Chaos in Theater: Improvisation and Complexity [New ed.] 1433134683, 9781433134685

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Anna Grazia Cafaro

CHAOS IN THEATER

Improvisation and Complexity TRANSLATED BY

Anna Grazia Cafaro and Melina Masterson

Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures

Have you ever prepared a discourse by heart and then found out that, when the moment arrives, surprise and uniqueness of hic et nunc are inevitable? No matter how much you prepare a text, it will need improvisation to be used on a stage or in the street. But, what is the limit between improvisation and technique, experience and training? Can we scientifically measure the improvisation of a text? This work aims to investigate in which dimension art meets science and how it happens. Artists need to discover new conceptual instruments that contribute to the probing of the laws of matter, social existence, and the human mind. The rigorous and fascinating trip that Anna Grazia Cafaro proposes to capture the sense, function, and nature of the actor’s improvisation is a splendid and a unique example of a “new alliance” between art and science, predicted forty years ago by the scientist Ilya Prigogine and the philosopher Isabelle Stengers. Thanks to the application of Chaos Theory to the theatrical processes, attempted here for the first time, the actor and the performance are analyzed as “complex dynamic systems” like a cell, in which, paradoxically, chaos and order coexist and maintain the system in balance; the continuous passages from chaos to order, create the necessary tension and energy that allows the spectator to build his own meaning. Despite the complex theoretical concepts this book is written in an accessible language and includes clear examples that make it comprehensible to a wide audience. It is perfect for students of theater, practitioners, scholars, and anyone who is curious about communicative mechanisms. It can be used in theater, science, comparative literature, and philosophy departments.

ANNA GRAZIA CAFARO is Professor of Italian and Spanish Language and Culture. She received her Ph.D. in Romance languages from Boston College in Massachusetts where she specialized in history and theory of theater. Her current research includes the representation of contemporary immigration and the abuses of human rights in theater and cinema. From 2009 to 2015 she taught Italian and Spanish at Bard College in New York where she directed the Department of Italian Studies and the Study Abroad Program in Taormina, Sicily. Her publications include L’improvvisazione dell’attore nel teatro di Ricerca Contemporaneo (2009) and “An Imploding or Exploding Society? The Honor Killing in Saverio La Ruina’s Theater” and the introduction to Honor Killing on Screen and Stage (2012).

Chaos in Theater

Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures Tamara Alvarez-Detrell and Michael G. Paulson General Editors Vol. 248

This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG

New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw

Anna Grazia Cafaro

Chaos in Theater Improvisation and Complexity

Translated by Anna Grazia Cafaro and Melina Masterson

PETER LANG

New York  Bern  Frankfurt  Berlin Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cafaro, Anna G. author. Title: Chaos in theater: improvisation and complexity / Anna Grazia Cafaro. Description: New York: Peter Lang. Series: Currents in comparative Romance languages and literatures; vol. 248 ISSN 0893-5963 Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016028447 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3468-5 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4539-1897-5 (ebook PDF) | ISBN 978-1-4331-3709-9 (epub) ISBN 978-1-4331-3710-5 (mobi) | DOI 10.3726/978-1-4539-1897-5 Subjects: LCSH: Improvisation (Acting) Classification: LCC PN2071.I5 C22 | DDC 792.02/8—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016028447

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

Originally published as L’improvvisazione dell’attore nel teatro di Ricerca Contemporaneo. Longo, Ravenna, 2009.

© 2017 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

Contents

Prologue by José Sanchis Sinisterra Introduction

vii 1



I

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity 1. Premise 2.  Observations on the Theatrical Work of José Sanchis Sinisterra 2.1  Improvisation in Sinisterra’s Laboratory 2.2  Less Is More: Aesthetics of Subtraction 2.3  The Tip of the Iceberg: Aesthetics of Reception 3.  Reflections on Improvisation, Border Zones 3.1  Improvisation Between Text and Performance 3.2  Improvisation Between the Real and the Non-real 3.3  The Subtext: Between the Explicit and the Implicit

5 5 6 8 12 16 20 22 24 26



II

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science 1.  Interpretative and Methodogical Hypothesis 1.1  Philosophical-Cultural Implications 1.2  The System and Complexity

33 33 35 39

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in Theater: Improvisation and Complexity 2. Analogies Between Theatrical Systems and Biological Systems 2.1  Actor and Performance: Complex Systems 2.2  The Actor as Dissipative Structure 2.3  Self-organization and Self-poiesis 2.4  Deterministic Chaos and Chaotic Systems 2.5 Holism 2.6 Nucleation 2.7  Fractals and Tension 3.  Final Reflections



III Improvisation Beyond Science 1.  Introductory Remarks 2.  Improvisation in Interpretation 3.  Hypothesis on the Process of Acting 3.1  A Practical Example 4.  From Chaos to Order in Theater 4.1  Graphic Hypothesis of the Receptive Process 4.2  Improvisation and Invention 5.  Improvisation in Sinisterra’s Minimalist Exercises 6.  Final Reflections Conclusion Bibliography

41 42 47 50 52 55 60 62 66 73 73 75 78 81 83 87 90 92 95 99 101

Prologue

The divorce between arts and sciences would seem understandable if we were to consider them in their respective realms, but this divorce should not be justifiable in the context of theory or, at least, in that of philosophy or knowledge. Considering that both art and science are two methods of investigating, comprehending and transforming reality, in the twenty-first century, it is not possible to maintain or to fuel this apparent incongruity. In particular, if the artist, preoccupied with adapting his thought and his work to the growing complexity of a world in transformation, did not try to approach the paradigms that the new scientific research offers to the astonished modern man, he would fall into a sterile narcissism. Artists need to discover new conceptual instruments that contribute to the probing of the laws of matter, life, social existence, and the human mind. As early as 1948, Bertolt Brecht had suggested to consider ourselves “children of a scientific era” since he was convinced that “sciences determine our social life in a totally new way” (Small Organon for Theater). He was basically referring to the “new social science” (dialectical materialism) whose purpose was to allow human beings to understand their reality and to be able to change it. Nevertheless, he was also invoking a necessary and fruitful symbiosis between art and science as a foundation of the new theater.

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More recently, John Brockman condemned the indifference that several ‘humanity’ intellectuals were showing towards many scientists’ great ability to divulge and to mold the thought of the new generations. The latters are the ones who face the big questions that have troubled humankind and who are still in search of answers. According to Brockman, the humanistic knowledge that very often “refuses science and often lacks an empirical basis is characterized by rhetorical comments in a spiral that broadens until one loses the sense of the real world” (Third Culture). This is not the case with Anna G. Cafaro, whose refined analysis of theatrical improvisation, from the perspective of complexity sciences, represents an original contribution to this desirable reconciliation of artistic expression and scientific reflection, rigorously pertinent to the ‘real world’ of theater. I want to emphasize, from the beginning, the audacity of her intent inasmuch as the actor’s art is the most ephemeral and fleeting element of the whole theatrical system. We all know that this art does not leave tangible traces as text, setting, costumes and music do; we know that it blooms hic et nunc from the versatile subjectivity of the actor and aims to reach the more elusive subjectivity of the spectator, who is a multiple and formless being, every night different. However, herein lies the value of Dr. Cafaro’s original epistemological approach: she submitted this complex interactive web of subjectivity to the objective parameters of chaos theory, through the analysis of complex dynamic systems. The two deterministic and aleatory vectors that structure her fertile hypothesis indeed support an infinite variety of natural and cultural phenomena (and aesthetic ones), able to provide explanations and clarifications. I find particularly illuminating her exploration of the concept of improvisation, which always has fluctuated in a limbo of general vagueness or in one of reductive technicality. In Dr. Cafaro’s analysis, by identifying and broadening its borders, improvisation reveals itself as the concrete and, at the same time, unpredictable territory in which the specificity of the theatrical phenomenon occurs. Since every theatrical event is an unlimited semiotic source and therefore, not limited to Semiotics, each event can be conceived as a “system far-fromequilibrium” formed by two asymmetrical but complementary subsystems: the stage and the audience or, better, the area of representation and that of expectation. The fluxes of information and energy that, according to the feedback principle and homeostatic models, connect these subsystems, find in the actor their main catalytic element.

Prologue | ix As we clearly deduce from this dense and brilliant study, which I have had the honor and the pleasure to recommend, it is in the actor’s ability of improvising where the organic (biological) nature—neither mechanic nor semiotic—of this complex structure of interactions shapes the theatrical system. The actor’s ability is linked to inevitability if we consider that the actor is, as a human being, a system open and far-from-equilibrium. In the deterministic context formed by the preset stage codes, this inevitable and desirable transience of the actor generates continual upheavals that open the way—to a major or minor extent—for the fertile unpredictability of the theater event, to the uncertainty, ambiguity and unrepeatable apotheosis of the present. As life itself ! The rigorous and fascinating trip that Dr. Cafaro’s proposes through the science of complexity to capture the sense, function and nature of the actor’s improvisation is, with no doubt, a splendid and—I would say—a unique example, with reference to theater, of a “new alliance” between art and science, which forty years ago the scientist Ilya Prigogine and the philosopher Isabelle Stengers were hoping to reach. José Sanchis Sinisterra, author and director, Madrid, Spain

Introduction

As a scholar and lover of literature and theatre, I was always intrigued by the seductive power a theatrical text has over the audience and have consequently tried to understand what differentiates various performances of the same text. For Meyerhold, theater is ‘the art of man’ and I knew intuitively that, as for him, the point of departure for my analysis should be the actor. Hence, I turned my attention to the performance of the actor on stage and in the lab. If we view the performance as merely an event resulting from the mechanical memorization and recitation of the text, we will never be able to uncover the secrets of the actor’s art, but if we explore the phenomenon, we will perceive that, between the act of memorizing and the act of reciting, there is a process of internalization imbued with improvisation. Already since the beginning of the twentieth century, great theatre directors and theorists have been assailed by the same doubts, hypothesizing various solutions and methods. They too considered the actor as a human being and the consequences that this implies. We imagine that, beyond the words contained in a text, there must be a web of interconnections involving words, technique, experience, intuition, and more, all very difficult if not impossible to define, distinguish, and recognize. We derive from this a view that the phenomenon that conceals the secrets of the transition from text to audience resides indeed in the act of improvisation.

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Improvisation in acting is usually associated with genres that do not involve a predefined text, i.e. the theatre genres in which improvisation is at its ‘purest’ state. Furthermore, many actors spontaneously yield to extemporaneous creation, unique and unrepeatable, during their performances. However, the phenomenon of improvisation is not at all limited to sudden creation; on the contrary, it accompanies every phase of a theatrical performance, with or without text, with or without rehearsals. The present work considers the phenomenon of improvisation based on the presence of a text, which appears to demand improvisation in order to be interpreted, on behalf of that specificity that distinguishes theatre from the other arts. During my research, conducted in Italy and Spain, I was able to attend a number of theatre workshops, and to interview various actors and directors. In particular, I had the opportunity to observe the work on Commedia dell’arte carried out by Mauro Piombo in Turin, Eugenio Barba’s workshops in Lamezia, and José Sanchis Sinisterra in Madrid. The latter, in addition to being a playwright and director, is also a theorist of his own theatre work, which turned out to be of enormous usefulness during our conversations and laboratory sessions for a deep understanding of the acting processes. From my very earliest contacts with Sanchis Sinisterra, there emerged numerous references to the theories of Chaos and Complexity, which the director had absorbed through the reading of various scientific texts. His concept of theatre as a system of relationships brought him to create a series of exercises in order to identify where exactly and how improvisation occurs. What S. Sinisterra does is experimenting with the human aspect of the actor perceiving the connections between art and nature; in this sense, what he works with is science. My work starts from these observations and further explores the mechanisms of the acting process. In particular, I am asserting that improvisation is not only a tool but also the necessary condition that makes the performance of a text possible, together with and through the actor’s intrinsic qualities. It does so not through a decoding or an exemplification of the text, but through a non-linguistic enrichment that accompanies and integrates the verbal component of the text. It is the condition that permits the “construction of complexity,” which is the core of Sinisterra’s dramaturgy. Thanks to improvisation, the actor finds himself in the condition of creating ex novo the text, by virtue of subjective factors determined by his system. Such factors, not random but selected by the actor’s system, are expressed in unpredictable ways, as they are subordinated to the momentary conditions of the hic et nunc. They reflect the actor’s true nature only if they have been previously

Introduction | 3 trained and developed. In this sense, improvisation requires a careful and strict physical preparation in addition to the capacity to yield to the spontaneity of one’s own nature. Improvisation is, therefore, a condition that favors the emergence, on the one hand, of the determinism of the acting elements and, on the other, of the aleatory modality of their expression. The application of the theories of Chaos and Complexity to theatre phenomena allows us to consider the actor as an open dynamic system to which we can apply the same laws that govern systems. Each actor is a network of relationships and, at the same time, an element of the network of the performance system, formed by the text, the audience, and the other actors. Thus conceived, the actor is a catalyst of energy, which, in the condition of improvisation, gives and receives energy from the stage event and from the audience. This exchange of energy maintains a constant level of tension, between order and chaos, capable of generating complexity. In the audience, such complexity favors the passage from chaos to order and thus the creation of meanings. What I propose to do is debunk the widely-held prejudices on improvisation that tie it to concepts such as indetermination, extemporaneousness, chance, or superficiality, and assert that it can be all of that, but is also much more. This work gives improvisation the dignity and worth it deserves in the artistic world, by acknowledging its primary ontological dimension, doing it justice, and restoring to it its essential role in the creative process. I suggest that it is legitimate to establish true analogies between the scientific world and the theater world, in the name of a complexity that dominates the field of global knowledge, already recognized by all disciplines. In particular, in Chapter II, I identify seven analogies between biological and actorial processes. The application of these analogies could become a valid contribution for future research on the paradoxically simultaneous and conflicting presence of order and chaos in the actor’s system, as intrinsic life forces. My work also intends to define the fields of action of order and chaos in the expression of a text; to identify important factors, both fixed and variable, that may influence both the performance and the reception of the dramatic text, and manipulate the elements of the “actor-as-system” and the “performance-as-system” with the purpose of increasing the tension necessary for complexity, as we shall see in Chapter III. Thanks to the phenomenon of improvisation, we are today able to approach the complex mechanisms of relationships that make it possible for a text to reach the audience in an ever more unique and original way. Today, the recent discoveries of the scientific world consider complexity a place of richness and creation. I intend to demonstrate that the actor’s improvisation

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is as complex a phenomenon as are cells, men, life, or the universe, and should be treated as such. Because in theater the actor is, first of all, a human being, and the interaction between actor and spectator is a flux of energy, science and in particular the cognitive and neurosciences could provide great insights into human action, behavior and mind. Specifically, progresses made in the field of empathy, the discovery of the mirror neurons1 and sophisticated forms of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), such as the last TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation), can help understand some brain and mind processes under certain stimulations.2 In light of what has been mentioned, my work aims to reduce the distance between art and science and build a bridge between these two worlds. They share the same nature principles on which all human expression is based. To understand how the actor functions means to understand how human beings and life itself function. I hope that this work is more than the sum of its chapters. P.S.: In this work, the term ACTOR will be used as a gender-neutral term that describes both a male actor and a female actress.

Notes 1. Vittorio Gallese, “Dai neuroni specchio alla consonanza intenzionale,” Rivista di Psicoanalisi LIII, 1, 2007: 197–208. See also SfN, Society for Neuroscience, November 2008, and “Human See, Human Do: Ballet Dancers’ Brains Reveal the Art of Imitation.” Science Daily. January 2005. 15 May 2016. 2. The TMS is the first non-invasive stimulation technique of human motor cortex that was created in 1985. See Elias Casula, July 25, 2011 15 May 2016.

I

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity

From a visible point that attracts attention, one can infer a hidden immensity. Jorge Wagensberg1

1. Premise The research on improvisation conducted in the contemporary Theatre Research2 in Italy and Spain introduced me to a varied and diverse theatrical reality in which ‘doing theater’ does not always answer to homogenous and coherent ethical and aesthetical choices. Nevertheless, I noted the need in both countries for more in-depth research on the actor and his abilities. As a matter of fact, there appears to be a generalized tendency to return to a Theater of Words3, after a Theater of Action or Body. Among the most interesting experiences that contributed to the origin and development of my work, there is the encounter with the Spanish Maestro José Sanchis Sinisterra. As founder of the Teatro Fronterizo in 1977, Sinisterra has long engaged himself—and he continues to do so—with the renewal of textual and actor-based dramaturgy through a combination of studio, practice, and divulgation. My reflections on improvisation were developed significantly, through my long, interesting conversations with the Maestro, as well as the readings of his theoretical writings, and above all the observations of one of his workshops, which I was able to attend in September of 2007. In particular, the workshop was geared towards the preparation of the actors before the rehearsals for the play Ñaque o de piojos

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actores, one of his last dramatic works. Following this meeting, the idea to analyze improvisation, not as an instrument of analysis but as a necessary condition in the representation of a text, was born. In this first chapter, I will begin by sharing my personal observations from Maestro Sinisterra’s workshop. Through a deductive analysis, I will try to understand the presence and function of improvisation in his laboratory, in an attempt to anticipate how improvisation will be reflected on stage. I will also seek to identify the means through which it manifests itself, and the elements of the performance involved. After, I will reflect on some fundamental principles of the actor-based dramaturgy of the director, which has been revealed during his work with the actors. Finally, in the third paragraph, using Sinisterra’s research on a marginal dramaturgy as a starting point, I will reflect on the function of improvisation in that borderland in which the known encounters the unknown: This is the place where creativity finds its best conditions.

2. Observations on the Theatrical Work of José Sanchis Sinisterra During rehearsals in a drama workshop, improvisation generally has a specific instrumental function, that of exploring the different possibilities of a text and the potential of the actor. This improvisation serves to highlight the hidden aspects and the various meanings present in the work. At the same time, it also allows the actor to step forward and push the limits of imbalance and chaos. In this way, each actor is able to evaluate his own physical and emotional potential and discover his unexpected abilities, thanks to inner resources that maybe he had never been able to use in more balanced situations. With these ideas, or better yet, expectations, I began to follow, with even more enthusiasm and extreme attention, the director’s every word and the actors’ every reaction. I wanted to record in my mind and on tape every little event that happened in that studio in Madrid. The Spanish playwright and director maintains in one of his articles that “dramaturgy aims to establish uncertainty.”4 I believe this sentence clearly summarizes both the need for a “new dramaturgy”, based on uncertainty, and the consideration of uncertainty, ambiguity, and lack of clarity as basic qualities in the field of dramaturgy, from Beckett and Brecht’s time on. These are the basics, as we will later see, of a minimalist art that does not explain ‘everything’ about a phenomenon but that, on the contrary, implies obscure areas that are rich in complexity.

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 7 Sinisterra conceives of a new dramatic action as “a more or less complex architecture of interactions based on different discursive strategies and on a combination of different codes, both verbal and non.”5 With the term architecture the Spanish Maestro refers to a real construction—to not call it a manipulation—of a given text so that this ‘constructed text’ could respond to the needs of the actor or, better yet, of the entire show. According to Sinisterra, the information provided by the text should include many shades so that the spectator—who must transform himself into a co-author—is involved in a permanent work of deduction, interpretation […]. My theater seeks more and more to put the spectator in front of the evidence of a shadow-filled reality, brimming with enigmas, where human activity is a permanent interpretation. For me, this is one of the political functions of theater.6

These words alone are enough to introduce their author, Sinisterra, and to anticipate not only his conception of theater and dramaturgy but also his vision of reality, of the level of awareness human beings are capable of approaching and—not less important—the political and social function of theater. In each encounter with Mº Sinisterra, his presence monopolizes the attention. Whether in a workshop, in the theater, or at the table in a bar, his ability to include and involve people allows everyone around him to feel like a part of a creative group, always stimulated by the fast, lively, and inexhaustible pace of the Maestro. Sinisterra has the gift of being able to combine conceptualization with practice, be it during his seminars, the rehearsals for his shows, or in conversation. He never separates theory from practice but always affirms the necessary presence of both as indivisible aspects of art in general and theater in particular. The combination of theory and practice, in fact, is present in every phase of the theatrical phenomenon, from the creation of the text to the formation of the actor, to the construction of the Echian7 implicit spectator, to the divulgation of ideas, towards the information and formation of all those who rotate around the world of theater. It is easy to infer how Sinisterra is busy, sometimes simultaneously, in all these tasks, as author, director, pedagogue, or critical spectator. Proud of his theatrical mission and pushed by the desire to physically control the material with which he works, he is often taken by a certain mania to list, classify, and categorize all the processes and the phases of the theatrical phenomena he has analyzed. This provides him a useful mode of organization for his work as both a director and a pedagogue. Furthermore, an important aspect of his artistic activity is the field of science. The director, thanks to his knowledge of recent scientific discovers, is able

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to find similarities and connections in the creative and evolutionary mechanisms. This allows him to enrich his artistic theory with conceptualizations belonging to the area of science. In an interview, he claims that, even though he comes from a family of scientists, he considers himself ‘the black sheep’ of the family. He admits to attributing parameters of science, however, to the “ambiguous and mysterious territory of art” and to have “always attempted to apply taxonomic criteria, not to limit the creative possibilities of the author but to support them.” He continues: Diagrams of various typologies are famous in my seminars, for example of the monologue or the dramatic dialogue […]. [For example] I have determined about eighteen different types of dialogue, not all of them used. […] I am trying to discover plurality, variety, diversity […] in such a way that the author finds himself in front of an infinite field that at times produces vertigo, to explore aspects of human reality through more complex theatrical forms with respect to those normally used […].8

2.1  Improvisation in Sinisterra’s Laboratory9 Before every show, through intense work in the theatrical laboratory, Sinisterra asserts from the beginning his desire to deconstruct the actors, in a Derridian sense, “not with a purely negative and destructive intent, but rather with the precise objective of finding the truth and the deeper meaning in them.”10 Sinisterra’s aim is to unpack their ‘professional’ baggage accumulated from experience or, as he himself affirms in his interviews, “cleanse the actors.” In fact, part of the craft of the actor is to repeat many times the same part to ‘fix it’, to make it therefore useable in other representations. In his traditional practice, the actor tends to associate phrases, states of being, and feelings with certain gestures, tones, and emphasis.11 The repetitions of the rehearsals and the continuous representations bring the actor to an unconscious excess of figurativeness or description of a certain text. In gaining experience, the actor automates useful techniques while at the same time corrupts his acting. As a consequence, he tends to add to his spoken words a variety of expressive, non-verbal languages that reinforce, through repetition, the literal significance without necessarily enriching it. When faced with this uniquely literal sense of the play, the spectator is unable to perceive the different nuances of meaning, regardless of the various expressive languages such as words, gestures, facial expressions, emphasis of tone, speed, etc. In Maestro Sinisterra’s hands the actor is de-structured, disoriented and pushed to look at the text in a different way. It is here that the work of a scrupulous and determined director begins.

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 9 The primary assignment for the actor, who is the central element of Sinisterrian dramaturgy, is to keep the text open rather than offering it to the spectators as a clear, concise path towards resolution. The actor has to reject a literal explanation of the text, and he must listen attentively to his fellow actors; he has to “become an element of a ‘translucid’ theater, a place where one can see but cannot see, where everything is clear and opaque at the same time.”12 He must make room inside to “tangle himself in the multiple threads of thought that belong to every living being and therefore also to his own character” (Sinisterra, Teatro, 19). This allows the spectators to perceive such a complexity of thought and to share “a certain way of feeling the world and existence” (19). In particular, through deconstructing exercises of improvisation created by the Spanish director, the actor is prompted to separate the verbal action expressed by words from the rest of the nonverbal languages, isolating the individual elements of the performance. The lab work becomes, from the first day of work, a gym for training every faculty of the actor, under continual and incessant stimulus from the director. It is tempting to ask the director if there is a risk of confusing the actor or of complicating his role. The aim of deconstruction is clear in Sinisterra’s mind, though: “to reinforce the expressive power of the actor, expanding his spectrum of interpretative strategies.”13 In this way, the actor is firstly conscious of the various elements that make up a performance, and secondarily, ensures that each of the elements acquire a sufficient amount of autonomy so that it may be used in the performance at the right moment. The first obvious observation of a theater workshop conceived in this way is the lack of correspondence between words and gestures, facial expressions, and body movements. This discrepancy creates a sort of friction among the elements that disrupts the expectations of the observer as well as of the actors themselves. One is immediately aware of a new dimension to the performance, and it is as if a new meaning is born, unexpected and unusual, but legitimate, as it is, in any case, the product of the combination of words and gestures. The actor, unconsciously, becomes in this way the author of a significance that differs from the literal meaning, without mechanically illustrating words with predefined gestures; he is free to move his body independently from words. From what has been observed up to this point, it can be deduced that only through the autonomy of all his expressive languages, both verbal and non, the actor will be able to express the text by means of the word and improvise the other elements without describing the word itself. In effect, one might suppose that even the word would be affected by such a procedure. In fact, separating the

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various elements involved in the acting and “training them” individually, the word will also feel the effects of the de-conditioning with regard to the gesture, and will be free to express itself without any connection or dependence on thoughts, movements, and body positions. In this work, the word ‘performance’14 defines the action of the actor that combines all those forms of expression. Through the independence of the different elements, the actor can create conditions so that the performance is sincere, true, and appropriate in that moment. We will see later on how these are the characteristics that identify the actor. Improvisation, in this context, is conceived as the condition of performance between the determinism of the text, intended as a fixed part, and the aleatory element of the actor, intended as human being—that is to say, those elements intrinsic to human nature. It is that condition that allows the freedom and independence of the elements of the performance. I mentioned, at the beginning of the second paragraph, that my expectations of improvisation in the workshop were with regards to an investigative function of this, in the sense that the actor, guided by the director, pushes himself to his own personal limits to discover both his physical and emotional potential. At the same time, it serves to reveal various meanings of the play. What I experienced during Sinisterra’s workshop was definitely more than that. I was able to not only confirm my expectations and observe that improvisation has, firstly, an instrumental function, but also that it, undoubtedly, has a greater function. Here, the ray of action of improvisation extends itself. In his laboratorial process, improvisation is still used as an instrument of exploration, of disclosure of meaning, “to discover innovation, open the senses, deconstruct, and go against the literal interpretation” (Interview). In addition, however, this improvisation is addressed—as Sinisterra specifies—to action, to intention, to subtexts, to the part submerged or to multiple trains of thought (Interview). What does it mean for the director to improvise the intention? By using improvisation as a subtext, other trains of thought are allowed to overlap with the principal, linear thought process. In the interview, Sinisterra adds that, after all, human thought does not explicate itself in one way only; therefore, “for example, while I am speaking with you, I am thinking that I should smoke another cigarette, and at the same time that the color of your t-shirt is the same as mine.” He continues: “What I do is inventing parallel trains of thought” in such a way that while the actor says certain things, he thinks about others (Interview). In doing this, the descriptive power, which the word-as-signifier is charged with, is reduced, allowing the perception of another idea beyond the literal significance.

