Creating Interior Mayhem in The Castle of Perseverance

This article examines the fifteenth-century morality play The Castle of Perseverance in conversation with the 2015 Disney/Pixar film Inside Out. The film certainly serves as a contemporary afterlife of the psychomachia, externalizing the turmoil of a young girl into the epic journey and struggle of her embodied emotions like Joy, Sadness, and Disgust. I discuss how I teach Inside Out and The Castle of Perseverance together to undergraduate students and argue that the film also offers an entry-point into potential immersive performance practices of The Castle of Perseverance; audiences may have followed both a central linear arc (the journey of Mankind) while exploring the narrative tools of the playing-space on their own.