ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 focuses on the inextricable nature of the cognitive and emotional processes in the theatrical experience. The chapter discusses emotional, cognitive, and conative responses to a play. The role of emotions in the transformational potential of drama and theatre is brought to the fore here. The processes of eliciting past emotional experiences in the audiences, undermining forms of experiential avoidance, and facilitating verbalisation of previously unsymbolised experience are described. The concept of emotional memory is introduced as audiences may be taken on emotional journeys to their past experiences as a part of their transformative process. There is also a review of theories of empathy, including mirror neurons and simulation theory; the distinction between cognitive, motor, and emotional empathy; intersubjectivity theories; low-level versus high-level mind reading; and the extended mind hypothesis. The notion of the development of emphatic sensitivity is important in the context of theatre’s transformative potential. A new definition of theatrical empathy is examined: one that takes into consideration both the order of presence and the order of representation. A theatrical experience is reformulated here as celebration of diversity.