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 11 I deduce from this that it is not about making the gesture, the movement, the expression, or the voice extreme, in order to discover the physical limits; the question is in creating more trains of thought at the same time, with the goal of training the coexistence of such thoughts, and avoiding confusion. It is about training the instantaneous association with other thoughts, the extemporaneous and parallel evocation of other ideas, all of this independently from the actions of the rest of the body. Obviously, the submerged part must be able to manifest itself only at the level of perception, through a look or a movement that evokes another train of meaning. In this way of acting, “a new non-explicit material appears” (Interview). Such a mechanism is endorsed by the limits of the word, which can offer only an approximation of the image and never a global representation. Adriano Piacentini observes that “the image reflected in the words does not pass through the transparency of crystal, but recomposes itself in the flickering of the flame.”15 Referring to the method of Calvino, he goes on to affirm that the word must give movement to figurative fantasy, that fantasy regulated by an intentionality that orients it towards meaning; it must aim directly at the imagination because it is there that we find the motor of the system of relationships that build the images of reality, of which words as a sign are a surrogate (Piacentini 399).

Obviously the field of discourse of Piacentini is Calvino’s literature, but the same principle could be easily applied to Sinisterra’s method. For Sinisterra the aim of the actor, as author, is to create complexity in the relationship between performance and spectator. Only in the condition offered by improvisation does the fascinating and intriguing phenomenon of ‘complexization’ become possible. Sinisterra declares more than once that he works with the unexplainable, the uncertain, the enigma, not to confound the spectator but so that the representation may provoke the reflection of the spectator (Sinisterra, Interview). The complexity, on which his theatricality hinges, is therefore associated with the necessity of saying the unspeakable, of giving an image of reality that is rich in empty spaces and shadows. His theater does not claim to represent reality but to explore it through particular points of view. In this sense, improvisation continues to have an investigative function also outside of the workshop and after the rehearsals, on stage. The spectator, involved in the improvisational process of the actor, will find him/herself obligated to decipher the complex performance through his own improvisation. All of this, in any case, will be seen in the following chapters when we speak about reception. For the moment it can be said that a theatrical representation in all its complexity acquires an investigative function above all with regard to the unknown, to

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the unexplored, to the many different worlds inscribed in the text, beyond a social and cultural function. According to some scientific theories (that will be explored in greater depth in Chapter II) for the ‘butterfly effect,’ a small perturbation in Sydney may cause a grand event in Boston. Sinisterra, welcoming scientific suggestions, is convinced that that can also occur in theater. In fact, a minimal action from the actor can have a noticeable effect on the spectator, provoking unexpected reactions outside of the theater. In this sense, hoping that the butterfly effect works, his poetics coincide with his ethics, and place him next to the other great artists of the second half of the twentieth century. To summarize, we can affirm that in the workshop, thanks to improvisation, Sinisterra’s actors explore multiple subtexts as well as the submerged part of the text, unknown even to the author himself. The director declares in an interview that improvisation favors the creation of complexity: “It allows the visible part of the text to become more complex; it complicates literality; it enables one to distance oneself from the danger of obviousness; it discovers latent dimensions of the play” (Interview). All of this is the nucleus of Sinisterrian poetics and methodology, which will be discussed in more depth in the following two paragraphs.

2.2  Less Is More: Aesthetics of Subtraction Sinisterra, in his reflection on a ‘minor theatricality’ or an ‘aesthetics of subtraction,’ from 1993, speaks of a condensation and an emptying of the dramatic word, which is no longer a carrier of the author’s thought, nor does it transmit any ideology: “[The word] is insufficient […], it does not say but it does. It does not show but it hides. It does not reveal what the character seems to say but actually what he does not want to say. And in this condensation of speaking, silence is just as expressive as speech”.16 The ‘minor theatricality’ is based on the following: the ‘expressive containment of the actor,’ the ‘mitigation of the explicit,’ the ‘thematic concentration,’ the ‘mutilation of the characters,’ and the ‘reduction of the theatrical space and of the number of spectators (Sinisterra, La escena, 28). In particular, the less the actor says, the more he expresses. The actor is no longer the super-communicator who multiplies his expressive resources with the risk of exaggerating in the illustration of the dramatic action. Instead, he adopts a contained, austere, enigmatic style through which—according to the image of the iceberg—manifests only a minimal part of how much happens to the character while the other parts remain submerged. The intensification of his presence does not implicate either hyperexpressivity or communicative omnipotence. Contrary to naturalist theater, minor

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 13 theatricality chooses to veil the obvious discursivity, accentuating the uncertainty and ambiguity of the transmissible contents. In doing this, the receiver is compelled to take on a more active role, encouraged to fill in the holes in meaning. Obviously, these actors, so trained, are to be inserted in the amplest context of the theater event, of which the text, the actor, and the spectators are also part and that, from now on, we will define as “show-as-system.” Sinisterra’s conception of theatricality and his exploration of the actor’s expression have, in fact, reception as a final goal, as the moment in which, according to the director, the theatrical phenomenon becomes concrete. Such an aesthetic of subtraction should be considered within the confines of his methodology, which in turn responds to the more general ends of the theatrical conception of Sinisterra and to precise questions about the future of theater itself. Sinisterra, in his work La escena sin limites, asks himself in which ways theater can continue to exist and develop. The foundational discourse of his methodology is quite logical and arises from two assumptions regarding the epistemological essence of theater. He states that “if the specificity of theater resides in the encounter between actors and spectators in a space and time” and “if the co-presence of actors and spectators is the condition for complex processes of identification and participation” (245), then it is necessary to increment these two presences, and to deepen and to enrich their interaction. In doing so, theater will not only continue to exist but it will evolve along with its elements. Sinisterra, therefore, entrusts the actors and spectators with the complete responsibility of theater, intended as both a show and a social and political instrument. He insists on the importance of the double presence of emitters and receivers and on the necessity of enriching their relationship, as ‘the theatrical encounter’ is a system. We cannot forget that his conception of theater and of theatrical processes is steeped in scientific knowledge of the last generation, such as the Theory of Systems and of Complexity. According to this, his aim, and that of the Teatro Fronterizo, is to “investigate and elaborate not only that which the scene transmits to the audience but also that which the audience itself transmits to the scene” (245). At this point, looking at the problem in this way, the Spanish director and theorist supposes that an “intensification of the presence and of the interaction” between actors and spectators “is produced with much efficacy and depth, starting from an essential, bare, aesthetic option, rather than an accumulative option that emphasizes spectacularity” (245). In his opinion, greater participation from the spectator corresponds with a minor (quantitative) offer from the actor. Thus the definition of ‘minor theatricality.’ Finally, minor theatricality gives a creative

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function back to the spectator, combating a citizen’s tendency towards passivity fomented by democratic societies today. An important political task for the future of the theater is, according to Sinisterra, to give back to the spectatorcitizen lucidity, creativity, participation, intelligence, and also innocence through his/her creative activity. Through a few exercises that I was able to observe in his workshop, Sinisterra’s minimalist dramaturgy, minor theatricality, and the function of improvisation are clearly reflected. The first exercise is that of the ‘single phrase,’ one of the exercises of semantic gymnastics which explores the multiple meanings of a phrase—other than literal—inscribed in the context, in the issuer, in the mode of expression, in the relationship with the other actor, etc. The actors have at their disposition a single phrase to pronounce for the entire performance. We could say that the actors are trapped in one phrase, but by improvising in the repetition of this, they have the possibility of emphasizing diverse elements, creating various senses. In this way, the phrase becomes a vehicle of meanings. The actors seek in the unknown a sense and logic, without being able to use linguistic codes of any type. They can ‘ask’ with their eyes and with their hands. In these cases, verbal phrases greatly limit the significance but train the improvisation of other perceptive and expressive faculties. The phrase of the exercise that I observed was: “This is the last time that I  come here.” At the beginning, each actor creates an internal ‘story’ to justify his own phrase; the actors are polite among themselves and they respect each other. Then they begin to set traps for one another and to stimulate each other reciprocally. Surprise as an unexpected act becomes a trampoline of reaction. In that moment they no longer think about the story but about reacting. During the course of the exercise, the instructions from the director help the actors to explore various meanings. Reciprocal surprise keeps the show alive. It might seem that the continuous reiteration would cause the semantic value of the elements of the phrase to diminish and the entire phrase to lose its structural function. On the contrary, the phrase maintains its semantic value in order to satisfy a communicative need between the two actors. Beyond this it also acquires different meanings based on the given contexts from the improvised—and therefore arbitrary—subtexts of each emission of phrase (even if at times they are suggested by the director). In other words, the phrase amplifies its value and becomes a polysemic instrument when it is accompanied by a combination of nonverbal languages and of the actor’s intentions that in some way must manifest them. Performance conceived in this way transforms itself into a polysemic element. The aim of this type of exercise is to train the actor to improvise the necessary subtexts

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 15 to express his intentions, to listen carefully to the other actor, and to extract from these subtexts those invisible hints that betray the other actor’s intentions. The second exercise is that of the ‘knocks’ and calls for the actors to sit at a table and use codes. Through knocks on the table, they themselves block the recitation of the text and force each other to pause or repeat the last phrase, with a different background motivation (one knock to indicate a pause and two to indicate repetition of the last phrase). The aim of this exercise is to escape from monotony and from the literality of the text. The word and its possible meanings are investigated in this case as well. The exercise trains the actor to react to any unexpected situation that could occur during the performance: Any error or distraction caused by a spectator could be a new stimulus for the next action. At the same time, the actor is constrained to be less representative. Sinisterra explains to the actors that: “At times, if the performance is long, it’s not because it exceeds but because it’s missing something,”17 that is, it is devoid of meaning. These types of exercises are useful, therefore, to create complexity around the linearity of the text and to add new dimensions. The third example regards an extreme minimalist exercise, known as Do It, or rather ‘exercise of the impossible.’ During this exercise, the actors are not allowed to speak. The director gives actor A a secret instruction, under the form of action, that actor B must discover through interaction with his companion. In the case of my observation the direction was: “I want you to open the door for me.” Actor A internally transforms his subtext and converts the impossibility, the obstacle to stir up the action. He must keep himself from using well-known coded gestures. Desire must not be “shown”, nor manifested, but only perceived. Specifically, actor A wants actors B to do something for him, without being able to either tell him or show him clearly. In this sort of incomplete conversation, the energy is modified according to the instructions of the director. For his part, B wants to fulfill the desire of A, even though he does not know what that is. Therefore, B must absorb every minimal detail of the other like a sponge. His task is to attempt, to try different actions until he finds confirmation from A. Contrarily, A responds to B’s attempts indirectly, with his body. Here impossibility is converted into necessity inasmuch as one depends on the other. Without using either gestures or looks, both actors must move and walk freely in the space they have at their disposition, without dispersing the energy that is developed from their interactions and diffused around them. In fact, as long as they can keep the purpose of realizing the other’s desire alive, both actors are involved in a flux of constant energy that inevitably involves the spectator. The silence develops a level

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of maximum attention to the signs of the other actor. Every detail of the expressions and gestures of the actors will be of enormous importance. The most useful instrument for both actors is to construct an interior monologue directed at the other, a sort of justification of their actions. Both must create a subtext, a ‘submerged part’ of meaning that does not correspond to the verbal text, in order to make the spectator aware of the existence of an unclear reality beyond that described by the verbal text. The spectator must be conscious of his impossibility to comprehend everything and of the fact that there will always be some aspect of the performance that escapes him. In this exercise, even if the text is always the same, the subtext can vary continuously, which ensures that one always plays with the unknown. This compromises the actor who somatizes the objective: He, in fact, must make the desire physical. Obviously, the desire can be nonsense, without meaning, but—as Sinisterra claims—it is common in daily life to encounter behaviors that do not have a clear meaning. In all three exercises, an intense relationship among the actors is established, based on the axiom that the ‘dramatic word’ alone, does not accurately express truth. Investigating the unspeakable, language is expanded to a point in which other realities become visible. Juan Mayorga claims that Sinisterra’s ‘theatrical word’ is “an injured word, incapable of taking charge of this world but, however, capable of showing, rather than telling, other worlds. It is a more limited word, but at the same time more powerful, because it’s more aware of its own limits.”18 As in biology, the particles that arrive at the limit of chaos through bifurcation cross the border to find order and begin again; in this way, for Sinisterra the frontier is a limit that needs to be surpassed, not an obstacle. This is the great lesson that the Spanish Maestro took away from science. Each word, though difficult to represent, becomes a source of meanings, or as in Mayorga’s words, “a mine ready to explode” (Sinisterra, La escena 27).

2.3  The Tip of the Iceberg: Aesthetics of Reception Because only that which lies beneath the surface can long remain unknown. Umberto Eco19

It has been noted in 2.1 and in 2.2 how Sinisterrian dramaturgy rotates around complexity. It will be seen here what is meant by complexity concerning the performance and the representation of a text. Maestro Sinisterra loves to define his theatricality with a clear, poetic image: that of the ‘iceberg.’ For the director “each element of a text is like the visible point of an iceberg”20: this makes only a tenth

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 17 of the whole visible, while suggesting that the other nine parts are submerged.21 In reality, this image goes back to the second century A.D., to the ancient Greek philosophy of obscurity.22 On this topic, Umberto Eco writes: “An unpublished, never before heard revelation will have to speak about a God that is still unknown and about a truth, which is still secret and profound. In this way, truth identifies itself with that which is not said, or what is said in an obscure way and must be understood beyond appearance and beyond the letter” (Eco 44). It can be deduced that neither the whole message of the author nor the entire interpretation of the receiver should be based on language, which is clearly insufficient: language limits itself to the transmission of the text and to some interpretations beyond that which is literal. Many other interpretations are born under the guise of intuitions, images, and symbols, which are impossible to describe linguistically. Eco affirms that “it is through processes of interpretation [conceived in this way] that we cognitively construct real, possible worlds” (44). Furthermore, Eco points out that the evocation of other referential planes does not intend to move the receiver away from the truth but rather encourage him to search for that truth in other contexts (150)—through mechanisms similar to those of metaphors and analogies—or in the intersection of various contexts. This is exactly the concept that supports Sinisterra’s methodology. The aim of an author is to enrich the text not quantitatively but qualitatively, with elements of complexity that reach the spectator in all his/her dimensions, whether sensorial, cognitive and aesthetic. In Sinisterra’s methodology the actor must generate conflict; he must endow his dramatic word with tension in order to generate an exchange of energy between himself and the spectator. This is a way to create complexity. The vitality of the show resides in the continuous flux of energy between the stage and the hall. Through the energy that s/he gives and receives, the spectator is able to construct meaning. Herein lies the importance of the ‘black holes,’ and another ‘import’ from science: energy given and energy taken. More precisely, according to Wolfgang Iser, during a reading, the point of view of the reader loses itself in the chaos of the literary material and is subject to two phases of a process: retention, for which the reader makes the text resonate in such a way as to allow aesthetic enjoyment, and protension, for which the reader’s anticipations are destined to be both fulfilled and emptied.23 It is as if the “readeras-system” alternated between states of order and chaos, maintaining a degree of stable tension. In every instant of the reading, a projection of the possible alternative scenarios is established, from which—anticipating the scientist Ilya Prigogine—the system will choose a single solution. In synthesis, Iser shows how the reader creates his text, while he reads. He does so not in an arbitrary way but

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by identifying in the text those clues—under the guise of empty, undetermined, ambiguous spaces—necessary for the reader to carry out his creative operation. For Iser, they are a sort of ‘black holes’ that, on the one hand, oblige the reader to fill them through the construction of ties, associations, and hypotheses, and on the other, allow the reader to create his own original, unique play. As a consequence, interpretation is free from any risk of subjectivism: It can be found between determinism and uncertainty, where the former refers to the text and its signs and the latter to the unpredictable creativity of the reader together with the elements that he involves, which from now on we will define as “reader-as-system.” Analogically, in the field of theater, Sinisterra adds that the show, formed by text, actor, and spectator, is no longer a unilateral emission of signs but rather an interactive process, a system based on the principle of feedback, in which the text proposes some indeterminate structures of meaning and the spectator (through the actor) fills the empty spaces with his own experience, culture, and expectations. Beyond this, while the author produces an artistic object, the reader (like the spectator), in this creative interaction, and in cooperation with the text, produces an aesthetic phenomenon (Sinisterra, La escena 251–252). Still in agreement with the German school, the director Sinisterra indicates the need to distinguish between the real reader and the implicit reader, who in theater convert into the real or empirical spectator and the implicit or ideal spectator. Just as Eco constructs his ‘model reader’ in the first pages of each of his novels (250), Sinisterra dedicates the first ten or fifteen minutes of his plays to destabilizing the spectator and deconstructing his/her certainties, expectations, and prejudices. Transformed in this way, the spectator becomes an ideal receiver, ready to enter the fantastic world of fiction, leaving reality behind. While the real spectator is an extra-textual figure, the implicit spectator becomes an intra-textual figure; therefore it becomes an element of the dramaturgical structure (251) to keep in consideration at both the moment of writing and the moment of the theatrical production. The implicit spectator will remain so for the duration of the show, as long as the pact of invention established with the actors lasts. This phase of the spectator’s construction process is fundamental to Sinisterra’s theater research and represents the first of the three phases in which the entire performance is carried out. The Maestro substitutes the classic sequence of “idea-development-conclusion” with “take off-cooperation-mutation.” In the take off phase, as we saw, the spectator is induced to detach himself from reality to enter the fantastic world of the play. Here, the spectator learns the codes and rules of the game and accepts the conventional pact (of theater). His interest and curiosity are piqued, and new expectations are established, different from those

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 19 he had before entering the theater. In the second phase, he is almost obliged to actively participate in the meaning of the play, with the creation of hypotheses, questions, associations, and more. Here, the creative work is developed, in which the spectator fills ‘the black holes’ of the text and that fertile exchange of energy between actors and spectators is produced. In the third phase, his/her expectations are not fulfilled and gratuitous solutions are not offered; on the contrary, the spectator is troubled and provoked by doubts and enigmas that leave him hesitant, or as Sinisterra says, “he is assigned homework” (254). What happens in this last phase is a return from the fantastic world to the real one, seeking to create a prolonged creative experience that the spectator can think about even outside the theater. We will see now, from a closer point of view, the evolution of the implicit receptor who, according to another of Sinisterra’s classifications, manifests himself in a five level ‘structure of effects’ along the play: referential, fantastic-generative, identifying, systemic, esthetic. On a referential level, the spectator designs a world to which he will refer during the course of the play, starting with more or less precise clues and temporal or spatial circumstances. On a fantastic-generative level, the spectator designs the elements of the piece, the characters, the action and the circumstances through verbal and nonverbal processes of interaction. On a level of identification, the receiver organizes his reactions based on the behavior of his characters. He lines up either for or against these characters. The ethical values explicit or implicit in the characters and their emotional registers provoke a major or minor level of subjective implication. On a systemic level, the spectator must fill the ‘holes’ of the text to complete meaning, calling on his creative capacity. Here the spectator will create his original, unique work. On an aesthetic level, the receiver accepts or denies the aesthetic nature of the product proposed to him. After all, it is his/her responsibility to consider the show a work of art or deny to it any artistic quality (254). In agreement with Sinisterra, Mayorga states that: One of the missions of art, or at least that I attribute to theater, is to enrich the experience of the spectator, which is important as a conversation or an encounter with another person. Theater must extend the life of the spectator. […] The text is more than the author. It has the ability to encounter other experiences that to me are unknown, with different contexts because the spectator lives in a different culture than my own. The text must contain elements that you judge to be non-negotiable, but at the same time it must be open enough to allow the radical interpretation of the director, the actors, and the spectators. It must be the sum of all these voices.24

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In short, the Theory of Reception gives Sinisterra the instruments necessary to conceptualize that which he was already putting into practice with his Teatro Fronterizo. The director firmly believes in a type of theatrical writing, full of ambiguities and chiaroscuros, that requires a concept of mise-en-scene that does not yet exist. […] A type of lightness is appearing in writing that is usually flattened by a concept of performance and acting that has multiple meanings and signs. As Bernard Dort used to say, the director became obese, and his obesity runs the risk of crushing the levity of this writing.25

The director recalls a quote by Roland Barthes that conceives theater as a polyphony of signs. According to Barthes, not all the signs [however] always have to function simultaneously, or rather there must remain holes or spaces so the audience can fill them. These holes exert a dynamic dramatic effect. The enigma is a structural element that must add up to the meaningful element. (Sinisterra, Explorar 47)

Sinisterra manipulates the text through those that he defines as its cardinal points; the same that then reveal themselves to be its points of strength, such as silence, emptiness, obscurity and immobility. These points function as openings in the “text-as-system” that allow the entrance and exit of energy. In a certain sense, such openings work like the chakras of the human body in Zen philosophy, or as the doors and windows of a house. Within the metaphor of the house, the writer Mayorga makes a comparison between the weak points of the text and “the land that the author cedes so that the spectator may construct his/her home using his/ her own experiences.”26

3.  Reflections on Improvisation, Border Zones From the observations of Sinisterra’s workshop and from conversations with the Maestro on his theories, I infer that improvisation takes place in a border zone, in which there is an irresolvable conflict. Better yet, improvisation is itself a place in which opposing sides live together, in which order and chaos, as will be shown later, coexist. These contrasting forces give life to the representation. In fact, we have seen how meaning is born at the border between two entities, that of the word and that of the gesture (intended as nonverbal action): one fixed, the other aleatory. As a catalyst of energy, improvisation allows the emergence of the unpredictable in an extreme zone of borders and limits, between the expected and the unknown.

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 21 Exploring the limits of the theatricality of an actor in a lab, and those of a show in a theater, analogically, means distancing oneself from centrality to reach the periphery. Here, one can find him/her in front of a margin or a border, as Sinisterra suggests in the manifesto of his Teatro Fronterizo. In traditional theater, there is certainly a margin between actor and spectator, but in the contemporary Theater Research it is about borders. We will now see what margins and borders, which at first glance could appear to be synonymous terms, mean. The notion of a margin is defined in the relationship between a full space and an empty one, with the exterior as a kind of no-man’s land.27 The margin indicates, that is to say, the end—the border of an area. For example, in traditional theater there is a unidirectional communication from the stage to the audience, conceived as a blank slate.28 The notion of a border, however, establishes the separation between two equally full territories that live reciprocally as two diverse, extraneous entities (Sinisterra, Itinerario 26–32). It is a barrier beyond which another unknown reality lies. The hypothesis of Sinisterra’s theater is to operate in the border zone in which, overcoming the barrier, the two zones enrich one another through an exchange of diversity. In the end, the work of art is the border between art and life. “Improvisation is a means by which to recover those unpredictable aspects of creation” (Sinisterra, Interview). For Sinisterra, this is found on the border between order and chaos, where chaos is intended as an order or a complexity that goes beyond ourselves that human beings are not given to understand. In this sense, the improvisation of the actor places itself between the unknowable complexity of human reality and an order established by codes and formal models: those of the text and of the performance. Improvisation is found in a border zone that Prigogine defines as “system far-from-equilibrium” (as seen in Chapter II). It is in this space that changes and innovation are produced, and it is in this space where the essence of theatricality is generated. The border is a fertile, productive territory that not only allows the emergence of the new, but also its use by the actor and by the spectator. According to the French philosopher Edgar Morin, when one finds himself in a complex situation, it is more important to have a strategy rather than a plan, because only strategy can allow us to advance through that which is uncertain or variable. Strategic art […] must consider not only uncertainty relative to the movements of the enemy but also uncertainty relative to what the enemy thinks, and also what he thinks we are thinking.29

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Morin considers a theatrical production a “battlefield, a variable, uncertain terrain” (59) in which the actor must be capable of instantaneously collecting information and knowing how to use it in a useful, constructive manner. The strategy becomes a bridge to reach the enemy through the instantaneous elaboration of information. It is born in a condition of improvisation that provides for the urgency of reaction. We can deduce that improvisation places the actor in a condition of maximum listening in terms of the other actors, spectators, and everything else that happens in the scene. Thanks to this, the actor—far from being in a balanced condition of normality—is made sensitive to every detail of his surroundings, listening with mischief and cunning to capture every minimal disturbance coming from the scene and from the room. This allows for the emergence of the unpredictable that characterizes the actor’s performance. Here we have another ‘loan’ from science: everything, together, contributes to the event. In the same way, improvisation allows the spectator to approach the complexity of the world responding to the urgency of answers and certainties, of meaning, against each plan. In this sense, art is a bridge between the human experience and indecipherable reality: where science is unable to explain, art creates.

