ESCALATION
Ratcheting-up the emotion
Right now, I am co-directing a play with my husband Stuart. It is a verbatim play about New Zealand's acclaimed response to the Covid pandemic — and the subsequent unravelling which led to violent protesters occupying the grounds of our Parliament Buildings in protest at the vaccine mandate. It is full of sudden, explosive and unexpected emotions — rage, blame, grief, fear, desperation. The challenge for the actors is to flip from one emotional state to another very quickly and fully — yet to organically occupy each state. I am full of admiration as I watch them achieve this.
And that is how real emotion often happens! It is sudden, it comes upon us out of nowhere, it is uncontrollable, it shakes us deeply and it can pass as quickly as it arrived, like violent weather.