Perception is a combination of two psychological factors: sensation and perception. The individual attributes of the aesthetic object are reflected in the mind of the aesthetic subject to form a subjective image, that is, the feeling; Perception is the synthesis of sensations to constitute a complete knowledge of aesthetic objects. People know the shape, volume, color, and sound of aesthetic objects through their senses, but they do not yet know what aesthetic objects are. Through perception, people know the whole picture and meaning of aesthetic objects. Generally speaking, both are reflections of aesthetic objects that act directly on the senses, but at different stages.

As the beginning of aesthetic activity, sensation and perception are intimately linked. Sensation is complete because of the abundance of sensations, and sensation is acute because of the generation of perception. When perception is formed, sensation is also contained in perception, becomes an integral part of perception, and is difficult to separate. So, let's call them perception.

Aesthetic perception, once generated, the aesthetic process naturally begins. Perception leads and images are generated, and then they attract long-term attention, stimulate emotions, touch imagination, and gain understanding. Therefore, we need to pay more theoretical attention to theatrical perception.

When the audience enters the theater from the bustling street market, he perceives everything on the stage in a different way and has a different standard than he perceives everything in the street market. In other words, the perception of theater is very different from the perception of life in general. One of the most obvious is the difference in perceived intensity.

Li Yu, who has a wealth of experience in theater, once described this subtle phenomenon in one of his novels:

…… The felt sheet on the theater is a strange thing, and it will be very difficult to be an ugly woman and help a beautiful woman. The ugly walked up and made her uglier and uglier; Peugeot walked up and made her very peugeot. There are often women who are five or six points beautiful, and they watch it offstage, but that's it, and when they go on stage and start playing, they are like Xizi being reborn and Taizhen coming back, even if she is a very beautiful woman, she is not as good as her.

Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy

According to the performance conditions at that time, Li Yu said that the "felt sheet" spread on the performance venue was extremely magical, touching the special intensity of the theater's aesthetic perception. The famous French actor Coglan said that the stage is a "space where people, objects, and even time itself are exaggerated", which also contains the meaning of Li Yu's words. Why is this exaggeration of intensity? Li Yu said that it was because of the care of Erlang God. In fact, the reason for this should be found in the special aesthetic state of the theater.

In the theater, the audience's sense of sight and hearing is particularly sensitive. Psychological experiments have proved that when sensory stimuli continue for a long time, people's sense of touch and smell will be weakened by gradual adaptation, while vision will be strengthened by adaptation. The longer you keep your eyes on the performance area, the easier it will be to see clearly and realistically. The sense of hearing, in a long process, will appear in a stable state, not necessarily strengthened, nor will it be weakened like the sense of touch and smell. Since drama mainly acts on the audience's visual and auditory senses, the superposition of the two should be the strengthening of perception rather than the weakening of perception. However, this is not the main basis for the perceived strength of the theater. Many aspects of real life are also perceived mainly by sight and sound, and there is no exaggeration like in the theater. There are other reasons to be referred. According to this book, there are three main reasons for this:

First of all, theatrical perception is the perception of the audience when their psychology is in a state of stretching. When the audience comes to watch the play, they generally always lift many invisible postures and various fortifications in life, and the entire psychological receptor organ is in a soft state. Chekhov's novel "The Death of a Little Civil Servant" tells the story of a young civil servant who disturbs a general in the front row by sneezing while watching a play, and dies of panic. However, it was only after he came out of the stretched state of watching the drama that he realized the tight boundary between himself and the general. When watching the play, "he stared intently and felt very happy", which was no different from the generals in the front row. And when he became nervously aware of the social hierarchy outside the theater, he no longer had the heart to watch the play. It can be seen that when you really watch a play, the aesthetic perception function is probably in a state of relaxation, and once you leave this state, it is difficult to really watch a play.

Because of relaxation and stretching, perception appears particularly sensitive. Diderot said:

When the heart itself stretches out to meet this blow, it touches the depths of the human heart more accurately and powerfully.

Diderot

This is an important reason why theatrical perception can show high intensity. A sentence that sounds relatively common in real life may sound very moving in the theater, and an action with a small amplitude can show great appeal on the stage. Sasai also said:

The characteristic of the audience is that their senses are more sensitive than any of the individuals who make up this community. They entered into the poet's offer of a reason to cry with a more urgent feeling, and the pain they felt was more intense, and the tears came more easily and more violently.

This intense effect, which results from a state of psychological stretching, is, in A. Popov's view, a kind of credulity that the audience enters voluntarily. "The audience is very gullible about the play on stage, and they happily volunteer to become captives of the artistic magic of the theater," he said. ”

Secondly, theatrical perception is a condensed perception. The mood of the audience is in a state of relaxation and readiness to accept, and the dramatist provides it with a strong stimulus, which is superimposed on each other, resulting in a special intensity of perception. The intense stimulation comes from the condensation of artistic means that act on the senses of the viewer.

If, according to the classical principle of the "Trinity", the plot time can only allow for one day and night, then, as Diderot put it, the characters "spend twenty-four hours in the most turbulent and turbulent moments of their lives". According to Schiller, it should be sufficient to make the peace of mind of an innocent soul develop into the condemnation of conscience after the crime; From a happy, confident, proud person, to terrible destruction. The distance between the two is extremely long, but the play has to be squeezed into the audience's senses in a short period of time and is convincingly accepted. This is the condensed nature of theatrical perception.