3.1  Improvisation Between Text and Performance I propose here a reflection on some of the boundaries that improvisation is capable of overcoming. Moreover, the title itself of Sinisterra’s book, La scena senza limiti, clearly indicates the overcoming of the limits, first and foremost that between the scene and the audience. The linguistic structures of the text represent a border between two semantic spheres, that of the text and that of a ‘macro-text’ constituted by the performance of the actor. In the moment in which the actor carries out his role, his identity establishes a connection with that of the text, and in this process the perimeter that encloses both the text and the actor becomes a border zone that favors transition, turbulence, chaos and the overcoming of the border itself. I maintain that such a process occurs by virtue of the improvisation of the actor, who humanizes the text in order to transform it into a macro-text. In fact, the border between the two identities causes a metamorphosis in the actor: When the actor expresses the text, he ceases to be himself in order to assume the identity of the character; at the same time, the character lives and manifests himself thanks solely to the identity of the actor. Therefore, there is an ontological conflict

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 23 between the actor and the character that does not resolve it and that represents the specificity of theatrical art, just as Pirandello had already suggested through his works, in particular Six Characters in Search of an Author. Thus, improvisation guarantees the identity of the actor at the same time it expresses the identity of the character. Perhaps not everyone would agree with the hypothesis of improvisation as a condition for the representation of the text, and perhaps someone might object that representation, intended as the interpretation of a character by the actor, does not prefigure improvisation, intended instead as spontaneous, immediate expression, free from any textual instruction. To clarify my hypothesis and reinforce the idea of improvisation as the necessary condition for the representation, I suggest imagining for a moment a performance without improvisation in which the actor mechanically played the role of the character, as Edward G. Craig theorized at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this case, the character would not even exist because it would be a simple reading of the text instead of a manifestation of the ‘pure and perfect art’ for which the Irish director had always wished. On the other hand, if we imagine that the text does not exist at all (oral or written, complete or draft) and that the actor improvises freely, the character would not exist in this case either, because the actor would be himself and would put himself on stage. This brief speculation confirms that improvisation—intended as a condition of expression—accompanied by the text, is a necessary condition for the representation or interpretation of the character. Obviously, improvisation in these terms is not intended as the action/initiative of the actor that frees him from all conditioning including from the text, but as a requisite to connect him to the text and to give life to the character through the vital elements of the actor. Offering himself to make the character live is a true and proper sacrifice for the actor, which refers back to that sacrifice par excellence of Christ as man, in the incarnation of God30: For the Catholic world, Christ represents the simultaneous, paradoxical presence of human being and divinity. Moreover, in accordance with Roberto Corradino, “theater is the ideal place to die, resurrect, and die again.”31 In addition, “the human sacrifice of the actor who prepares himself and puts himself in front of a judging audience, stimulated by curiosity about what is in front of them, is functional only if it urges the spectator to ask himself further questions” (Gnesi). Therefore, improvisation represents the variability that, together with the fixed, structural points of the text, constitutes its representation.

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3.2  Improvisation Between the Real and the Non-real A performance is therefore a dilemma of borders, above all between the real and the non-real, between the absolute dimension of the character and the individual experience of the actor. In fact, the actor must be the other while being himself: He must be and not be at the same time. The theater critic Luis de Tavira goes into greater depth of the argument, stating that the most dangerous enigma of performance as art is the risk of the false correspondence between acting and simulation: In fact, the two concepts do not coincide.32 Tavira associates performance with the concept of reaction, speculating that if performing presupposes a reaction, this reaction is always natural and spontaneous in its conceptual identity. Therefore, according to Tavira, admitting the reaction implicates that the actor acts in a true, not false, manner: “If we refer it to human conduct, reacting is no longer predictable but rather the consequence of a stimulus that lives in the precarious instant of a situation. […] The stimulus is fictitious but the reaction is real” (11). From here we face the paradox of performance, in which fiction produces reality. Based on this “the tears are real but that which provokes them is only in the mind of the actor” (12). All of this becomes notably important for our discussion because, from the reflections of Tavira, we can infer that, in fiction, improvisation is the condition by which reality is created. A physical reaction to a stimulus, although fictitious, is spontaneous and natural, and shows the human quality of the actor. Tavira draws attention to the fact that Aristotle in his Poetics already addressed the issue, although, according to the critic, it has been misinterpreted for centuries: In the Poetics, Aristotle had already indicated a double dimension in the revealing construction of mimesis as the representation of an absent reality: that of the ‘represented’ and of the ‘representative.’ These two dimensions suppose two radically distinct qualities of action, while theater appears as the art of happening, that is to say, the mimesis of drama. The development of the dramatic life (peripezia) of the character is the action as praxis, and the construction mimesis of this praxis is in the one who creates it, poiesis. Therefore, in the conceptual light of this enigmatic text on the origin of poetics in theater, we can understand performance like that poiesis that creates the praxis that consumes the peripezia of the drama in which existence becomes personification, whose irrational effect is catharsis.33

For Aristotle, therefore, it was very clear that if a character imitates reality, an actor does not imitate but rather creates a reality inspired by that imitation. In other words, let us consider three levels: A, as a drama in real life (praxis); B, as a fictitious text that imitates that drama (mimesis); C, as the actor who creates

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 25 that drama on stage (poiesis). For example: In Shakespeare’s text, the character of Othello is the imitation of a real jealous man. On the stage, it is the actor the one who creates Othello every time. Tavira’s argument, on first reading, could seem confused, yet it proves to be absolutely convincing. Following his reasoning, both the actor and the character create an action, with one difference: The character, in carrying out his action (praxis), imitates a reality that exists a priori, while the actor puts into the game his own reality. Or better, even though the character carries out his action, he is part of the scene that recreates the original drama. It is as if between artistic reality— the essence of drama—and the scene there were a tacit pact, intrinsic to the artistic nature of theater, from which the actor is excluded. Therefore, the scene, and not the actor, is responsible for the mimesis. Consequently, the confusion that has accompanied Aristotelian theory for centuries resides in this subdivision between the creative action of the actor and the imitative action of the scene in itself. That being said, and returning to the beginning of our argument, one could suppose that even Aristotle believed in the creative act of the actor. It would be interesting, though impossible, to know what he thought about the process of the actor. Tavira’s critical reflections obviously lead to an argument on catharsis and consequently on the receptive experience. This experience, as we have already seen, is not passive but active on a cognitive, physical and affective level, just as in real life. It is worth asking if catharsis truly happens solely on an affective-emotional level, or if it involves all three dimensions of the human experience: the perceptive, cognitive and aesthetic dimensions. In regards to this subject, and to identification in particular, Sinisterra suggests that the latter should be intended as “an authentic, systemic belonging” and not “a mere empathetic adhesion,”34 without specifying the terms in which he conceives it. I would like to add to Sinisterra’s claim that I believe what happens to the spectator is a true process of empathy, and that empathy could be considered the key to aesthetic reception. To investigate this point further, it is important to explore the concept of empathy. The connection between expression (performance) and reaction suggested by Tavira could be backed by recent scientific discoveries. In fact, just a few years ago, it was discovered, thanks to neuro-scientific experiments, that empathy does not involve only feelings and emotions, but the whole person in all his physical structure. Scientists discovered that “the ability to appreciate physical pain in others is processed by the same areas of the brain that we use to live the pain that we perceive personally.”35 Furthermore, the scientist Tania Singer explains that “when we witness the pain of another person, we are involved from a psychobiological point of view in overlapping mechanisms, but

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that the absence of physical stimulus differentiates only the response tied to sensory receptors” (Rossi Mason, I meccanismi). Returning to our implicit receptor, we can say that he creates his work by involving all the psychobiological dimensions of his being: physical, cognitive, and emotional. In the artistic experience of the representation, therefore, both the actor and the spectator experience the sincere life of the character, in every human dimension. This entails that in theater, relationships are recreated: Catharsis does not happen because of the identification with a specific character as such, but because of a relationship with the character, or with that that the character represents. From what we have seen, we can gather that improvisation is that which makes the apparently paradoxical situation of theater possible: It is a necessary prerogative for the expression of the actor; it is a characteristic of the nature of the actor, whereby the performer is able to create and not to imitate.

3.3  The Subtext: Between the Explicit and the Implicit In the border zone between the explicit literal meaning of the text and the possible implicit meanings we find the subtext as a dimension that guides the actor and the spectator and to which the interpretation of the text is entrusted. Before entering into the matter of the subtext, I would like to digress for a moment and reflect about the concept of knowledge in regards to the experience of the theater performance. This will allow better comprehension of the function of the subtext and the argument broached in this paragraph. If as a premise we acknowledge that knowing has to do with acquiring awareness of an event or a phenomenon, we can suppose that awareness is acquired through infinite relationships that are built into our organism on various levels: The more levels involved, the more our awareness is increased. This means that our knowledge increases if the involved parts of our being increase. For this reason, a knowledge that aspires to be global should depend on the involvement of the whole person: of the physical, perceptive and cognitive being. If we presume that theatrical performance is an experience of knowledge, we can deduce that this is qualitatively proportional to the number of levels involved: The higher the number of areas involved, the higher the quality of the knowledge will be. In the act of representing, the dimension of the physical experience is added to the verbal experience. The integration of the two experiences leads to the process of the performance.

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 27 With this premise, and returning to our argument, we will say that on stage, the actor is in charge of what Stanislavskij defines as ‘subtext,’ or that element that confers a three dimensional character to the show and that completes the text for the actor as much as for the spectators. The subtext, therefore, is necessary for the construction of the performance because it represents the concrete structure in which the abstract text is inserted. Without this, the spectator would not perceive the work in all its unity but only in suspended elements in the scene. The subtext is the context in which to insert the text so that meaning is created and the “actor system” is constructed in its physical dimension as well. Stanislavskij suggested identifying, more than anything, the psychological motivations of the actions of the characters that were not explicit in the text but that were necessary for the global significance of the work.36 This second level of the text is where characters’ thoughts, desires, feelings and emotions are contained; though they may not be explicit, the actor must keep them in mind, as they help him give meaning to his lines. Furthermore, we can infer that a text cannot exist without a subtext. The actor finds himself working principally within the subtext rather than within the text itself. The subtext, however, even though it is correlated to the text, represents a variable in the sense that while the text is always fixed, the subtext can vary from one moment to the next, depending on the interpretation of directors or that of actors and according to conscious or unconscious choices. As it is related to the text, the subtext depends greatly on the dramaturgical writing: The more precise the writing, the less complex the subtext will be. In fact, when the dramaturgy is both explicit and rich in descriptions, the subtext is lacking in meaning, ambiguity and intentionality: The subtext asserts its importance when neither the intention of the text nor that of the author is clear or unique. It is there where the subtext may contain the tension between chaos and order; it may host many possible interpretations and may transfer such a tension to the spectator. The subtext can become a labyrinth for the spectator, an intellectual challenge, or a code to decipher. At the moment in which the spectator passes from chaos to order, s/he also passes from interpretative ignorance, from confusion, to the encoding of a meaning, to interpretation, and in that precise instant s/he finds the exit from the labyrinth, as will be shown in Chapter III.

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Notes 1. Jorge Wagensberg, Ideas sobre la complejidad del mundo (Barcelona: Metatemas, 2007) 113. 2. For more information about contemporary Theater Research see Daniela Vargiu. “Il Teatro di Ricerca italiano.” 2012 Magazine. December 2, 2009. 15 May 2016. 3. Also called the Theater of the Actor or of the Author. 4. José Sanchis Sinisterra, “Cinco preguntas sobre el final del texto” in La escena sin límites. Fragmentos de un discurso teatral (Ciudad Real: Ñaque ed., 2002) 286. 5. “[…] una más o menos complexa arquitectura de interacciones basada en diversas estrategias del discurso y en la combinatoria de códigos diversos, verbales y no verbales” in J.S. Sinisterra, “Cinco preguntas,” 284. 6. “Se trata de disponer las ‘informaciones’ que el texto proporciona con muchas sombras para que el espectador—que debe transformarse en coautor—tenga que hacer un trabajo permanente de deducción, de interpretación. […] Mi teatro, cada vez más, intenta colocar al espectador ante la evidencia de que la realidad está llena de sombras, repleta de enigmas y que la actividad del ser humano es una permanente interpretación. Para mí, ésa es una de las funciones políticas del teatro” in José Manuel Joya, “Treinta años de experimentación teatral. Conversaciones con S. Sinisterra” in Nueva Revista de política, cultura y arte, 66. Universidad de la Rioja (1999): 150.

15 May 2016. 7. It refers to Umberto Eco’s concept of the ‘implicit spectator.’ 8. “Siempre estoy intentando aplicar criterios taxonómicos. No para limitar las posibilidades creativas del autor, sino para apoyarlas […] Son “famosos” en mis seminarios los esquemas para plantear las diversas tipologías, por ejemplo, del monólogo o el diálogo dramático […] [Por ejemplo] tengo determinados unos dieciocho tipos de diálogos diferentes, la mayoría de los cuales no se han utilizado todavía […] Procuro descubrir pluralidad, variedad, diversidad […], de manera que el autor se encuentra ante un campo infinito, que a veces produce vértigo, para explorar aspectos de la realidad humana con formas teatrales más complejas que las normalmente utilizadas” in Juan A. Ríos Carratalá, “Entrevista a J. S. Sinisterra,” Universidad de Alicante, España, 11 de Noviembre de 2005, 15 May 2016. 9. Regarding the difference between a theater studio and a theater laboratory see 15 May 2016 “It was the late nineteenth century’s love affair with science and technology which spawned a new scientific rhetoric in the theatre, a development begun by Delsarte’s proto-behaviorist study of actors’ emotions. Delsarte’s work may have been criticized

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 29 for its mechanistic approach but it heralded a new interdisciplinary language for actor training, a language which drew on the common associations of the scientific method: rigor, objectivity, systematic interrogation.” 10. Jacques Derrida, Il decostruzionismo 15 May 2016. 11. The naturalist and realist theater of the XIX century is proof of an extreme combination of gestures and words, which the spectators were able to use to predict the behavior of the actors on stage, their gestures and their intonations. 12. J.S. Sinisterra, Teatro Traslucido (Pisa: Fondazione Teatro di Pisa, 2002) 20. 13. J.S. Sinisterra, Personal Interview, 21 July 2007. 14. In Italian, I coined the word ‘attuazione’ to express the performance of the actor as explained above. It is the actor’s action disconnected from any literal meaning of the text. Instead of giving (per-) form to a text, I privilege the acting of his system, defined as “actor-as-system”. 15. Adriano Piacentini, Tra il cristallo e la fiamma. Le lezioni americane di I. Calvino (Firenze: Atheneum, 2002) 398, in which the author describes the relationship between word and image in Leonardo’s code, described by Calvino in Visibilità. 16. J.S. Sinisterra, “Per una teatralità minore” in La scena senza limiti, (Perugia: ed. Corsare, 2003) 15. 17. From the theater laboratory conducted by Sinisterra in Madrid, which I attended in September 2007. 18. “Una palabra herida, incapaz de hacerse cargo de este mundo y, sin embargo, capaz de mostrar—más que decir—otros mundos. Una palabra más limitada y, al tiempo, más poderosa precisamente porque más conocedora de sus límites”, Juan Mayorga, “Prólogo” in J.S. Sinisterra, La escena sin límites, 27. 19. Umberto Eco, I limiti dell’interpretazione (Milano: Bompiani, 1990) 44. 20. “Cada elemento de un texto es como la punta invisible de un iceberg” in J. Sinisterra, La escena sin límites, 27. 21. It is interesting to notice that also Calvino, speaking about the birth of ideas of a writer, reports in Lezioni americane (87) a citation taken from Hofstadter: “The majority of his [writer] source, like an iceberg, is deeply immersed under water, not visible, and he knows it” in Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach (Milano: Adelphi, 1984). 22. The term takes its origin from Ermete Trismegisto, born from the syncretic union of the Greek God Ermete with the God of Egyptian mythology Thot, both divinities of writing and magic in their respective cultures. From the first century BC to the third century, a corpus of hermetic writers, attributed to the God Ermete, was formed. One of principal cornerstones of the hermetic doctrine is the process of initiation that man must complete to free from terrestrial chains the divine part (intellect) that exists in him. The means to reach salvation would be indicated by knowledge or gnosis, which alone can allow interior purification and therefore the reunion with divine intellect.

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23. Wolfgang Iser, L’atto della lettura: una teoria della risposta estetica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987) 330. 24. “Una de las misiones del arte, o que al menos yo otorgo al teatro, es enriquecer en experiencia al espectador, que sea para él tan importante como una conversación, o un encuentro con una persona. El teatro debe ensanchar la vida del espectador. […] El texto es más que el autor; tiene la capacidad de encontrarse con otras experiencias que para mí son desconocidas, en ocasiones porque el espectador vive en una cultura distinta a la mía. El texto ha de contener elementos que tú juzgues innegociables, pero por otro lado ha de ser lo bastante abierto para que permita la interpretación radical del director, de los actores y, finalmente, de los espectadores. Ha de ser una suma de todas esas voces” in J. Mayorga, El Duende, Primer Plano, (Madrid: 2004) 47. 25. “[…] un tipo de escritura dramática, llena de ambigüedades y de claroscuros, que requiere un concepto de puesta en escena que todavía no existe. […] En la escritura está apareciendo un tipo de levedad que suele resultar aplastada por un concepto de puesta en escena y de la actuación híper significativo e híper semiótico. Como decía Bernard Dort, el director se ha vuelto obeso, y su obesidad corre el riesgo de aplastar la levedad de esta escritura”, J.S. Sinisterra, Babelia, “El País”, Madrid, 16/01/1999, 22. 26. “El silencio, el vacío, la oscuridad, la pausa […] son la tierra que el autor cede para que el espectador levante casa desde su propia experiencia”, see Mayorga, in J.S. Sinisterra, La escena sin límites, 25. 27. J.S. Sinisterra, Itinerario Fronterizo, Primer Acto (Madrid: 222, enero–febrero de 1988) 26–32. 28. Another example could be the traditional teaching of a professor in front of a group of students considered ‘blank slates.’ Between the two there is a margin, and the task of the professor is to fill the empty space of the group. 29. Edgar Morin, “Le vie della complessità” in La sfida della complessità (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1995) 59. 30. Theme introduced by Pirandello in Trovarsi and then developed ad extremis by Jerzi Grotowski. 31. Paola Gnesi, Intervista a Roberto Corradino, 2007, 15 May 2016. 32. Luis de Tavira, Interpretar es crear (México D.C: Pasodegato, 2007) 9. 33. “Ya en la Poética, Aristóteles había señalado una doble dimensión en la construcción reveladora de la mimesis como representación de la realidad que se ha ausentado: la de lo representado y la de lo representante y que suponen dos calidades radicalmente distintas del hacer cuando el teatro aparece como el arte del acontecer, es decir, mimesis del drama. La consumación de la peripecia dramática del personaje es la acción como praxis y la construcción mimesis de esta praxis es en aquel que la crea, poiesis. Así, a la luz conceptual de este enigmático texto sobre el origen del hacer poético del teatro

The Actor’s Improvisation and Its Complexity  | 31 podemos entender la actuación como aquella poiesis que crea la praxis que consuma la peripecia del drama en que consiste la existencia como personificación, cuyo efecto irracional es una catarsis” in L. De Tavira, Interpretar es crear, 8. 34. “Una autentica pertenencia sistémica”, “una mera adesión empática” in J.S. Sinisterra, La escena sin límites, 257. 35. Complete citation: “Empathy is the ability to put oneself in the shoes of the others and to share sensations with them. If up to this point one believed that only feelings and emotions were of interest, today research has shown that the ability to appreciate the physical pain of others is processed by the same areas of the brain that we use to live the pain that we perceive personally. When a painful stimulus arrives, the signals travel like an electric current to the brain. The painful stimulus is then translated into a response that is both physical and emotional. [The experiments were carried out] by the Neurosciences group at University College London, directed by Tania Singer. The study has shown—explains Tania Singer—that when we witness the pain of another person, we are involved from a psychobiological point of view in overlapping mechanisms, but that the absence of physical stimulus differentiates only the response tied to sensory receptors. The evaluation of the emotional response has shown that there is a direct relationship between the intensity of the affective tie and the cerebral response” in J. Rossi Mason, I meccanismi dell’empatia, “Ecoplanet”, 11/3/2004. (Technological and scientific daily magazine). See also 15 May 2016. 36. Konstantin Stanislavskij, Il lavoro dell’attore sul personaggio (Roma: Laterza, 2005).

II

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science

[when faced with a ‘poetic’ science] I should be on the alert, mobilizing all my wariness and allergies: instead, I seem to recognize the sound of something solid that supports the argument, regardless of its rhetorical wrapping. Italo Calvino1

1.  Interpretative and Methodogical Hypothesis That improvisation is an indeterminate and vague phenomenon does not mean that it cannot be considered as a nonlinear system, as a network of references and information, of experiences, and of techniques. Whoever wants to attempt to improvise, or simply try to comprehend the phenomenon, would find him or her in front of multiple doors and, in opening them, would discover infinite connections among the various routes. Certainly, the first reaction would be that of being lost, but he or she will not be able to deny the pleasure of the continuous, unexpected and unpredictable change that nature will provide. Sinisterra looks to the field of science “to find susceptible models of reality to organize and formalize the always vague and often arbitrary field of artistic creation.”2 Erich Köhler, in a discourse on literary genres, draws on the Theory of Systems because only the construction of a system confers coherence to the comprehension of reality, that coherence that is necessary to give a sense to experience.”3 He continues, affirming that “the construction of a system is an instrument of appropriation, and not of reproduction, of reality” (17). Köhler bases his theory on that of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, according to whom “the

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utility of the system consists in its capacity to reduce, while constructing meaning, the complexity of the real” (17). In fact, the system, which on the one hand organizes reality around those points that constitute the knots of its network, on the other hand enriches the relationships of each element of the network with all the others. In this sense, by creating a structure, the system reduces the general complexity and augments the specific complexity. Applying Luhmann’s theories to theater as a sociocultural system, we are able to deduce that the same phenomenon happens: Through the complexity of the represented text—at the same time and paradoxically—the spectator is placed in the conditions to construct meaning, therefore to reduce the complexity of the real; while the actor constructs specific complexities, the spectator reduces the general complexity. In particular, during the performance of the actor, each element is placed in relation to the others: The gestures, the words of the text, the tone, the facial expressions and all of them form a system, which from now on we will define “actor-as-system.” On a higher level, this system creates a structure that encompasses the spectator and while, on the one hand, this structure directs him towards the general sense of the play, on the other hand, the systemic structure created by the actor amplifies the relationships between each verbal act of the text with all the other elements. Meaning is born from the combination of these relationships; because it is not a linear relationship, meaning assumes a prismatic form. Improvisation is the complex territory on which a play is constructed; it is an ambiguous and contrasting territory and for this reason fertile for innovation. It is the place in which the complexity can increase and diminish at the same time. In our case, considering the entire theatrical event a system permits us not only to understand how the show functions from within but also how it influences the spectator and, in turn, society. The significance of the system is organized according to determined mechanisms and is able to reflect itself on various levels, from that of the actor to that of the audience and of the entire community. Studying improvisation solely from an artistic point of view is almost impossible and certainly incomplete, while analyzing it through the philosophic-scientific dimension will give us a broader, richer vision. Examining theories based on the evidence of Chaos and Complexity in systems and creating analogies between theatrical systems and scientific systems will let us recognize new variables and to discover in what way the performance of the actor could be managed and manipulated. Most important, an integrated study will let us understand how an actor functions and how the human being behind the mask functions, since both are regulated by laws of nature.

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 35 From the observation of determined moments of the actor’s performance, within the scene and the show as a whole, I will try to explain the phenomenon of improvisation through an inductive way. The philosophic-scientific point of view of Ilya Prigogine, Fritjof Capra, John Briggs and David Peat among others, will inform my interpretative hypothesis, contextualizing the artistic phenomenon in a vaster cultural field: Through a series of analogies between theatrical and biological systems, we will see how the mechanism of creation is as unique in elemental systems as it is in those which are more evolved. In particular, we will note how the same process, both in science and art, is based on creative mechanisms that require the phenomenon of improvisation as a necessary place in which the creation of the ‘new’ can take place, and in which complexity can be developed.

