4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

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rasaesthetics
feelings, but what is communicated or transmitted by means of rasas
are emotions. One “has” emotions even if one is not feeling them; one
“experiences” feelings even if sometimes disconnected to emotions (“I
don’t know why I am feeling the way I feel”). The links between
emotions and feelings are usually manifest, but not always. When an
actor’s abhinaya is strong, the emotions are communicated and audience
members feel feelings – whether or not the actor is feeling something.
In expressing the emotions by means of abhinaya one may or
may not create feelings in oneself, but a good actor always creates
feelings in the partakers (audience). In order for rasas to be shared,
performers must enact the abhinaya of a particular emotion or concatenation
of emotions according to the traditions of a specific genre of
performance. The feelings aroused may be personal, intimate, and
indescribable; but the emotions enacted are consciously constructed
and objectively managed.
According to Stanislavsky-based Euro-American acting, one does not
“play an emotion.” One plays the “given circumstances,” the “objectives,”
the “through-line of action,” the “magic if.” If this is done right,
“real” feelings will be experienced and “natural” emotions will be
displayed. But according to my interpretation of the NS rasic system,
one can work directly on the emotions, mixing them according to
“recipes” known to the great acting gurus (which means, simply,
“teachers”) – or even by devising new recipes. From a Stanislavskyan
vantage, such direct work on the emotions will result in false or mechanical
acting. But anyone who has seen performers thoroughly trained
in the NS rasic system knows these performers are every bit as effective
as performers trained in the Stanislavsky system.
If performing rasically is to offer emotions to partakers in the same
way that a chef offers a meal to diners, then the effectiveness of the
performance depends very much on an active response from the partakers.
The NS is very emphatic in its insistence that natya appeal to
people of all stations in life, affecting different people differently. 4 The
more knowledgeable the partakers, the better the experience. To
respond to the fullest, partakers need to be connoisseurs of whatever
performance genre they are taking in – as wine tasters need to know
vintages, bottling procedures, and ways of sampling in order to fully
appreciate a wine. There is a sliding scale of how much one needs to