Abstract
This paper examines the acting theories by Jean Renoir and Louis Jouvet in terms of affect theory, especially that of psychologist Daniel Stern. Renoir and Jouvet told their actors to read their scripts repeatedly without any personal expressions, thinking that affected by the rhythm of the words, the actors could grasp the “spark” (Renoir) and the “sentiment of the text” (Jouvet), the impersonal forces that would let them discover how to perform the characters. To elucidate these mystic forces, this paper focuses on Stern’s concept of “vitality affect,” the kinetic and cross-modal qualities of feeling that correspond to the shape of the stimulus, to argue that the affect would lead to the becoming-animal of the actors.
