scholar

13. Grotowski, Jerzy, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 210.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 128. In such a short paper it is impossible to examine these conditions in depth. For a more detailed explanation and the exercises developed to realize them, see Towards a Poor Theatre.

15. Grotowski, op. cit., p. 35.

16. Ibid., p. 133.

17. Ibid., p. 211–12.

18. Ibid., p. 38.

19. Ibid., p. 37–46.

20. Ibid., p. 46.

21. This distinction between aesthetic and therapeutic catharsis is somewhat simplistic, since their relationship could be better understood as a continuum rather than as that between two separate entities. For the sake of clarity in my analysis, however, I am comparing the extreme ends of this imaginary continuum rather than the grey area connecting them.