Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience 9781472584786, 9781472584816, 9781472584809

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Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience

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Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues explores the interactions between science and performance, providing readers with a unique guide to current practices and research in this fastexpanding field. Through shared themes and case studies, the series offers rigorous vocabularies and methods for empirical studies of performance, with each volume involving collaboration between performance scholars, practitioners and scientists. The series encompasses the modalities of performance to include drama, dance and music. SERIES EDITORS John Lutterbie Chair of the Departments of Art and of Theatre Arts at Stony Brook University, USA Nicola Shaughnessy Professor of Performance at the University of Kent, UK IN THE SAME SERIES Affective Performance and Cognitive Science edited by Nicola Shaughnessy ISBN 978-1-4081-8398-4 Performance and the Medical Body edited by Alex Mermikides and Gianna Bouchard ISBN 978-1-4725-7078-9 Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies edited by Rhonda Blair and Amy Cook IBSN 978-1-4725-9179-1

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Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience Edited by

Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia and Victor Jacono

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Methuen Drama An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as Methuen Drama 50 Bedford Square London WC 1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 © Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia and Victor Jacono and contributors, 2016 Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia and Victor Jacono have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN : HB : ePDF : ePub:

978-1-4725-8478-6 978-1-4725-8480-9 978-1-4725-8479-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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To those who live at the crossroads

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix List of Contributors xi Acknowledgements xiii Preface Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia and Victor Jacono xiv

PART ONE THEATRE AS A SPACE OF RELATIONSHIPS: A NEUROCOGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE Introduction: The Shared Space of Action Clelia Falletti 3 1 The ‘Mirror Mechanism’ and Motor Behaviour Maria Alessandra Umiltà 15 2 Body Presence and Extra-personal Space Perception Giorgia Committeri and Chiara Fini 23 3 The Circus Actor: Towards a Cognitive Approach Philippe Goudard 35 PART TWO THE SPECTATOR’S PERFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE AND ‘EMBODIED THEATROLOGY’ Introduction: Towards an Embodied Theatrology? Gabriele Sofia 49 4 Body and Corporeity in the Theatre: From Semiotics to Neuroscience. A Small Multidisciplinary Glossary Marco De Marinis 61 vii

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5 Audiences’ Experience of Proximity and Co-presence in Live Dance Performance Corinne Jola and Matthew Reason 75 6 Theatre and Science: Reflections on Theatrical Efficacy in Antonin Artaud Lorraine Dumenil 93 PART THREE THE COMPLEXITY OF THEATRE AND HUMAN COGNITION Introduction: Complexity, Cognition, and the Actor’s Pedagogy Victor Jacono 103 7 A Rope Over an Abyss John J. Schranz 117 8 The Actor’s Embodied Language: Preliminary Investigations of a Pilot Experiment Gabriele Sofia, Silvia Spadacenta, Clelia Falletti, and Giovanni Mirabella 131 9 Perception and the Organization of Time in the Theatre Luciano Mariti 139 PART FOUR INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON APPLIED PERFORMANCE Introduction: Does Art Therapy Work as a Rehabilitative Tool? Giovanni Mirabella 157 10 Use of Theatrical Techniques and Elements as Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorders Jenna Gabriel, Elisa Angevin, Tamara E. Rosen and Matthew D. Lerner 163 11 Theatre as a Valuable Tool for Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation Nicola Modugno, Imogen Kusch and Giovanni Mirabella 177 12 Theatre and Therapy: ‘Care’, ‘Cure’, or Illusion? Jean-Marie Pradier 187 Notes 199 Index 247

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 1.1

1.2

2.1

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5.1 5.2 5.3 8.1

Original stimuli: digitized images of the artworks by Lucio Fontana. Control stimuli: digitized images of graphically modified versions of the original artworks. Original stimuli: digitized images of the artworks by Franz Kline. Control stimuli: digitized images of graphically modified versions of the original artworks. Exemplar stimuli for the experimental conditions used in the allocentric task of extrapersonal space categorization. Modified from Chiara Fini, Marcel Brass, Giorgia Committeri, ‘Social Scaling of Extrapersonal Space: Target Objects Are Judged as Closer When the Reference Frame Is a Human Agent with Available Movement Potentialities’, Cognition 134 (2015). Exemplar stimuli for the experimental conditions used in the egocentric task of extra-personal space categorization. Modified from Chiara Fini, Marcello Costantini, Giorgia Committeri, ‘Sharing Space: The Presence of Other Bodies Extends the Space Judged as Near’, PlosOne, 9(12) (2014). Effect of presence experiences on enjoyment ratings (Corinne Jola, Matthew Reason). Effects of proximity on sensorimotor simulation (Corinne Jola, Matthew Reason). Effects of co-presence on sensorimotor simulation (Corinne Jola, Matthew Reason). The age of the subjects of the experiment (Gabriele Sofia, Silvia Spadacenta, Giovanni Mirabella, Clelia Falletti).

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32 85 87 88

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

8.2

Schematic representation of the mechanism underlying ‘Experiment 1’ (Gabriele Sofia, Silvia Spadacenta, Giovanni Mirabella, Clelia Falletti). 136 11.1 Coronal view of the brain, reproduced with permission from José A. Obeso, Maria C. Rodríguez-Oroz, Manuel Rodríguez, Javier Arbizu, José M. Giménez-Amaya, ‘The Basal Ganglia and Disorders of Movement: Pathophysiological Mechanisms’, News in Physiological Science 17 (2002), pp. 51–55. 179

Tables 5.1

Distribution of audiences’ evaluations of proximity and co-presence (Corinne Jola, Matthew Reason). 10.1 Elements of theatre and cognitive models of ASD they may inform.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Elisa Angevin, Student in the Applied Psychology program, New York University USA . Giorgia Committeri, Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Imaging, Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, University G. d’Annunzio, Chieti, and ITAB , Foundation G. d’Annunzio, Chieti, Italy. Marco De Marinis, Professor of Theatre, University of Bologna, Italy. Lorraine Dumenil, PhD in History and Semiology of the text and the Image. Member of the THALIM research team (Université Paris III -Sorbonne Nouvelle, France). Art History and Literature teacher. Clelia Falletti, Associate Professor of theatre studies at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Chiara Fini, Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium; Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University G. d’Annunzio, Chieti, and ITAB , Foundation G. d’Annunzio, Chieti, Italy. Jenna Gabriel, Graduate in Drama and minors in Applied Theatre and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Studies, New York University, USA . Philippe Goudard, MD, circus artist and producer, theatre actor, and researcher, Professor of performing arts and Assistant Director of the programme ‘Cirque: histoire, imaginaires, pratiques’ (RIRRA 21/ Université Paul Valéry Montpellier, France). Victor Jacono, PhD in Performance Studies (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy), theatre maker and educator. Corinne Jola, Lecturer in Psychology, School of Health and Social Sciences, Abertay University, Dundee, UK .

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Imogen Kusch, Theatre Director and founder of Klesidra Theatre, Rome, Italy. Matthew D. Lerner, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, and Director of the Stony Brook Social Competence & Treatment Lab (SCTL ), USA . Luciano Mariti, Professor of Theatre, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Giovanni Mirabella, Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, and Scientific Consultant at IRCCS Neuromed Hospital, Pozzilli (IS ), Italy. Nicola Modugno, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Founder and President of the onlus ‘ParkinZone’, and Chief of the Parkinson Centre of IRCCS Neuromed Pozzilli (IS ), Italy. Jean-Marie Pradier, Professor Emeritus of the University of Paris VIII , France, founding member of the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA ), and the founder of the Laboratoire d’Ethnoscénologie, MSH – Paris Nord. Matthew Reason, Professor, Faculty of Arts, York St John University, UK . Tamara E. Rosen, PhD student, Member of the Social Competence & Treatment Lab (SCTL ) of Stony Brook University, USA . John J. Schranz, Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Malta, pedagogue-director, deviser of the interdisciplinary research programme ‘xHCA – Questioning Human Creativity as Acting’, Malta. Gabriele Sofia, Contract lecturer in theatre studies and physical theatre at Paul Valéry University, Montpellier, France. Researcher of the RIRRA 21 (Paul Valéry University) and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Paris Nord. Silvia Spadacenta, Post-doc researcher Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research and Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen, Germany. Maria Alessandra Umiltà, Research Fellow in Physiology, Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Italy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank the Faculty of Literature, Philosophy, Humanities and Oriental Studies at the Sapienza University of Rome, and the Department of Media, Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Bologna for their important contributions toward the publication of the present volume. Our gratitude also goes to the publisher Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, Mark Dudgeon, and Emily Hockey for their precious collaboration, as well as to Nicola Shaughnessy and John Lutterbie for promoting the publication. Gabriele Sofia would also like to thank the Department of Cinema and Theatre at the Paul Valéry University of Montpellier for the support received during the preparation of the present volume. The authors of Chapter 11 wish to thank the ‘Fondazione Neurone’ for its financial support and in particular Dr Nicolò Meldolesi for his constant encouragement, and advice. Giovanni Mirabella would like to also acknowledge his sister, Professor Anna Mirabella, for giving him valuable advice about theatrical performances, allowing him to establish a link between his studies and the world of theatre.

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Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience was formed out of human relationships. We are not presenting a simple collection of essays but the result of a series of encounters, collaborations, and mutual influences between researchers hailing from different geographical and disciplinary contexts. Thus, each chapter is the result of a debate, a discussion, a listening process. Apart from the significant interpersonal and multidisciplinary dimensions, we would also emphasize the important temporal dimension of such collaborations and exchanges. The present volume looks Janus-faced into the past and into the future, shedding new light upon research-based theatre practices that already at the turn of the twentieth century started paving the way for the interdisciplinary exchange of today. Such research practices in the theatre laid the foundations from the first articulations of problems that the more recent dialogues between theatre and cognitive neuroscience have been addressing and reformulating in view of prospective research. Thus, one of the objectives of the present publication is to furnish as complete a picture as possible of a multidisciplinary domain that continues to undergo a rapid transformation. Even so, a hidden subtitle of the volume could be ‘in praise of slowness’. In these long years of collaboration, we realized that we could come to witness the creation of a truly interdisciplinary exchange only via a long process of discussion with research practices pertaining to disciplines that were distant from our own. Such slowness was indeed characterized by a disciplined search for differences that would make a real difference (to put it in Batesonian terms) to our habitual outlook. Such a learning process naturally contained both moments of enthusiasm and of resistance. Consequently, in the course of this journey, slowness, patience, listening, but at times also contrast and boredom, became precious partners. xiv

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* * * The adventure named ‘Dialogues between Theatre and Neuroscience’ was launched in February 2009, thanks to a cultural project presented by the Department of Performing Arts and Sciences at Sapienza University, Rome. It resulted in a series of five interdisciplinary conferences that were held annually up to June 2013. The editors of the present volume are the same three scholars who organized those five encounters. The conference grew gradually, with the passing of the years, to become an international point of reference for research on the performing arts and neuroscience. A great number of the chapters in this book derive from that experience and from the network that was formed during those conferences, which continues to produce new ways of collaboration. In the context of such an experience, we have chosen to adopt an ‘anomalous’ approach, seeking always to maintain a scientific respect for disciplines deriving from fields of research other than our own; we have invited those participants from other disciplines to adopt the same rigour. Notwithstanding the effort required in keeping with such a rigorous approach, this was preferred to the risk of ending up with a sort of ‘multidisciplinary fruit salad’, an assortment of terms, concepts and theories thrown into a muddled concoction that is often served to the public at conferences. Instead, the scientific respect maintained with regard to the single disciplines enhanced the opening to dialogue, in a space that would be free from the disciplinary hierarchies that continue to limit every academic system to this day. As theatre scholars, our interest in neuroscience is based on two premises. First, we consider theatre as a discipline pertaining to the vast territory of the ‘human sciences’, which include anthropology with its different branches and educational sciences; psychology with its two important domains: (a) cognitive functions: perception, learning, language, memory, and (b) affection: emotions, personality, motivations, drives, and the meanders of folly; and (c) sociology, the cognitive sciences, political sciences, economy, history, etc.1 Second, we are convinced that, for those who study theatre, it is necessary not to lock themselves within the boundary of literary perspectives and interpretations. On the contrary, they should open up to an interdisciplinary perspective in an attempt to understand the complexity, strength and totality of the engagement between actor and spectator, the stage and the audience.

