catharsis

[thana ag]

I thought Aristotle referred to the catharsis  as to what the the audience experience in reaction to the performan ce on the stage,not to the actors' purging. 
Looks like you are having fun with the role! 
Bestest,
anath
From: ablatner at verizon.net
To: list at grouptalkweb.org
Subject: catharsis
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 09:23:00 -0500
CC: DRAMATHERAPYLST at LISTSERV.KSU.EDU










Contemplation on Catharsis
 
    For many years I didn't get 
Aristotle's theory of catharsis, but two ideas have come together to explain it 
so that maybe I do get it. 
          1. People live 
toned-down lives, operating in a range of civilized modulation, between extremes 
of emotions. Except for the few drama queens and histrionic character disorders, 
most folks don't indulge in rage, total humiliation (with all the nonverbal 
elements expressed in generous fullness), horror, fear, disgust, triumph, smarmy 
sarcasm (with open child-like face), deep mea-culpa guilt, and so forth. (I'm 
rehearsing for a play right now for our community theatre, my being in the role 
of LInus in the Broadway 1968 play, "You're a good man, Charlie Brown," --- a 
take-off on the Peanuts cartoon strips... and I go through a variety of 
emotions---and need to exaggerate them for the audience to appreciate.. and it's 
fun. And I realized that exaggerating emotions---that's the key---having a 
context where I can get panicked (if I'm away from my security blanket) or etc. 
--- well, I get into it. The behavior arouses the emotion. And afterwards 
there's a funny feeling of having emptied myself a little. 
 
       2. What feeds 
into this theory is another one: That people accumulate low to medium and often 
tiny doses of guilt, shame, annoyance, and other components of "burden" the way 
they accumulate dental plaque (see my paper 
on my website about what that's about and why we really need to floss every 
24 hours!). An experience of vivid emotion often helps to clear the system 
somewhat the way flossing breaks up the plaque, or closing down your computer 
every several days cleans off a lot of the residual memory that you didn't need 
and frees up the computer system to work better (did you know that?) . 

 
     3. So a measure of drama 
and catharsis, in addition to its functions (as I've written about them in the 
journal in 1985 and in Foundations of Psychodrama 4th ed 2000,) is simply a kind 
of stretching, workout, what a good exercise does if you've been sort of 
sedentary. 
 
    Thoughts? 
 
 
 
 
 
Adam Blatner, M.D.
   website: www.blatner.com/adam/   
 		 	   		  
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