When the condensation of theatrical perception becomes a conventional habit, the audience naturally changes their perceptual expectations when they enter the theater. Hegel said: "As soon as the audience enters the theater and sees many people who are well prepared, lit and dressed, they expect to see something unusual." ”

In life, people don't discern all the lines, forms and colors that catch their eyes, but when all these things appear on the stage, the audience will judge that they cannot be ordinary and accidental, so they are particularly sensitive and active. A person can not care about the carelessness of the layout of his room, but he will feel uncomfortable with the unbalanced picture on the stage.

American director Rose Kling once cited the form and line on the stage as an example to illustrate how their special forms and special combinations act on the audience's sensitive perception:

Regular and well-proportioned forms indicate formality, seriousness, and calmness, while irregular arrangements indicate informality, pleasantness, and warmth; The high-rise position indicates majesty, and the low-rise position indicates lowliness; The dense form indicates vigor, and the evacuation form indicates poverty; For coronation occasions, vertical lines should be used, and parallel lines should be used for market scenes; For the development of the army, it is advisable to use continuous lines, and when the class teacher returns, it is appropriate to use broken lines......

Most audiences are unaware of these rules, but their own theatrical perception often succumbs to them. The scale of the deviation and bias that exist in large numbers in real life will expand invisibly as long as they appear on the stage slightly.

Concentration is based on filtration. A large number of meaningless phenomena in life will be eliminated in the drama, so when the audience sees some phenomena of unknown meaning on the stage, they will always consciously discover their meanings, or wait for their meanings to be revealed. In fact, this kind of discovery and waiting of the audience often comes true. That is to say, all the artistic factors of drama acting on the senses of the audience always condense a certain meaning.

16th-century European stage design

There have been some colorists who have done extensive social surveys on the psychological and emotional value of various colors, although most of the survey subjects are painters, arts and craftsmen, printing and dyeing workers, and there are quite a lot of differences and exceptions. It is not easy to make a graph with the method of probability theory, and it is not easy to convince many people. However, in the case of stage lighting, such a diagram is very useful. This is because, as long as the viewer's vision is within reach, the colors must have a certain psychological meaning, and due to the purification of history, complex exceptions have mostly been ruled out. For example, the "Crain Color Sentiment Value Scale", which can roughly represent the perceptual habits of Westerners, and the "Obizaburo Color Affective Value Chart", which can roughly represent the perceptual habits of Orientals (mainly Japanese), are more practical for the perception of theater than for the perception of life. These two tables show the emotional value of theater perception from the perspective of color, and other perceptual factors can also be inferred, that is, they all have perceptual value beyond the reality of life.

Krain Color Affective Value Table

(Continued)

Otewa Saburo color sentiment value table

Thirdly, theatrical perception is a kind of linkage perception. This has already been touched upon above, but here is a little more to illustrate the intensity of perception. Rose Kling once pointed out based on her rich practical experience that if a line wants to gain high-intensity perception in the audience's psychology, it probably depends on the cooperation of actions:

A powerful gesture – When an actor is about to say an important line, he can raise his hand to show attention and silence.

- He can knock on the table to show attention.

- He can ask others to move away from him so that he has more space to attract attention.

- He can extend his fingers or fists to attract attention for emphasis.

If it is sitting - before speaking, the actor can stand up suddenly.

If standing - before speaking, he can sit down suddenly.

Seductive Expressions – Before emphasizing a line, the actor can apply an unusual expression to get someone's attention. Of course, this expression must be natural and fit the character of the person in the play.

Prop utilization – like cans, magazines, umbrellas, and anything else can be used to emphasize the next line. For example, move your chair a bit before you speak. Or suddenly point to a photo or picture to emphasize the line to be said.

Rose Klint gives these examples, which the audience can often see from the stage. When the visual and auditory senses are used together, the intensity of perception is indeed far greater than that of the auditory sense. This linkage of theatrical perception is more evident than any other form of art.

Antonin Aalto also took the perception of the interconnectedness of theater as his artistic ideal. He believes that the traditional Western concept of drama places a strong emphasis on lines, when in fact posture and action are more important. Lines can express clear logic, while gestures rely on the senses to act on people's perceptual functions. Relying on perception, the logical elaboration is reduced, creating a sense of "ethereal", and Aalto connects "ethereal" and perception to form his understanding of the drama. "Drama is empty and full of perception," he said. The emptiness here mainly refers to the exclusion of overly clear and heavy ideological words; The perception mentioned here refers to the multifaceted encirclement of the human spiritual world through the senses, and the drama only knows the shock, but does not know where the shock comes from and what logical path it follows. In his opinion, oriental theater is characteristic in this respect: "They not only shock you in one aspect, but act on your spirit in many ways at once." That is to say, theatrical aesthetics should be accessible to the inner spirit through multiple senses, but the inner spirit is not isolated in a single logical way, but precipitated in the diversity of the outer perception. Theatrical aesthetics is connected to various other psychological mechanisms by perception, but it is always the perceptual factor that appears at the forefront of aesthetics.