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In-depth studies and a plurality of points of view, divergent perspectives even, in a context of ongoing exchange, spur the participants (those partners who accept the dialogue) to a continuous re-examination of their points of departure, an ongoing modification of their analytic tools, and a constant redefinition of their own object of study. Certain stereotypes and prejudices that each one of us harbours with regard to distant or less-known disciplines are thus exposed. The wealth of each ‘encounter’ grows thanks to the constant effort made in questioning oneself, one’s own research and points of reference. In the field of interdisciplinary studies between neuroscience and the arts, theatre occupies a particular role in that it perhaps features least in scientific laboratories and publications. For instance, if we took the recent massive volume entitled Art, Aesthetics and the Brain,2 we would note that it includes macro sections on the visual arts, dance and music, but that theatre is absent. There are multiple reasons for such a lacuna. One lies in the tendency of dancers to produce generally codified motor skills that are not encountered in everyday life. In dance there is also the tendency to utilize a score. Although the notion of score, in the broad sense, is encountered in the majority of performance practices (referring to a ‘sequence of events’), in the sense that is closest to its original use in music, the score, engaging the whole body in each phase of action, is to be found only in a minority of occidental theatre practices. On the contrary, a great number of dance creations often use the score, to the point that certain practices, beyond the sequence of events composing a given performance, dispose of a whole series of codified action patterns used as the ‘building blocks’ for the construction of performance. The existence of such codified action patterns has facilitated the interest of neuroscientists in dance, not only with respect to the topics of ‘thinking in action’, ‘decision making’, etc., but with respect to learning, using and recognizing already codified motor skills. Moreover, in dance, far more than in the theatre, there is a strong demand to document, preserve, ‘leave a trace’ of the ephemeral event that is ‘performance’. This is due to the fact that EuroAmerican dance practices generally ‘record’ a given choreography so that it may then be re-presented years later, in different places, by different dancers. Such a tendency is evidently less important in the theatre (although it often appears in different forms tied to the written text). Instead it has led both dancers and dance researchers

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to develop a strong interest in all forms of technology that are capable of recording and quantifying the dynamics of the body as it moves in space in the most precise and efficient way possible (e.g. ‘motion capture’ technology). This has rendered dance studies and practices more prepared to use such technology to research the dynamics of human action during a dance performance. Nonetheless, we do not wish to mark a divide between dance and theatre studies – the presence of dance in the present volume testifies to that. On the contrary, the approach that guides this volume studies the actor–dancer at a level relating to deep techniques, to the creative strategies of presence, to mechanisms of stimulation in the spectator that are common to the manifold disciplines pertaining to the live performing arts. Such a perspective, therefore, attempts to explore the ‘dance of energy and thoughts’ that lies at the basis of all performing arts.3 The present volume is composed of four sections, with each section being introduced by one of the editors. The exception is the final section, which has an introduction by the neuroscientist Giovanni Mirabella, who has participated with us in the organization of ‘Dialogues between Theatre and Neuroscience’ and with whom several collaborations were launched. Part 1, entitled Theatre as a Space of Relationships: A Neurocognitive Perspective, starts from an aspect that is essential to the performing arts: the actor–spectator relationship, which extends from the ‘shared space of action’ to the human perception of a space shaped by cultural and personal expectations and expertise. The introduction tackles space, but also the question of emotions. Chapter 1 by Maria Alessandra Umiltà and Chapter 2 by Giorgia Committeri and Chiara Fini address space via scientific tests. Philippe Goudard, who closes Part 1 with his chapter on the circus, refers back to emotions, introducing the concept of the ‘aesthetics of risk’ just like Garcia Lorca, in defining the ‘duende’, introduced the aesthetics of death with reference to the terrible moment of truth in the extreme encounter between the bull and the toreador in the arena, or in the flight of the trapeze artist (with no safety net) across the vast circus dome which envelops both himself and his spectators. Part 2, The Spectator’s Performative Experience and ‘Embodied Theatrology’, stands to show how, via a deeper multidisciplinary

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analysis of the spectators’ experience, one can arrive at the formulation of a new approach, ‘Embodied Theatrology’, addressing the epistemological core of theatrical disciplines. Chapter  4 by Marco De Marinis highlights certain key concepts for the exploration of a new perspective on the spectator: ‘body’, ‘flesh’, ‘embodied simulation’, ‘kinesthesia’, etc. Instead, the investigation by Corinne Jola and Matthew Reason in Chapter  5 associates theory with an empirical approach, a qualitative and experimental study, showing how the analysis of the spectator’s experience acquires importance in the field of the cognitive sciences. In Chapter  6, Lorraine Dumenil studies the embodied experience of the spectator with reference to the writings of Artaud, whose subjectivity is a luminous example of an experience that is at the same time both instrument and object of research. In Part 3, The Complexity of Theatre and Human Cognition, discusses an epistemology that has recently identified complexity science as a common platform for the exchange with cognitive neuroscience focusing on the actor’s pedagogy. Chapter 7 is by the pedagogue-director John J. Schranz, who discusses the theatre’s specificity, the centrality of the performer, defined as the ‘decathlonist of the arts’, and touches upon the inseparability of discipline and liberty, structure and improvisation, structure and the flow of life. Chapter 8, by Gabriele Sofia, Silvia Spadacenta, Clelia Falletti and Giovanni Mirabella presents a scientific experiment investigating the actor’s embodied language, illustrating how specific training regimens undertaken by certain actors bring about modifications in the brain, improving precision, reaction time and decision making. The complexity and non-linearity of our perception of time is discussed by Luciano Mariti in Chapter  9, focusing on some techniques of dramaturgic construction that guide, surprise and dilate the spectators’ perception. The fourth and final part, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Applied Performance, is introduced by a reflection that questions the actual validity of using artistic activities as instruments of rehabilitation for disorders affecting patients’ cognitive and motor capacities. In Chapter  10, Jenna Gabriel, Elisa Angevin, Tamara Rosen and Matthew Lerner review models of processes underlying the social deficits experienced in the autism spectrum, linking them to particular theatrical techniques and elements which could inform the discussed cognitive models. Chapter 11, by Nicola Modugno,

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Imogen Kusch and Giovanni Mirabella presents a scientific report regarding a ten-year experimental study that introduces theatre techniques in the rehabilitation of Parkinson’s patients. Bringing this part and the entire volume to a close, in Chapter  12 the ethnoscenologist Jean-Marie Pradier provides a broad, detailed historical and anthropological excursus on ‘the theatre that heals’. The alternate succession of voices (theatre and the arts, neurophysiology, cognitive neuroscience, complexity theory, social sciences, therapy . . .) aims to produce associations and dissociations, constructing bridges at the same time. It is necessary, however, to keep the basic points of reference for the abovementioned discussions clear and well-defined. In the capacity of editors of the present volume, as theatre scholars, we feel duty bound to stress the great importance, when speaking about ‘theatre’ and the actor, of not confusing the process (the work of the actor on him/herself) with the product (the character). Of course, the one does not exclude the other. When tackling the dialogue with neuroscience, however, we must be rigorous in choosing the specific level upon which we are engaging the discussion and in sticking with that level. The entire volume develops on the process level. We cannot, however, expect those who operate in other fields to possess the same awareness, sensitivity and rigour on this point, just as we certainly do not possess the same awareness and sensitivity in relation to the fundamental points of the other disciplines. It is for this reason that, methodologically, we have discouraged risky encroachments into territories that lie beyond one’s competence. Even so, in at least one case, such an overlap was inevitable, that is in the last part of the book. The studies presented in this section, which give an account of the research and practical activities that have recently been using ‘theatre’ to cure certain diseases and conditions such as autism, project the picture of a turbulent, thus often confused drive toward the multiplication of experiments. In this field, which appears very attractive as it might open lucrative work opportunities for practitioners, research and reflection have yet to find their fixed points and instruments of anchorage, not only in the medical field, but also to avoid a confused recourse to a generic idea of the ‘theatre’. Such a confusion turns out not so much in the application of theatre techniques as in speaking about them, when it is often forgotten that they are, indeed,

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techniques, and hence not products (results) but belong to the level of process. Contributors to this volume come from seven different countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, the UK and the USA . Thirteen areas of research inform the perspectives and approaches of the contributors (who, in some excellent cases, have themselves contributed to create or innovate): neuroscience; physiology; physiology and clinical brain research; neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience; psychology; psychology and social sciences; theatre studies; theatre arts; circus arts; applied theatre and child and adolescent mental health studies; ethnoscenology; arts; social competence and treatment. All generations are represented: contributors range from professor emeritus to young researchers and students. By pure chance, there is perfect gender equality: eleven women and eleven men. In such a composite publication, the wealth of diverse points of view and different experiences inevitably brings with it a variety of registers that might appear bothersome to the reader; such heterogeneity is indeed a resource in itself. Such a wealth of perspectives and registers should never be forced into homologation: the chapters by Jean-Marie Pradier and Maria Alessandra Umiltà inevitably differ in their approach and ipso facto in the style of their presentation. The volume’s architecture, with its alchemy of opposites, the effort not to stray into foreign territory and to avoid invasions aimed at establishing forced correlations, let alone to derive conclusions . . . at first sight, might perplex the reader. We, however, sincerely believe that such caution and alchemy ensure that the reader feels motivated to accept the challenge to discover unimagined equivalences, to reformulate things ‘already known’ and, perhaps, to be inspired by new intuitions. As a whole, the aim of this constellation of points of view is not to provide quick solutions, but slow and relevant questions. Its ambition is to open new possibilities for debate, rather than crystallizing formulas and concepts. We hope that the reader will somehow be able to appropriate him/herself of the methodical slowness from which the studies presented in this volume have emerged. Clelia Falletti, Gabriele Sofia and Victor Jacono

