2. Let's think in more detail about the politics of realist acting. Leigh aligns Stanislavski with Brecht; Robin suggests that realist acting deals with all aspects of the human, including the political; MK wonders about the real-world social and political ramifications of contemporary realist actor training. A major critique of realist acting has always (since Brecht) been based on its emphasis on the (liberal humanist) individual at the expense of the social, what Kirk Williams recently described as the often anti-social marriage of myth and science in early Naturalist drama. Can we get beyond these perceived dichotomies - between the private and the political, the fixed and the fluid, the Freudian and the Marxist? Should we move beyond them? Do they describe a genuine division of aesthetic thought, or do they represent decades of critical prejudice more accurately than actual performance technique? How are contemporary practitioners of realism (like Zarilli or Mitchell) implicitly challenging the validity of these well-worn binaries?
3. What role does the social context of the artists play in the efficacy of realist performance? What about the contexts, and lived experiences, of audience members? MK describes the incredibly personal, even dangerous, responses actors can have to realist performance; Roberta describes the intense affect realist performance can create in spectators; Kirsten considers the fraught relationship between Esther Williams' performance work and her autobiography. Indeed, especially in Britain and the US, realism is lauded in the press, but as soon as realist performance threatens to tip over into something a bit TOO real, a bit too familiar (like Agamemnon's curse-laced trip across the stage), reviewers and ordinary spectators alike begin to get genuinely nervous, begin to have unexpected reactions that trigger something akin to a fight-or-flight response. How do we account for these moments of "hyper" realism? How do we theorize their effects, and their value?
