Affective Performance and Cognitive Science Body, Brain and Being

by McConachie, Bruce; Blair, Rhonda; Cook, Amy; Iball, Helen; Furse, Anna; Lutterbie, John; Hood, Erin; Machon, Jo; Trimingham, Melissa; Pollick, Frank E.; Shaughnessy, Nicola

• ISBN13: 9781408185773
• ISBN10: 1408185776
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-01-30
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

Summary

This book explores new developments in the dialogues between science and theatre and offers an introduction to a fast-expanding area of research and practice.The cognitive revolution in the humanities is creating new insights into the audience experience, performance processes and training. Scientists are collaborating with artists to investigate how our brains and bodies engage with performance to create new understanding of perception, emotion, imagination and empathy. Divided into four parts, each introduced by an expert editorial from leading researchers in the field, this edited volume offers readers an understanding of some of the main areas of collaboration and research:
1. Dances with Science
2. Touching Texts and Embodied Performance
3. The Multimodal Actor
4. Affecting Audiences

Throughout its history theatre has provided exciting and accessible stagings of science, while contemporary practitioners are increasingly working with scientific and medical material. As Honour Bayes reported in the Guardian in 2011, the relationships between theatre, science and performance are 'exciting, explosive and unexpected'. Affective Performance and Cognitive Science charts new directions in the relations between disciplines, exploring how science and theatre can impact upon each other with reference to training, drama texts, performance and spectatorship.

The book assesses the current state of play in this interdisciplinary field, facilitating cross disciplinary exchange and preparing the way for future studies.

Author Biography

Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent, UK. She is Director of the Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance and is leading the AHRC funded project 'Imagining Autism.' She is the author of Applying Performance (2012), Gertrude Stein (2007) and co-editor of Margaret Woffington (2008).

Table of Contents

Preface
Dialogues between Disciplines: Science, Theatre, Performance: Performance practitioners and neuroscientists respond to questions posed by Vincent Walsh (Wellcome Trust 'Objects of Emotion' symposium) What do artists want from scientists? What can we learn from each other?

Part One: Performance Affecting Science
Introduction: Operating in Science Theatres: Cognitive Perspectives on Drama, Theatre and Performance, Nicola Shaughnessy, Professor of Performance, University of Kent
1. Erin Hood (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Performing for Medicine? Knowing Pain in and through Performance
2. Matthew Reason (York St John University)- Kinesthetic Empathy and Interdisciplinary Collaborations: Neuroscience and Performance
3. Melissa Trimingham (University of Kent) Touched by meaning: haptic effect in autism

Part Two: Touching Texts and Embodied Performance
Editorial introduction: Amy Cook, Assistant Professor, University of Indiana
1. Natalie Bainter (University of Indiana), An Exercise in Shame: the Blush in A Woman Killed with Kindness
2. John Lutterbie (Stony Brook/SUNY) Wayfaring in Everyday Life: Gesture and Embodied Cognition
3. Naomi Rokotnitz (Talpiot College, Israel), 'Screaming with despair' (II.88): Dramatic Performance As Affective Science in Peter Nichols' Passion Play

Part Three: The Kinesthetic Practitioner
Editorial Introduction: Rhonda Blair
1. Gabriele Sofia (Sapienza Università di Roma - Université Paris 8) The effect of theatre training on cognitive functions
2. Martin Welton (University of London, Queen Mary) Footage: Feeling in Footwork
3. Anna Furse (Goldsmiths, London): Our informed Hearts: how the body thinks, recalls and remembers (Director Anna Furse is collaborating with her Royal Ballet colleague Esther Linley, video artist Lucy Cash, sound artists Graeme Miller and Cambridge Professor of Neuroscience, Nicola Clayton)

Part Four: Affecting Audiences
Editorial introduction: Bruce McConachie (University of Pittsburgh)
1. Adam Alston (Royal Holloway, University of London) Affect and/as Risk in Immersive Theatre
2. Helen iball (Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds) An audience with The Oh Fk Moment: applying cognitive and psychotherapeutic models to 'interactive' theatre
3. Jo Machon (Brunel University) Immersive performance, (syn)aesthetics and the phenomenology of technologies
Afterword