PART ONE

Theatre as a Space of Relationships: A Neurocognitive Perspective

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Introduction: The Shared Space of Action Clelia Falletti*

The dialogue between the disciplines of theatre and neuroscience, though still a difficult one, has a history behind it, a history launched by theatre makers and maintained by them over the years, through contexts they generated for this purpose. This is not to deny the fact, however, that there are many theatre makers who make clear their bored disinterest in the subject: ‘But why on earth should we need to discuss this thing again? It won’t get us anywhere.’ This attitude, however, does not achieve anything, in my view, except to make the dialogue between neuroscience and theatre even more pressing and important. The same applies to scientists; they find it amazing and inexplicable that theatre makers should profess such a marked interest in some of their discoveries, wading through their treatises and publications, even going to the length of approaching them from a scientific point of view. In this opening section of the book, I am putting forward theatre’s point of view, addressing a public that might not profess a particular expertise in neuroscience – neither do I, in fact. However, seeing that my approach to theatre leads me to consider it as pertaining to the field of the human sciences, I find myself having to delve into the recent discoveries of cognitive neuroscience and striving to grasp certain things; it is these that I wish to address here. 3

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A shared space of action To knock down fences and make the encounter easier with apparently far-distant areas, we should agree on the terms we use in our disciplines so as to open up new fields of research. To begin with, I speak of ‘space’, a topic of great importance in theatre; it has a larger literature than ‘time’, which is an equally important concept in theatre and is the theme of Mariti’s contribution to this volume. ‘Space’ is also the subject of the two following chapters, by Umiltà and Committeri & Fini, who treat it from the viewpoint of their own fields, i.e. physiology, psychology, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. However, I shall try to tackle it from a point of view different to that of theatre. I shall mention but a few of the many spaces possible: e.g. personal space, such as the sensory outer layer of cells covering the human organism, teeming with stimuli; or peri-personal space, which is the space surrounding each one of us.1 These spaces are specific to each of us, sometimes rendering us solitary individuals. Then there is interpersonal space, the space we share with others, a relational space, where exchanges occur. Each space is very different to the others, but all are physical spaces, not metaphoric ones. Then I will call the reader’s attention to another space, until now unfamiliar, but one which is equally physical. It is not ‘metaphoric’ nor is it a ‘mental’ space – rather it is as concrete and measurable as peri-personal space, and as relational as the interpersonal one . . . there is however a fundamental difference about the space I am addressing: it isn’t outside of us, it is an inner space, ‘inner’ in the sense that it is a space inside the brain; it is a piece of the brain. Some might find this image disturbing, perhaps even repulsive . . . but that is how I visualize it. It has a name: ‘shared space of action’.2 It is a physical space, not metaphorical, meaning that when actions are carried out in the presence of others, in the brain of the doer there is an area of a few square millimetres that lights up and an identical area of a few square millimetres lights up in the brains of the others. This is an objective, scientific fact. Let us now apply this finding to the field of theatre; in saying that there is a shared space of action I would be holding that when an actor on stage executes an action (and in theatre that means – and we must not

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forget this – a motivated, conscious action with a precise aim, that is: an action with an intention), the implication in neurobiological terms is that the neurons of a certain area of his brain are activated; in other words we could say that in a certain area of the brain the ‘motor programme’ is put into action, making it possible for him to execute a certain action with a certain intention. I would also say that when this activity occurs in that area of the actor’s brain while on stage, the same activity would be occurring in the same brain area of those facing him – concomitantly – or consonantly – with him, or as in a mirror, one could say, independently of the will of both actor and spectator, provided, however, that the action is executed with intention: it is that intention that the brains of others pick up, echoing the agent’s motor programme in their own brains’ motor programmes. We can say all this thanks to the recent discoveries of the cognitive sciences.

Let’s talk about mirror neurons Let’s talk about mirror neurons, then. The 1990s were declared the decade for brain research, which resulted in a considerable, worldwide shift in focus of the scientific community’s research. The first immediate outcome was the acknowledgement of the brain’s plasticity, which resulted in the debunking of the earlier belief that the brain expands rapidly in its first days, months and years to then decline inexorably as age sets in. On the contrary, the more it works and the more it exercises itself, the more it expands and redesigns itself – quite like a muscle. One of the lines of research was that of brain mapping, with the functions of the various sectors being identified. Some areas were already well known, charted and described, such as Broca’s area, to mention one classic example. There was an unceasing effort to map as many areas as possible and to identify their respective functions. Active on this track, the researchers forming part of neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti’s team in his University of Parma laboratory were carrying out experiments to study a macaque monkey’s brain when, quite by chance, as so often happens, they hit upon something surprising. Imagine this scenario: the macaque monkey is sitting at its desk, at its table, everything is ready, all

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sensors have been attached, the monitor is on, ready to register the first firings of the monkey’s brain when the neurons corresponding to a specific action are activated. In the planned experiment, on being provided with a number of objects, the monkey was to move things about on the table or pick up food – apples or peanuts – to eat. What was being investigated were the actions of grasping, carrying to the mouth, moving objects about, and so on, so as to map the brain areas and neurons activated for these operations. What happened at that point is something about which many anecdotes have done the rounds. One of the scientists carrying out the tests came in and while setting up the objects he put something in his mouth, a peanut, maybe . . . perhaps he came in eating an ice cream . . . whatever. What happened at that moment was that the scientist heard and saw, on the monitor, that some areas in the monkey’s brain were lighting up. He heard them, in fact, because the monitor does not only show them lighting up – one also hears them ‘firing’, as the sound of the brain’s electrical activity is referred to, something very similar to the sound a drop of water makes when it falls on red-hot metal. What he found to be odd was the fact that the brain areas which had lit up, those which had fired, were the same areas and neurons which would have been activated had the monkey picked up a peanut to eat it, but it wasn’t the monkey that had done the picking up and eating actions – he had. He looked at the macaque; it was motionless . . . and pokerfaced. For all intents and purposes, the macaque was doing nothing, no muscle was twitching, even; clearly enough, however, its brain was working – it was eating a peanut. It was something like the discovery of America – America had always been there, so nothing had actually been discovered; still, there’s no denying the fact that something had been made known to everybody, in a very precise manner. The relative areas had been mapped, moreover, even to the extent of demonstrating which neuron was engaged in which action, neuron by neuron, even checking and revealing that each neuron was, in fact, also that activated when the subject observes – but does not execute – the action. This is, indeed, a very important discovery. Let us say, therefore, that they discovered a precise, anatomical locus in the brain where a mechanism mirrors the actions of others; to their surprise, then – theirs, and that of the entire scientific community – they demonstrated that this mirroring system coincided with

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the motor system, which controls the doing of that same action when the subject himself executes it. The name the research team gave to these neurons is highly imaginative: mirror neurons. The beauty of the name itself – mirror neuron system – must have contributed greatly to the extent to which the discovery caught even the general public’s attention. The author of the first chapter, Maria Alessandra Umiltà, was a member of that research team. These neurons fire in the brain both when one executes a specific action as well as when one sees others carrying it out. These neurons fire or, in other words, the brain’s motor programme kicks in, taking on the same action we would be observing, irrespective of whether that action would then be actually executed, manifestly, in the space outside us. Indeed, it is a motor programme. Since then, research has moved on. This discovery hypothesizes, explains and scientifically proves something extremely interesting. At the very moment we observe an action being carried out, our motor programme kicks in to carry out that very same action in that self-same moment; furthermore, it also is the self-same moment in which (and also the reason whereby!) we understand that action which is occurring before our eyes. This means that the response is immediate, one that is not processed by any presumed (and perhaps now no longer presumable) areas of higher cognitive processes. In other words, comprehension is immediate; I understand ‘simply’ because I am ‘simply’ redoing the same action that I see in front of me. The brain’s motor programme is not a lower level, a mechanical one, bereft of intelligence, as distinct from an abstract high level, one for elaboration and understanding.3 A concrete example would be a girl, bent over her notebook, taking notes, raising her hand to pull her hair back so as to see better whatever she is writing; as she does this, an area of a few square millimetres of her brain lights up, and the same thing happens in my brain as I look at her. Let us say, however, that while her hand is going up to her hair it changes direction (which means her intention changes) shooting up to catch a fly, instead – and another area of a few square millimetres is set in action in her brain, and the same thing is also happening in my brain. If she were to keep shifting intentions (and brain areas, one after the other, different, distant to each other), she would design a dancing map in her brain, as well as in the brain of whoever is observing her.

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By now it should be clear how interesting this can be to theatre makers. In theatre – which is, par excellence, the locus for beholding – each member of the audience is doing his dance with the actor. The two of them together are creating a dynamic shared space of action; that dynamic space is, at the same time, both a dance and a critical crossroads of intentions. Two reflections immediately follow. First: neurophysiologists tell us that in our brain there are myriads of neurons (or nerve cells) firing away ceaselessly, every instant. We are in the eye of a storm, a sort of terrible confusion, over which we have no control. The key to being efficient in whatever we are doing, they tell us, is to have fewer neurons firing, not more. The first thing brought about by the performer’s ability to create and maintain – in himself and in the audience – a shared space of action is that the space he has created is under control; regulated, one may say, and even intentional; it is similar to when one is concentrating hard on a difficult task and suddenly the turbulence seems to ease off for a moment, allowing for that task to be executed with its wealth of detail (the more details to be attended to the better it is, for one’s attention to be bewitched). The second reflection is more fascinating. This joint dance of ours has its consequences in other areas . . . the areas of the emotions (other square millimetres lighting up simultaneously): we enjoy being together, we strive not to lose contact, fearing we may not manage. It gives us a sense of fulfillment, of being at one with the present, a sharp sense of proprioception. The end result of the actor/ spectator relationship is that in that moment they are not alone in their task – they are two. A more authoritative scientific confirmation for the observations of theatre makers and scholars can hardly be found: Peter Brook, who says that in sharing sounds and movements with the audience, the actor overcomes and transcends all linguistic and cultural barriers, making the spectators part of an event which they themselves have to contribute to and create; Reinhardt, who speaks of the magical moment in which the audience’s breathing merges with that of the actors; traditional theatre’s working jargon, which speaks of the harmony of the actors on stage as a sort of breathing together – which influences even the rhythm of the audience’s breathing.

