The Routledge Companion to Theatre, Performance and Cognitive Science / Edition 1

by Rick Kemp, Bruce McConachie

Overview

The Routledge Companion to Theatre, Performance and Cognitive Science integrates key findings from the cognitive sciences (cognitive psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary studies and relevant social sciences) with insights from theatre and performance studies. This rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field dynamically advances critical and theoretical knowledge, as well as driving innovation in practice. The anthology includes 30 specially commissioned chapters, many written by authors who have been at the cutting-edge of research and practice in the field over the last 15 years. These authors offer many empirical answers to four significant questions:

• How can performances in theatre, dance and other media achieve more emotional and social impact?
• How can we become more adept teachers and learners of performance both within and outside of classrooms?
• What can the cognitive sciences reveal about the nature of drama and human nature in general?
• How can knowledge transfer, from a synthesis of science and performance, assist professionals such as nurses, care-givers, therapists and emergency workers in their jobs?

A wide-ranging and authoritative guide, The Routledge Companion to Theatre, Performance and Cognitive Science is an accessible tool for not only students, but practitioners and researchers in the arts and sciences as well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138048898
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Series:	Routledge Companions
Pages:	386
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rick Kemp is Professor of Theatre and Head of Acting and Directing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA. An actor, director and Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Neuroscience and Art, his publications include Embodied Acting: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Performance (2012) and The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq (2016).

Bruce McConachie, Emeritus Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, has published widely in theatre history and cognitive studies. His scholarship includes Engaging Audiences (2008), Evolution, Cognition, and Performance (2015), and chapters in Theatre Histories: An Introduction (3rd edition, 2016). A former president of the American Society for Theatre Research, McConachie also acts and directs.

Table of Contents

General Introduction

Bruce McConachie

Part I: Artistry

Introduction

Rick Kemp

1. Stanislavsky’s prescience: The conscious self in the system and Active Analysis

as a theory of mind

Sharon Marie Carnicke

2. The improviser’s lazy brain: improvisation and cognition

Gunter Lösel

3. Devising – embodied creation in distributed systems

Rick Kemp

4. Embodied cognition and Shakespearean performance

Darren Tunstall

5. The remains of ancient action: Understanding affect and empathy in Greek drama

Peter Meineck

6. Minding implicit constraints in dance improvisation

Pil Hansen

7. Applying developmental epistemic cognition to theatre for young audiences

Jeanne Klein

8. 4E cognition for directing: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and Caryl Churchill’s

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire

Rhonda Blair

9. Acting and Emotion

Vladimir Mirodan

Part II: Learning

Introduction

Bruce McConachie

10. Improvising communication in Pleistocene performances

Bruce McConachie

11. Ritual transformation and transmission

David Mason

12. Communities of gesture: Empathy and embodiment in Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane

Dance Company’s 100 Migrations

Ariel Nereson

13. Creative storytelling, crossing boundaries, high-impact learning and

social engagement

Nancy Kindelan

14. From banana phones to the bard: The developmental psychology of acting

Thalia R. Goldstein

15. 'I'm giving everybody notes using his body': Framing actors’ observation of performance

Claire Syler

16. Acting technique, Jacques Lecoq, and embodied meaning

Rick Kemp

Part III: Scholarship

Introduction

Bruce McConachie

17. Systems theory, enaction and performing arts

Gabriele Sofia

18. Watching movement: Phenomenology, cognition, performance

Stanton B. Garner, Jr.

19. Attention to theatrical performances

James Hamilton

20. Emergence, meaning and presence: An interdisciplinary approach to a disciplinary question

Amy Cook

21. Relishing performance: Rasa as participatory sense-making

Erin B. Mee

22. The self, ethics, agency and tragedy

David Palmer

23. Aesthetics and the sensible

John Lutterbie

24. Talk this dance: On the conceptualization of dance as fictive conversation

Ana Margarida Abrantes and Esther Pascual

25. Distributed cognition: Studying theatre in the wild

Evelyn Tribble and Robin Dixon

Part IV: Translational Applications

Introduction

Rick Kemp

26. A theatrical intervention to lower the risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of

dementia

Tony and Helga Noice

27. The Performance of Caring: Theatre, empathetic communication and healthcare

Rick Kemp and Rachel DeSoto-Jackson

28. Awareness performing: Practice and protocol

Experience Bryon

29. Imagining the ecologies of autism

Melissa Trimingham and Nicola Shaughnessy

30. Toward consilience: Integrating performance history with the coevolution

of our species

Bruce McConachie