Emotional repertoire and individual

As put forth by the concept of valence, a term used in quantitative re-search and also in traditional emotion rere-search (Scherer, 2000; Ashka-nasy et al., 2002; Wundt, 1874), the caricatures are placed in a scale from positive to negative, i.e from pleasant to unpleasant. In two caricatures, the emotions the participants seemed to experience were mostly negative and in the other two positive.

In the monster story, the amount and intensity of unpleasant emo-tional episodes labeled the process as more unpleasant than pleasant.

Emotions had to do with the way the director pushed the group to their physical and emotional limits. He discredited the actors so many times that the feeling of shame became so commonplace that it lost its power.

He shouted at them, he deliberately insulted them and openly mocked their performance on the stage. He made impossible demands on them to immediately learn their lines and long monologues by heart. He openly compared actors to each other. The actors felt helpless shame and rage.

In the Elitist caricature, the process was also unpleasant. The direc-tor had her vision, which she expected the acdirec-tors to produce on the stage.

Yet, the actors had a very different idea of the text and found it hard to position themselves as merely being the director’s marionettes. The di-rector positioned herself as an artist, and the actors as her instruments.

The director despised the traditions of the theatre where she was vis-iting. She manifested the cultural superiority of the capital city and its theatre scene, thus simultaneously depreciating the provincial city and its

tradition. The actors were offended by the director’s disdaining attitude towards their theatre and their professional history. She controlled the ensemble and pursued her vision of the play, as she possessed authority over the process.

The director distanced herself from the ensemble by not making di-rect contact with the actors on the stage, but instead used other people to convey her messages. This caused confusion and segmentation among the group. The director divided the work group into “her” people and others. The feelings of mistrust and suspicion contaminated the atmos-phere. The director’s distrust towards the group escalated.

In the tea-party caricature there was a mutual feeling of calmness and trust. The director had the text, the method and the work schedule firmly in her grip and the actors trusted her. The work group enjoyed the feeling of safety. They felt confident about the solutions, since they saw how much energy the director put in meticulous organizing. The atmos-phere was harmonious. Nobody wanted to disturb the peace.

In the family caricature the atmosphere was electric and vivid. The director did not have a ready made, clear vision as the process started. It was created together along the way. She also let the rehearsal situations evolve quite spontaneously. The participative work method led to uncer-tainty, but also to excitement, since everybody had the possibility and the responsibility to create the text. The director’s interest in the actors and in the whole work group strengthened the feeling of collectivity. Her in-tensive gaze followed everybody. She commented and thanked the scenes she preferred and left the less successful ones uncommented upon. As she herself was criticized, she was offended. She wanted to solve the situation as soon as possible and the parties compromised. The sometimes harsh humor cultivated by everybody, seemed to be both a means of self-criti-cism as well as soft critiself-criti-cism towards colleagues. The intimacy and the physical proximity seemed very important for the whole group.

As noted earlier, the theory links positive emotions with positive re-sults. With results I mean the financial results such as the amount of

tickets sold and artistic results such as the criticism and the evaluation by the participants and peers. Negative, unpleasant processes are usu-ally not expected to bring good results. However, these caricatures tell another story: there are two pleasant processes from which one became a hit, and two unpleasant processes from which the other also became a best-seller.

The monster caricature opposes almost everything good leadership is understood to entail whereas the tea-party, verging on the ideal presented by leadership literature did not succeed. In both monster and family cari-catures the shows were sold out and the critics were appreciative making the processes financial and artistic victories.

The monster and family caricatures both had a broad repertoire of emotions. By emotional repertoire I mean the freedom of emotional dis-play, both into negative as well as into positive direction. In monster and family caricatures the broad repertoire of emotions was openly displayed.

In the autonomous artistic professions the tensions are said to fuel artistic processes (Brundin, 2002). In the family caricature, the conflict opened up the register of the negative emotions and uncertainty, and added to the tension. In the monster caricature, however poisonous the director usually was, he was also moved into tears when he saw one of his ac-tresses play her scene on the stage.

The display of emotions was mediated by the physical proximity of the work groups. In the family caricature the physical closeness in the dressing room, as well as on the stage, between the group and the director added into the collective feeling. In the monster caricature, the director was very close to the actors all the time. He was with the actors on the stage. He followed them from a close physical range, so close they often could feel him breathe nearby.

