Something in AP Lit

"One of the paradoxes of human existance is that all experience-even painful experience-when trasmitted through the medium of art is, for the good reader, enjoyable. In real life, death and pain and suffering are not pleasurable, but in poetry they may be. In real life, getting soaked in a rainstorm is not pleasurable, but in poetry it can be. In real life, if we cry, usually we are unhappy; but if we cry in a movie, we are manifestly enjoying it. We do not ordinarily like to be terrified in real life, but we sometimes seek movies or books that will terrify us. We find some value in all intesne living. To be intensely alive is the opposite of being dead. To be dull, to be bored, to be imerceptive is in one sense to be dead. Poetry comes to us bringing life and therefore pleasure. Moreover, art focuses and so organizes experience as to give us better understanding of it. And to understand life is partly to be master of it." -Laurence Perrine, Structure, Sound, And Sense

In acting different characters we can experience a whirlwind of different emotions. We go through happiness, saddness, fear, anger, confusion, nervousness, and so on and so forth. Like Perrine says, in real life we don't enjoy being sad or angry. I don't look forward to feeling these emotions in real life, but in a play I do. I didn't always. I used to be scared of all my negative emotions, and in real life, I still am to a degree. But in a show, it's so so so so so different. This summer I did 42nd Street and at the end of the show there is the 42nd Street Ballet in which one of the Gangsters accidentally kills Billy Lawler's character (this is the show within the show). I was onstage during the gunshot and the thing genuinely scared the crap out of me. During the whole run of the show, I was still always shocked whenever I heard that gun go off. It was one of my favorite parts of the show. For the rest of the show, I had to be what I refer to as typically bubbly Becky/lots of dancing/musical theater acting. But for this one scene I was a hooker, which was different, and I got to experience a murder. I say it as if it was an honor to whitness this, and it kind of was because the cast that weren't onstage at this moment in the show didn't get to feel that initial shock after hearing the gunshot, they didn't get to be scared after realizing that somebody was dead. And it was fun. Being scared was fun. It really was. And I looked forward to that moment every night. But in real life, if I saw a murder on the streets, I would be going to therapy straight away.