(no subject)

[watertank]

The emotions we experience in the theater cannot be identical to those we have in the real world. But then, what are they? When we witness certain events in real life-a tearful reunion, a fistfight, a funeral-we experience real emotions. When analogous events occur on stage or on the screen, they trigger a similar arousal. But the cognitive context is quite different, for we still know that we are sitting in a darkened theater. The experience is analogous to that of " cold  fear" produced by injecting epinephrine, that "as if" emotion that occurs in participants who cannot attribute their arousal to any external cause.

When a performance threatens to become too real, sophisticated adults may protect themselves by laughing nervously and thus breaking the spell altogether. This reaction to the loss of "psychical distance" (Bullough, 1912) is sometimes seen In theaters in the round, where the audience surrounds the playing area and those in the front row can almost touch the actors. If the play is a blood-andguts melodrama, in-the-round staging may become too close for comfort. Suppose there is a well-acted scene in which a man almost murders his wife with an ax. The members of the audience directly adjacent to the two actors are very likely to avert their heads. The scene has become too real and the emotion too genuine. The audience responds by breaking contact.
Gleitman, p.486.