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Mapping a classic: body mapping and Koodiyattam Rasa breath patterns as a way of embodying character and analysing text in a production of The Trojan Women with second year acting students from the University of Cape Town’s Drama Department.

This article sets out to critique the methods used in the process of directing Gwendolyn McEwen’s version of Euripedes’ classic, The Trojan Women, with second year students of theatre and performance at the University of Cape Town (UCT). In so doing I intend to offer an embodied approach to character and textual analysis. Central to this approach is the engagement with methods of mapping that involve what I have identified as somatic mapping. This approach, I argue, allows for a cyclical relationship between breath, emotions, body, and mind. I draw principally from Body Mapping and the Sanskrit theory of Rasa (in particular the connection between rasa and breath).