In the elitist caricature, the relationship between the director and the actors was more distant. In the case of the elitist, the director and the actors formed two separate groups that stood apart and could not bind together. In the tea-party the distance was more spiritual in nature: the

director had an aura of harmony and calmness, which spread into the work group. Nobody wanted to break the harmony. The harmony and safety started to prevent participation and questioning. The collective niceness, the safety and the certainty the director was able to convey re-leased the work group from responsibility. The element of risk was absent.

Although this process was a respite from the consuming and demanding rehearsal processes where tension and conflicts are a part of everyday life, the result of the tea-party process was neither financially, nor artisti-cally satisfactory.

The work groups in the monster and the family caricatures felt collec-tive participation as they all were accollec-tively co-constructing the perform-ance and not merely making a predestined vision come true. In the elitist caricature the director seemed to have a very clear vision. She tried to impose her vision on the actors, finally by using her hierarchical position and by appealing to their sense of professionalism. Compared to the ac-tors, she claimed to have a superior understanding of the work at hand.

Before the rehearsals had even started she had polished her vision into perfection and did not want anyone to alter it. However, the actors did not agree with her view, and therefore, rejected it. The emotional reper-toire of the work group in the elitist caricature got into a rut: the process was labeled by mistrust and anger.

Heroic vs. shared leadership. In the caricatures we can find examples of both charismatic, narcissistic and shared leadership. In the monster story, the leadership was built around one man. He led the actors using shame and humiliation, like the narcissistic leaders may do (Maccoby, 2000). The actors suffered, but for them the process was an ordeal that had to be gone through. They did not question the monster’s leadership even though they were both emotionally and physically strained. The ac-tors felt they got something in return for their trials with this charismatic person: they overcame themselves. Even though most of the time the leader was almost in rage pushing the actors he also showed his apprecia-tive and tender feelings. Maybe this way the actors saw the monster was

capable of seeing also the good in their work, and that he was sincere in his work. It seems that the sincerity was demonstrated through the broad emotional repertoire. In this way he also came close to the actors.

Leadership is negotiated in relationship between the members of the group. The actors did not question the individual leadership of the direc-tor. The director took it as a matter of course and the actors surrendered to his power. Also Eva, showing broader emotional repertoire than other actors, was allotted some kind of leadership, or at least a position as a spokesperson for the group. Considering the process afterwards the ac-tors seemed to accept that this is the style of some direcac-tors and their task is to make the best out of it.

In the elitist caricature, the leader on one hand said she wanted to build a collective feeling, but then again, she wanted to be the autocrat.

She had a vision she wanted her group to implement and she was not will-ing to negotiate it. The ensemble did not understand her ambiguity. Some of them felt rejected as the elitist decided to ally herself with some of the actors while keeping the others at a distance. The unequal treatment added to the distrustful construction of leadership. As Maccoby (2000) states, the narcissistic leaders do not take criticism well.

The emotional repertoire of the elitist was narrow. She made half-hid-den sarcastic remarks. It built further the distance between the members of the group as the communication was indirect and oblique. According to the narrow definitions of leadership it could even be said that there was no leadership in the caricature of the elitist. The members of the group did not accept her leadership. Somehow it seems as if Heidi refused to have it. She did not devote to the group, on the contrary: she demon-strated her contempt for it.

Already the names of the caricatures in the family and tea-party refer to the more strive toward collectivity and sharing. Even though in both processes the ensembles had a leader, the director, more space was given to other members too to influence the process and the outcomes. Sharing happened through participation. The members were expected to actively

construct the process and not just follow the orders. However, these two processes differed in their emotional repertoires. In the family carica-ture, there was closeness built by all the members of the ensemble. Also the emotional repertoire ranged from occasional feelings of anger and despair to ecstatic. In the tea-party, even though the process was trusting and respectful, the emotional repertoire was kept rather narrow. Extreme emotions and feelings were avoided.

In theatre ensembles, both individual heroic leaders as well as shared leadership co-exist.

Broad emotional scale seems to be beneficial. It opens up possibilities for all the participants to use their emotional potential. But just putting emotions on a scale or recognizing, naming and labeling them seems in-adequate. The dynamism is lost.