ABSTRACT
Performance makers manipulate by making use of the interconnection of human bodies, and our inability to resist the affects (and effects) of that interconnection. Works that lead us to these situations are ‘made’ by theatre practitioners, who, therefore, make us do the things we do, to the extent that they create situations that offer limited options. Their work is to make the spaces into which we step with our actions, but those notional spaces have definite qualities, which lead to more-or-less delimited action potentials, and also for delimited affects and relation potentials. The child that magically appears from under the rubbish pile immediately dashes into the middle of our group, grabbing hold of the tallest man among us. He seems to have been adopted as a parent, and the child seems to want protection from all of us. Kinaesthetic empathy is a theory of bodies that communicate with each other, feel each other’s movement, and echo it within themselves.