1.1  Philosophical-Cultural Implications Entering into the physical and biological world of Prigogine and his colleagues is, for a scholar of art and literature, like immersing oneself in an ocean of atoms and particles where an apparent chaos reigns. From the beginning, however, we are able to make out mechanisms and processes. Only when models and shapes of order are captured are we able to feel “at home” or at least in a familiar place, and able to understand languages and especially internal mechanisms that regulate movements and forms. This proves that all human activity, broadly speaking, could be dominated by similar principles. Whether these are physical, chemical, biological or mathematical, sociological, psychological or literary and artistic sciences, all expression of human knowledge seems to belong to a single culture, even though each one explicates itself in a specific way. In The New Alliance of 1979, Prigogine and Stengers clearly and decisively express themselves on the subject of a single culture and they write: For the first time, a physics theory allows us to describe and to predict an event that responds to the most general needs of a theory on creativity. […] In the far-from-equilibrium states we see coexisting […] a continuous working […] with the brusque, discontinuous new element. […] It seems that for the first time the object of physics is no longer radically distinct from that of the so-called human sciences and that a real exchange among these disciplines is therefore possible.4

Even though the two scientists do not mention in their main works the ones before them who had studied the relationship between the two disciplines in question, their enthusiasm towards the achievements of science, that tend to draw together human and physical sciences, is evident. I have personally been infected

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by the same enthusiasm, which has brought me to associate the achievements of science with the phenomenon of improvisation and in general with the artistictheatrical world. Since the 1950s,5 Prigogine, the Belgian chemist of Russian origin, also fascinated by literature, philosophy and art, deepens his studies into the dissipative structures and the systems far from the equilibrium, obtaining the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977. Prigogine is certainly neither the first nor the last scientist to study these subjects; he was “however the first to formalize the dissipative structures and to define in greater depth modes and conditions in which selforganizing behaviors develop.”6 The choice falls on him also because he has without doubt made a notable contribution to the diffusion of important scientific principles and their philosophic and cultural repercussions, through the publication of numerous scientific books, for laymen. Of particular importance is the already cited work The New Alliance. In this book, Prigogine and Stengers hope for a new and more integrated relationship defined as a ‘new alliance’ between man and nature, a substitute for an old alliance discussed by Jacques Monod in 1970, in the volume Chance and Necessity.7 As Calvino writes, in his review of The New Alliance, published in Italy in 1980, “the book is a passionate meditation on man and the universe that, rejecting the separation of the ‘two cultures,’ tightly interweaves in the same discourse the roads opened by scientists and the questions of philosophers.” (Calvino 2040) The “new alliance” suggests above all the overcoming of distinctions between the scientific and humanistic knowledge to which ‘man’ and ‘nature’ have been forever relegated and hopes for a more profound collaboration among various disciplines, based on a contamination of cognitive methodologies. Without entering into mathematical formulations and logical questions, that which interests our argument is the vision of the world and of life according to Prigogine. He bases his theories on the presumption that natural phenomena are characterized by imperfection, instability, indetermination and disorder. In other words, Prigogine and his colleagues address the complexity of the world and the universe with acceptance and respect. With the development of computer science and technology, in fact, numeric approximations do not seem to offer solutions which are certain and definitive for analysis and classification. From here, it is necessary to accept the imperfection of the scientific method and the incapacity of this to measure and quantify those realities, which reveal themselves in nature to be complex. Prigogine integrates this issue of knowledge with the concepts of Complexity and Chaos, intended as organizational principles not yet known to human beings. This implies the figure of a scientist who is no longer an external observer

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 37 of reality but who has now become the object of his own study. Consequently, for the scientist, who is now subject and object, it becomes impossible to view objectively the world in which he finds himself immersed; he is barred from a complete and global knowledge of the empirical world. He is only able to establish relationships with those parts of the world that surround him, and to have points of view and opinions regarding the phenomena that he observes. Such a scientist does not claim to analyze and break down the phenomena of complex realities, but rather accepts them for how they reveal themselves to him, seeking meaning in the totality of the single parts. Such knowledge is multidimensional, subjective, imperfect and limited. Other scientists share Prigogine’s vision of the world and of knowledge. In particular, Briggs and Peat extend their disquisitions to the world of art. According to their theories, also artists, like scientists, understand the complexity of the world but they seek to communicate it rather than explain it. Art, as a category made subjective by human thought, is, as we know, realized only and uniquely in the moment in which there is a consumer of the artwork, and therefore cannot be quantified in a material way. However, art is also, as we do not easily think of, like science: It is but a set of relationships between consumer and object; thanks to this characteristic art exists only hic et nunc, or in the moment, in the manner and in the context in which the relationship takes place.8 Art itself is abstract, though music, painting, literature and theater can stimulate and provoke ‘artistic relationships.’ The relationships between the consumer and the work of art do not necessarily have to coincide with that of the artist and the same work, and most of the times they do not. According to the aforementioned scientists, artists primarily project infinity on a finite form, not to make it simpler but rather to confirm the existence of a rich and complex reality. In applying this concept to theater, I believe it is possible to assert that the actor is well aware that his is not the only possible interpretation of the text, but his art form has to stimulate in the spectator mechanisms able to recall the complexity of the text itself. Through the play, the spectator must penetrate the complex world of which he himself is a part. Endorsing these principles, the scientist Jorge Wagensberg declares that “the artist counts on the fact that, from a visible point that draws attention, it is possible to deduce a hidden immensity.”9 The scientist continues, saying that “knowing, in the sense of capturing or believing to have captured, an immeasurable complexity through a simple image, produces an emotion, a very special feeling that we perceive as instantaneous and intimate; or better, in a secret complicity with the mind that produces such an image.”10

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At this point, it comes naturally to reflect on some important consequences that derive from such a vision, mainly of an epistemological nature. If science questions the possibility of reaching absolute knowledge, as it is impossible to know everything, that which can be pursued is therefore an approximate knowledge of the object of study and of the processes themselves. I believe it is necessary here to consider the new epistemological concept that follows that (even though this is not the place to explore the question in-depth): knowledge is no longer the acquisition of objective data but rather the comprehension of the processes and relationships that govern cognitive phenomena. According to Mauro Ceruti: the relationship between conscience and knowledge is marked by endless limitations, but which are the source of the emergence of the new. To every moment of awareness correspond both a new consciousness and the production of a new cognitive unconscious. Consequently, to every moment of awareness corresponds an increase in ignorance.11

The limits are not barriers but refer to the constructive mechanisms of knowledge. They become a critical place through which the emergence and creation of innovation happens. In a certain way, the limit of knowledge is like an unreachable horizon, like a mirage. Ceruti continues, “from epistemology of representation we pass to epistemology of construction” (34). The point of view of Prigogine, Capra, Briggs and Peat brings us inevitably to the reconsideration of the concept of observation and experiment, as well as that of truth. If the laws do not say anything specific and reliable about a phenomenon that happens in space and time, if they are only the description of a possibility that things might happen, then science is reduced to but one of the possible discourses on the world, or a temporary discourse.12 From this discourse we deduce that science is no longer the repository of the world’s only truth. Agreeing with Ceruti, we can easily say that we pass from an image of science as episteme,13 that is security and certainty, to an image of science as doxa, or hypothetic knowledge and opinion (25–26). A sort of baton hand-off of truth is established: Science gives way to complexity, repository of many truths for as many observers who desire to get closer to natural phenomena. Knowing is therefore a complex system that includes observer and observed, as both belong inseparably to the same world. From this perspective reality is created in the moment in which a person observes it. Complexity is without doubt a key concept in such a vision of the reality of the world and of art, and for this we will try to better clarify its value and its role in cognitive and creative mechanisms. Rather, I should say that complexity is so

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 39 essential to our topic that we must think of it as a constant, always and everywhere present in this work, even when it is not mentioned explicitly.

1.2  The System and Complexity It has been stated that Prigogine and his colleagues observe and comprehend the world as a complex entity, a system of systems. Furthermore, it is on the system that the conception of matter, of life, and of all perceptive and cognitive processes is based. Knowledge itself is reduced to a phenomenon of relationships that, under the disguise of a system, comes to constitute the pivotal principle around which all human activity revolves. The system, therefore, becomes the nucleus of a well-defined philosophic-scientific conception. From the Greek synestai (to put together), the system in such a conception is intended not as a passive juxtaposition of a certain number of elements but rather as an active entity in continuous movement. The peculiarity of the system in this conception is that the movement does not derive from any external force, as it did for Greek philosophers, nor from any sort of unknown or magic energy; the movement derives from continuous interactions between the elements that these same elements are able to generate. It has to do with a force internal to the system, due not to the elements but to their relationships. The relationships among different levels generate movement and determine the fundamental characteristic of the system: Complexity. The shift of attention from the elements to their relationships entails the distinction between quantity and quality of the system and consequently between the concepts of complication and complexity. Henri Atlan, on this matter, specifies that: a complicated system is a system of which we comprehend the structure and the functioning principles: On principle, it is undeniable that with time and money it is possible to reach an integral knowledge. On the contrary, the complex system is that which provides us with a global perception, in terms of which we can identify and describe it, though aware that we cannot comprehend it in its full details.14

Both concepts suggest a difficulty of comprehension, but require two different approaches. In the case of a complicated problem, the analytical approach leads to the breaking down of the system and to examining the singular parts of the system in a linear way. For example, a watch or any mechanical object, can be broken down into parts, manipulated and reassembled. Instead, in the case of a complex problem, the necessary approach is of the systemic or synthetic type. The problem concerns the relationships in a system that cannot be broken down;

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once they are broken down, it would be impossible to reconstruct the system. Let us think about a chorus of voices: the problems of a chorus cannot be resolved by analyzing the single voices—each single voice of a chorus is intended to sing but not to represent the entire choir—as much as working on the dynamics of the chorus as a system that encompasses all the voices. In this case, the system must be comprehended as an indivisible whole. Scientist Fritjof Capra is of the opinion that one of the greatest innovations of science in the twentieth century was the “passage from analysis to synthesis”: The great surprise of science of the XX century consists in the fact that it is not possible to comprehend systems through analysis […]. The relationship between the parts and the whole has been overturned. With the systemic approach, the properties of the parts can be understood just by studying the organization of the whole. The systemic thought process is “contextual” that is, the opposite of the analytical (thought process). Analysis means breaking down something in order to understand it; systemic thought process means placing it in a context of a broader whole.15

Nevertheless, Prigogine and Stengers had already maintained in 1979 that the analytic method was nothing but a ‘fallacious idealization’ and the following example clarifies once again the importance of context in the comprehension of a phenomenon, highlighting the necessary holistic approach: [reducing] buildings to conglomerates of bricks, with the same bricks it is possible to construct a factory, a palace or a cathedral. It is by looking at the entire construction that we can see the effect of time, of the style in which the building has been conceived (Prigogine and Stengers 32).

According to our scientists, therefore, we can comprehend the unique characteristics of a whole phenomenon, not of its single elements, only through the context in its entirety. In light of what has been said up to this point about the systemic thought process, and about complexity and knowledge in general, it emerges that the phenomenon of complexity is closely connected to the point of view of the observer. Complexity, in fact, is not an objective property of a system, but, as Carmelo Impera argues, “a property of the scientific representation currently available in a system”16 or better, a property of the system constituted by the observer and by the observed object. It could be argued that it is an arbitrary property of the observer with regards to the system, rather than a characteristic of the system itself. I insist on clarifying this point because from here it follows that, in order to know, or better yet, to understand a complex system, various models, or according

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 41 to Stengers various paradigms, are necessary (Stengers). Complexity thus exacts “strategies of multi-dimensional thought, […] the dynamic use of diversified models to connect theories, information, problems and meanings on various levels” (Impera 11), which can be translated in multiple points of view. Only in this way can we draw closer to an almost global vision of the system. Complexity is closely linked to chaos but does not actually coincide with it. The area in which complexity is generated is, in fact, on the borderline with chaos, in that particular area where the possibilities of evolution are maximized. That is to say, complex adaptive systems are situated between excessive order (a sort of immobility that recalls a mechanism) and excessive disorder (out of control chaos that can cross over into anarchy). They have to do with a ‘place’ inhabited by order and chaos contemporaneously. It follows that complexity does not mean a culture of opposites, of black and white, right or wrong, but of cohabitation and coexistence. Things do not exclude one another and they do not neutralize each other, but they “add, integrate, complete, refer and balance each other.”17 Eraclito states: “It is necessary to know that conflict is universal, that justice is a fight and that all things are generated by conflict and according to necessity” (De Toni 39). According to Stacey “people give birth to new ideas when they argue and do not agree, when they are in conflict, confused and in search or new meaning” (39). The French philosopher Edgar Morin considers complexity to be ‘a challenge’: On one side, it means giving up our knowledge, the crumbling of the myths of omniscience, of completeness, of perfection. On the other side, it is the need for a greater leap into the adventure of knowledge, and of a deeper dialogue with the universe.18 At this point, I think that we too should embrace the intellectual challenge suggested by philosophers and scientists and confront complexity, trying to untangle us from its labyrinths. In agreement with Morin, “one cannot draw closer to complexity through a preliminary definition. We must follow different paths” (49), which implicates, in my opinion, even non-linear paths. The Theory or Science of Complexity is therefore the field of science that is apt to observe and study these systems in order to understand their behavior.

2. Analogies Between Theatrical Systems and Biological Systems It is a sign of an educated mind to satisfy oneself with the amount of precision that the nature of the problem acknowledges, and not to seek out exactness when only an approximation is possible. Aristotle

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2.1  Actor and Performance: Complex Systems When observing a theatrical performance, one immediately realizes of the presence of a non-linear phenomenon very similar to a system. In fact, the actor does not act using predictable, mechanical gestures that come as a response to an action, nor does the audience passively and mechanically takes in the representation of the actor. Rather, it has to do with a set of intricate and changeable events based on the relationships of numerous elements implicated. On one hand, improvisation involves, without doubt, relationships among the internal elements of the actor as a human being, such as technique, experience, intuition, talent, memory, genes, the memorized text; on the other hand, the same improvisation involves the actor, his colleagues, the author, the audience, the scene, the lights, the music and all the stage objects. All these elements form a network of systems developed on various levels. On an initial level we can consider the “actor-assystem” and on a higher level, as a major system that encompasses a minor one, we will have the “performance-as-system.” Various systems with relative subsystems operate on both levels according to the relationships that they establish. To have a clear example of a scene that functions as a system, we can take into consideration an excerpt by Dario Fo. In one of his plays, Rosa fresca aulentissima (1977),19 the artist, in an attempt to prove the obscenity of the word ‘Ruzzante,’ uses three phrases to gradually modify the entire psychophysical system. On an initial level, the actor coordinates the words to say with gestures, tone of voice and facial expressions. As Fo recites: “Ruzzante is a vulgar word, the most vulgar of all. Uh, how vulgar that is!” The word “vulgar” is expressed in three distinct ways20: If in the first phrase it has a neutral tone, in the second it becomes intoned with greater force, a lower tone and with a longer ‘uh-vowel’ sound. Furthermore, it is associated with a particular facial expression, with the dilated pupils of a person scandalized and almost annoyed by the word, which brings us to the third phrase, in which the whole body is involved in the exclamation. At this point, Fo backs away, shrugs his shoulders, elongates the “uh” sharpens and heightens his voice, narrows his eyes to show a person who is physically bothered by the word due to the vulgarity of the concept. On a second level, the actor coordinates all of this with the spectators, negotiating the rhythm of each line with them. In fact, during the scenes that require the intervention of the audience, his attention is constantly focused on the spectators, creating a greater interaction. In particular, during the third phrase, his eyes seek out those of the spectators in order to maintain eye contact and, based on their laughs, he will modify the rhythm and waiting time between lines.

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 43 In the same show, Fo pronounces the name of the critic De Sanctis, emphasizing the guttural sound of the consonant “c” (pronounced ‘k’) in front of the consonant “t” as if it were a linguistic obstacle. Noting that this generates laughter from the audience, he repeats the ploy twice, varying it the second time to stimulate still more laughter, though the result is feeble. The result of the second bout of laughter probably determines his decision to subsequently pronounce the name without the emphasis on the “c”. In fact, the third and fourth times the name slips off the tongue without a guttural hitch, and the attention is rapidly transferred elsewhere. The example of Dario Fo illustrates perfectly, and better than others, how performance can be considered a system of relationships between words, gestures and facial expressions and the show, a system of relationships between actor and audience. Dario Fo, already since the 1970s, reduces the distance between the stage and the audience in order to facilitate interaction with the spectators and create the show directly with them. To understand exactly how a system functions, we draw information from the field of science. From a scientific point of view, a system is intended as a set of interactive elements driven towards a common goal, in such a way, however, that it is possible to distinguish that which belongs to the system and that which is external to said system.21 Understanding things in a systemic manner literally means “put them in context, establish the nature of their relationships” (Capra 38). According to systemic theories—as has already been observed—living systems are integrated totalities and their properties are properties of the whole system. The fundamental principle of the Systems Theory is the network. Such an element outlines the organizational diagram of any system through a set of relationships and dynamic interconnections that are created as much among internal components as between these and the external environment. Each network, in turn, becomes an element of a greater systemic network, eventually becoming part of the network of the universe. In a structure like this, each element is capable of influencing the whole system and in turn is influenced by any minimal perturbation that happens in the system. Each stimulus can become a ring of retroaction and travel through the network. The theatrical performance consists of simple entities, endowed each with its own meaning, that come into relation with greater entities, also endowed with their own meanings, and so on. Each line and each scene are concatenated in a rigorous network structure. In the same scene, various levels and recalls intersect in a non-linear way according to mobile hierarchies. On the strength of these hierarchies, one can observe some particularities that appear on a higher level and

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that do not exist at a lower level, as will be seen later on. As the elements of the structure become involved, the body of the actor adapts and transforms, creating new postures and new expressions. Therefore, for example, the words of the text expressed by the actor, in conjunction with gestures, operate on a level and give place to determined solutions; in the moment in which these solutions relate to other elements, such as lights, sounds or memory, the relationships move towards a higher level, putting elements of various systems, equivalent or not, into contact, such as the voice system with the light system, the memory system with the facial expression system, and so on. At the higher levels, new and diverse signs will appear, born from the need of the same system to adapt, self-organize and self-produce. In reference to this, Dario Fo offers another, clarifying example: at a certain point in the play The Resurrection of Lazarus,22 the actor begins to laugh in an exaggerated way, to the point of distorting his face. After several seconds, the laugh no longer involves just the face but the entire body, provoking excesses in the movements of the arms and legs. It is clear, then, that the level of the laugh, in conjunction with the level of the facial expression, determines the relationship with the movement of the arms and the entire body, just as the volume of the laugh diminishes, influenced by the maximum opening of the mouth. The entire “actor-as-system” adapts to the unrestrained, excessive laugh, and as the laugh increases, new postures intervene that before did not exist. Such a consequentiality of body actions leads to the creation of the new. Presumably, Dario Fo includes the excessive laugher in the script, though not the manner and the timing with which it should be implemented. In the moment in which he expresses it, he will certainly improvise the body gestures that simply adapt themselves to the distorted face, just as he will improvise the length and intensity of the laughter, or the direction of his gaze and his posture depending on the reaction of the audience, which are impossible to predict during rehearsal. Laughter, in its entirety, adapts to the “performance-as-system.” We can therefore deduce that improvisation is a condition for adaptation, organization, and thus for the creation of laughter. What seems arbitrary is in reality a necessary adaptation of the “actor-as-system” intended as a network of relationships. Improvisation favors relationships between various elements and the mobility of hierarchies that allow connections between face, arms and body. Also in this case, the Systems Theory,23 formalized by L. Von Bertalanffy in the 1950s, explains the phenomenon of emerging properties. According to this theory, one of the fundamental elements of the organization in living organisms is its hierarchical nature that is the existence of multiple levels of systems within

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 45 each broader system. In this way, cells combine to form tissues, tissues to form organs, and organs to form organisms. In turn, organisms live in groups forming social systems that go on to form, through interaction with other species, ecosystems, which are, according to the physicist F. Capra, the highest level of systemic organizations. From observation of the behavior of systems, we note the existence of different levels of complexity, and at each level of complexity the phenomena show emergent properties 24 that are nonexistent on a lower level. In Capra’s opinion, this evidence contradicts the Cartesian paradigm, according to which the behavior of “the whole” can be comprehended completely by studying the properties of its parts. Contrary to the analytic thought process, systemic thought shifts attention from objects to relationships, from quantity to quality. Capra explains that systemic thought “defines the comprehension of a phenomenon in the context of a broader whole” (Capra 38). In the network structure, we can understand how a minimal perturbation inside the actor or coming from the outside could cause an enormous change in both the “actor-as-system” and the “performance-as-system.” This effect, defined by scientists as the butterfly effect, will assume an enormous importance in the broader theatrical systems. Let us see what happens in the case of the “show-assystem”: Firstly, as the show is a network system, the hierarchy among the parts of the system itself disappears, and therefore each element of the system gains importance exactly as much as all the others. This means that a gesture from a spectator is just as important as the gaze of the actor or the light in a scene, or a fit of coughing by a spectator, in creating meaning: The smallest disturbance, coming for example from a spectator, will be perceived by the actor and by the system as a whole. At this point, the actor will acknowledge the disturbance and will insert it in the system, modifying the continuation of the show. It can therefore be inferred that, within the total representation, each element contributes to the construction of meanings just as each spectator can be an active creator of the representation. Thanks to this quality of maximum adaptability or elasticity, both systems will be unpredictable, which will allow them to transform and evolve continuously. The incorporation of each internal and external element to the ‘expected plan’ of the director promotes a continuous construction of meanings—of which the actors and spectators are not always aware—often neither predicted nor desired. As we will see, the butterfly effect is entrusted with the social and political function of the theatrical performance. As we have already seen in the case of Maestro Sinisterra, a minimal event for the actor can have repercussions on the spectators, provoking in them important transformations.

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Edward Lorenz was the first to analyze the butterfly effect in a 1963, work that reported on a study of meteorological phenomena (De Toni). He noted that a minimal variation in the initial conditions of a system (physical, chemical, biological, economical) could cause great consequences, thanks to numerous interconnections that influence the phenomenon. The butterfly effect is based on the idea that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Hong Kong could cause a typhoon in New York. It is the overcoming of the linear relationship between cause and effect, according to which a small cause corresponds to a small effect and vice versa. The practical consequence of the butterfly effect is that all complex systems, like climate or the stock market, are difficult to predict on a useful time scale. The butterfly effect is one of the principle characteristics of complex systems. Returning to the concept of complex systems we will focus now on their main characteristics. That of the actor and that of the show are not only considered systems but “complex, adaptive, dynamic and open systems,” since they are characterized, as we have seen, by: An elevated number of elements different among them; a network of relationships and interconnections among the components of the “actor-as-system” and between these components and the spectators; the evolutionary dynamic of the components; the influence that each of these components exerts on the rest of the system. In order to demonstrate that we are faced with a complex—but not complicated—phenomenon, all we have to do is try to deconstruct the performance: We will only have separated elements that are interesting in and of themselves and that touch various fields of human knowledge, such as the words of the text, that recall dramaturgy and literature, gestures, that recall physicality, anatomy, and tone, and the frequency of the lines, that recall music and also psychology and neurology. We realize that both the list of the single elements and that of the skills involved are very long. What we are interested in revealing, however, is that this type of analysis and classification does not offer any artistic comprehension if not purely technical. Without doubt, it does not reveal the artistic miracle of the actor’s expression. We will need a systemic approach that exposes us to the global phenomenon in its vastness and variety of competence. Only a thought process of the synthetic, and as we will later see, holistic type, will allow for a general approximation of the phenomenon. The actor, yet again, forms his own true network, drawing information and data from all types of experiences, from his personal life to his work, to his acquaintances, to technique, to emotions. The “actor-assystem,” through various levels of organization, behaves like a living organism. With the existence of this type of relationships, the “actor-as-system” can be considered complex, but not complicated.

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 47 We can imagine the actor like a spider25 that takes advantage of its web to connect itself with the world around it. Between the actor and reality lies a complexity through which the former elaborates the latter. Everything that the network produces is assimilated and elaborated by the actor, contributing to the development of his performance. Undoubtedly, the improvisation of the actor, is a place of complexity in which elements are not organized linearly, but are so interconnected on various levels that they build a network of relationships that escapes our comprehension. In a brief performance by Roberto Benigni on Pippo Baudo’s show,26 the actor has in his script a laugh that has to do with Berlusconi’s political victory in 1994. The entire performance is constructed on the laugh that originates from the answers, obviously pre-prepared, of the presenter. Therefore, here we can admire how Benigni sets up the moment of the laugh with an increasingly urgent rate of questions, improvising the rhythm, gestures and breathlessness of the body. Moreover, it can be observed how, in the performance of the laugh, similar to the spider, the actor instantaneously incorporates that which he has at his disposition in the scene: Among other elements there are the chair and the seated, aforementioned presenter who finds himself the object of punches and slaps, benevolent though they may be. All this contributes to the whole show. In reality, improvisation is a phenomenon whose complexity is perceived and experimented continuously in all fields of natural experience; moreover, complexity is the element that defines the character of vagueness and indetermination of improvisation. According to this, improvisation as a place of complexity is present in every type of evolutionary system, both biological and artistic. From a scientific point of view, a system is defined as complex if it is characterized by numerous, diverse elements and, more specifically, by numerous, nonlinear connections among these elements. In particular, complex, adaptive systems are systems capable of adapting themselves and changing according to experience, such as living organisms, characterized by their capacity to evolve.27 These are vital and in continuous transformation, such as organisms, animals, men, society, politics, culture: They are open since they interact with the external environment, receiving or transferring something to the outside; they are dynamic because they evolve with time, tending towards improvement.

2.2  The Actor as Dissipative Structure It was shown in Chapter I how the actor paradoxically is and is not, how he embodies contemporaneously the actor and the character through the unique structure of flesh and bone of his person. It will be added in this paragraph that

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the actor, still paradoxically, impersonates stability and change. While stability is constituted by his physical structure, change is represented by a continuous transformation due to the flux of energy coming from both the spectators and the whole scene, and from the text as an external element. The fluxes are channeled internally, elaborated and reissued externally, by virtue of improvisation. In this sense, if the actor acts as a container, his performance will be the content that falls on the spectators and on the scene in the form of active energy. During the performance, the system, in opening itself, acquires elements of disturbance that transform themselves into information, which can be considered an energetic contribution to the development of the performance itself. It is an oxymoronic system that is at the same time open and closed: it is closed due to the fixed physical structure and open thanks to the continuous exchange of textual matter and human energy derived from the audience. If the structure expresses the determinant, the flux of energy expresses the causality of the actor’s choices. In light of this reflection, we can deduce that improvisation of a given text occurs only in the presence of these two seemingly contrasting but non-exclusive poles. Let us examine another performance by Roberto Benigni and in particular his participation in Paolo Bonolis’s television show in 2006.28 The actor, looking at a photo of himself and Pope Wojtyla (John Paul II), manages to recount the episode from beginning to end in an exhilarating, involving way. For almost seven minutes, the comedian holds the attention of the presenter and of the audience. Undoubtedly, the argument must have been prepared, and therefore the text, if not completely, was already given: His encounter with the Pope. Nevertheless, during those seven minutes, his enthusiasm, which is always strong, is sustained by improvisation, in addition to a combination of gestures and expressions set to the right rhythms, appropriate to the intensity of his enthusiasm and passion. In the clip of this video, the exchange of energy between the host and the actor, seated next to each other, is evident. Bonolis listens to the story with the utmost attention, administering energy to the comedian through curious eyes that do not distract themselves for a moment. Although he seats in a nonrelaxed posture, he shares the movement of the comedian with nods of the head and laughter in response to his punch lines. Bonolis literally hangs on Benigni’s every word, as do all the spectators. The actor finds a source of vital energy in the closest spectator, which he exploits to develop his performance. The greater the involvement of Bonolis, the more fruitful and creative will be the participation of the actor. The two, thanks to the close distance between them, seem to vibrate the chords of Benigni’s improvisation in unison.

