Engaged interaction involves cognition and emotion working, not separately, but as I have written about previously (Bundy, 2003) in a fused thinkingly-feeling or feelinglythinking way. While I wrote this with a gut understanding of what I meant, I did not, at that time, have the same theoretical understanding of the way this worked as I do now. Over the years, I have continued to ponder and search for explanations for this. Recently, I came upon the work of appraisal theorists. By layering the understanding I developed from their work (particularly about the way people experience emotion in response to actual life events) with my understanding of the way people experience emotion in process drama and as theatre-goers I began to develop further (and I think useful) understanding of the way emotion is central to engaged interaction in drama and theatre experiences. I begin by outlining ideas about the way emotion is generated according to appraisal theorists using examples from drama experiences to illustrate. I then turn to consider some of the different types of emotion that might be experienced as a result of different appraisals. Included in this discussion is a focus on the idea that interest, is itself an emotion, resulting from a specific appraisal. I then turn to look at the operation of emotion in response to fictional and dramatic situations. I conclude that emotional experience is central to engaged interaction but that drama educators need to provide opportunities that encourage and facilitate the simultaneous experience of "interest-appreciation" and "imagination-based" emotion. Throughout this discussion, I refer to Sophocles' play, Antigone and to a process drama, loosely based on this play which was designed and facilitated by Julie Dunn to illustrate my ideas. I also refer to the TheatreSpace project. This was a large Australian Research Council funded project that investigated the experiences of young people who attended a number of different theatre .events as spectators (see O'Toole, Adams, Anderson, Burton, Ewing, 2014). I draw, in particular, on the interview responses of young spectators following a 2008 performance of a Bell Shakespeare/Queensland Theater Company production of Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome: a Shakespeare Commentary.