Cathartic Effects of Contemporary American Plays: Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart (1979) and Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs (1982)

This paper results from empirical research on the cathartic effects of two American plays, Crimes of the Heart (1979) by Beth Henley and Brighton Beach Memoirs (1982) by Neil Simon. In his analysis of the Greek tragedy, Aristotle mentioned catharsis as an emotional purification effect of tragedy on the audience. Comparing historical development of theatrical trends in Europe and the USA, we noticed that they started differentiating around the 1950s. Catharsis has been the purpose of the theater for almost two thousand years. However, European theatrical trends began expelling catharsis by creating the audience’s alienation from the characters (the epic theater), distorted plots and caricature characters (the theater of the absurd), or by showing unmotivated violence on theatrical scenes (in-yer-face theater). On the other hand, the twentieth-century American drama remained rooted in the realist tradition, presenting characters and situations with which the audience can identify. Based on the hypothesis that despite the dominance of the anti-cathartic trends in European mainstream theatres, the European audience still enjoys cathartic plays, we created a survey questioning the emotional effects of contemporary American dramas on 30 recipients. After analyzing the recipients’ answers quantitatively and qualitatively, we concluded that they experienced emotional and cognitive catharsis, which confirmed our hypothesis of the cathartic effect of contemporary American plays on the audience.