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 49 Observing the performance from the outside, we could be tempted to think that the interacting forces in the actor converge in a certain quantity of static energy, and that it is this energy that is transmitted to the spectators under the guise of clear, explicit meaning. If it were this way, improvisation would not have a role. Furthermore, it is difficult to think that a system constructed in such a way, and based on the cohabitation of two polar opposites (stability and transformation), could be balanced. Actually it is not, and improvisation guarantees the absence of balance. It should be noted that balance does not mean stability; in fact, even without balance, the system maintains its stability. In order to better explain how such a phenomenon occurs, we look to the dissipative structures of Prigogine, for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977. Prigogine is attracted by systems far-from-the-equilibrium, present in the majority of natural phenomena. The scientist realizes that, far from the equilibrium, the system, which he defines as “dissipative structure,” manages to maintain its stability because of the simultaneous and paradoxical opening and closing: structurally open, organizationally closed. In this system, structure and change coexist, as well as immobility and movement. While “dissipation suggests chaos and dissolution, structure is the opposite.”29 Such a system maintains a stable form while allowing a continuous exchange of matter and energy with the outside environment, which permits the continual regeneration of the system in an autonomous way. Briggs and Peat suggest the example of the flame of a candle. This flame maintains its form and color while transforming the wax and oxygen: on one hand, it absorbs and burns, and on the other it expels through smoke: “the flame represents the equilibrium of non-linear reactions in the realm of diffusion.”30 Applying a literary figure here as well, an oxymoron is produced that is both chemical and physical at the same time. After all, the human body also functions in this way, like a tree, a city, a professor in class or any other complex dynamic system. Scientists confirm that stability and transformation do not cohabitate as a single state of things but as a continuous alternating of the two: It is this alternating that maintains stability. Obviously scientists explain that the alternating of the two states constitutes the self-organization of the system itself, which we will see in the following paragraph. Returning to the theatrical system and applying the information gleaned from the field of science, we can infer that the actor, in order to keep the show alive, needs a continuous exchange of energy with the outside, both through the manipulation of the text and subtext, and the audience’s best attention.

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2.3  Self-organization and Self-poiesis During his performance, the actor must express the text with his whole being, as well as react to the fluxes of energy from the audience; at the moment in which he projects the text with his voice, gestures, facial expressions, tone, and more, he finds an infinite number of possible methods at his disposal, from which he continually selects merely one. We can suppose that it has nothing to do with a conscious process, at least not completely, although the prior preparation of the actor could help him in his choices. In that precise moment, the system seems to function in an autonomous and adaptive way with regards to the particular conditions of the scene. Let us reconsider Benigni’s participation in Pippo Baudo’s program, already seen in 2.1, in order to observe how the “actor-as-system” manages to self-organize, creating chaos and then order again. The actor, pretending not to remember the name, asks the presenter multiple times what happened to that disreputable person who was candidate in the election. After a sequence of jokes on both sides in an attempt to reveal the identity of the politician in question, Baudo responds that that politician has become Prime Minister. This response, seemingly unexpected, provokes an unsettling burst of laughter from Benigni. The laughter, as with Dario Fo, progressively infects the whole body and the whole scene around him: Benigni, laughing hysterically, throws himself on the ground, does a somersault and ends up punching (in an innocuous way) the presenter himself. Reflecting on what happens, we notice that, from the moment in which the laughter begins, the “actor-as-system” functions autonomously and organizes itself in a scene that it self-generates. The laughter triggers a series of connected actions at an urgent pace. The actor could do everything, but his internal logical system chooses the actions that it deems most appropriate for the situation; the system pushes the actor towards uncommon actions even though without crossing the line of scenic decency. The system obviously remembers having done so successfully in other occasions and ventures to perform actions which are similar yet new. Benigni, already on his feet, raising his tone of voice and flailing about from one side of the stage to the other, sets up an atmosphere in which the audience not only accepts the somersault and the punches to the presenter, but also considers them a logical consequence of laughter and creative innovation. We can gather from that that, through the phenomenon of improvisation, the “actor-as-system” not only self-organizes but also self-generates. It is capable of producing that innovation, those new formulas with which it had never before

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 51 experimented, all due to the fact that each single creation is born from the needs of the moment. Seemingly, the comedian brings his performance to a state of confusion or chaos; all in all, however, after a few fairly eventful scenes, he is able to reestablish order on the stage, even putting himself back together physically. This is an example of improvisation that completes the text, pushing the actor to the limit of spontaneous representation. To better understand what happens and how the passage from chaos to order functions, we look once again to the field of science. Prigogine realizes that, far from the equilibrium, entropy is not negative; on the contrary, it is constructive, in the sense that it comes to create order in a chaotic system. He describes his results in this way: The most general conclusion that can be drawn from these studies is that, near the equilibrium, disorganization and inertia are the norm, while beyond the threshold of instability the norm is self-organization, the spontaneous appearance of an activity differentiated in time and space (Prigogine and Stengers 243).

In other words, Priogogine’s primary conclusion is that, in conditions far from the equilibrium, the elements of the whole system find themselves at the limit between chaos and order: They continually cross the critical thresholds of the two states, but they are also capable of self-regulating and therefore self-balancing, creating order from chaos. In order to understand how this process functions, we should imagine many particles that interact in various ways. With the increase in particles or interactions, or in movements caused by external disturbances (meaning an increase in complexity), the system becomes ever more chaotic, reaching the limit with a “burst” defined in physics as “bifurcation” (Capra). From each bifurcation, multiple new particles are created ex-novo, never before recognized by the system. These represent “the inventions” of the system or possible solutions of continuity of the system itself. Once the point of bifurcation is reached, a flow of creativity is opened in which self-awareness disappears: Chaos self-organizes. At this point, the system, unable to accept all the possible solutions, must choose a single solution and entrust it with its development; from the “chaos” of the solutions, it will choose one (seemingly) ‘at random.’ It is clear that self-organization entails self-poiesis, or the formation of new structures and behavior patterns. Capra explains that self-poiesis is a network of production processes, in which the function of each element is to participate in the production or transformation of other elements of the network. In this way, the entire network continually reproduces itself. If these processes stop, the whole

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organization will stop. For this reason, they must continually regenerate themselves. From this we can infer that the development and evolution of a system are based on the continuous creation of the novelty, and that creativity is a property of life itself, inasmuch as it spontaneously generates new configurations. Furthermore, by virtue of the self-organization, any error, accident or external disturbance, is not only taken into consideration but also put in play by the system and transformed into meaning. If we transfer this theory to the field of theater, from this point of view, we will see that self-organization guarantees the maximum flexibility for the actor and for the entire performance, including the spectators in an active way. Selforganization ensures the importance of each element of the system to the whole; therefore, each spectator’s contribution becomes an integral part of the performance. For the function of the play and the construction of meaning, a hierarchy among author, actor, director and spectator no longer exists: They are all part of the “performance-as-system” in equal measure.

2.4  Deterministic Chaos and Chaotic Systems It is true that the actor, during rehearsal, can—and must—train his skills and experiment with his choices based on the targets he wants to reach, but it is also true that it is impossible to train all the solutions, as well as impossible to predict in the workshop the exact conditions of the representation. Therefore, when he enters the scene, he must face specific contextual conditions. Each individual choice by the actor is associated with an infinite number of other elements that, almost contemporaneously and with an extremely high velocity, must be elaborated and adapted. If the “actor-as-system” chose, among the thousands of possibilities, a completely different, extraneous solution from the system, this would cross the critical threshold and a line or a gesture would be out of place. The “actor-as-system,” instead, must choose a solution that is neither identical nor too different, but similar and compatible: A variant of the preceding, something new in which the preceding is recognizable, in which there are traces of what happened in the preceding scenes. An example would the musical form Theme with variations: The theme is presented multiple times, each time new and original but with the continued presence of the thematic idea. The properties of similarity and recognizability within novelty, on the one hand, guarantee the originality of the representations because of a lack of absolute repetition; on the other, they sustain a certain coherence to the whole

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 53 work that—based on continuous changes—would otherwise be a collage of fragments which would have too many differences among them, at the expense of the identity of the play. In Benigni’s televised performance described in 2.3, we have an example that clearly illustrates this point. The actor, after the burst of laughter, could have chosen a number of actions instead of the somersault and the punches to the presenter. We can absurdly imagine that Benigni could have laughed staying completely still. In this case, he would not have answered to the expectations of the audience and to the atmosphere that he himself had created; he would not have been nearly as creative or as genial as ended up being. Similarly, if he had exaggerated in manhandling, touching or insulting the presenter, he would have crossed the line. Instead, his actions maintained the euphoria spread over his whole body and the scene itself, and, at the same time, amplified both physical actions and emotional states without crossing the line. It should be noted how the limits are negotiated with the audience from one scene to the next: Based on the reaction of the spectators, the system adapts and makes decisions every time. Therefore, among the infinite possibilities, the solution is not as arbitrary as it appears, but rather seems to be subject to the internal laws of the system. Shifting to the philosophic-scientific field, Prigogine explains that the problem of creativity has two dimensions: the activity of individual innovators and the response of the environment. Innovation is a fluctuation accepted by the environment: It would not be possible in an overly coherent universe, whose calm identity would remain immune to fluctuation, and not even in an incoherent universe in which all fluctuations are equivalent and are therefore insignificant. […] The fluctuations depend on the dimension of the fluctuating zone (Prigogine and Stengers 244).

If for example we throw a rock in a river bed, there could be the following possibilities: If the rock is too small, it creates neither disturbance nor creation because the system does not break its equilibrium; if the rock is too big, it generates a “catastrophe” that destabilizes the “river-as-system.” In order to create a different wave able to enrich those typical of the river, without destabilizing the flow, the new wave should not cross the critical threshold of fluctuation. The river will accept the new wave and stabilize itself accordingly, creating a new system (243). We are therefore in the presence of multiple possibilities and, at the same time, of a system that chooses the most appropriate solution according to the internal logic of the system, which is defined in physics and biology as “mind.” The system seems to oscillate, then, between binding conditions and freedom, between

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necessity and chance. This explains the adjective “deterministic”—oxymoronic with “chaos”—in the title of this paragraph, since the solution chosen by the system is determined by the conditions of the system itself. These conditions concern various elements that belong to a technically scientific field. In order to better understand the process, here is a list of some of these conditions: Feedback represents a process of retroaction for which each chosen solution influences the system every time; another decisive condition is represented by memory, thanks to which the system remembers previous errors and seeks to avoid them in successive choices; in human systems, genetic mechanisms come also into play, and thanks to them new solutions, with characteristics similar to previous ones, are favored (Prigogine, Capra). I would like to make a digression here with regards to chaos and chance. Chaos might be thought—erroneously—to be a synonym of chance31 or that it refers to total disorder; on the contrary, chaotic systems are well-organized, dynamic and predictable systems, even in the short-term. Chaos is not causality and total lack of order, but an order so complex that it escapes human perception and comprehension. In a chaotic system, order and disorder clash continually, managing to maintain stability. In fact, the privileged dimension of the theory of complexity is the brink of chaos, as life and creation take root only in the discontinuity of this hazy, ambiguous territory. These types of chaotic systems are unpredictable, due to their heightened sensibilities to even the smallest external disturbance, as this has the power to dramatically modify the entire system (Capra, Briggs and Peat). The phenomenon of improvisation does not belong to chaos as the realm of the unpredictable, the irregular, the immeasurable and the taboo, but Prigogine, Briggs, Peat and their colleagues associate it with chaotic systems such as the phenomena of clouds, of smoke, of tornados, of a jagged coastline and of the rhythm of cardiac fibrillation: “behind chaos there is a hidden order that gives origin to complex phenomena, based on very simple rules.”32 When the actor improvises, his system becomes a chaotic one in which we find the same hazy, ambiguous territory that we have just seen in physics. While chance is apparent, chaos exists but alternates continuously with order: One does not exist without the other (Briggs and Peat). If there were no chaos, and if the actor knew exactly what to do and say with set methods, the system would be static, in perfect equilibrium without any creation of novelty or of “life,” which in our case corresponds to “art.” There would be no production of meaning beyond the single, literary significance, which would be transferred mechanically from the actor to the spectator. Only the dynamic presence of chaos produces complexity

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 55 of meaning, as it favors the production of relationships within a given level and among other levels. We can conclude with the claim that the actor’s performance is unpredictable because each choice taken by his system is absolutely sudden and consequential with respect to the previous choice. His choices are linked to one another, in a whole that takes the global context of the show into account. Here is another paradox: Choices are determined by the previous ones as much as they are unpredictable, since each choice is determined by the ‘mind’—or logic—of the whole. As a consequence, the future combination is absolutely unforeseeable. It is true that the dynamic of the new combination is determined not by single elements but by their relationships. Therefore, knowledge of the single elements does not help in recognizing their combinations: We can infer that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. This is why knowing technique, experience, character, text and more, do little to help predict the combinations of these elements, that is to say to predict the performance of the actor and the success of the show. Consequently, each system is deterministic and aleatory at the same time, and every performance is unique and original. According to Piacentini, “in the new vision of the world33, chance is a decisive factor that combines the dichotomies of history, or the separate parts of the world, and gives meaning to combinatorics,” while for Calvino chance, in art, is suggested by the poetic instinct, by the imaginative power of art, evoking the concept of attractor. Piacentini describes Calvino’s theory as an instrument of freedom from destiny and from necessity: chance, aleatoricism is to not be exorcized but becomes a constituent factor of the epistemological picture, organizing principle, trigger of biological systems. Life is the daughter of chance […] it is neither fixed nor unrepeatable […]. Chance, or alea, if it does not make us freer, at least does not nail us down to the eternity of necessity (Piacentini 355).

2.5 Holism Artistic-theatrical mechanisms seem to be governed by a principle that we will define as holistic, whereby it is impossible to break the whole down into parts. This seems to refer to the actor, to the overall theatrical representation and to a third, even broader, system that involves the entire community in which the performance takes place. Specifically, the relational combination of the elements that branches out as the systems evolve, slowly forms, in the three cases, an organized and autonomous whole impossible to be subdivided: As a living organism,

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it is greater than the sum of its parts. In all three cases, we see an emergence of qualities that did not exist on previous levels. Furthermore, we can also recognize in theatrical models that hologramatic principle34 for which the part is in the whole, just as the whole is in each part. In fact, connecting the whole to the concepts of similarity and recognizability, even a simple gesture from the actor will be coherent with the whole play; potentially, the gesture contains the whole play, just as this play contains all gestures. This ensures that the spectator (besides the actor himself ) feels completely involved in the play as a whole, so engaged as to end up being a part of the show himself. When this happens, it is easy to understand how the performance of the artist is already in the spectator and vice versa. Let us use the example of the play Ñaque o de piojos y actors, directed by Sinisterra.35 At the beginning of the script, the characters Ríos and Solano meet in a theater after many centuries. Ríos asks Solano if the place where they find themselves is the stage, and immediately after, if what they have in front of them is the audience. Solano says yes, and asks if this seems strange to him, and so on. This conversation sheds light on various aspects of an artistic, existential and philosophic nature. The interpretative choice of the director is clear from those first lines in which Ríos’s questions reveal an important clue for the comprehension of the whole play. The lines are: RÍOS: Is this the stage? SOLANO: Yes. RÍOS: And is this the audience? SOLANO: Yes. RÍOS: That? SOLANO: Does it seem strange to you? RÍOS: Different…36

The text is ambiguous because it does not indicate completely any one trait of the characters’ personality, especially that of Ríos. Therefore, the interpretative choice of Ríos could have fallen on curiosity, on indifference, on rage for ending up in that theater or on something else. Sinisterra chooses fear: Ríos is afraid of that audience and his performance clarifies the ambiguity of the text. Ríos’s second question is preceded by a pause that breaks up the rhythm of the preceding lines and emphasizes the importance of what he is about to say. Furthermore, the question is pronounced with a shaky voice, typically used to express fear. The voice, the pause, the facial expression, the tone, the music and the posture construct the meaning of fear, which in turn create various meanings in the expectations of the

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 57 spectators. At this point the spectators, who do not yet know anything about the play, are able to predict a sort of relationship between the actors and the audience, perhaps characterized by conflicts, though they ignore the reasons. In this sense, the gesture of the actor contains an echo of the whole play. Later on, on page six of the script, Ríos expresses fear and reserve yet again in another line referring to the audience, almost confirming the difficult relationship that will be dealt with in the play. Solano asks: “Which now???” to which Ríos answers: “The now of now: mine, yours, that of the audience […].”37 Finally on page seventeen, the problem explodes with the clear assertion of Ríos: RÍOS: Sometimes I’m afraid. SOLANO: Afraid? RÍOS: Yes, afraid. SOLANO: Of what? Of whom? Of the audience? Why? 38

Only at this point of the play do the spectators have confirmation of the two previous clues, and they can add information to their mosaic of data. The fear of the audience introduces the central theme of the play, which consists in the delicate and difficult existential condition of the actor, since it depends on the fragile relationship between him and the audience. Not only, but even the choice of lights, kept low and mysterious from the beginning of the show to the end, is an indicative sign of coherence with the whole of the play, a desire to create an ambiguous and polysemantic atmosphere. Let us now try to understand how fear responds to the holistic principle and therefore how it represents a gesture that refers to the play as a whole. For the semiologist De Marinis, the theatrical event, or macrotext, is a “pluricode” and “plurimaterial” text39 in which codes and materials are connected and organized in the form of a “network of relationships-interactions-hierarchies […] to which we give the name of textual structure of the show. [This,] as a network divided into a hierarchy of codes, is what guarantees intercodical coherence to the macrotext” (De Marinis, Semiotica 75) or textual coherence, of primary importance to the theatrical event, even more than the “semantic coherence” (75) of the verbal text. That is to say that De Marinis recognizes an organized network of codes and matter in a theatrical work, which refer to one another and which characterize the spirit of the entire event: codes, materials and their expressive relationships determine the character of the play. Obviously fear is expressed, in our example, through some of the many codes that constitute the theatrical event: those that are culturally associated with body posture, facial expressions and a wavering voice. These few codes are still able to

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refer to something deeper regarding the sense of the entire play and are necessary to create that textual coherence of which De Marinis speaks. I cannot forget to mention an important example in which the holistic principle is applied to theater. Ferruccio Marotti wonders if “the scenarios” of the Commedia dell’Arte are: a synecdoche of the text and of the performance. Pars pro toto of a literary work that has to become theater, they identify in the text, on the one hand, the mediation between an idea of performance and the performance, and on the other, they position themselves in the absence of such a mediation40.

The scenarios refer, indeed, to a precise type of performance that must have been well known to the entire society during the time of Comici dell’Arte. The masks, like those short structural outlines, used to recall complex constructions that were certainly shared among actors and spectators. Holistic and hologramatic principles implicate, above all, the sharing of codes between the actor and the spectators, which, if it is not defined a priori, can be established at the beginning or during the performance. This sharing is fundamental to the construction and the negotiation of meanings through the course of the event. In the previous example, the wavering voice of Ríos is associated with fear according to cultural convention, while in the case of the attire (dirty, frayed rags of the 1600s) of the actors, it deals with instrumental codes that are shared only at the beginning of the performance. In keeping with Sinisterra’s work, the same characters Ríos and Solano represent, from the beginning of the play and throughout the whole performance, an example of pars pro toto, in which the ‘whole’ is represented by all the actors, or better, by the universal condition of the actors. Also in this case, the philosophic and historical-artistic codes are shared in part, but the rest are constructed and shared during the performance, through the semantic reflections suggested by the text and through an education of those spectators who are unfamiliar with the history of theater and cannot imagine the condition of actors throughout the centuries. The aforementioned principles favor the sharing of artistic messages both within the theater between actors and spectators, and in the whole community. If we consider the whole community as a system structured on a level broader than that of the representation and of the actor’s performance, the spectators will be the mouthpieces of the absorbed meanings, elaborating them in turn in the systems they will go on to create outside the theater. On a philosophical level, the concepts of complexity and of systemic networks replace a reductionist vision of knowledge with a holistic vision.41

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 59 Holism conceptually considers the whole not as a sum of its parts but greater than the sum of its parts, based on the idea that the properties of a system cannot be explained exclusively through its elements. This is certainly not a new concept in the history of thought (if we think about Greek philosophy), but it returns in the contemporary vision of knowledge with more authority than ever, almost legitimizing its presence with new scientific principles. Let us try now to understand the influences of a concept that is just as fascinating as it is mysterious, and in which sense the holistic whole is greater than the sum of its parts. French philosopher Morin defines the system as a unity, and at the same time as a multiplicity. He maintains: “The logical complexity of the unitas multiplex requires us to not dissolve the many into one, nor the one into many” (Morin 51). The coexistence of unity and multiplicity would seem a contradiction/oxymoron, instead it is nothing but an aspect of complexity. The holistic whole becomes an autonomous totality capable of self-organizing and self-producing emergent qualities. Our group of scientists retain that the cooperation of the elements determines the behavior of global systems and supplies them with properties that can be completely extraneous to the elements that make up the system. This property is called emergent behavior, in the sense that, from simple, well-defined behaviors of the single elements of the system, a global behavior emerges that could not have been predicted by the single parts, as already shown in 2.1 with regards to the properties of the systems. “Such emergent qualities exert retroactions on the level of the parts, and they can stimulate these parts to express their potential” (51). If these theories are applied to individuals, it is easy to understand how culture, education and language allow for the development of the mind and intelligence (51). Let us apply the hologramatic principle to the artistic realm, reconsidering the chorus of voices from 1.1. In the choir, as an organized whole, new qualities will emerge, which will allow the potential of the voices to be externalized. Only from the relationships of the voices and from the combination of the individual participants, different sounds will be born that the single voices are incapable of producing. In this sense, the chorus produces one polyphonic voice that is qualitatively greater than the sum of the single voices. On the other hand, the establishment of an autonomous system implicates a sort of sacrifice of the single individualities in the name of the whole, in our case of the choir. The individual voices will be annulled and they will give way to that single, rich voice that is produced in another dimension, on another level of development of the system. As in the scientific case, even in art it happens that “organization imposes constraints

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that inhibit some of the potentialities found in the various parts” (51). In reality, some voices could be apt to excel as soloists but in the choir this is not possible: the voice must adapt for the survival of the whole.

2.6 Nucleation Through the analysis of various points, we are drawing closer to an almost global vision of the creation of actions that complete an interpretation. More than the choice or selection of a solution carried out by the system, I find the previous phase, or the build up of data and information that lead to the next choice, worth analyzing. How the actor manages to collect the right information and process it in a short amount of time is what surely attracts my attention. In Benigni’s case, during the improvisation of the laugh, the system surely had a store of actions from which to choose: jumping, dancing, shouting, undressing, crying and other similar actions dictated by the euphoria of the moment and by the character of the actor. His system chose “the somersault” and the punches to the presenter almost to punish him as the bearer of bad news. It could be imagined that the system did not take into consideration different actions, such as whispering, sleeping, singing or eating. Why, then, does the system choose in a determinate way? Based on what does it choose the most appropriate solutions? We could say that the system seems to be truly intelligent! From a scientific point of view, within the dynamic, evolutionary process of a system, the fundamental phase for the production of novelty, and therefore for creativity, is that of nucleation. It is this phenomenon that answers our questions. In this incredible process, scientists have perceived that which they define as “attractor” appears to be a sort of “style” that characterizes all the choices of the system. Briggs and Peat affirm that, based on Chaos Theory, when a system distances itself from the equilibrium and chaos increases, the system is attracted by “a strange attractor” defined as “a region that exerts a magnetic attraction on a system, as if trying to attract the system to it.”42 This means that the network does not disperse the information that it collects (improperly we would say ‘those that come to mind’) but directs it towards a center of attraction, a magnet. It is also true that, in doing this, the network does not collect all kind of information but only that that interests the magnet. It follows that the more connections the system manages to find, the more possible solutions it has at its disposal, even if, as we have already said, it is not a question of the quantity as much as the quality of the connections. Unfortunately, the

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 61 mechanisms that explain the nucleation of a system are still unknown, and therefore it is also unknown how the system chooses the attractor. It is my intuition that this process is crucial to the distinction between the living organism of a common person and that of an artist. It was said before that, in the accumulation phase, elements intervene from the most varied fields, such as technique, memory, experience and text, together with those elements belonging to the inner life of the individual, such as gene pool, personality, intuition and talent. There is a difference between the elements that can be modified and those that cannot be. I am tempted to presume that the attractor of the system has to do with a genetic quality intrinsic to the system; that it is related to personal talent and therefore is an invariable element capable of attracting the most “appropriate” or most “compatible” solutions with the attractor itself. This would explain the inspiration of the artist, as an attractor that attracts only that that he considers “artistically worthy”, as the system is forever in need of a succession of linked information. This could have to do with the determinism of the mind of the system. Thanks to improvisation, the mind distracts itself, and when this happens, a more complex structure emerges: When the conscious thought (linear) is suspended, an internalized organization manifests itself and synthesizes the complexity of the real. In this sense, improvisation can be considered to be an instrument that favors the emergence of an intimate, complex part of the actor, extremely related to his/her attractor, or duende in the words of Federico García Lorca.43 Thus, the duende could be the decisive factor that determines the choice of the solution even though it cannot be predicted before it happens. What has been said up to this point brings us to the consideration that the creative mind is not subordinated to the apparent anarchy of chaos, as one might think, but to a form of order that we are not capable of deciphering: that of the logic of the system. These reflections induce us to reconsider also the ‘chance’: the multiplication of information and therefore of meanings, just as the selection of a single possible option, is not completely entrusted to chance but depends— though we ignore to what extent—on the strength of the attractor. The strange attraction, therefore, is the force that pushes any system towards a completely new direction. In a human organism, this phenomenon reminds us of that of concentration. When one concentrates, he or she focalizes the attention on the possible solutions to the problem: Being interested in something drives all relevant information and puts it together in order to find a solution. Concentrating means attracting information in order to manipulate it in a creative way: It is creating complexities, possibilities, and solutions.

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2.7  Fractals and Tension In observing the various works of an artist, we will note that they tend to resemble each other, with a certain coherence of style in all productions that characterizes the artistic personality of the artist. Based on this, the artist is normally drawn to create similar but not equal entities. The same principle can be noted within a work of art, and it is useful for the artist-consumer relationship, as on the one hand, it allows the artist to transmit, paradoxically, the indivisibility and totality of his work through separate parts; on the other hand, this principle allows the spectator to recognize common elements, which act as central threads, in the complex chaotic system of a work. In this way, the spectator does not lose himself in the ambiguity, and he is not left at the mercy of thousands of possible meanings. Returning to the musical example of the Theme with variations, the listener alternates between order and chaos, maintaining a necessary tension to the creation of meanings: The piece forces him to constantly interact with this tension. In fact, if on the one hand, the listener loses himself among the many different, unpredictable sounds (chaos), which represent the variations, on the other he feels comfortable in recognizing a familiar theme (order). In the case of Ñaque, there are various thematic voices that, in the span of the play, return to help the spectator find himself. On a structural level, many scenes are set together in a mirror-like way, and they return after various pages. For example, on pages two and seventeen, we find the same exchange of lines about the man with the beard, just as the explanation of performance (recite, represent, relate, remember, revive) is found on pages six, nineteen, thirty-five, and thirty-nine, and the scene that describes the difficulty of performing multiple times the same play recurs on pages three and fourteen. In all cases, the characters alternate in reciting the lines. This represents, without a doubt, an element of textual complexity that makes the spectator reflect on the lines themselves and on who had previously spoken them. From a representative point of view of the text, the element of complexity transfers to the actor in the moment in which he suggests that the mirrored scenes, performed only a few pages apart, are the same in terms of words but are referred to another context. For this reason, it is possible to transmit this different context only through the modality of the performance. Let us look at a concrete example. Speaking of a man in the audience with glasses and a nose, on page three we read: SOLANO: (He was here) also last time. RÍOS: Yes. SOLANO: And all the other times.

