Anxious Affinities: How Theatrical Performance Can Generate a Platform for Interpersonal Dialogue

Abstract

Abstract The article combines both philosophical and psychological approaches to argue that art and theatre performance especially can be grasped as a revelation of the universal and basic human concern, which is existential anxiety. The author presents an opinion, that via performative acts on stage, spectators and performers/actors are interconnected in hermeneutic situation (Hans-Georg Gadamer), in which they play their existential experience. Therefore, the universal death anxiety (Irvin D. Yalom) can be understood as a possible platform for interpersonal and intercultural dialogue (Martin Buber). The article concludes, that archetypes (Carl Gustav Jung) are such a place for mutual understanding, representing both mental and physical answers to the basic existential experience of humankind.