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The revolution in theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century Thousands of years ago theatre was sacred, a ritual, a locus for collective celebration presided over by the shaman. The shaman was a bridge between Man and his gods . . . perhaps. What is certain is that he bonded the members of a group, weaved the community together by repeating songs, words, invocations, liturgies and representations, narrating stories of the divine and of the heroic deeds of that people. This conscious capability to collectively tap the divine outside of and within us was, however, lost . . . or so we are told. Was it indeed lost, though? At a point in time early in the twentieth century, a number of persons took up theatremaking; they did not know each other; they were not in touch; the places where the phenomenon occurred were far from each other. Konstantin Stanislavsky, Jacques Copeau, Vsevolod E. Meyerhold, Adolphe Appia, Edward Gordon Craig . . . They had something in common: they rebelled against the theatre of their time, commercialized, degraded into an industry of mediocre entertainment. They reasserted its sacredness, its ethic and its artistry. Meyerhold defined theatre as the art of Man, by which he meant that while theatre is made by the human being, as poetry, painting, sculpture, music and all the other arts are, theatre is made of the human being, in that its subject, its agent force and its medium is Man himself. Painters use canvas, pigments and brush. Not so the actor: he employs himself, which results in that self needing to be highly trained, armed with techniques enabling him to execute his artistic work in the presence of the spectator. In their time, these reformers were rebels; having since assimilated them, we risk denying them their rebellion. More often than not, they were amateurs in the field of theatre; they were not professionals, often self-taught, ever driven by a search for theatre’s deepest meaning. Repudiating the theatre of their time, setting out on a search for a theatre that was more than theatre and whose meaningfulness lay beyond mere spectacle, they came to find a sense for it. Faced by the onset of the new media, they withdrew to the background, an archaic stance one could say, identifying the human being as theatre’s very essence – Man the actor/Man the spectator: theatre is

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made up of the link between the human-being-performer and the human-being-spectator, both constituting a whole in a twoway feedback loop. It is at this level that we best recognize the sweeping powers theatre embodies, the psychophysiological dilation it can trigger in the spectator in resonance with the performer’s psychophysiological dilation. This is the theatre they envisaged. Here we find ourselves face to face with theatre’s very foundations, a level at which there is no staging, no text, no curtain and no costume. The twentieth century abounded in research aiming to tease out the performer’s ‘secret’. From Stanislavsky’s early twentieth-century reflections and research, right through to Grotowski’s at its tail end, up to today with Eugenio Barba and theatre anthropology, much effort was expended in trying to understand and explain theatre’s base level ‘scientifically’. Imagine a spectator sitting in the stalls, mesmerized by an actor who, deploying nothing but his presence on stage, holds him spellbound, attentive, concentrated and vigilant. At this ground level, I like to think of the performer as a gladiator in an arena: the performer’s entire on-stage life depends on his ability to hold the spectator’s attention – were the spectator to shift his look elsewhere, the performer dies . . . on scene, that is. With what weapons can this gladiator fight for his life? Back to that theatre: the actor is on stage, attracting us and holding our attention. Our eyes follow him, never letting go, questioning every tiny variation of his, in an effort to read his intentions . . . until we too, the spectators, start ‘acting’ in our seats: the back, the adductors, all of us in a state of tension, markedly so or not, as when we prepare to react but we are unsure why, in which direction . . . but we still are immobile, like that macaque monkey in the Parma laboratory. The spectator is alert. Why so? Facing an actor who still hasn’t done anything! Is it true, however, that he hasn’t done anything? This is the highest level of the art of the performer (i.e. when great performers are able to trigger such acuity in the spectator with nothing but their stage presence). In the language of theatre anthropology this is called ‘the pre-expressive level’; it is broken down into its biophysical components and the ‘recurrent principles’ underlying it, such as precarious equilibrium (‘balance in action’), dynamic oppositions between various parts of the body (‘the dance of oppositions’), and so on.4

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In the nineteenth century, this mystery was explained in terms of the theory of magnetism, then a recent discovery, which was invoked as an explanation for many things. Thanks to thirty years’ study of theatre anthropology, we can now see the scenic body’s complex architecture, so that we are able to recognize that fascination which we, as spectators, experience to be nothing but a physical construct on the part of the performer. It is a body which – consciously or not – is activating a technique that controls breathing and defies its own equilibrium. Though everything about him seems immobile, in actual fact everything is in motion, with exaggerated tensions at play all over. What sustains the stillness is a hidden dance, a continuous dynamism of opposing forces, similar to that of the tight-rope walker. This is where the ‘secret’ lies; this is what the ‘magnetic’ attraction is: a physical disequilibrium, a series of oppositions throbbing with life. Could there be something else? Definitely . . . because the person who is challenging one’s equilibrium is a body-mind in its inseparable unity; its physical disequilibrium is at one with its emotional disequilibrium; to challenge one’s physical equilibrium implies perturbing that all-too-smooth background of mundane feelings which, like a soft carpet, helps us live our lives smoothly – until the unexpected strikes and upsets our routine life – be it something as stupid as a step we wouldn’t have seen . . . and we topple over. What the performer does is that he deliberately puts himself in precarious equilibrium, affecting both muscles and emotions, spurring the imagination into action: his is a continuous dance of disequilibrium and contrapositions, at a constantly shifting rhythm, sometimes slow, sometimes bursting suddenly into action. These techniques, and their effect on the audience, are even clearer in the instance of circus artists, which is the subject of the last chapter of this section by Philippe Goudard.

A gift, or a Trojan horse? It is here that neuroscience has given us a precious gift, the gift of a shared space of action, a concrete, physical grounding for the actor/ spectator connection, which is the same grounding underlying theatre itself – the very stuff, indeed, that theatre is made of. It appears that thanks to neurophysiology and the cognitive sciences it is now possible to analyze the behaviour of the human

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being engaged in the performing arts, as well as the feedback loops active in the system stage/stalls, performer/spectator, actor/ fellow-actor, that refined self-orchestrating ability which the human-being-‘actor’ trains himself for, as well as its effect on the human-being-‘spectator’. It is thus important that the theatre and neuroscience dialogue be actively engaged, as it could be a great help for theatre to be recognized as an art form – as, with all true art forms, theatre is a profound expression of the human being, but, unlike all other art forms, its agent force and medium are its self-same creative artists.5 Yes, our knowledge has received a fine gift: this luxurious space, this penthouse terrace looking onto the Vatican gardens and the dome of St Peter’s. With it in hand, we can take the closing words of RizzolattiSinigaglia’s book – which underlines the pre-reflexive nature of the observer’s understanding of the actions of others6 – and we can directly relate them to theatre anthropology’s discoveries on the pre-expressive in the work of the performer (whose fascinating stage presence emerges from a precise strategy he employs – consciously or not, it little matters – woven of a play on imbalance and oppositions). Paraphrasing Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia’s words and framing them in ours, we can say that the pre-expressive of the performer corresponds to the pre-reflexive of the spectator: ‘that modality of understanding which, prior to any form of conceptual and linguistic mediation, gives substance to our experience of the others’ (‘pre-reflexive’ is akin to ‘pre-expressive’; with that ‘pre-’ as an indicator of order, of rank, not of time, a pointer to what lies at the foundations, the endless process of change which alterity is). To conclude – what do the mirror neurons do? They fire in resonance with the actions of others, a resonance phrased in a lexicon of actions; they decipher the sense of the actions of others, that is they understand in terms of actions and not in conceptual or linguistic terms; they anticipate chains of actions, they form predictions, hypotheses (which are routines already etched in the motor programme). What is it, this shared space of action? It is a space of action within which every action or chain of actions – of the doers as well as of those observing – occur immediately inscribed and understood, without needing any explicit and deliberate ‘cognitive operation’. As we see someone carrying out an action or a chain of actions, his

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doing immediately becomes meaningful to us, even if he does not want it to. The mirror neuron mechanism and the selectivity of its responses establish the boundaries of a shared space of action.

Why is this of interest to the art of the performer? As we have seen, action is a process; it is neither a result nor a product. Action has phases, it unfolds in time; neuroscientists know this very well, but theatre-makers have always known it. ‘Do not play the result – go through the action’: that has always been theatre’s golden maxim. Precision needs to run through the entire action, rooting all its details in the present. Acting out the result is a non-starter – it is the process that must be presented. In that process, in the unfolding of the action, the intentions can undergo variations. Let’s take an example: someone picks up a pen to write something (‘writing’ being the ‘task’, the chain of actions); absent-mindedly pausing, he moves it about on the table, fingers it vaguely, maybe runs it through his hair . . . and then – he gets down to actually writing. What would happen to somebody observing him? The mirror neuron system simply monitors the observed actions, constantly revising its own potential motor-acts, modifying the activated chains of action (meaning that it comes up with other hypotheses of the writer’s intentions); it does that by ‘simply’ exploiting the same motor cognition (‘shared motor acts potentials’ we could call it) that governs and controls our very strategies of action. We have already discussed this, but would do well to look at it again as this is the very essence of the performer’s work: he generates ambiguity, sudden turning points, surprises. In our desire to communicate, ambiguity is something we try hard to avoid in everyday life. Paradoxically, however, a good performer lives on ambiguity, striving to train himself in order to be able to activate, in his work, all his motor acts and chains of action differently to his everyday-life doings.7 He introduces ‘sats’ (one of Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret working terms), ‘otkaz’ (one of Meyerhold’s terms from his work on biomechanics) and microstops in his actions, sudden volte-face, deviations from the routine and altered intentions,

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all of which generate ambiguity. This is precisely what the performer is trained to do, thereby causing continuous reconfigurations in the spectator’s potential motor acts, forcing him to shift the gears of his intentions – and all this thanks to that shared space of action. The result? The spectator is kept on the edge of his seat, on his guard. Ambiguity, chaos and the unexpected – they are strategic weapons every theatre performer worth his salt recognizes as his best allies, sometimes born of pure chance; they help him keep his creativity alive . . . his and, at the same time, that of his seated spectators. These sudden digressions, shifting intentions, leaps of thought and fluctuating rhythms are mirrored and felt by the spectator in his very being, leading him to move from one hypothesis to another, torn between predictions and rethinks by the swell of changes he finds himself caught in. For the spectator it is a dance of the senses and of the mind; Eugenio Barba refers to this in all his theatre anthropology writings from the early 1980s onwards, as does Meyerhold, and his disciple Sergei Eisenstein. This is the strongest and most profound connection I find with the recent discoveries of cognitive neuroscience; it needs to be studied in depth.