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 63 RÍOS: How exhausting, right? SOLANO: Very. RÍOS: And the others? SOLANO: Also. RÍOS: All the same? SOLANO: More or less.44

On page fourteen, we find the same scene but with the characters alternated. In this case, the element of complexity, besides the exchange of names, is that the scene refers not to a person in the audience but to one of Ríos’s lice. Obviously, the first scene in the text, being more important than the second, would deserve more intensity, while the second could be performed with more irony. Instead, observing the performance of the first scene, we see curiosity and superficiality, while in the second scene the actors seem more profound and worried. The element of complexity is entrusted here to a second line of thought, made up of a subtext that refers to a less literal meaning: Speaking about lice is equivalent to speaking about actors. It is as if the topic affected them personally, and the most difficult thing is not carrying lice around but being an actor at all times. In this sense, an attentive spectator would let himself be provoked by the intensity of the actor and by connections that create tensions and doubts. The diverse but recognizable elements in a play and in a performance can be different and on various levels. Besides the textual level, there are many cases that express the tension between verbal and gestural expressions. When these expressions do not correspond, it is difficult to maintain a physical equilibrium and it can also be difficult to establish, on an existential level, equilibrium of the actor’s condition. For this reason, the actors on stage often move, carry out unusual manual tasks and try to distract from the figurativeness of the actor. From Prigogine and his colleagues Briggs and Peat we learn that principles of similarity and recognizability occur thanks to the fractal nature of complex systems. Let us digress here to point out that in science a fractal is a non-linear figure, formed by elements that multiply in the form of ramifications. The elements resemble each other because they repeat themselves, and from time to time they create different figures. For example, a snowflake, a leaf or a cloud, are described as fractals, as are the Matryoshka dolls from the Russian tradition. In a fractal, according to the holistic principle, each part reflects the whole. Without doubt, however, the most interesting aspect of a fractal is that it contains order and chaos at the same time, and from the tension between them a new form is born (Briggs & Peat 195), novelty. We can easily understand how creation, and therefore our topic, is entrusted to the construction of tension.

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To better clarify the function of fractals and their application, Briggs and Peat propose a poetic example. They analyze a poetic text and conclude that literary techniques such metaphor, irony, paradox, etc.,—which they define as reflectaphors for their quality of making reflecting—create an inexplicable tension in the reader between two or more terms. Therefore, “a reflectaphor creates a state of immense wonder, doubt and uncertainty, a perception of nuances” (196), that unsettles the reader. The tension between differences and similarities, in fact, forces the mind of the reader to abandon its linear thought system and adapt to a new situation, as if finding itself in a labyrinth. The same thing happens to the actor who experiences a tension, even if it happens in a different moment than that of the spectator. Both the actor and the spectator, when faced with tension, experience an uncomfortable situation that forces them to react with their whole being. In the actor, the tension between chaos and order is necessary in order for him to be something else than a man and to communicate with the spectator. Eugenio Barba identifies in the training an efficient technique to familiarize oneself with tension: Training is a psycho-physical, systematic and drawn out process of discomfort, based on and geared towards unbalance, because it is a physical and mental situation that costs the actor more in energetic terms than a balanced situation45.

Even though Barba, during his training, does not focus explicitly on improvisation, he seems to focus on the issue of tension, on the creation of energy and the lack of balance. Also with regards to tension, Arthur Koestler, in 1964, states that the creative act of the artist and the scientist is born from the momentary fusion of two normally incompatible areas of expertise, and the tension in such areas creates disconcertment and meaning in the spectators.46 Koestler’s analysis is interesting and acute, especially if we consider that it is almost contemporary, in years and in intuition, with Prigogine’s scientific discoveries. He explains comedy, and all creative act, through the scientific phenomenon of “bissociation” or the juxtaposition and fusion of two different referential areas of expertise, perceived simultaneously. According to Koestler, the thought process normally acts in a convergent way, through associations and similar operations that connect elements of the same referential plane. For example, while we drive, we unconsciously adopt a series of actions and reflexes coherent to the driving. The same thing happens when we are deep in conversation: Our gestures, facial expressions and thoughts revolve coherently around the topic of conversation. It is also possible for us to drive and talk at the same time because our brain manages to separate the two areas; therefore, be

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 65 it consciously or unconsciously, our thought process follows coherent channels, at least until a problem occurs. The problem is generally determined by an increase in tension that, in one way or another, has to discharge itself in the end. At this point, Koestler suggests that a single referential train of thought is not enough to release the tension and solve the problem. According to him, what happens is a clash (collision)—which he defines as bissociation—through which two different, incompatible areas or contexts come into contact. It has to do with adopting a divergent thought process. The two areas follow different logic and therefore function internally according to different codes. In the moment in which the different forms of logic overlap, the solution to the problem lies in a behavior that is logical but that comes from another context; undoubtedly, the two areas must be related in some manner in order to create a connection. The author proposes as an example the anecdote of a Marquis of the court of Louis XIV to understand the bissociative phenomenon: The Marquis, one day, entering into his wife’s room, finds her in the arms of a bishop. Seeing that, he goes calmly to the window and begins to bless the people in the street. His wife then asks him “What are you doing?” And the Marquis replies “Since Monsignor is carrying out my duties, I’m doing his” (7).

Koestler adds that the same topic of adultery is also found in Shakespeare’s Othello and that “here too the tension mounts until it reaches the climax when Othello strangles Desdemona. After this, a gradual catharsis is produced in which, according to Aristotle, horror and piety reach the purification of emotions” (7). He continues saying that “in the anecdote, the tension mounts as the story progresses, without ever arriving at the expected climax. It suddenly changes direction with the unexpected reaction of the Marquis, which disappoints dramatic expectations” (7). The strange reaction of the French Marquis suddenly breaks up the logical development of the situation; the tension is relieved and consequently, the emotion is reduced. This happens through a shift of attention from the area of adultery to that of the social division of work. The two areas have different logic and different “rules of the game.” The overlapping of the two initially causes laughter, due to the clash of two incompatible codes, and of two different contexts. Obviously, the unexpected is not enough to trigger a comic reaction. In the anecdote, the Marquis’s behavior is not only unexpected but also perfectly logical. The singularity lies in the fact that it deals with another form of logic. Therefore, creation resides in the choice of a logic that is different but still related to the principle topic (the topic of work is secondary compared to that of adultery).

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To sum up, Koestler maintains that the creation of an original idea happens when the stereotypical habits of daily thought are broken, shifting attention to a secondary aspect of the problem and therefore overlapping two different referential areas. In this way, a surprise effect is created which causes tension in the spectator, who in the beginning will feel disoriented but then will seek to understand the new logic.

3.  Final Reflections From analogies with the evolutionary principles of a biological system, it can be inferred that the “actor-as-system” and the “performance-as-system” can be considered complex, adaptive and dynamic systems. Characterized by the same properties and behaviors, both the natural and artistic systems seem to belong to a single evolutionary form that involves all expressions of nature on various developmental levels. Likewise, we can observe that there exists in the theatrical systems certain dependence from the initial conditions, and therefore they must be considered unpredictable, unique and original systems, just like human beings, cities and economic systems. They move around figures called “attractors” that relatively determine the choices of the system; the attractors of the actor could be represented by subtexts, inasmuch as they channel the possibilities of choice, even though, thanks to improvisation, the final selection remains unpredictable. It is the subtext that could represent a useful variable for the manipulation of the entire process, as suggested by the methodology of Maestro Sinisterra. Furthermore, thanks to the butterfly effect, an actor’s performance could cause profound effects on the spectators and on the entire community, beyond the intentions of the author, the actor or the director. Analogies with the field of science propose a breaking down of the process of acting to identify the modifiable variables, those that can be isolated and manipulated. This would allow the director and the actor to act consciously and intentionally on the processes of textual representation in order to transmit certain messages rather than others. The analogies also suggest not underestimating even the smallest detail in the expression or in the text, as each detail could be a generator of meaning. Improvisation, as a condition of artistic representation, requires the utmost reciprocal attention of the actors and spectators, as well as the opening up of

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 67 all flows of energy, from the outside and from the inside, from the spectators, from the other actors, not to mention from the atmosphere of the scene, as well as from within the actor himself, from his intuitions and his emotions. The well-trained actor takes the material available around him and transforms it, rather than being contained by cliché techniques and rhetorical gestures that limit his expression. Thanks to this, improvisation favors freedom from necessity and from rules; it promotes the novelty through contact with the diversity of external elements. Even mistakes will be integrated into the scene and considered to be stimuli for new actions. In this sense, the function of promoting risky situations, or familiarizing the spectators with reality and little known situations that could frighten or provoke skepticism, is entrusted to the theater. On the other hand, improvisation does not preclude risk: Because it embraces novelty as well as diversity from the external and internal of the systems, it does not defend the structure of the form but rather causes dispersion and confusion. In fact, if the actor concentrates on complexity, he risks losing the spectator. Sinisterra specifies that if the actor does not hierarchize the levels of importance well, the spectator can focus his attention on an area that is not useful to the comprehension or connection with the following sequence. A text allows everything except what it doesn’t prohibit. But how to know what it prohibits? […] Sometimes I myself enter into a hallucinatory state of improvisation from the outside without being outside (Sinisterra, Interview).

For a good performance, an actor must know how to balance his intrinsic potential with the technique and manipulation of the elements of the show. Considering improvisation to be the land of evolutionary processes, both in nature and in art, it does not, however, equalize the scientific and artistic spheres, nor was it my intention to demonstrate this. Multiple analogies help us to understand similar systemic mechanisms in the two fields, but they show neither the similarity of their substance, nor the quality of the relationships that exist among their specific elements. I end this section with the words of Briggs and Peat, which clearly synthesize the characteristic of the systems. They state: “Complex systems—both the chaotic and the organized ones [in both the scientific-biological and the artistic-theatrical fields]—are, finally, impossible to analyze: They cannot be reduced to parts because the parts constantly fold themselves inside one another through repetition and feedback.”47

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Notes 1. Italo Calvino, No, non saremo soli, “La Repubblica”, May 3, 1980. Cited in Italo Calvino, I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, La alleanza, Essays 2: 2040. 2. “[…] para buscar modelos de la realidad susceptibles de organizar y formalizar el siempre vago y arbitrario campo de la creación artística”, J. S. Sinisterra, Personal Interview. See Chapter 1, 2.1. 3. Erich Köhler, “Sistema dei generi letterari et sistema della società” in La pratica sociale del testo, by Carlo Bordoni (Bologna: Clueb, 1982) 17. 4. Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, La nuova alleanza (Milano: Longanesi, 1979) 25. [Original La Nouvelle Alliance. Métamorphose de la science. Paris: Gallimard, 1979]. 5. Indeed, Prigogine’s results are prepared by the discoveries of other scientists from the end of the 19th century. Here is a brief chronological list of the most important events that lead up to the Theory of Chaos and Complexity: In 1865, the concept of entropy, or disorder, to science (Clausius); in 1915, the Theory of Relativity (Einstein); in 1925, quantum mechanics; in 1927, Indetermination Principle (Heisenberg); in 1931, Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics (Onsager); in 1963, Butterfly effect (Lorenz); in 1977, Dissipative structures and open systems (Prigogine); in 1981, Theory of catastrophes (R. Thom); in 1982, Fractals (Mandelbrot); in 1985, Theories of evolution (Maturana-Varela-Bateson). For a summary of the history of science, please see: 15 May 2016. 6. Among the first researchers to propose the concept of Self-Organization were Ross Ashby and Heinz von Foerster in the 60s, who highlighted the properties of complex systems to develop organized structures from locally chaotic situations. See M. Annunziato, Caos, Complessità ed Auto-Organizzazione, “Energia Ambiente e Innovazione”, 5, 1998, 57–69. 7. Jacques Monod, Il caso e la necessità (Milano: Mondadori, 1971). [Original Le hasard et la nécessité, 1970]. 8. J. Briggs and F.D. Peat, Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide to Theory (New York: Harper & Row, 1989) [Original Espejo y reflejo: del Caos al Orden (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2005)]. 9. “El artista confía en que de una punta visible que atrae la atención se puede deducir una inmensidad oculta”, J. Wagensberg, Ideas sobre la complejidad del mundo (Barcelona: Metatemas, 2007) 113. The image is embraced and developed by the director Sinisterra in his dramaturgy. 10. “Conocer, en el sentido de captar o creer captar una complejidad inconmensurable a través de una imagen simple, produce una emoción, un placer especialísimo que percibimos instantáneo e íntimo; o mejor dicho, en una privada complicidad con la mente productora de tal imagen”. J. Wagensberg, Ideas, 113.

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 69 11. Mario Ceruti, “La hybris dell’onniscienza e la sfida della complessità” in La sfida della complessità (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1985) 34. 12. This argument refers to the concepts that inspire the art and literature of some Italian intellectuals of the 60s and 70s, I. Calvino and E. Gadda among them. The Italian writers proceed from these same scientific presuppositions in order to broaden the horizons of the ‘possible arguments’ on the world even more, almost infinitely, as art is the place where all combinations are possible in terms of the real world, in which the possibilities are selected one at a time by nature itself. In agreement with Piacentini (see “Mondi possibili” in Tra il cristallo e la fiamma (Firenze: Atheneum, 2002), while for other scientists nature chooses one possibility from the infinite number based on an internal logic of its system, Calvino chooses one possibility among infinite according to desire; therefore, the worlds of the writer could anticipate those of the scientist (Piacentini 403). 13. From the Greek epi-‘on’ and histamai ‘to stay’, ‘to place’, ‘to establish’, it is a term that indicates the certain and incontrovertible consciousness of the causes and effects of becoming, or knowing that we establish ourselves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, on stable foundations. 14. Isabelle Stengers, “Perché non può esserci un paradigma della complessità” in La sfida della complessità (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1985) 68–69. 15. Fritjof Capra, La rete della vita (Milano: Rizzoli, 2006) 40. [Original The Web of Life (New York: Doubleday-Anchor book, 1996)]. 16. Carlo Impera, Complessità, in Educarsi per educare (Marsala: ODB, 2004) 10. 17. A. De Toni, Verso il management della complessità. Principi e declinazioni (Udine: Università degli Studi di Udine, 2005) 34. 15 May 2016. 18. Edgar Morin, “Le vie della complessità” in La sfida della complessità (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1985) 58. 19. Dario Fo, Rosa fresca aulentissima, video. May 15, 2016. 20. In these lines, Dario Fo emphasizes the vulgarity of the term, even though it belongs to an important figure of Italian literature. The comedian specifies that “ruzzare” in the dialect from Padua means “mating with animals.”. 21. See L. von Bertanlaffy, Teoria generale dei sistemi (Milano: ILI, 1971). 22. Dario Fo, La Resurrezione di Lazzaro, video, May 15 2016. 23. The theory of systems is an area of interdisciplinary studies that explores the properties of a system in its wholeness. It was developped in the 50s by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, William Ross Ashby and others, basing it on the principles of ontology, the philosophy of science, physics, biology and engineering. 24. The term was coined in the early 1920s by philosopher C.D. Broad.

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25. The example is suggested by A. De Toni and L. Comello, Prede o ragni. Uomini e organizzazioni nella ragnatela della complessità (Torino: Utet, 2005). Economists propose the application of the Theory of Complexity for the economic and business sectors, and they suggest the metaphor of the spider and the web to represent complexity. 26. Fantastico, Television show, 1994. May 15 2016. 27. One of the most important research centers for the theory of complexity is the Santa Fe Institute, founded in 1984, particularly dedicated to the study of complex adaptive systems, CAS. May 15 2016. 28. Roberto Benigni, Il senso della vita, video, 2006 49:00, May 15 2016. 29. “La disipación sugiere caos y disolución; la estructura es su opuesto”, in Briggs y Peat, 139. 30. “La llama de la vela representa el equilibrio de las reacciones no lineales en el reino de la difusión”, in Briggs y Peat, 128. 31. The Latin word ‘caos’ (in English ‘chaos’) and the Italian word ‘caso’ (in English ‘chance’) share the same etymological roots. 32. James Gleick, Caos, La nascita di una nuova scienza (Roma: Sansoni, 1997) cover. 33. Piacentini is referring to the scientific discoveries of the last fifty years and their philosophic repercussions. See A. Piacentini, 206. 34. The philosopher Morin explains that “the hologram is a physical image whose qualities depend on the fact that each of its points contains almost all the information of the whole that the image represents. For example, each of our bodily cells contains [potentially] the genetic information of our entire being. Naturally, only a small part of this is expressed in the cell, while the rest is inhibited.” E. Morin, 52. 35. Ñaque o de piojos y actores, in DVD version, dir. Sinisterra e C. Martin (Madrid: Metamorfosis, 2008). For the theatrical script see J.S. Sinisterra, Ñaque (Ciudad Real: Ñaque, 1999). 36. “Ríos: ¿Esto es el escenario? Solano: Sí. Ríos: ¿Y eso es el público? Solano: Sí. Ríos: ¿Eso? Solano: ¿Te parece extraño? Ríos: Diferente… ”, in J.S. Sinisterra, Ñaque, 4. 37. “Pregunta Solano: ¿Qué ahora? Responde Ríos: El ahora de ahora: el mío, el tuyo el del público […]” in J.S. Sinisterra, Ñaque, 6.

Improvisation and the Philosophy of Science | 71 38. “Ríos: A veces también siento miedo. Solano: ¿Miedo? Ríos: Sí, miedo. Solano: ¿De qué? ¿De quién? ¿Del público? ¿Por qué?” in J.S. Sinisterra, Ñaque, 17. 39. Marco De Marinis, Semiotica del teatro: l’analisi testuale dello spettacolo (Bompiani: Milano, 1982) 94. 40. Ferruccio Marotti, Il teatro delle favole rappresentative: un progetto utopico, in “Biblioteca teatrale” 15/16, 1976, 191–215. 41. From the Greek “holon ”, or whole. The term, together with the adjective holistic, was coined in the 1920s by Jan Smuts. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Smuts defined holism as “the tendency, in nature, to form wholes which are greater than the sum of its parts, through creative evolution.” The current of thought of Holism was reconsidered during the 1980s. 42. “Un atractor es una región del espacio de fases que ejerce una atracción ‘magnética’ sobre un sistema, y parece arrastrar el sistema hacia sí”, in Briggs y Peat, 36. 43. At a conference in 1930, Lorca describes the duende as inspiration, passion, extemporaneousness, and a power possessed by the artist. “The duende of the interpreter creates a new wonder that, to all appearances, is nothing but the primitive form. It is the case of the “induendata” Eleonora Duse that sought out failed works in order to bring them success, thanks to her inventive abilities […]. In reality, what happened in those cases was something new that had nothing to do with what existed before; warm blood and science were put into empty bodies”. Taken from the first of four conferences that Lorca gave in 1930 at the behest of the Hipano-Cuban Institution of Culture. Now in F. Lorca, Teoria e gioco del duende (Milano: Ubulibri, 1999). 44. “Solano: (Ya estaba) la otra vez. Ríos: Sí. Solano: Y todas las otras veces. Ríos: Qué fatigoso, ¿no? Solano: Mucho. Ríos: ¿Y los demás? Solano: También. Ríos: ¿Todos igual? Solano: Más o menos”, in J.S. Sinisterra, Ñaque, 3. 45. Conference given in Theoretic-practical Seminary at the University of Eurasian Theater, X Session, 2003, Personal interview. 46. A. Koestler, L’atto della creazione (Roma: Astrolabio-Ubaldini, 1975). 47. “Los sistemas complejos—tanto caóticos como ordenados—son imposibles de analizar en última instancia: no se pueden reducir a partes porque las partes constantemente se pliegan unas dentro de otras mediante la iteración y la realimentación” in Briggs y Peat, 147.

III

Improvisation Beyond Science

Science and theater can meet on the steep crest of philosophy and of reflection on the models of reality, on being in the world, on the categories of time and space (both fundamental and common) and on many other things that I do not yet know. A. Bianco1

1.  Introductory Remarks Giulio Giorello affirms: The etymological root of theater is the same as that of theory, and scientific knowledge in the Western tradition is strongly tied to sight. In 1623, Galileo Galilei, in The Assayer, extolling the great discovery of telescopic vision, says, for example, that the telescope almost lets you touch with your hand the mountains on the moon. This is beautiful, because the view through the telescope becomes a substitute for touch. This is a fundamental point. Therefore, without doubt, the element of vision is fundamental to scientific research; even the Greek word idea has the same etymological roots as the Latin word video, and therefore the insight of essences, in Platonic terms, is the equivalent of the human eyesight, except that it is the eye of the mind that sees and not only the eye of the body.2

Both scientific and theater research make use of vision and of insight, which allow us to enter into the unknown. In theater, it is the eye of the mind that sees the idea, senses the essence of things, captures the invisible images of concepts, and goes beyond gestures, bodies and words. The actor addresses the mind’s eye of the spectators, offering his vision of the text, which is seen with his mind’s eye. So, what is the relationship between the physical eye and the mind’s eye? And that between science and theater?

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Franco Ruffini recounts that, in 1904, Gordon Craig was watching Isadora Duncan dance and confessed to having had a revelation: According to Craig, Duncan was dancing but moving naturally with divine movements. Ruffini affirms that: “He had managed to transcend the performance, go beyond the dance and see perfection. The English poet William Blake used to say that philosophers and scientists watch with the eyes, while artists watch through them: This is what happened to Craig.”3 Ruffini comments that “the artist seizes the spirit of movement with the eyes and beyond the eyes. The stage is seen with the eyes but allows us to glimpse much more.” From Ruffini’s information and comments, we can infer that the spectator watches the scene but, through his eyes, enters the world of the actor with his entire being. Or better yet, the world of the actor enters into the spectator’s global system of body-mind-spirit through his eyes. Though functioning like nature, and though establishing analogies between theatrical and biological systems, theater has a very different aim from that of science, or perfect sciences: Approaching a reality that is not tangible but invisible. Theater does not claim to trace the essence of reality in a definitive way but to glimpse one or more possible worlds. Chaos shifts to order, just as ambiguity shifts to an essence that is difficult to describe but suggestive of meaning. That which is seen in physics is sensed in theater: It is seen with the interior eyes of the mind. Therefore, the approach to a complex phenomenon such as theatrical performance cannot be based solely on the notions of exact sciences (see Chapter II)—such as physics, biology and thermodynamics—but must involve an indispensable interdisciplinary methodology. In this regard, the observation of the critic Gillo Dorfles is very accurate: “art […] and science cannot equal one another because in science there is no univocity in the relationship between significance and signifier. There is only the denotative aspect, not the connotative aspect that is so important in works of art.”4 A more in-depth reflection on the meaning of scientific data and the implications of this on other fields is necessary here. This reflection goes beyond the field of pure science and draws nearer to that of aesthetics. Only in this dimension can it be understood how the theatrical event is comparable to a vital system, in continuous transformation, subjected to its own rules but able to assimilate to universal systems, an integral part of human and social life. It is true that I have made use of analogies with the field of science in order to understand the mechanical and biological processes through which the ‘new’ within the actor is created, and these analogies will continue to serve us as semiotic analyses in seeking to identify “constant structures” and “biological universals”—as De Marinis calls them5—involved in improvisational processes. Nonetheless, we are aware that improvisation presents us with a theatrical

Improvisation Beyond Science | 75 phenomenon that is not easy to analyze, as it enables the interweaving of indefinite codes and various expressive methods which operate on various levels, an interlacing almost comparable to that of—according to De Marinis—“the technique, talent and personal charm” of Nô theater (166). It is with these considerations that we return to the delicate relationship between a text and its representation. In an attempt to clarify such a relationship and to understand the role of improvisation within it, let us draw on some semiotic notions. From a semiotic point of view, De Marinis defines the representation of a dramatic text as “the performative transcodification of that text” (24) without making one depend on the other in terms of importance,6 and he specifies that the dramatic text […] will never be able to ‘contain,’ not even virtually, the real, effective mise-en-scènes that it has caused, it causes or will cause (32). [The dramatic text] cannot, in any case, contain/transcribe […] the performance and is not […] even contained by this, from the moment that, on the contrary, it [the text] dissolves itself in the performance in a globally irreversible manner, through decisive changes of expressive material and codes (36).

I think it is appropriate to affirm that the irreversibility that De Marinis talks about is made possible by virtue of the improvisation of the delivery of the text, of its materialization, or better, of its coming into being: The text exists thanks to the subjectivity and vitality of the actor. Without improvisation, the representation would only potentially exist but could never be inferred from the text. Improvisation, as it is intended in this work and as it will later be demonstrated in greater detail—that is to say, as a condition of realization—guarantees the theatrical representation complete artistic autonomy from the dramatic text.7 That being stated, in this chapter we will reflect on the concept of interpretation and on its relationship with improvisation. The process of constructing meaning in the delicate relationship between actor and spectator will be studied in greater depth, as we will seek to understand how, through improvisation, the actor multiplies the interpretative signs and ensures that various lines of thought emerge in the scene, even simultaneously, and reach the spectators.

2.  Improvisation in Interpretation If every performance is an interpretation, inasmuch as it contains careful, critical choices established a priori during rehearsals, not every interpretation is a performance. Let us try to understand, then, in what sense a performance is an interpretation enriched by improvisation.

