Emotion Line

This was an experiment in portraying the varying intensity of emotions and how to increase or decrease that intensity. For this exercise a group of six actors were arranged in a line facing the audience and were each number in sequence from 1 to 6. Starting at actor No.1, they were then each given a second number from 7 to 12.

They were then given a particular emotion to respond to (love, anger, etc.,) and their number indicated the level of intensity that they must attempt to portray.  Moving along the line, the actors had to portray the same emotion with two different levels of intensity.

This exercise was to explore some of Artaud’s ideas expressed in his ‘Theatre of Cruelty.’  When Artaud talks of cruelty, he does not mean it in a violent or physically harmful way but it is the idea that showing the audience a ‘truth’ that they might not want to see is cruel and could be emotionally painful.

“Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distance, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them.”

– Lee Jamieson, Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice, Greenwich Exchange, 2007, p.23