1 The ‘Mirror Mechanism’ and Motor Behaviour Maria Alessandra Umiltà

As human beings, we are constantly in relationships with other individuals. Our survival depends on our ability to understand their behaviour. What makes social relationships different from our perception of the inanimate world is that not only do we witness others’ behaviour, we also perform it. There is something shared between our personal experience and the experiences we witness: the observer and the observed share the same mind-body system. One essential element of social cognition is the capacity of our brain to establish a direct link between ‘what I do and feel’ and ‘what she/he does and feels’. Which neural mechanism allows us to empathize with others, and to understand their behaviour? The original discovery of ‘mirror neurons’ in the macaque monkey, and the subsequent discovery of the existence of a similar mechanism in humans, allows us to explain for the first time the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning our ability to establish social relationships with others. The first study that documented the existence of mirror neurons was published in 1992;1 it described the properties of neurons recorded in the ventral premotor cortex of macaque monkeys (area F5).2 Mirror neurons are visuo-motor neurons: they respond to both visual and motor stimulation. This means that mirror neurons are activated both when the monkey performs goal-directed motor acts and when it observes similar motor acts performed by another individual (either 15

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monkey or human). The definition of ‘mirror neurons’ was originally used to highlight the concomitant occurrence of congruent visual and motor responses embedded in the same neural cell. Recently, mirror neurons have been recorded in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL ) of macaque monkeys;3 these nerve cells have been defined as ‘parietal mirror neurons’. More precisely, the inferior parietal lobule is constituted by a variety of different sub-regions that are anatomically and functionally distinct. However, what should be emphasized here is that the parietal region in which mirror neurons have been recorded is extensively interconnected with the premotor area F5. This allows us to define a ‘parietal-premotor mirror circuit’ comprising cortical areas that are anatomically interconnected and characterized by common functional properties. The hypothesis regarding the functional role of mirror neurons is that they represent the crucial part of a mechanism that allows action understanding: observing a motor act causes an automatic activation in the observer of the same neural mechanism triggered by the execution of a similar motor act. Such visuo-motor mapping could be the mechanism for a direct form of action understanding, since the neuronal activation evoked during motor act observation matches that evoked during motor act execution.4 A clear definition of the term ‘motor act’ is required here. Movement is a mere displacement of body parts without a goal. The term ‘motor act’ indicates a series of movements that allow an individual to reach a goal (e.g. grasping an object). Motor acts are goal-directed movements and, as such, they incorporate two different components of motor behaviour: the executed movement and the goal to be reached. If the interpretation of the functional role of mirror neurons is that they play a crucial role in action understanding, which aspect of the observed motor act triggers the observation/execution mapping mechanism? Is it the observed goal or the movements employed to achieve it? To address this issue we tested the responses of F5 mirror neurons during the observation and execution of a motor act (grasping) which had the same goal, but was achieved using different effectors. In choosing to use different effectors we dissociated the goal of grasping from the movements required to accomplish it.5 During the experiment, the monkey observed the experimenter performing grasping motor acts under three different experimental conditions. First, the experimenter grasped a piece of food using her

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hand; second by using a pair of ‘inverted pliers’ that required an inverted order of finger movements to accomplish the goal of taking possession of the food, i.e. closing fingers to open the plier tips, opening fingers to close the plier tips. In the third experimental condition, hand-grasping mirror neurons were tested when the monkey observed the experimenter spearing a piece of food using a sharpened stick. The animal did not have any experience with the use of the stick whereas it was used to the inverted pliers. The population analysis showed that the peaks of discharge always occurred at the moment in which the effector (hand, pliers or stick) was taking possession of the food, independently from the different sequence of opening/closing phases required to accomplish the goal. Furthermore, the onset times of neural response during observation of the stick spearing occurred later when compared to grasping by the hand or pliers. The interpretation of these findings is that the visually driven responses of grasping mirror neurons are based on a ‘motor template’ that is the natural effector. The visual mirror responses were stronger when the effector–object interaction resembled more faithfully that performed by the natural effector (the grasping hand, i.e. the motor template). In contrast, the more dissimilar the observed motor act from the motor template (e.g. spearing with the stick) the weaker and the more delayed the neural response. The necessary condition is that all observed motor acts share the same motor goal. Having established the importance of the goal for the understanding of a motor act, the next step was to investigate whether the consequences of a motor act, which intrinsically follow goal accomplishment, are also mapped in the motor system of the beholder. Because many object-related actions can be recognized by their sound, we investigated the capacity of mirror neurons to respond to a perceived motor act only on the basis of its acoustic consequences. To this purpose, we studied F5 mirror neurons with an experimental design in which hand motor acts were presented in vision and sound; sound only; vision only; and motor conditions.6 The selected motor act belonged to the motor repertoire of the monkey (e.g. peanut breaking and paper ripping). The results showed that a certain percentage of grasping mirror neurons can be driven not only by action execution and observation, but also by the sound produced by the same action (i.e. by the

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acoustic consequences of the action). Furthermore, a particular class of F5 mirror neurons, ‘audio-visual mirror neurons’ can discriminate between actions on the basis of their sound. Summarily, we demonstrated that the acoustic consequences of a motor act are recognized and mapped in the motor system of the perceiver. More recently, Gazzola et al. demonstrated both the existence of a similar audio-visual mirror mechanism in humans and that such mechanism was somatotopically organized on the basis of the type of effector.7 What about the visual consequences of a motor act? Are the visual consequences of a motor act performed by another individual mapped in the cortical motor system of the beholder? Our experimental hypothesis was that the observation, not only of the hand gesture, but also of its visual consequences, activated the same motor centres required to produce the graphic sign. To test this hypothesis, we measured the intensity of the cortical motor system activation of the beholders during the observation of digitized images of abstract paintings, specifically the ‘cuts in the canvases’ by Lucio Fontana.8 Two categories of stimuli were employed: digitized images; and images of graphically modified versions of the original artworks displaying the same graphic pattern but devoid of their dynamic component (see Figure 1.1). Results showed that cortical activation was significantly stronger during the observation of the original artworks compared to the observation of control stimuli, and that such cortical activation was mainly localized over the sensorimotor areas. Moreover, the intensity of cortical activation was stronger when observing original artworks than during control stimuli, regardless of the participants’ familiarity with the original artworks. These results confirm our experimental hypothesis showing that the consequences of a motor act performed by another individual (e.g. the cuts on Fontana’s canvases) are mapped in the motor system of the perceiver in ways that actually simulate the gestures of the artist. The observation of the cuts on the canvases activates the motor representation of the same hand gesture in the brain of the beholders. In contrast, control stimuli, because of their lack of implicit dynamicity, are merely processed as images that are not the manifest consequence of someone’s gesture. Beside the observation of dynamic or static motor acts, even the observation of the static consequences of a motor act is capable of activating its motor representation in the

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FIGURE 1.1 Original stimuli: digitized images of the artworks by Lucio Fontana. Control stimuli: digitized images of graphically modified versions of the original artworks.

observer’s brain. The motor system of the beholders ‘resonates’ activating the motor representation of the artist’s gesture. To offer a closer assessment of the involvement of sensorimotor cortical circuits during the observation of the static consequences of hand gestures, and to detect the specific cortical areas activated by their observation, we performed a second experiment using abstract artworks as stimuli. We hypothesized that the observation of brush strokes, as visible traces of goal-directed hand movements, was also capable of activating the cortical representation of the same hand gesture in the observers’ brains. To verify this hypothesis, we presented participants with images of abstract works of art by Franz Kline that are characterized by the presence of marked traces of brushstrokes (see Figure 1.2).9 As control stimuli we used a modified version of the original artwork, although designed with the intent of removing the visible consequences of the artist’s gesture such as drips of paint, blurred contours, differences in brushstroke pressure, etc. The results showed that a negative fronto-central electrical potential was

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FIGURE 1.2 Original stimuli: digitized images of the artworks by Franz Kline. Control stimuli: digitized images of graphically modified versions of the original artworks.

modulated between the two conditions; this was significantly greater during the observation of original paintings than during the observation of the control stimuli. The comparison between the neural sources in the two conditions revealed a significant activation of the cortical areas belonging to the sensorimotor circuits; this demonstrates the direct involvement of the cortical sensorimotor

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system in the perception of static meaningless images belonging to abstract art. Our interpretation of the results is that the brushstrokes are responsible for the activation of sensorimotor areas controlling the motor acts that led to their production. With these experiments, we have demonstrated the involvement of the mind-body system of the beholder in abstract art perception. Is the same mind-body system involved in the perception of movies? To address this issue, we investigated whether the mirror mechanism responds differently to the observation of the same hand motor act (grasping) filmed via different ways of the camera approaching the scene.10 We determined whether various types of camera movements, more or less simulating an observer’s own movement toward the observed acting agent, might modulate the observer’s mirror mechanism. Indeed, we investigated whether the mirror mechanism was differently modulated by different filming techniques such as still camera, zooming in on the scene, real camera movement towards the scene through the use of a dolly (camera mounted on fixed tracks) and by using a steady cam (a camera fixed to the body of the cameraman, walking towards the scene). Results showed that the observation of movies filmed by means of a steady cam was the most effective in sensorimotor cortex activation. The still camera was the least effective; the dolly and zoom techniques were clustered in between. We also investigated whether the differences among viewing conditions (still, zoom, dolly, steady cam) could be related to the participants’ subjective reports on the feeling of involvement and the experienced naturalness or artificiality of the camera movement used. Participants clearly rated those movies in which the camera approached the scene as more involving than those filmed using a still camera. Furthermore, participants perceived the movements of the steady cam as being the most natural and most resembling the movements of an approaching observer, thus eliciting the feeling that the observer him/herself could walk towards the scene. Our results indicate that a movement of the camera that is visible in the movie enhances the observers’ mirror mechanism. This could be related to a stronger feeling of involvement in the scene due to the approaching movement itself, thus enforcing the mirror mechanism. The results of these recent studies demonstrate that the perception of abstract artworks not only involves visual cortical areas, but also

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elicits the activation of sensorimotor circuits. In this sense, during the fruition of art, perception and action are not separate domains implemented in different anatomical and functional circuits: we do not simply perceive art; action itself contributes to its perception. The discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys and the confirmation of a similar mechanism in the human brain, for the first time established the possibility of determining the neural mechanisms of basic aspects of social cognition: by sharing the same mind-body system of the individuals we face, we gain automatic access to their internal world.

2 Body Presence and Extra-personal Space Perception Giorgia Committeri and Chiara Fini*

Introduction Space perception depends on our motion potentials and on the actions we intend to take. In a series of behavioural experiments, we used virtual 3D reproductions of a realistic environment to investigate whether our perception of extra-personal space is modulated by the presence of other bodies within the visual scene. We showed that objects are judged as being closer to an actual human being with potential for movement compared to a humanlike dummy or to a static object. Such distance reduction was due to the activation of a specific pattern of movement, i.e. the walking action. The spatial distance was indeed seen as reduced when the judgement was preceded by the short video of a point-light walker, and even more when it was preceded by a point-light runner. Inferring the intentionality of the walking action appeared to be a prerequisite. More importantly for the context of theatre, what influenced perception was not only a ‘bottom-up’ but also a ‘topdown’ priming of abstract beliefs about the biological nature of the 23

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agent. The effects of the dummy and the human agent became more similar after the subject watched a video of ‘Pinocchio’. Finally, we showed that the mere, task-irrelevant presence of other bodies (both human and human-like) makes objects appear closer to us when we use our own body as the frame of reference in an egocentric spatial judgement. The reported experimental effects suggest the existence of a Near Extra-personal Space (NES ). This seems to represent a dynamical perceptual and functional category of space, and could represent a special portion of shared space in which our bodies ‘resonate’ with the whole body of other human beings.

