Melanie Lynskey Research Paper

“The interesting thing about acting is using all your own stuff and having some kind of personal catharsis while you're working.” Melanie Lynskey said this about her work as an actor. Melanie is a prolific actress and has been for many years, and over these years, she has had the good fortune of creating worlds so vivid that the audience is able to have a cathartic experience. This to me feels like a great privilege, she is able to provide people with something that they desperately need: a release of emotions. She is able to give the gift of catharsis to all of the people who have been building up these strong emotions all week. In return she gets the gift of catharsis on a daily basis. She has the great privilege of going to work everyday and getting to release any emotions she had built up. This to me seems like the greatest reason to become an actor, or work in theatre, because working in theatre means the ability to have a cathartic experience in real life, which is something that is extremely hard to come by.

Aristotle wrote The Poetics in 335 BCE and in them he stated the elements that he believed made great theatre. He wrote that the ultimate goal of theatre is for the audience to have some sort of catharsis at the end. This to me is one of the few things that still rings extremely true from The Poetics, which with the advent of modern theatre have become a bit obsolete. Catharsis on the other hand, will never become obsolete, because everyone at some point needs to release their pent up emotions. That is the exact reason I got into theatre, because I want to be able to give someone that catharsis, however, what I wasn’t expecting was to be able to have many cathartic experiences