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According to the musician Wilhelm Furtwängler, an overly subjective interpretation and a literal, sterile one are two sides of the same coin. Both lack a total comprehension and sense of continuity between composer and musician.8 Furtwängler affirms that: A conductor’s anxiety to determine everything beforehand down to the smallest detail is caused by his fear of having to rely too much on the inspiration of the moment. […] This attitude is wrong because it cannot possibly do justice to living masterpieces. The great masterpieces of music are subject to the law of improvisation to a far higher degree than is commonly realized (106).

The semiologist Ann Ubersfeld maintains that the representation is in a way inscribed in the dramatic text, in the sense that the writing contains all the possible interpretations of the text itself. This does not seem to exclude the ambiguity of the dramatic text9 and above all, it does not seem to preclude Furtwängler’s statement, in which he affirms that “a score cannot give the slightest clue as to the intensity of a forte or a piano or exactly how fast a tempo should be. […] The dynamics are quite deliberately […] symbolic […] added with the sense of the work as a whole in mind” (Furtwängler 107). Thus, the writing, albeit necessary, is never enough to transfer the ultimate meaning of the text or the intentional meaning of the author. Writing is always a place of indeterminateness, whose realization requires continuous decisions about tempo, intensity and character. Because of this approximate quality of dramatic writing, interpretation is possible. The actor, in preparing his performance during rehearsal, shapes his interpretation by establishing some fixed points, some critical decisions chosen a priori that characterize the key to the reading and style of his interpretation. However, during the performance on stage, the interpretation is inevitably enriched by moments of improvisation, which are difficult to define and control during rehearsal. These decisions are at the mercy of the system; it is the “actor-as-system” that will choose in that precise moment based on a series of factors incontrollable at that moment. The expressivity of the actor must agree with the meanings and openings of the text. As a consequence, interpretation is not to be confused with performance, representation or implementation: It establishes the point of view of the director or the actor but it cannot coincide exclusively with the final representation of the text on stage. The interpretation can give life to various performances, each one different from the other. Presuming this, it could be said that performance is an interpretation of interpretation. The more precise and rich the interpretation, the

Improvisation Beyond Science | 77 less space will be dedicated to improvisation on stage. On the contrary, the more ambiguous the interpretation, the greater the number of unpredictable choices. Let us return for a moment to the opening scene of Ñaque o de piojos y actores: RÍOS: Is this the set? SOLANO: Yes. RÍOS: And is this the audience? SOLANO: Yes. RÍOS: That? SOLANO: Does it seem strange to you? RÍOS: Different.

I propose we focus here on Ríos’s second question: “And is this the audience?” It has already been said in 2.5 that the way in which Ríos chooses to ask the question clarifies the ambiguity in the text and offers the spectators an interpretative key, fear. At this point, however, it is important to note that the interpretative key, agreed upon and decided during rehearsal by the director and by the actor, is not enough to represent Ríos’s question in a decisive, convincing way. The actor must draw on his subjectivity if he wants to avoid theatrical clichés and be original. In this specific case, Ríos draws on the contrast of timing between the first and second question. The second question, in fact, is preceded by a long pause that breaks up the rhythm of the preceding lines and underlines the importance of what he is about to say. The wavering voice, typical of fear, slowly articulates each syllable, forcing the audience to focus on that specific question. The difference of the line, pronounced much more slowly than previous ones, also affects his companion Solano to such a point as to distract him from his own task and bring him closer to Ríos in order to ask him “Does it seem strange to you?” There is another example immediately after, when Solano, in an attempt to reassure his friend Ríos that the audience is always the same and there is no need to be afraid of it, asks him to identify a man with a beard, then one with glasses, and finally one with a nose. Solano: “Look at that man … with the beard.” Ríos answers “They all have a beard.”10 Between Solano’s question and his answer, Ríos allows several seconds to pass in which he observes the audience. Had he answered immediately, he would not have been convincing. The same thing happens with Solano’s second request: “[Look at] that one with the glasses,” to which Ríos responds “They all have glasses.”11 At this point, the spectators have entered into the rhythm of question-pause-answer-pause. But the third time, when Solano asks “[Look at] that one with the nose,” Ríos goes against the expectations of the audience and answers immediately: “Ah yes!,”12 staring at a particular spectator and identifying him. This sets off the laughter of the audience. Had Ríos waited

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the third time as well, he would not have given importance to the third question, nor would he have created the necessary tension to emerge from the circle of questions. I therefore maintain that interpretative a priori choices are unable to establish the exact timing of the lines and the length of pauses between one phrase and another, and they are incapable of defining the gestures and expressions of the actor, if not summarily. Both timing and gestures, during the entire representation, must be continuously adapted to the audience as it is the direct interlocutor. The actors on stage, thanks to improvisation, can determine the latest reading of a text, making it unique and original. In agreement with Claudio Vicentini “the actor must play continuously with the expectations of the audience. He must surprise it, provoke it, incessantly varying the space assigned to its reactions.”13 Indeed, “the creation of the rhythm of the scene” is an “essential element of acting” (201), because the tension of the characters and the attention of the audience derive from this rhythm. Each member of the audience “breathes with the movements and lines of the interpreters, and follows them as if they were jazz sessions […]” (201). Improvisation, then, defines a means of expression, which is more powerful and suggestive than the semantic value of the verbal text. This is by virtue of the holistic principle, based on pars pro toto,14 i.e. from a single gesture and from the way and the timing with which it is expressed it may be possible to trace a whole world, related to it but not manifest, invisible to the naked eye. Only with the mind’s eye is it possible to peek into the thick composite network in which the gesture is interweaved, in terms of intentions, character, personality, social belonging and all those elements that refer to the human essence of the actor. Sticking with Wagensberg’s metaphor, which Sinisterra makes his own, “from a visible tip of an iceberg, one can infer a hidden immensity,”15 improvisation enriches the interpretation of subjectivity and discover some of that immensity.

3.  Hypothesis on the Process of Acting The intellect seeks, the heart finds. George Sand

We have seen how the phases of the creative process are carried out in the improvisation zone, so amorphous, indefinite and shadowy, yet rich in dynamic processes. In this zone, chaos and order cohabitate, or better, they alternate (Capra, Briggs

Improvisation Beyond Science | 79 and Peat, Prigogine), chasing each other to the limit, only to give way to the other, like in a relay race, or in a game of opposites. The concept of life as a dialectic of opposites presents itself here. We recognize, in fact, that the dialectic of two opposite principles, such as those of chaos and order, is the foundation of tragedy according to Nietzsche.16 These two principles not only represent the Apollonian and Dionysian elements of the origin of life, but being distinct and irreconcilable, they also characterize the interiority of man. Calvino, in American Lessons, affirms that “I oscillate continuously between these two paths, and when I feel like I’ve explored all the possibilities of one, I throw myself into the other and vice versa.”17 Sinisterra employs the image of a mountain ridge as a metaphor for the actor who “travels on the edge of two zones (Sinisterra, Interview): One is a zone of organicity, a place of emotions, stimuli, and experience; the other one represents organization.” The actor that travels solely in the zone of organicity is governed by emotion and impulse; he is on the edge of hysteria and goes through a series of experiences that can be received by the spectators but cannot be repeated in other representations due to their momentary, chaotic effervescence. The actor who allows him to be managed by organization is rational, mechanic and perfect, only able to please and produce emotion because of other phenomena. Sinisterra clarifies that “the emotion of the actor does not automatically infect the spectator; it is almost always the form that produces emotion and the spectator perceives the behavior […]. For me, the ideal is an actor who oscillates effortlessly and without transition from organicity to organization” (Sinisterra, Interview). Improvisation allows such an oscillation. It is without doubt curious that from Sinisterra’s minimalist exercises organicity and organization clearly appear. Essentially, inflections are decisions and therefore organization, and the actor is aware that a rational decision can change him organically in tone and rhythm; he reciprocally receives an organic stimulus that produces a rational decision, and so on. The concept of oscillation is really important, as it represents the search for stability on the border between order and chaos. In a 2002 interview by Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Dario Fo affirms that the actor must make structure and improvisation to coexist. He continues, citing Shakespeare: “you must always act as if it were the first time; you must find the words again.” Odifreddi adds that it must happen “as if one did not completely know the development of a line and had to reconstruct it while saying it.”18 Let us return once again to the play Ñaque and in particular to the scene in which Ríos has a clever idea that he communicates to Solano. The text does not

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contain the slightest indication for the actors, except for Ríos’s conviction and Solano’s perplexity, which are inferred from the dramatic text. RÍOS: [And if we were to change roles?] Us … and them? SOLANO: Are you referring to the audience? RÍOS: Yes. SOLANO: Change? … How? RÍOS: They act and we … watch and listen. SOLANO: Hmm, what an idea! RÍOS: Wouldn’t you like to? SOLANO: I don’t know…I don’t believe so… RÍOS: It would be fun! SOLANO: It would be boring! 19

Solano’s interpretative choice is clear from the first line, when he begins to smile. It is obvious that the idea entertains rather than scares or intrigues him. This choice becomes explicit and entertaining after the Ríos’s “Yes,” when he bursts out laughing in a particular way. It is a clichéd laugh, not natural, easily recognizable as a theatrical ploy to make the audience laugh. Solano doubles the laughter after Ríos’s explanation, “They act and we watch,” as if he were completely involved and in agreement with Ríos’s clever idea. But to Ríos’s question, “Wouldn’t you like to?” Solano draws from another theatrical cliché to make the audience laugh again, acting by contrast. In fact, he breaks the rhythm of condescension and follows the euphoria of the laughter with a sudden brusque change of expression, tone and gestures: He becomes worried and insecure, no longer convinced by Ríos’s idea. After this easily recognizable tricks, Solano finds himself in a corner of the stage, annoyed by Ríos’s gestures, who in the meantime continues to draw closer, as if trying to impose his idea also through his physical presence; furthermore, he finds himself immersed in the clichés that he himself constructed as a reaction to the clever idea. But at this point both the actor and the character must breathe, and in order to do so, they place their trust in improvisation. We can note how Solano decides to physically escape from Ríos, quickly heading towards the center of the stage, and emotionally, through an expression that is far from both the fun of the laugh and the worry of the line. The actor alternates here between organization and organicity. Returning to our improvisation, soaked with tension, we can say that from order we shift to chaos through a process of accumulation. This causes the explosion that in turn brings us back to order: From the infinite possibilities of significance to a single sense, to which the interpretation is entrusted. It is similar

Improvisation Beyond Science | 81 to lighting a fire under a pot, which in turn causes the drops of water to move more and more quickly, to the point of seeming to jump for joy. In the same way, we can imagine that during improvisation, elements combine ever more quickly depending on associations, memories, assonances, loans, repetitions, similarities, and many others, to give rise to gestures, facial expressions, allusions, recurrences, which refer to other things. A line from the text may want to suggest multiple meanings depending on how it is said: The physical posture of the actor, his movements, his tone of voice, the speed and still his ironic, sarcastic, pedantic, disinterested, joking, boring tone, etc. All modes that, when contextualized, can be tied to the construction and negotiation of a greater meaning of the whole play, be it political, social, literary, historic, and more. Improvisation then is to be considered as an interdisciplinary territory in which the borders of the fields involved are not defined, nor are they simple to define; a complex territory in which the production of relationships among the elements affects all branches of knowledge, in all kinds of combinations, because the elements are a part of a living or artificial organism, as Barthes affirms: Theater is a sort of cybernetic machine. At rest it is hidden behind a curtain. But as soon it is out into the open, it starts to send messages to your address. These messages are simultaneous and of an altogether yet with different rhythm; at a given point of the show you will contemporaneously receive six or seven bits of input (that come from the scene, from the costumes, from the lights, from the disposition of the actors, from their gestures, from their mimicry, from their words). Some of this data endures while other changes (words, gestures); we then have true informational polyphony on our hands, and theatricality is this: a spectrum of signs set in counterpoint (thick and vast, simultaneous and subsequent).20

Obviously, as we have already seen in previous paragraphs, there are levels of organization within the networks that identify different levels of complexity. Capra tells us that on each level of complexity new properties emerge, which do not appear on lower levels (Capra 39).

3.1  A Practical Example Here I propose a practical example related to the process of acting, seeking to isolate certain variables within a performance. This example demonstrates how different variables are articulated on various levels and how various interdisciplinary fields are entwined; in particular, it highlights the moment in which improvisation intervenes and its function thereof. If, on a lower level, the words of a line are associated with gestures, on a higher level, a third variable is added to the

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previous two, such as a facial expression; on a more advanced level, a fourth variable is added, such as a tone of voice, and so on. Let us imagine the line “You shouldn’t do it!” and that the purpose of this line is reproach. This aim will be ever present in the system as a leitmotif and will act as “attractor” (which we remember from the paragraph on nucleation), in such a way that the mind/internal logic of the system always keeps its eye on the end goal. The reproach represents the subtext of the line and serves as a bridge of communication between the actor and the spectator. On an initial level, to choose the quickness of the line, the system must put elements in play such as experience—moments in which the line has been pronounced at various speeds—technical preparation, methodological studies, the memory of having heard the line in other occasions even in daily life, intuition, the association with the gravity of reproach, etc. The chaos of these elements leads to a bifurcation and to the choice of a single solution. On a second level, the tone of voice is added. The system takes the initial velocity into consideration, as well as the thousands of subsequent combinations, determined by elements such as technique for a particular tone, the tone relative to the character’s age, the emotion of the moment, the presence of another actor, etc. The system will choose a combination in this case as well. On a third level, gestures are added. Here the combinations are influenced by the position of the actor, which gives preference to some gestures more than others; some are instinctively linked to his personality and age, and take into consideration the character of the recipient of his gesture, of the level of reproach that he wants to impart, etc. The system chooses, for example, to raise its right arm and point its finger at the other actor. On a fourth level, the facial expression is added. At this level, the process becomes even more polished. With tempo, tone and gestures already established, the facial expression can only be directed towards the other actor. Here, too, there are many possibilities, which may be determined by applicable technique, by duration and by intensity. The categories may repeat themselves on every level, as on each one they will have different facets and produce different combinations. Therefore, for example, the memory that on the first level recalled the speed of the line heard on TV, at the theater, at home or on the street, will recall on the second level the tone heard years before from the father of the actor and so on until the fourth level, in which this memory might reawaken an entire series of sensations tied to the look of reproach. The combinations that we have sought to propose in the four phases represent emergent properties of the various levels. These properties, or systems, evolve to the point of forming a complete representation, which involves the whole

Improvisation Beyond Science | 83 organism in its physical, biological, chemical and cognitive dimension. Applying the holistic principle seen in 2.5 (the whole contains the part just as the part contains the whole), to our example, we note that reproach is contained in the pointing of the finger, just as the pointing of the finger, the facial expression, the tone of voice and the speed of the phrase are contained in reproach. And not only: All of this and much more is contained in the concept of reproach, by virtue of the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If it were not this way, if for example we only had the line without the participation of the other dimensions such as the gesture, the facial expression and the tone, the theatrical act of the actor would not be truthful or convincing, just as Stanislavski had perceived a hundred years ago, nor would it be organic according to Grotowski’s theories of fifty years ago. Faced with the bare line, today we could say that the actor would not use his whole organism, specifically his chaos. Barba affirms that: “the true communicative passage happens through the senses. It is necessary to prove in person the corporeal difficulties in drawing out sensations, emotions and knowledge of one’s own psychophysical limits.”21 All of this happens thanks to improvisation. In conclusion, we can assume, that the same process that leads from chaos to order leads to the essence of meaning in theatrical systems: Order represents meaning when it involves the actor on every level. When the initial conditions of the system predicted by the text are altered, arbitrarily or not, a meaning emerges quite unpredictably. From here it is important to know how to identify variable and invariable elements: The actor could succeed in controlling and managing, though relatively, those variables related to his psycho-physical, behavioral individuality, and in manipulating those fixed, constant structures of the scene in relation to technique, experience and verbal text. Here lies the mastery of dramaturgy in both the text and the acting process.

4.  From Chaos to Order in Theater From a semiotic point of view, a representation is a set of verbal and nonverbal signs that communicate meaning to the spectators.22 Without getting into purely semiotic questions about the comprehension of one or more meanings in the text, what warrants our attention here is the process of meaning, or better, the passage from chaos to order, where order is intended here as meaning. In particular, we will see how the spectator succeeds in creating meaning in the “performance-as-system.”

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In the “actor-as-system” there occurs a true cognitive operation. The actor experiences all the phases of the process both consciously and unconsciously: He feels the impulse, the tension growing, anxiety for the search, the increasing confusion of various reference planes, before choosing a solution from a different plane. After the choice, at the end of the process, he senses that the chosen idea is the key to the problem, in Poincaré’s words23 it is a ‘useful solution;’ it comes as no surprise to the cognitive system of the actor, as it was conceived like a child and thus born after a period of gestation. The explosion is a fusion of two or more different realms that must unify their logic systems in order to find a single solution. Shifting our attention to the “performance-as-system” and the relationship between spectator and scene, we will see that the spectator-consumer is emotionally involved from the beginning of the show. Along with the growing tension, the expectations of the spectator increase based on codes (of conduct, of culture, of mentality), which he shares with the actor. Both sides accept and respect the “rules of the game” of each realm. When the explosion in the actor occurs, the spectator is shaken off-balance by surprise, a solution that seems contrary to his expectations. The first instinctive consequence of this unbalance operates on an initial level of the system between actor and audience, rousing emotions and producing laughter, tears, rage, and more (according to the personal aptitudes of the spectator): All forms of escape that alleviate at least a part of the tension. At this point, the spectator must find his balance once again, and he does through the comprehension of the “strange” act that upsets him. In this second phase, as Priogogine theorizes, other mechanisms of interconnection take over, influencing more cognitive realms. It is conceivable to think that, on a second level of systemic development, feelings other than instinctive reactions are roused. It is a higher level of systemic development, where the rest of the energy is not dissolved in a sudden or aggressive way, with laughter or tears, but with “a gradual catharsis of self-transcendental emotions.”24 In other words, the process becomes more logical and emotions transform into reflections. In this phase, understanding the actor’s line becomes an intellectual challenge, a question of placing the meanings on several planes of reference, which do not necessarily have to coincide with those of the actor. They must, though, be inserted into a cognitive context. The example taken from Ñaque, analyzed in paragraph 3, helps us highlight the double function of the actor’s choice. We remember that Solano, blocked by theatrical clichés and overwhelmed by Rios’s gestures, flees his place on the stage and abruptly changes the situation. Certainly, the actor’s decision to distance

Improvisation Beyond Science | 85 himself and change expression represents a way out for him, while for the spectators it represents a moment of ambiguity. The spectators likely ask themselves: “And now what? Is Solano entertained or worried?” In reality, even though in the following line he says “It would be boring,” his true feelings remain unclear. Only later will it become clear if he accepts or rejects the idea. In this sense, what is order for the actor is chaos for the spectator. Such observations bring us to the conclusion that, on the level of the “performance-as-system,” the phases of the creative process for the actor and the spectator are not mirror images, as the two systems, due to their natural network-like structure, intersect and overlap: While the inner energy tension grows in the actor, the spectator begins to feel included by the energy being created in the theatrical space, or in the “performance system.” The spectator’s tension diminishes, he feels more comfortable and able to share the ‘codes’ with his fellow participants. At the moment in which the actor, bursting with possibilities, reaches the peak of chaos, the spectator, conversely, cannot build up more expectation, and therefore reaches the maximum of order and stability, since the expectation can be only one. For the actor, identifying the solution means elevating the problem to a higher level of sophistication, as it represents a moment of reflection and self-admiration, in a sublime sense, according to the theories of Koestler and Wagensberg; it is here where the actor returns to order and stability. For the spectator, on the other hand, witnessing a ‘different’ solution represents the height of unbalance and instability; for him it is a shock of tension. The actor, with regards to the spectator, becomes a provocateur of chaos and therefore of knowledge.25 My application of the Chaos Theory to the actor’s process can be synthesized through the following phases of the creative process: In the actor: 1. ORDER: memorization of script, confidence in technique 2. CHAOS: increase in tension and possibilities. Bifurcation, moment of internal explosion. 3. ORDER: the system chooses a solution and, from chaos, order is restored. In the spectator: 1. CHAOS: element of surprise and curiosity generate chaos. 2. ORDER: search for meaning, justification of the actor’s behavior. Expectations of logical solutions grow. 3. CHAOS: surprised by unfulfilled expectations. Moment of unbalance and instability, chaos.

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It is as if the actor, through the improvised element of surprise, were able to project his chaos to the audience; in actuality, it is a precise form of order that he imparts as a unique solution to chaos. It is similar to the calm after the storm: The spectator does not experience the artist’s tempest and therefore to him the calm seems improvised, born from nothing and chaotic. At this point, the spectator begins a quest for a new logic according to new codes that he must chase in the show and share with the actor in order to keep up with him. In this sense, the spectator too becomes creator, with every new or strange solution offered by the actor becoming a key to entrance into another referential realm, to another dimension. In this phase, which comes later than the actor’s, the spectator will experience a creative process similar to that of the actor-creator. Evidently, it will involve creative processes on different levels, but there will be a creation of new solutions on both sides. Actor and spectator will seek to perceive complexity and communicate it, the actor to the spectator and the latter to himself.26 The more ambiguous and implicit the performance, the more the reaction of the receiver will resemble that of the creator, in an ever more refined search for meaning in constantly developing levels of relationships and interconnections between elements of different realms. The artistic event becomes a mental challenge. Let us return once again to the example from paragraph 3 in order to reflect more deeply on the process that involves the spectator. It has been said that the ambiguity of Solano’s behavior unleashes a moment of chaos in the spectator, while for the actor this is the escape route from his problem. From this moment on, the spectator embarks on a path towards order, or better towards the construction of meanings, which may justify the actor’s actions, and make sense in terms of the entire play; above all, they may allow him to pursue the development of the story. Initially, he feels lost and begins to concoct various hypotheses through questions and answers, connections, references and associations of all kinds: He asks himself “now what?,” “Is Solano entertained or worried or disinterested?,” “Is he convinced or not yet?,” “Is it important that he be convinced or not?,” “What else will Ríos do to convince him?” In the spectator’s creative process, improvisation grants him a true intellectual, cognitive operation, just as it previously did for the actor. I maintain that, in the creative process, there are both conscious and unconscious factors, which cause the tension to increase until an appropriate solution is reached. The spectator, in fact, does not focus solely on physical and obvious clues

Improvisation Beyond Science | 87 such as behavior, facial expressions, Solano’s gestures, the actions and interactions of the two actors, but rather begins to weave relationships with previous scenes using memory, the characters’ pasts, their experiences and personalities, predictions of the future. Unconsciously, the spectator imagines possible lives for Solano and seeks a connection with the choice of that precise moment. Let us add to this the desire and curiosity of the spectator, along with the emotions of that moment, which, based on their intensity, will influence Solano’s choices in the mind of the spectator. Thanks to this, some spectators will project themselves onto the two characters, or simply hypothesize Solano’s choices based on their own character and personality. Each spectator’s choice will likely be proven wrong in the following scenes, but the spectator already knows that the whole process is a continuous negotiation between proven and contradicted hypotheses: It is all part of the “rules of the game.” Once again, improvisation creates infinite relationships, led by internal “attractors” within the spectator, in addition to the clues left by the actor. In this case as well, as we have already seen in the actor-creator, the “spectator-as-system” will find the best solution to the problem, which may not be the most logical or rational but the most appropriate to the condition of the “receiver-as-system.” During improvisation, each spectator will create his solutions based on the influence of his own biological factors.

4.1  Graphic Hypothesis of the Receptive Process Let us focus here on the “performance-as-system,” and in particular, on the third of the aforementioned three phases, in an attempt to demonstrate, with a graphic example, exactly what happens in this phase. The third phase is a very delicate moment, as it expresses the true transfer of the play, from the stage to the audience. If we overlap the three moments of the “actor” with the three moments of the “spectator” seen above, we find that while the actor, at the end of his process, projects the solution under the guise of order, the same solution is received by the spectator in the form of chaos (apparent). The global whole that the actor expresses in each concept or given line is three dimensional by nature, and its unity can be understood only through the physical perception of the play, represented by the combination of text, actor and subtext. We could better hypothesize a four dimensional whole, in which the fourth dimension is represented by the physicality of the play. The spectator is given the difficult task of deciphering an

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abstract whole and participating at all the levels involved in the actor’s creative process. At this point, we suppose the presence, between the actor and the spectator, of a fourth wall,27 which serves not as a barrier (as some directors of the early XX century described), but as a mirror, an interface28 that acts as a filter between the two. Let us imagine all the relationships that the “actor-as-system” attempts to establish with the spectator, in form of lines. These lines are projected on the interface, resulting from words, looks and gestures, as well as from lights, objects, space, and more; through the interface, they seek to impress the whole system of the spectator. On the other hand, let us not forget that the observer, just like all other living organisms, is self-poietic, or autonomous, and therefore represents a complex dynamic system just like that of the actor. I would like to specify here that the “actor-as-system” projects on the interface not elements but lines, or rather the relationships interwoven among the elements of its system. The “actoras-system” and the “spectator-as-system” seek to create connections first and foremost the one with the other, before working together to construct the network of the “performance system.” Moving from the other part of the interface, we will see the spectator being bombarded by points, or single elements, instead of lines or relationships. What are these points and to what can we compare them? In a certain sense, the mirror/ interface lets the signifiers go and keeps the signifieds, of Saussurean memory. Certain key concepts of this argument actually refer to the Structuralism of the turn of the century, which we will choose not to address, as it is not relevant to the final outcome of this study.29 Considering that the relationship between signified and signifier is highly subjective, inasmuch as it constitutes a system, which is fractal by nature, it is clear that our spectator can only approximate such a relationship, without being allowed to acquire the exact concept corresponding to the signifier. The spectator will not be able to understand the totality of the concept expressed by the actor just as he has conceived it, even though the signifier does not travel alone from the stage to the audience, but in the company of sound, tone, look, speed, timbre, light, and more. The signifier is also in the form of a “system.” Now we can understand the concept of Sinisterra’s Teatro Traslucido and the impossibility of total transparency. Here is a graphic image that reflects the comparison between a simple performance and a complex one.

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Figure 1.

Figure 2.