Description of behavioural studies We perceive and explore the surrounding world by means of our body, which represents our only possible bridge with reality. In a human being the sensations depend upon the physicality of the body, and are synthesized in a perceptual experience; this is one of the basic cognitive processes of our mind. In this regard, there is a theoretical perspective called Embodied Cognition, which claims that cognitive processes are deeply rooted in the body’s interactions with the world.1 As originally maintained by the perspective of ecological psychology,2 the relationship between an organism and its environment is not mediated by indirect, mental representations; rather it is guided by directly perceivable opportunities for action (known as ‘affordances’). It is argued that we evolved from animals whose neural resources were primarily devoted to perceptual and motor processing, and whose cognitive activity largely consisted of immediate, online interactions with the surrounding environment.3 Such evolutionary inheritance would be still expressed in the influence of the sensorimotor system on many cognitive processes. This holds particularly true in the domain of spatial perception. Indeed, when perceiving surrounding space, our body constitutes a unit of measure by which the world is scaled.4 Some theorists in this field have proposed different categorizations of space in which the distance from the objects, their location and their affordances assume a different relevance with respect to our body. These subspace systems differ in their functional characteristics, the primary sensory and motor systems involved, the underlying neural

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correlates and the reference coordinates. Indeed, all types of spatial information must be encoded in relation to a certain reference frame (RF ) or system, which can basically be defined as egocentric or allocentric.5 In an egocentric reference frame, constituted by subject-to-object relations, locations are represented in relation to the observer and his physical configuration. In contrast, so-called allocentric reference frames refer to spatial relationships that are independent from the observer’s position/viewpoint and may be object-centred, environment-centred and world-centred.6 An influential and comprehensive model has been proposed by Previc,7 who postulated the existence of several qualitatively distinct systems dealing primarily with defined subspaces. He distinguished a peripersonal space system for reaching and manipulative behaviours; a focal extra-personal (i.e. beyond reaching distance) space system for visual scanning; an action extra-personal space system for postural control and locomotion; and an ambient extrapersonal space system for navigation and orientation control. A different space categorization based on motor resources has been offered by Grüsser8 who, apart from a grasping space, divided extra-personal space into three sectors: a near-distance action space (1–6/8 m), that is multimodal and body scaled (depending on body size and walking speed), a far-distance action space (8–30 m), and visual background (over 30 m). Focal and action extra-personal spaces acquire particular relevance in the present context, which also corresponds to the social and public spaces of proxemics (the study of interpersonal distance).9 The perception of such a space is strongly influenced by the action possibilities and motor power intrinsic to our own body.10 Indeed, extra-personal space seems to be categorized not only in relation to relevant optical and ocular-motor variables, but also as a function of a person’s current potential to perform intended actions.11 To give an example, distance appears greater when the effort associated with walking increases (e.g. when subjects are carrying a heavy backpack12 or when they are older).13 Therefore, the potential of our body to achieve behavioural goals strongly influences our distance judgements.14 Parallel research in the field of action co-representation revealed that we represent biological agents in a different way to nonbiological agents.15 The human body, as a biological agent, seems to be a visual stimulus that undergoes a special processing as a source

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of action that could be remapped into our own body. The human body represents a special perceptual configuration. It has been shown to activate the extrastriate body area (EBA ), critical for perceiving the position and/or configuration of another person’s body, perhaps as part of a broader system for inferring the actions and intentions of others. It may also be involved in perceiving the configuration of one’s own body (e.g. in the guidance of actions).16 Moreover, observing a body with implied motion as well as an actual biological motion activates the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS ).17 Accordingly, the authors suggested that ‘. . . this region . . . is sensitive not merely to biological motion but, more generally, to stimuli which signal intentions or intentional activity’. Crucially, the network of brain areas that support action and the implied and actual biological motion perception in the human brain (the pSTS , the premotor cortex, and the anatomical link between the two, that is the inferior parietal lobe18) is often called the mirror neuron system, or ‘action perception system’.19 Thus, we seem to be selective detectors of the human body and of biological motion, given that the other’s body could represent a ‘special presence’ in the surrounding space and also a special type of allocentric spatial reference frame. Moving on from these considerations, we performed a series of behavioural studies by investigating whether and how the perception of extra-personal space is influenced by the presence of another human body. We used virtual 3D reproductions of a realistic environment (see Figures 2.1 and 2.2) and asked our experimental subjects to judge the location (‘near’ or ‘far’) of a target object (a beach umbrella) located at progressively increasing or decreasing distances from a particular RF (an extrapersonal space categorization task via the psychophysical limits method). We derived average near/far thresholds (NES for Near Extra-personal Space) from the positions where a change from near to far or vice-versa was reported. We did not aim to extract absolute values of distance estimation, but rather to investigate the intrinsically subjective experience of the surrounding extrapersonal space. We therefore chose a dichotomic categorization task based on verbal labels (rather than continuous metric evaluations), employing categorical spatial representations that serve perceptual functions such as registering positions in both egocentric and allocentric reference frames.20 We opted for the ‘near/far’ judgement due to its ecological

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value, because when we have to decide, for example, whether someone else can do something in our place or go somewhere on foot instead of taking a bus, we judge very rarely in metrical terms, but implicitly judge whether something is ‘near’ or ‘far’. In the first study,21 we employed human and non-human allocentric RF s (see Figure 2.1). We found a significantly larger NES when the subjects categorized the target distance relative to a human virtual agent (Other RF ) compared to a target distance that was relative to a static, inanimate object (Object RF ). Moreover, we tested whether the NES extension was driven by the anatomical structure of the RF or by its movement potentials. We did this by adding a wooden dummy as RF (Dummy RF ), which is human-like from a morphological point of view but without the potential to

FIGURE 2.1 Exemplar stimuli for the experimental conditions used in the allocentric task of extrapersonal space categorization. Modified from Fini et al.22

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move. The ‘near’ space extension was only observed for the human agent. Finally, to rule out the possibility that the effect was simply due to a line-of-sight mechanism (visual perspective taking) we compared a human agent which was free to move with the same agent tied to a pole, thus with inhibited movement potentialities but equal visual accessibility (Tied-Other RF ). The NES extension was abolished by this manipulation, showing that movement potentialities are the relevant factor. Our results demonstrated, for the first time, that during allocentric distance judgements within extra-personal space, we implicitly process the movement potential of the RF. A target object is perceived as being closer when the allocentric RF is a human agent as compared to a non-human agent. This reveals a mechanism of social scaling in extra-personal space processing.23 Such experiments suggest that the body of another individual within the environment is represented as an implicit biological motion. This corroborates the idea, extending it to the social context, that ‘the spatiality experienced by a subject (primarily through visual means), especially the perception of the distance of objects, proceeds from an interpretation of things or sensations through reference to the possibility of movement’.24 In 1896 Bergson had already argued that: ‘The objects circumscribed therein are distinctly positioned in accordance with the relative ease with which my body is able to touch them and to move them . . . they organize themselves according to my body’s increasing or decreasing powers.’25 He interpreted perceived distance as something organized according to a metric of the power of action; a human body represents this potential power of action (see also the previously cited works by Proffitt and colleagues, as well as Gallese and Sinigaglia26). Our data suggests that such power must not necessarily be that of the observer: the other’s body is a special window through which we perceive space, as it seems to represent an implicit biological motion, or better, a ‘horizon of the possible’ actions.27 In this regard, the recent theory of mental simulation, used to account for the practical/functional signification with which objects and structures within our immediate environment are perceived, may be interpreted as an attempt to reduce the possibilities available within the horizon of the subject’s perceptual experience of actualization.28 The implicit actualization of a possible action that is compatible with the context is also conceptualized as the implicit, pre-reflective simulation of a planned/afforded/inferred action.29

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Another study was carried out in order to investigate whether a specific pattern of action (i.e. the walking action) was triggered by observing a human body with motor possibilities and standing in a large environment.30 We made use of biological motion displays as primes for the extra-personal space categorization task described above. Point-light biological motion stimuli are animations merely composed of a dozen points of light attached to the joints of a moving agent, allowing us to represent movement information in isolation.31 When in motion, such stimuli evoke a vivid perception of a human body in action.32 In the first experiment, participants were presented with the motions of a point-light walker (computed as an average walker from the motion-capture data of fifty men and fifty women)33 or with a scrambled motion of points; then we performed the same extra-personal space categorization task described above, and as RF s we used a human body (Other RF ) or an inanimate object (Object RF ). In a second experiment, we explored whether the speed of the walking action further modulated the distance perception. Participants were primed with point-light walkers moving at different speeds: a runner, a normal walker and a slow walker. Finally, to investigate the role of intentionality, in a third experiment we displayed a sitting down or a standing up point-light motion before the presentation of another human body as RF which could be orientated towards the target or not. Results showed a NES extension when the human body RF was primed with a point-light walker, an effect which was modulated by the walking speed (runner > normal and slow walker) and observed only when the intention to cover the distance by walking was conveyed by both the point-light pattern of movement (standing up prime) and by the Other RF (because it was orientated towards the target). In this second series of experiments, we therefore demonstrated that a human body adopted as an allocentric RF (since it could and would be able to walk in a large space) activates a specific pattern of action (i.e. the walking action), and both the perceptual consequencies of that action and the intention to perform it appear to play a crucial role in the distance estimation. Is the vision of a biological agent a necessary requirement to drive the extension of the extra-personal space judged as near? Can abstract beliefs about the biological nature of an agent influence our categorization of the space between the agent and an object? The

