This chapter focuses on Neoplatonist engagements with the issue of life worth living as represented in the philosophy of Plotinus. The Platonic metaphysics and ethics regards the highest form of life as the life of pure intellection, and the materiality of the body in strongly negative terms as the limiting and potentially corrupting influence on the soul. Therefore, the question about the conditions of a life worth living emerges specifically as a question about the worth of embodied life. Is it worthwhile for the immortal soul to descend into bodies, and to remain there until the bond between body and soul dissolves naturally? Plotinus’s attempts to answer this questions are best viewed in terms of a negotiation between the anti-corporealist stance, according to which disembodied existence is always better for the soul, and an acknowledgment that the embodied condition is good for the soul, insofar as it enables the realisation of some of its capacities.

Working in different countries provides huge learning opportunities for theatre practitioners in understanding the capacity of drama pedagogies to uncover deep human connections beneath more superficial cultural differences, and to learn ways of negotiating the obstacles those cultural differences create. As recent years have brought more focus on both the social justice imperatives and the overall value of diversity and inclusion across schools and societies, the need to connect across cultures becomes ever more important. In this chapter we describe the journeys of our work exploring Shakespeare through intercultural dialogue with Omani colleagues. We describe the content and timeline of two interlinked multiphase education projects on Shakespeare with Omani teachers and students: the first with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which began as part of an education enquiry for the World Shakespeare Festival in 2012, and the second with Butterfly Theatre Collective, a small Meisner rooted company who specialise in exploring the uniqueness of every performance and performer. We offer a comparison of the practicalities in carrying out similar projects with two very different arts companies, and share the conceptual and emotional learning we found through our associations with Omani teachers, directors, actors and young people.

This chapter discusses stimulus evaluation theories (SETs), which foreground a process of stimulus evaluation (or appraisal). A first brand, called evaluation-first SETs, include appraisal theories in psychology and (quasi-)judgmental and perceptual theories in philosophy. Theories in this brand differ in the role they confer to stimulus evaluation (constituent-only, causal-only, constituent-causal), the granularity of the output of this process (molar, molecular, molar-molecular), and the system required to produce it (in terms of representational format and Attitude, operations, and operating conditions or automaticity). The transition from stimulus evaluation to the other components is accounted for by evaluation-response links that are innate—in the biological version—or learned—in the non-biological version. The latter version splits again in a summary and elemental sub-version. A second brand, called embodied SETs, postulate that stimulus evaluation acquires its heat after bodily responses set in, or they assume an indivisible evaluation-response connection. SETs outperform the previous theories in their capacity to account for the (world-directed) Intentionality of emotions. Most of them can also account for ontogenetic and phylogenetic continuity (except judgmental theories), phenomenality, bodily aspect, heat, control precedence, and irrationality. Molar SETs deliver discrete emotions, purely molecular SETs do not. Empirical research that tests SETs is discussed.

Chapter 4 concentrates on a trauma narrative, Winter Birds (1994) by Jim Grimsley, relating the childhood of a young child named Daniel Crell in a household marked by violence, alcoholism and sexual abuse on the part of a maimed father. The testimony of the protagonist (who is also the narrator) is carried out by the second-person pronoun that, combined with other linguistic elements, serves as a coping mechanism throughout the narration. Drawing from socio-cognitive theories and cognitive stylistics (and in particular Text World Theory), it shows how Grimsley’s narrative does not confine itself to inform us about the author’s own traumatic experience through Dan but makes readers enact it through an embodied style performing the character’s vulnerability rather than describing it.