Starting with Emotion: The Gift Theory

An open gift releasing emotions toward an audience, a metaphor for creating theater.

I have noticed that when I ask my students in middle and high school to create an improvisation or a scene from scratch, they immediately think about the story, the characters, and the context. Sometimes they think about style as well.

But they almost never begin with the emotion they want to create in the audience.

I am not referring to the emotion the actors are supposed to feel or display. I mean what we want to happen inside the people watching: amusement, fear, tenderness, wonder, melancholy, discomfort, or any other emotion the scene requires.

I have long tried to follow a piece of advice Silvano Antonelli once gave me:

“Whenever you are unsure about what you are doing, ask yourself which emotion you are celebrating.”

That sentence gave me a great deal to think about.

In life, emotions are usually perceived as consequences. Something happens, and we feel fear, joy, anger, or sadness. It is therefore understandable that young people find it unnatural to begin with an emotion before they have even invented what will happen.

But when we are creating a scene, the process is reversed.

We are not receiving the experience; we are preparing it for someone else. We know the effect we are aiming for, and we have to construct the theatrical conditions that can produce it.

To explain this reversal, I use what I call the Gift Theory.

Receiving a Gift

Think about receiving a gift, perhaps an unexpected one.

Even before you open it, curiosity, surprise, and anticipation may begin to build. Then comes the moment of discovery, and what you find creates a new reaction: joy, disappointment, a rush of emotion, surprise, or even embarrassment.

In that situation, we are the audience.

We receive something prepared by someone else and experience the emotions it creates.

Preparing a Gift

When we are the ones giving the gift, however, the process is different.

First, we think about the person who will receive it and the reaction we hope to elicit. Do we want to surprise them? Move them? Make them laugh? Show them that we know them and were thinking specifically of them?

Only then do we choose the gift, how to wrap it, when to give it, and the words that will accompany it.

The same thing happens in theater.

The emotion we want to create guides our choice of story, characters, actions, rhythm, space, and style. Every element becomes part of the way we wrap and present our gift to the audience.

Emotion Guides; Logic Organizes

Starting with emotion does not mean abandoning logic.

Logic helps us build a scene that is clear, coherent, and solid. Emotion gives it direction.

If we rely only on the first logically plausible solution, we risk creating scenes that are correct but predictable. When we know which emotion we want to celebrate, however, we can test every choice by asking whether it is really leading us toward that destination.

This also helps us avoid the most obvious solutions.

A scene intended to move the audience does not have to be sad from beginning to end. It might begin by making them laugh. A scene designed to unsettle them might use an apparently ordinary situation. An unexpected choice may be more effective precisely because it does not reveal its intention immediately.

Emotion does not hand us the solution automatically. It forces us to search for it.

An Intention, Not a Guarantee

No one can guarantee with absolute certainty what every audience member will feel. People differ and bring different experiences, sensitivities, and memories to the theater.

Starting with emotion does mean taking responsibility for what we want to offer the audience. It means not merely putting a story onstage, but asking why it is worth telling and what kind of experience we want to create through it.

Audiences do not come to the theater simply to receive information. They come to feel.

That is why, before asking what needs to happen in the scene, try asking yourself:

What do I want to happen inside each person watching?

The gift begins there.

And, as anyone who works in theater knows, what must ultimately appear completely natural is often the result of work that has nothing natural about it.