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question arises because it is known that the degree to which action observation influences action execution depends on whether or not participants believe that the acting effector (a hand wearing a leather glove) belongs to a biological agent or to a non-biological agent.34 Notably for us, it has also been shown that watching a short video fragment with either a human being or an animated character – Pinocchio – as its main character, can influence the following execution of a task (a go/no-go social Simon task) in which participants interact with either a person or a wooden dummy. The latter was co-represented in the social Simon task only in the case of the Pinocchio manipulation, demonstrating that by using a topdown belief manipulation it is possible to influence the action corepresentation of a non-biological interaction partner.35 So, we recently tested whether the categorization of extrapersonal space can be influenced by abstract beliefs about the biological nature of the agent RF. In this way, we could manipulate the perception of the agent’s action potentialities and intentions without confounding the appearance of the agent itself, which differs greatly between a biological, human agent and a nonbiological agent, such as a wooden dummy. Participants were first asked to read the story of Pinocchio, then to watch a video in which Pinocchio acts like a human,36 so that they could become further attuned to the story. They then had to perform extra-personal space categorization using a non-biological agent (Dummy RF ) or a biological agent (Other RF ) as their frame of reference. We measured the degree of the participant’s involvement with the story using an ad hoc questionnaire and found that the more participants were transported by the story (and identified themselves with its main character Pinocchio), the smaller the difference between the NES categorization when using the avatar and the wooden dummy as RF. The results indicate that top-down abstract beliefs about a nonbiological agent induce us to judge as ‘near’ a similar portion of extra-personal space with both the biological and the non-biological agent as a frame of reference.37 Overall, this is in line with the observation that embodied mechanisms of space perception seem either to contribute to social and cultural effects38 or to be affected by them.39 The evidence discussed so far concerns contexts in which the other body is used as an allocentric reference frame for distance perception and spatial categorization. However, in the majority of

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cases, we judge distances and categorize the surrounding space with respect to our own body, without explicitly paying attention to the location of other bodies present within it. Previous studies on peripersonal space have shown that our motor responsiveness is affected by the presence of another individual able, like me, to act within a reaching space range. Specifically, an object may afford a suitable motor act when it is ready not only to our own hand but also to the hand of the other.40 In the same way, when we see an affordable object, the other’s action opportunities modulate our perception: observing someone reaching for an object using a tool induces us to perceive the object as closer.41 Moreover, the mere presence of another person within our visual scene who is in a position to act on the objects present on a table, changes the way we think about and describe the spatial relationship between the objects, because we spontaneously tend to take on the spatial perspective of that person.42 In order to explore whether the mere, task-irrelevant presence of other bodies in the scene modulates the perception of extra-personal space, we performed additional experiments by administering the space categorization task in egocentric coordinates (i.e. our own body as RF ).43 The subjects were now required to judge whether the target was ‘near’ or ‘far’ from their egocentric perspective: in a basic Self condition; in the presence of either an avatar (Self with Other) or a wooden dummy (Self with Dummy) or a static object (Self with Object) (see Figure 2.2). We showed that the mere presence of a human body potentially able to cover a distance, can enlarge the portion of space judged as ‘near’ to us. It is worth noting that the human body is able to reduce the perceived space even when it is a static wooden dummy. Structural and morphological shapes resembling human bodies are therefore sufficient conditions for the effect to occur. During egocentric spatial categorization, an implicit, low-level analysis of body shape thus seems to be at play, without a detailed processing of other body characteristics such as movement potentials. The effect might be mediated by the extrastriate body area (EBA ) within the inferior temporal sulcus44 which is activated by images of humans (both moving and static) presented in a variety of formats (e.g. photographs, line drawings, silhouettes) relative to perceptually matched control objects, as well as during the vision of human biological movement.45 Thus, given the ability of our brain to

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FIGURE 2.2 Exemplar stimuli for the experimental conditions used in the egocentric task of extra-personal space categorization. Modified from Fini, Costantini, Committeri.46

extract motor information from even static pictures, we raise the possibility that a wooden dummy might be sufficient to trigger the biological motion representation that impacts on our space perception. Conversely, as discussed above, when explicitly using the dummy as allocentric RF for spatial categorization, the NES is not enlarged as it is for the Other RF.47 When the RF is allocentric, the space categorization might imply a finer processing of the RF ’s characteristics; consequently the ‘living’ appearance of the human structure could play a greater role. What the present data shows is that when sharing extra-personal space with other bodies (both human and human-like), a wider portion of space appears near and therefore ‘accessible’ to us. This might represent an evolutionary advantage in the struggle to survive in the presence of potential competitors within the environment, although further studies either

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in virtual or in ecological reality are needed to test this interpretation. It would also be very interesting to explore, for the context of theatre, the role of the body when it is the target of spatial categorization, during both allocentric object-to-subject and subject-to-subject judgements, as well as during egocentric observerto-subject judgements. From these studies, we can claim that a body in extra-personal space is a relevant stimulus which affects our space representation either when it is assumed as RF, or because of its mere presence. We have also shown that the other’s body triggers the motor simulation of the walking action. It can therefore be argued that the perception of the extra-personal space is filtered by the motion potential intrinsic to our own and the other’s body. A space that is ‘ready to foot’ (similarly to the ‘ready to hand’ peripersonal space) would induce a pre-reflective simulation of the walking action, one that is also triggered by seeing another body that is able and ready to cover the distance. The potential and intention to act, which defines a biological agent as such, are necessary conditions to filter the perception of extra-personal space in motor terms both from our own or the other’s body. When we move, and we perceive the space, our intention and action potentialities are affected by those of others; they can directly affect our action or our space perception, albeit more indirectly. Until today, what was referred to as a ‘space of resonance’ was mainly peripersonal space (i.e. the reaching space). However, the space that we commonly share with others is not just the space covered by the reach of our limbs. It is, rather, a space in which we can move and act with the whole body. The experimental effects we described were observed in this latter type of space. We have called this Near Extra-personal Space. It falls within the action extrapersonal space system for postural control and locomotion described by Previc48 and could correspond to the near-distance action space of Grüsser,49 that is bodily scaled and multimodal. In such multisensory and motor coding lies the concept of ‘shared action space’,50 where our own or the other’s actions are immediately understood without ‘explicit awareness’. While the literature is rich in examples of motor resonance related to reaching and grasping actions, it is less generous in evidence concerning the whole body. Nevertheless, the motor posture of the whole body strongly expresses the potentialities and intentions to act in a specific way

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and, as we have shown, it re-shapes our space representation. Interestingly, Calvo-Merino et al.51 compared the brain activity of dancers watching their own dance style to that while watching a different style, thus showing the influence of motor expertise on action observation. A greater bilateral activation in the premotor cortex and intraparietal sulcus, right superior parietal lobe and left posterior superior temporal sulcus was detected when expert dancers viewed movements that they had been trained to perform compared to movements they had not. The results show that this ‘mirror system’ integrates the observed actions of others with an individual’s personal motor repertoire, and suggest that the human brain understands whole-body actions by motor simulation.52 From this perspective, a question that arises is whether such resonance mechanisms can be modulated by the physical distance between the observer and the observed body. Usually, when we go to the theatre, we try to book a seat nearest to the stage so as to have a deep aesthetic contact with human acting. Our choice is mainly driven by the attempt to have a better view of the stage, but it could be also implicitly determined by the attempt to have a better ‘resonance’ with the movements and the gestures of the actors, in order to be part of this ‘near’, shared common space. In conclusion, a ‘near’ social space (i.e. one that is sensible to the presence of other bodies and motor-defined) could be considered as a special platform for creating an intense bodily dialogue not only among the actors but also among the actors and their audience.

3 The Circus Actor: Towards a Cognitive Approach* Philippe Goudard

We, as spectators, are spellbound by a trapeze artist who gracefully performs the most complex and perilous acrobatic moves, one after another. Maintaining a connection with us, she blends her emotions into her rendition of the acrobatic, choreographic or dramatic scores of her show. The clown, a virtuoso of failure, raises our laughter using his highly sophisticated physical and emotional control. The juggler moves us by turning the trajectory of the objects which he manipulates into kinetic art. The trainer communicates with his animals as well as with the spectators and the space . . . Circus actors, or artists as they are officially called in the profession,1 have many skills. Like other artists in the performing arts, they perform in front of their audience, but they also have skills that are more specific to their own disciplines (e.g. acrobatics, juggling, animal training . . .). They use various categories of sensory-motor or psycho-cognitive activities (e.g. motor execution and coordination, perception and motor control, the creative process itself and any acts intended to elicit a reaction from their 35

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audience) according to modalities of breathtaking complexity, the most essential of which remain unknown. Similar sporting activities – acrobatics in particular – which have been explored and studied by scientists can partly help us to understand these modalities. However, the processes involved in sports, the purpose of which is competition and evaluation, differ from those of circus actors, who aim to create and produce artistic shows.2 Moreover, the context of professional practice in the circus is very different from that of sport. The everyday practice of their art – including composition, writing and staging – implies specific features of pronounced aesthetic constraint, besides the various economic, professional and production factors; it applies to both public and private sectors. ‘The circus artists perform at the theatre, music hall, cinema, television, cabaret, in the streets, as well as . . . at the circus!’3 A study of the circus and its actors requires a particular approach, as shown by the colloquia organized by the French medical association, Société Française de Médecine du Cirque:4 Oddly, there is a complete absence of circus practices in the scientific publications on motor control . . . and rather than being a field for the application of theories on motor control elaborated elsewhere, the research on circus skills undertaken in situ (acrobatics, juggling, etc.) can, or rather should, offer a perfect place for these theories to be discussed, confronted and developed.5 Actually, such in situ observations were first made in research carried out mainly in France some fifty years ago by Paul Bouissac, a pioneer in the field. That is why we can here offer a set of scientific research results specific to the circus and its actors. Based on personal practice and observation since 1974, and developed in French universities between 1988 and 2013,6 these results relate to circus skills and higher professional education in the circus arts. Such a conceptual and practical corpus opens up the prospect of a cognitive approach to the circus arts. For example, based on the observation that circus actors use physical, neurophysiologic, symbolic and linguistic processes to bring a coherent meaning to their exchanges with their audience, the hypothesis of invariant properties and cognitive processes that are specific to the circus can be posited for appropriate experimentation.

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Nowadays, circus actors perform across the five continents. Their mainly gestural art reaches past national borders and blends into all cultures. At the same time, their refined artistic discipline and rigid organization constitute a closed world where legends and secrets prevail. The circus revival since the 1970s has undoubtedly provided access to this world. Young people of all backgrounds, including researchers, could thus approach the circus as a field of scientific study. The present chapter is both the outcome of and a testimony to such developments. Given the history and conditions of current circuses, we can presumably identify some universally shared elements for both circus actors and spectators. Are there any important invariants to be found in the circus? Could scientists bring them to light?

