Onstage Emotion as Imagination

Abstract:Although many actors report experiencing genuine emotions befitting a specific character’s circumstances, the actors themselves are neither their characters nor in their characters’ circumstances. Moreover, it seems that if our circumstances do not afford certain emotions, we will not experience these emotions. Thus, actors experience “a paradox of onstage emotion.” This article aims to provide a solution to this paradox. I argue that actors’ onstage emotions are repeatable, controllable, scripted, and impersonal; however, everyday genuine emotions are neither repeatable nor controllable nor scripted and are always personal. Therefore, onstage emotions are not genuine emotions. I then argue that imagination is a repeatable and controllable mental state and that it can be scripted and impersonal. Finally, given that imagination is seen as a re-creation of occurrent experiences, I conclude that onstage emotions are not genuine emotions but rather are imaginative emotions—a re-creation of genuine emotions, and the solution of imaginative emotions better accounts for actors’ onstage performance.