It can be noted in observing figure 1 that, when the actor limits his performance to a figurative description of the verbal text, he transfers linear reactions to the spectator. For example, he will describe a tree, and the spectator will understand the concept of that tree without having to formulate hypotheses about other kinds of trees. The spectator has to merely connect the dots with his mind’s eye

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(traced lines) to reconstruct the description. Though the comprehension is quick, the spectator’s reception is passive and lacking in creative stimuli. Conversely, in figure 2, it can be observed how the actor adds complexity to his performance, increasing the relationships between verbal and gestural elements. In our example, the actor enhances the sum of dots that camouflage the original figure of the tree. In doing this, the perimeter of the tree becomes shaded, and the dots indicate various lines of connection, both straight and curved. The tree is conjured by the dots but not described. Consequently, in order to trace the profile of a tree with his eyes, the spectator will have to process the multiple possible figures suggested by the dots and fill in those broken lines and empty spaces with his own imagination, knowledge or memory. It is as if the spectator, with the help of a particular pair of glasses, were to see a series of chaotic dots randomly placed in three-dimensional or four-dimensional time and space. This all happens while the actor, on the other side of the interface, determines the course of the performance with a series of spatial-temporal vectors that, based on his creative process, connect the various dots. The whole descriptive process is carried out in an intermediate zone between the stage and the audience, between actor and spectator, which Sinisterra calls third zone. Specifically, the Spanish Maestro defines this area as: An in-between place in which the spectator has escaped from his reality, so that a new (reality) suggested by the scene constructs and offers him […] the possibility to be as he should, not as he is […]. A third space, an intermediate place between the scene and the body seated in the audience, a magic point in which everything breaks, in which time has its own rhythm, in which ideas, sensations, memories, feelings, hopes, laws, beliefs, desires, fears combat with one another […] (Sinisterra, La escena 296).

In the third zone of the theater, thanks to improvisation, there is a continuous shifting between chaos and order for both the actor and the spectator. We are dealing with a true investigative process that involves both sides, through tensions and conflicts, as well as rejections and confirmations. Both give themselves over to the quest unaware—or very nearly—that they are putting themselves in play in the search for meaning. At this point, I would like to conclude this section with a necessary reflection on the relationship between improvisation and invention.

4.2  Improvisation and Invention As has already been said, improvisation allows both the actor and the spectator to undertake a process of investigation. In this context, it is clear that improvisation

Improvisation Beyond Science | 91 has to do with a phase relating to the moment of inventio, and therefore to the finding of materials that then—following the discourse of classic rhetoric—order and express themselves (dispositio and elocutio). I consider it important to highlight the fact that inventio, in this case, is not a combination of pre-existing elements but a creation of new realities. During the performance, in fact, the actor does not limit himself to combining various elements of his repertoire, such as gestures, positions and rhythms. As has been demonstrated, he is able to create his material ex-novo, following a method that is not conscious but dictated by his system and his urgencies. In this way, during the theatrical event, he not only creates his own original repertoire but affirms his artistic identity, idiolect and style (just think about Dario Fo and Roberto Benigni): The greater the physical-technical possibility of letting himself go, of improvising and of becoming more self-aware, the higher the percentage of originality in his artistic identity. With regards to invention, Francis Bacon was already differentiating between the discovery of the unknown and the recollection of ancient knowledge at the beginning of the 1600s. According to Bacon, as Rena Lamparska recalls: [Of inventions] there are two species: The invention of the arts and that of the arguments […]. The first can be called strictly invention, given that it means discovering unknown things; instead, the second is nothing but the memory of things already known and merely recalled.30

The Baconian hunter-scientist ‘invents’ only in the moment in which he ventures “into a vast, unknown space” rather than hunting in the “reserve of the exempla” and, continuing with the metaphor of the hunt, ‘conquers’ his prey, “or rather creates inventions” with the help of “open-mindedness and mental ability” (158). From here, the truth of the philosopher-scientist becomes the conquest of the new by an intelligent, creative, imaginative man, not to mention a good scientific observer. In the specific case of the actor, it could be said that he should also be technically well-prepared. The invention or “discovering unknown things” (159) is for Bacon, as it is for Caloprese, “the recreation” or “artistic transformation of material reality with infinite possibilities of discovery” (169), an original processing of real, yet to be considered, elements. With regards to the relationship between invention and the reception of the spectator, Lamparska continues: through the realism of the ‘new’ discovered in observed reality and transformed into the ‘vagueness’ and ‘beauty’ of the ‘fake’ images, the recipient is reached, his interest and sense of wonder piqued. The cognitive functions of wonder and of aesthetics are joined. […]

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‘Altering the facts’ of empirical reality in poetic form is expressed by beauty, that essential element of invention and wonder (169–170).

Altering the facts of empirical reality, as we know from science, does not consist in recombining existing elements but in working on the relationships that may be established among them. Therefore, we will say that Bacon’s concept of invention as processing and transformation of reality, together with the concept of the hunter-scientist, is the foundation of the theatrical research of the 1900s, and in particular of the directors analyzed here. Each of them elevates the artistic experience to a higher dimension compared to that of ‘simple entertainment’, making it a life experience and not just fiction: Being an artist leads to the awareness of being an individual and of being part of a group. Theatrical improvisation, then, aids in the search for oneself. In this sense, the function of theater is social, political, ethical and pedagogical, and it acquires greater value because it contains the meaning of life itself for its participants. It stands to reason that the concept of Theater is different for every artist.

5.  Improvisation in Sinisterra’s Minimalist Exercises Within the Teatro Fronterizo, in the mid-eighties, Sinisterra carries out several workshops on the dramaturgy of the actor in which he explores the borders between figurativeness and abstraction. This study is in line with the investigative path he embarked on in 1977, in which the actor is once again the center of artistic reflection. Here the director questions “the imperialism of figurativeness,” investigates the specific language of theater and pushes his intuition to seek valid approaches to abstraction. In fact, Sinisterra points out that in other artistic fields such as painting, music and ballet, abstract forms were already being experimented at the beginning of the XX century; theater, though, has never been included in these studies, with the exception of the attempts of Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus.31 There is, however, an aspect that distinguishes these workshops and that makes them truly interesting: The appeal to scientific theories (of the Systems) to organize the exercises, structure them and put them in the hands of the actor. During the execution of the exercises, though, the actors and the director discover a completely unexpected element that goes beyond science; they become aware that they are dealing with a raw material that is impossible to predict and to structure. Because the exercise is a far-from-equilibrium system, though it maintains

Improvisation Beyond Science | 93 the actants (minimal units of action) as fixed elements and repetition as a preestablished condition, the process from chaos to order proves to be an unpredictable and unintentional generator of meaning. Let us take a closer look. In all the exercises, the actors train themselves to escape from the literalness of the text, from its manifest meaning, from what the play originally “says.” Among the most extreme cases, there are those made up of a series of actants that repeat themselves according to simple mathematical models. The so-called ‘minimalist’ exercises integrate principles of serial and repetitive dynamics with the systemic principle of feedback—gleaned from scientific theories—according to which an artistic event is not considered linearly but circularly, with each element influencing the others and vice versa. For example, if A influences B and B influences C, C will influence A who will in turn influence B and so on, in an infinite cycle (Sinisterra, Sistemi 72). The abstract formula of the exercise could be the following: —Actor A carries out actant x, which influences B; —Actor B carries out actant y, which influences C; —Immediately after, actor C carries out actant z, which influences A; —Actor A carries out actant x again (under the influence of z), which influences B; —Actor B carries out actant y again (under the influence of x/z), which influences C; —and so on … for ever (73).

In reality, the individual gestures have no meaning in themselves, but the entire exercise should be considered as “a system whose elements do not exist individually but form a whole regulated by a set of laws, which develops over time and uses feedback to function” (72). In observing the phenomenon, I witnessed the creation of something completely new in the field of theater: Despite “the dominant goal […] of maintaining the repetitive principle as rigorously as possible,” despite “the absolute lack of intentions of representation,” from “miniscule alterations inevitably created in the actants e/o during the pauses”—because of their human nature—“strange, figurative constellations” (73) would take shape, which produced various strains of meaning. The director specifies that: there was no story, nor situation nor characters, but there was something that had to do with human existence, and together with the vicissitudes of interaction, it created moments of tensions, mystery, humor, pain […] (73).

To this we add the heightened senses that could be the result of overlapping actants with a verbal text: The combinations of meaning would increase exponentially.

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We are talking, as Sinisterra says, about a “new theatricality” (73) in the process of being discovered and developed. In this way, Sinisterra extends theatrical practice to the limits of representation, literally putting the actor to the test. The actor, when faced with a serial model of the same fixed and repetitive gestures, will demonstrate his humanity solely by virtue of improvisation, through the smallest signs of human nature filtered through improvised details. Facial expressions, respiration, pauses and the intensity of fixed gestures are merely openings through which infinite associations, meanings, references, allusions, suppositions, doubts and perceptions can be glimpsed. It is these small, stolen signs that break up banality and serial monotony. I would like to point out that, thanks to scientific findings, we know that these small signs are not at all random but rather determined by the system. That is to say, they express the urgency of the “actor-as-system”: the urgency of that moment. Therefore, the fact that these signs are unpredictable does not mean they are not justified and sought by the global system of the man-artist. The actor is unaware of the reactions and interpretations he may cause in the spectator because they do not share the same point of reference. The meanings he creates within himself with each gesture, or cycle of gestures, constitute variable subtexts, which prove useful in justifying his actions and demonstrating confidence in his interaction with the other actors. His aim is less about revealing the subtext and more about being a part of a system that generates meaning. These exercises demonstrate how, in an abstract dimension, improvisation is the very condition that is necessary for creation. Such exercises prove that the gesture in itself is interpreted by the spectator as action, or as a movement that justifies an intention, which goes beyond the intention that actually motivates the actor. The two meanings, that of the actor and that of the spectator, do not have to coincide. The study becomes even more interesting when a given verbal text overlaps with the actants, when two different, parallel lines of meaning are unleashed in both the actor and the spectator. The two lines might cross, but maybe not. In any case, from the development of the two now independent means of expression (gestural and verbal), meanings multiply exponentially, sometimes distancing themselves completely from the semantic meaning of the text. The director plays, and makes the actor play, with gestures interpreted as signs, rather than representations of a clearly defined reality. Conceived in this way, theatricality is not based on the verisimilar or on the distinction between reality and verisimilitude, but on an authentic poietic activity in which the actor is put in a position to create ex-novo, unwittingly, a specific theatrical language.

Improvisation Beyond Science | 95 According to Minimalist theories,32 “the artistic object should have a value in itself and not in the representation of reality, or mimesis.”33 It should call attention to itself thanks to its intrinsic qualities such as “size, height, geometry, color, material” (Pérez Carreño 46). Sinisterra, then, takes up the conceptualizations of minimalist art: He eliminates figurativeness and referentiality and leaves the meaning of the actants in the hands of his actors, with no reference to any predetermined version of reality.

6.  Final Reflections In this chapter, we have seen how improvisation facilitates the search for meaning in the artist’s performance and in the spectator, his recipient. Improvisation is not, then, pure chaos but rather the development of chaos to order, a dynamic moment that gives life to the play and in which meaning is generated. It is not an instrument of illustration that serves the dramatic text, nor is it a psycho-biological instrument of the actor’s subconscious, capable of externalizing extemporaneously and irrationally the actor’s most varied states of being and his most arbitrary choices, as Surrealist theory would have us believe. Improvisation is then a condition of the artist that, though causing a suspension of the rational faculties of the actor as a human being, permits the interweaving of innumerable relationships among various factors, such as biological (character, genetics, psychosomatic), social (behavioral, inhibitory), technical (of study, of experience) and those related to intuition, talent, will and passion. Such relationships are always the product of deterministic and aleatory conditions. A semiotic approach that takes scientific knowledge into account can offer us a rational reflection on the communicative processes of the actor, and, consequently, on the effect they have on the spectator’s reception. This approach is useful for identifying constant and variable elements in the performance, and it can help us to formulate a hypothesis on the division between the two. It can also contribute to the isolation of biological, emotional and behavioral influences from those related specifically to the artistic realm, even though, it is still impossible today to identify the degree to which such influences may have an impact. On the other hand, it can easily be affirmed that the complex phenomenon of performance, just as it defies any purely scientific explanation, also defies any semiotic analysis, inasmuch as improvisation, in which the performance is steeped, is linked to the individuality of each individual actor.

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Sinisterra, through his research on minimalist exercises with actants, has discovered that it is possible to separate gestures from verbal meanings, and from any figurative illustration of the spoken line. Sinisterra’s experiment to apply improvisation to the execution of the gestures (actants) alone demonstrated first and foremost the impossibility of separating the different factors that influence the decisions of the system. In the end, this was not the goal of the director, who was trying to push the potential meanings of the actants to the maximum. What is relevant from his experiment is, in fact, that improvisation on the combinations of the individual actants leads to strange “constellations of meanings,” (Sinisterra, Sistemi 73), which are unrelated to those aimed and premeditated by the director or by the actors. Here we see the power of the significance of the gesture as an action in itself. The role of improvisation in creating meaning goes beyond any pre-established figurative connection; it functions independently of the intentions of the text or of the actor. In this way, improvisation determines the specificity of theatrical language, independent of the other arts.

Notes 1. Annalisa Bianco, Interviews and Opinions, http://www.css-teatro.com/media/spet tacoli/43_260_documenti.pdf> 15 May 2016. 2. Giulio Giorello is Professor of Philosophy and Science at the University of Milan. This excerpt is taken from G. Giorello, Interviews and Opinions, 15 May 2016. 3. Franco Ruffini, Conference held at the Eugenio Barba’s workshop in Lamezia Terme, VV, June 2007. 4. “El arte […] no puede ser ciencia, precisamente por el hecho de que en la ciencia existe univocidad en la relación signifiant-signifié. En ella encontramos solamente el aspecto denotativo, y no el connotativo, tan importante y a menudo, sobresaliente en las obras literarias y, en general artísticas”, in Gillo Dorfles, El devenir de la crítica (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1979) 44. 5. De Marinis, Semiotics of the Theater. Orig. Semiotica del teatro: l’analisi testuale dello spettacolo (Milano: Bompiani, 1982) 17. De Marinis affirms that “from early research on the topic of theatrical biology, the clear result is the important impact that transcultural biological factors and innate behavioral patterns have on the actor’s work.” (16).

Improvisation Beyond Science | 97 6. In connection to the relationship between text and performance, De Marinis dedicates more than one paragraph of his book (Semiotica) to the criticism of various scholars such as Pagnini, Lotman, Jansen, Brandi and Kowzan, inasmuch as they maintain the supremacy of the verbal text over that of the performance, 26–29. 7. Among the implications that these considerations entail, there are surely those which regard the study of dramatic texts at the high school and college level. It is common in these institutions to limit interest to the verbal text and not integrate the study with the vision and analysis of the performance text; today this can be changed through video or live performances, now plentiful in cities and towns. 8. Wilhelm Furtwängler, Concerning music, in J. Rink, The Practice of Performance, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 106. 9. Anne Ubersfeld, Theatrikòn. Leggere il teatro (Roma: Universitaria la Goliardica, 1984) 10. 10. “Solano: ‘Mira aquel hombre… el de la barba’. Ríos contesta: ‘Todos tienen barba’”, J.S. Sinisterra, Ñaque, 2. 11. “Solano: ‘El de las gafas’ Ríos contesta: ‘Todos tienen gafas’”, J.S. Sinisterra, Ñaque, 3. 12. “Solano: ‘El de la nariz’. Ríos: ‘Ah si!’ ”, J.S. Sinisterra, Ñaque, 3. 13. Claudio Vicentini, L’arte di guardare gli attori (Venezia: Marsilio, 2007) 195 14. See Chapter II, 2.5. 15. See Chapter I, 1.1. 16. F. Nietzsche, Nascita della tragedia, Opere complete, Vol. III, 1 (Milano: Adelphi, 1982). 17. Italo Calvino, Lezioni americane (Milano: Mondadori, 2000) 72. 18. Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Interview with Dario Fo, in ‘Teatro e Scienza,’ “La Repubblica”, April 17 2002, 19. “Ríos: [¿Y si cambiáramos los papeles?] ¿Nosotros…y ellos? Solano: ¿Te refieres al público? Ríos: Sí. Solano: ¿Cambiar? … ¿Cómo? Ríos: Ellos actúan y nosotros… miramos y escuchamos. Solano: ¡Vaya una idea! Ríos: ¿No te gustaría? Solano: No sé…. no creo… Ríos: ¡Sería divertido! Solano: ¡Sería aburrido!”, j. s. sinisterra, Ñaque, cit., p. 11. 20. Roland Barthes, Letteratura e significazione, in Saggi critici, Einaudi, Torino, 2002. 21. Theorical-Pratical Seminar from the conference held at the University of Eurasian Theater, X Session, 2003,

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22. From the 1970s to today, there have been various semiologists who studied—and who continue studying—the semiotic problems of the dramatic text, the performance, and the relationship between the two. Worth mentioning are Franco Ruffini, De Marinis, Cesare Molinari, Jurij Lotman, Keir Elam, Ann Ubersfeld. 23. Henri Poincaré (1854–1912), French, mathematician, physicist, astronomer and philosopher of science. He has been one of the precursors of the theory of relativity and twelve-time nominee for the Nobel Prize. In 1906, Poincaré wrote Science and Method, in which he identified the creativity in the capacity to unite pre-existing elements in new combinations. Moreover, he was able to foresee the appearance of order from disorder, a principle that Prigogine will develop some decades later. He coined the phrase “creativity as a union of the new and useful” which became the basis for his work Science and Method. 24. Arthur Koestler, L’atto della creazione (1964) (Roma: Astrolabio-Ubaldini, 1975) 19. 25. The actor simply poses questions which are difficult to answer but that engender other questions. On the one hand, he provokes primary sensory reactions, and on the other, intellectual curiosity. 26. Jorge Wagensberg, Ideas sobre la complejidad del mundo (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1985) 108. 27. The fourth wall is an imaginary one, located in front of the stage: It generically indicates the border between the fictional world and the audience. Such a concept was born in the Théâtre Libre of André Antoine, founded in 1887, with the advent of theatrical realism. Bertolt Brecht was famous for deliberately breaking the fourth wall in an attempt to encourage his audience to think more critically about what they were watching. 28. From the Latin inter facies, between the faces. In the general sense of the term, an interface is the point, area or surface on which two qualitatively different entities meet. According to the De Agostini dictionary, it is an interconnection or coupling that allows two characteristically different parts of a system to work together. 29. Saussure considers signifier and signified to be two sides of the same coin. Though inseparable, the relationship between the two is arbitrary. But for Saussure “arbitrary” does not mean subjective and free but rather “unmotivated,” or unnecessary to the meaning expressed. 30. Rena Syska-Lamparska, Letteratura e scienza. Gregorio Caloprese teorico e critico della letteratura, Introduzione di F. Lomonaco, Studi vichiani, 43 (Napoli: Guida, 2005) 158–59. 31. J.S. Sinisterra, “Sistemi minimalisti in teatro” in La scena senza limiti, 70. 32. Artistic movement born in post-war America, based on limited resources and on the simplicity of form, structure and material. 33. Francisca Pérez Carreño, Arte minimal. Objeto y sentido (Madrid: La balsa de la Medusa, 2003) 46.

Conclusion

In the Introduction to this work we hypothesized how the actor’s improvisation encapsulates the secrets of the representation of a text. In the preceding three chapters we identified the main secret with the character’s ‘urgency’, which becomes the actor’s urgency. This is the impulse that Grotowski talks about in his theories, and that, according to theater director José Sanchis Sinisterra, expresses itself through a process of ‘complexization’ of the performance. Sinisterra insists on the need to make the actor’s gesture ‘complex by enriching it with energy, tension, and conflict, and by multiplying the lines of thought beyond it. Paradoxically, by making the gesture ‘complex’ the actor reveals the spontaneity of his human nature, and the truth of it. To express the fiction of the character the actor would only require technique, cliché and perfectly structured gestures. However, to express his urgency and his truth, the actor needs improvisation as the necessary precondition that makes it possible. As analyzed in this work, the phenomenon of improvisation should not be associated only with spontaneity, impulsiveness, chance, and approximation. On the contrary, in art and in theater in particular, improvisation takes on a leading role—that of bringing back ontological dignity to theater, emancipating its specificity.

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Stealing a metaphor from playwright Juan Mayorga, we can compare improvisation to a “mine”1 that makes the actor explode from the inside: disintegrating the person into infinite sparks as if a firework, revealing the actor’s interior richness, rhythms, tones and shades. Thus, it is thanks to improvisation that the unique, literal meaning of an artwork can be expressed through the variety of the actor’s expressions. Profound analysis of theatrical processes was possible thanks to original analogies made between the artistic field and the scientific one. By applying the System Theory and considering each element of a show as a system, we have explored the complex field of relations that can be established between a text and a spectator from a very original perspective. We demonstrated that the actor is a complex phenomenon structured in a web of relations as is a show in its entirety. We investigated a new dimension created by improvisation, a ‘third zone’ between the stage and the audience space, in which the two virtual realities of actor and spectator meet, and where negotiations of meanings happen; we identified the action fields of chaos and order noting that the process from chaos to order in nature is no different than the one that transforms impulse into meaning, in art. Finally, we believe that by identifying and delimiting the fields of action of order and chaos, in both actor and spectator, and by deliberately altering the relationships among the elements of the theater system, the meanings of a performed text can be manipulated; in fact, such manipulation can happen only through the use of effective improvisation. Using the latest scientific research in theatrical contexts, we can infer that improvisation is not at all a phenomenon based on randomness. Chaos exists only in relation to order, to which it is connected in a necessary dialectic process leading to the creation of novelty. Improvisation is the main agent that makes the novelty being—at the same time and in the same way— the product of randomness and, paradoxically, that of determinism.

Note 1. According to Mayorga, Sinisterra treats “each word, each gesture […] as a mine ready to explode” in Juan Mayorga, La escena sin límites, 27.

Bibliography

Critical Texts Dictionary of Philosophy, by P. A. Angeles, New York, Harper Perennial, 1981. Dictionary of the History of Ideas, by P. Wiener, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973–74. Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, a cura di V. Branca, Torino, UTET, 1974. Dizionario di retorica e di stilistica, a cura di A. Marchese, Milano, Mondadori, 1981. Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, Roma, Le Maschere, 1954–62. Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of Language, by O. Ducrot, T. Todorov, The Johns Hopkins University, 1994.

History of Theater Alonge, Roberto, Dal testo alla scena, Torino, Stampatori, 1984. ———, Roberto Tessari, Manuale di storia del teatro, Torino, Utet, 2001. Angelini, Franca, Il Teatro del Novecento da Pirandello a Fo, Milano, Laterza, 2004. ———, Teatri moderni in Letteratura italiana, vol.VI, Torino, Einaudi, 1986. Cruciani, Fabrizio, Teatro nel Novecento, Firenze, Sansoni, 1985. ———, Clelia Falletti, Civiltà teatrale del xx sec., Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986. Meldolesi, Claudio, Fondamenti del teatro italiano. La generazione dei registi, Firenze, Sansoni, 1984. Puppa, Paolo, Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo Novecento, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1993.

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Rubio Jimenez, Jesus, La renovación teatral española de 1900: manifiestos y otros ensayos, Serie Debate 8 (Presentación de Juan Antonio Hormigón), Madrid, Asociación de Directores de Escena de España, 1998. Savarese, Nicola, Teatri orientali: suggestioni e influenze, in Enciclopedia del Teatro del ‘900, a cura di Attisani. Milano. Feltrinelli, 1980, 509–517. Teatro contemporaneo, diretto da Mario Verdone, Roma, Lucarini, 1981. Roberto, Tessari, Teatro italiano del Novecento, Firenze, Le Lettere, 1996. Tomasino, Renato, Le forme del teatro: analisi e storia delle pratiche di spettacolo, Palermo, Acquario, 1984.

Theory of Theater Artioli, Umberto, L’attore nelle concezioni delle avanguardie storiche, in Enciclopedia Udel teatro del ‘900, by A. Attisani, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1980, pp. 356–363. Attisani, Antonio, Il teatro come differenza, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1978. Barberi-Squarotti, Giorgio, Il testo teatrale, in Le sorti del tragico. Il Novecento italiano: romanzo e teatro, Ravenna, Longo, 1978. Barthes, Roland, Sul teatro, Torino, Einaudi, 2002. Bertani, Odoardo, Parola di teatro, Milano, Garzanti, 1990. Carlson, Marvin, Theories of the Theatre, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1984. Catalano, Ettore, L’esperienza del teatro, Bari, Levante, 1984. Cruciani, Fabrizio, “Voce Processo Creativo” in Anatomia del teatro, by N. Savarese, Firenze, La Casa Usher, 1983, pp. 161–174. Frost, Anthony, E R., Yarrow, Improvisation in Drama, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Gordon, José, Teatro experimental español, Madrid, Escelicer, 1965. Holub, Robert, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction, London, Methuen, 1984. Marotti, Ferruccio, Amleto o dell’oxymoron. Studi e note sull’estetica della scena moderna. Roma, Bulzoni, 1967. Nietzsche, Friedrich, La nascita della tragedia (1872), in Opere complete, vol. III, 1, Milano, Adelphi, 1982. Petrella, Fausto, La mente come teatro, Torino, Centro scientifico torinese, 1982. Szondi, Peter, Teoria del dramma moderno. 1880–1950, Torino, Einaudi, 1962. Tognoloni,D., Un torneo d’improvvisazione, “Quaderni di teatro”, 18 Nov. 1982, Firenze, Vallecchi, pp. 49–54. Ubersfeld, Ann, Theatricòn. Leggere il teatro, Roma, Euroma, 1984. Vicentini, Claudio, La teoria del teatro moderno, Firenze, Sansoni, 1981.

Bibliography Related to Chapter I Aristotele, Retorica e Poetica, a cura di M. Zanatta, Torino, Utet, 2006. Bocchi, Gianluca, Mauro, Cerruti, La sfida della complessità, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1995.

Bibliography | 103 Derrida, Jacques, Decostructionism, Eco, Umberto, I limiti dell’interpretazione, Milano, Bompiani, 1990. Gnesi, Paola, Roberto Corradino: prima di tutto viene l’attore, Intervista a R. Corradino, “Contemporanea”, 07, 3/6/2007