The Significance of Theatrical Performance

Many problems of the great theatrical plays have been solved through psychoanalysis. Otto Rank, in his famous book Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und Sage,1 made very careful and detailed researches in this field showing that the Oedipus complex is the main content of every tragedy. Jekels showed that the same complex reversed is the foundation of comedy. We know that the theatre, from Greek saturnalia to modern performance, and the great festivals after the death of the Urvater are closely connected. But very seldom do we read in psychoanalytic papers about the significance of acting itself, apart from the content of the play. Here, as in so many other cases, Freud has opened up the way for us by pointing out the secret significance of art in general in the words: 'Art, which certainly did not begin as art for art's sake, originally served tendencies which today have for the greater part ceased to exist. Among these we may suspect various magic intentions.'2

We believe that magic is of great importance in acting as well as in other forms of art. It was, however, not through watching a famous play executed by prominent actors that I perceived the hidden significance that lies behind all acting, but by looking on at a very mediocre popular piece played by unskilful amateurs drawn from the working classes. And not unlike the method used by Freud in Der Dichter und das Phantasieren which was to observe the effect of cheap novels upon the minds of uneducated people, I observed the effect of the play I was watching on an audience whose members were of the same class as the performers.