Circus sciences and the arts: An ancient culture The various disciplines gathered under the umbrella of the modern circus in the eighteenth century are fascinating to both scholars and scientists alike as they provide the opportunity to look beyond physiology or human behaviour, thus giving access to the bizarre and the unusual. Before museum collections, the cabinets of curiosities that appeared during the Renaissance displayed extraordinary phenomena, both physical and anthropological. Dwarfs were exhibited next to odd animals in royal menageries in Europe. Based on such exhibits, the concept of the ‘Savage’7 was invented and exploited in the circus shows of the nineteenth century. The Hagenbecks, or Miss Lala, captured at the Fernando circus by Edgar Degas, the phenomena exploited by Barnum, or the main characters of Tod Browning’s Freaks, are all examples. This relationship to strangeness refers the spectator and the artist to a cognitive process of self-perception considered by Stiker as ‘a pattern which is not that of equality, but of identity’.8 Antoine de Pluvinel and Arcangelo Tuccarro should be mentioned with regard to physical education, biomechanics and the physiology of human as well as animal movement. In 1594, the riding master de

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Pluvinel laid the foundations for the equestrian art of dressage.9 As early as 1599, Tuccarro created an illustrated handbook on exercise and dance, dedicated to King Charles IX of France.10 During the nineteenth century, Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, magician, physicist and engineer, a precursor of robotics applied to the circus, recreated a trapeze artist’s movements with his 1845 automaton, Voltigeur au trapèze, the star of his Théâtre Robert Houdin de Paris. Through their chronophotographs, first Eadweard James Muybridge in 1878, then Edouard-Jules Marey in 1882, helped to improve the analysis of the movements of acrobats and riders. From 1895 onwards, the cinematograph brought the movements of acrobats, jugglers, magicians and circus clowns into the spotlight. Remarkably indeed, since the pre-cinema era, cinematographic art, which requires the spectator to rebuild a reality existing only as light stimuli on a screen and which calls for a complex cognitive process of emergence, has been a source of interest and inspiration for the art of moving images. Georges Méliès and some brilliant actors such as Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin made a masterful contribution. Marthe and Juliette Vesque dedicated their lives to the observation of circus performers and animals, leaving 8,000 drawings whose exquisite detail and infinite precision show their postures, phases of movements and trajectories. Their work constitutes a documentary source of top-quality scientific data.11 In the first years of the twentieth century, some science journals featured ‘human phenomena and physiological curiosities’12 or ‘Indian acrobats’.13 These few examples, including L’acrobatie et les acrobates (1880) by George Strehly, a Latin teacher at the Sorbonne as well as an acrobat,14 or the outstanding Symbolisme de l’acrobatie antique15 by Waldemar Deonna, also a Latinist, demonstrate that scientists and scholars have shown a keen interest in the circus; circus actors could, in turn, benefit from their work and bring their art to bear in the broader scope of scientific, natural and cultural phenomena.

Towards a scientific approach specific to circus actors These pioneering works often focused on a particular discipline (e.g. acrobatics or equestrian art) or methodology (e.g. the study of

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documents, modelling by drawing, building or recording, etc.) and paved the way for an experimental and analytical scientific approach of the circus and its actors. In France, such a methodical, systematic, scientific study of the circus was made possible thanks to the work of three prominent professors within their respective fields: Claude Lévi-Strauss, the father of modern anthropology, who held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France; Michel Boura, a Professor of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine in Nancy; and Gérard Lieber, a Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Montpellier. Their studies investigated the circus and its actors with an interdisciplinary vision, instead of focusing on one aspect at a time. They assumed the existence of invariants that were common to the various circus processes that they thoroughly explored and experimented. The results of their work became avenues for research in the cognitive sciences. Paul Bouissac, whose studies were strongly encouraged by Claude Lévi-Strauss, was the first to apply a scientific approach to the circus, which he frequented and practiced – he founded and managed the Gérard Debord Animal Circus between 1964 and 1966. Circus & Culture16 is a collection of articles and papers dating from 1966 to 1974 in which he lays the foundations for the linguistic and cultural specificity of circus art and group disciplines around equilibrium and disequilibrium, abstraction, and discontinuity, among others. In La mesure des gestes,17 Bouissac offers prolegomena for a semiotics of the circus that was based on description, symbolism and measurement, linking it to cognitive science for the first time, and establishing a connection between the syntagmatic model and a cybernetic and mathematical model of gestures. It is truly remarkable that twenty years on we were to produce the very same assumptions and conclusions while approaching the circus through other disciplines, admittedly without knowing of Bouissac’s work at the time (he had been working at the University of Toronto since 1962). I myself had been a circus actor since 1974 (first as a trapeze artist, then as a clown) and a producer. From 1988 onwards, I had the opportunity to carry out some research under the supervision of Michel Boura in Nancy at the physiological laboratory of physical activities in the Faculty of Medicine and the Institut National de la

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Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM ). The focus of this research consisted primarily of energy studies and the incidence of pathology in the various circus disciplines taught at the Centre National des Arts du Cirque. I was soon joined by Philippe Perrin, today a Professor of Science and Techniques of Physical and Sports Activities in Nancy (INSERM and Faculty of Sport) – his work is an authority on human equilibration – and Denys Barrault, then chief physician at the Institut National des Sports et de l’Education Physique (INSEP ) in Paris and team physician for the French gymnastics, diving and judo Olympic Teams. Circus medicine in general, and our results in particular, are deeply indebted to their work. The method of calculation of workload that we established enabled us to highlight the fact that (a) there exists a specific relationship between the workload and the onset of pathology; (b) that practising circus art professionally without sustaining an injury is impossible; and (c) that joints, which contribute to maintaining equilibrium, are the most affected. Moreover, our study revealed that the onset of pathology coincides with a number of factors, the first of which is the practice of circus art itself, through the actors’ performances, working conditions, social and economic factors and current behaviours – that is, a unique culture of effort. The pathology affecting circus actors therefore results from their quest for imbalance in practising the discipline as much as from their lifestyle, in the art as much as in the profession.18 These initial results were followed by a systematic study of health issues specific to circus artists, their prevention and treatment, and the neuromotor specificities of circus practices.19 They also produced other questions. First: what does the art of the circus actor involve? This question elicited several answers.20 The circus actor, in each of the disciplines of acrobatics, juggling, training, and clowning, moves from a steady state (static or dynamic) to a deliberate imbalance, which he counterbalances by a figure or a posture, before recovering. This self-destabilization on the part of the actors is achieved using clever, complex, and risky actions, some of which endanger their own lives. Thus, risk is at the heart of the circus actor’s activities. Alternating between postures (anti-gravity invariant schemes)21 and figures (the sequences of movements) connects steady and unsteady states to some references. These references are the objects,

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apparatus or animals acting, on the one hand, as performance markers, and on the other hand, as the cognitive, postural, spatial and behavioural referents, which work upon the circus actor as much as on the spectators. These alternations between postures and figures can be considered as ‘syntagmas’, elements of a language specific to the circus, to which the notion of imbalance is central. The momentum, impulse, landing, and rotation in the three planes – sagittal, frontal, horizontal – produce trajectories that are operated and adjusted by the artist in accordance with the space in which he performs and his apparatus (topocinèse), as well as with his own perceptions (morphocinèse). The circus actor therefore operates ballistic objects (juggled objects, animals, etc.), possibly including himself, ensuring ‘airborne rotation . . . the continuity of gestural sequence . . . as well as a full participation against the unbalancing effects of gravity, the quest for the highest difficulty, risk taking’,22 and then piloting the trajectory of his own body (as an acrobat) or behaviour (as a clown). Postures, figures and trajectories are therefore the elements of a language that is specific to circus arts. ‘If circus is a language, how does it communicate with us?’ This question made us consider the circus as an art of abstraction, as well as an art of incarnation. As an abstraction,23 its trajectories and forms have a physical effect on its audience. As an incarnation, the show musters the spectator’s representations, or whatever the signs transmitted by the emitters-actors to receivers-spectators arouse in him. For instance, a flying trapeze act heightens our experience of gravity, verticality, height, and anticipation of trajectories, but also taps into our personal history, our representations or culture of risk, of solidarity, of life and death, of failure and the surpassing of self. Surrendered to gravity, the acrobat meets our dream of cutting loose from its pull. Thanks to his cognitive system, a spectator at the circus can fly while remaining seated, survive the fall and triumph over the risk by way of delegation. Finally, the question ‘What does the circus speak to us about?’ is the main theme of the studies I have been carrying out since 1995 through ‘Cirque: Histoire, imaginaires, pratiques’. Noting that for thousands of years, in many cultures, the circus has belonged to a broader entity – shows with a central playing area or in a circuit, which exhibit some common components (the public surrounding the show, seasonal periodicity, performance, real or symbolic games

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with death . . .) – we tackled the antique and archaic origins of the circus. We have discovered that the actions engaged by circus actors are related to the notions of cycle, risk and crisis, where the rituals of wandering, of sacrifice, of summons and the conjuring of death have shifted from the religious calendar to ‘secular’ tours organized in accordance with the profit afforded by the shows. Disequilibrium, impermanence, instability are at the roots and heart of the circus and the disciplines that it is composed of: acrobatics, juggling, animal training, clowning. At the circus, risk is an aesthetic. As an art of movement and gesture, it combines trajectories just like music fashions sounds or image fashions forms and colours. The living and performing conditions of circus actors are as important as their shows in the universal fascination they hold when, through their acts, they display ‘chaos organized for sensual pleasure’.24 Between the impetus and the fall, the circus actor practices an art and adopts modalities of existence in which he is constantly at risk of disequilibrium, impermanence and instability.25 Finally, by focusing on the spectators’ reception, from 1990 to 1993 we were able to carry out experiments on the sounds produced by performers and objects, and the ways they were received by the audience and the artists’ performances.26 As early as 1968, Paul Bouissac had published Volumes sonores et volumes gestuels dans un numéro d’acrobatie. Pour une expression mathématique des gestes.27 The similarities between his assumptions and research and our own (carried out decades later), corroborate results obtained using different tools – linguistics, semiotics, cultural studies on the one hand, and physiology and theatre studies on the other.

Prospects for a cognitive approach to the circus actor The corpus results obtained between 1962 and 2014 warrants a cognitive approach in the study of processes underpinning the circus actor’s work. Many of the fields explored and highlighted by these scientific works are indeed relevant to the various disciplines that contribute to cognitive science: the cybernetics and mathematical modelling of

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gesture, the semiotics of acrobatic, clowning, juggling or animal training shows, representations and conveyed symbols, and complex-gesture phenomena involving neural networks in the actor and in the spectator. A cognitive approach to the study of circus actors could tap into the successive disciplines of cognitive science as they are ‘successively intertwined’.28 Cybernetics deals with the functioning of our brain, with the human brain machine modelled on the computer. Therefore, cognitivism looks at symbols – some wonder if our mind computes symbols. And connectionism developed along the invention of networks such as the Internet. Now, some more interdisciplinary theories combine cybernetics, cognitivism and connectionism. The theory of enactivism29 postulates that we interact with the outside and that reality materializes at the same time as our action is realized. That raises an important question: does reality exist, or is it a production of our brain? Is what I see independent of the fact that I see it, or is my gaze creating what I see? That notion offers a new approach to life, to mind, to our relationship with the world.30 Where is the show? On the stage? In the brain? Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI ) reports events one hundred times slower than brain conduction. What happens between the two elements detected by MRI ? Where is brain plasticity located? Where does the spectator receive it? The circus actor constantly interacts with space, spectators and his own perceptions, as much as with circus culture and history. The cognitive understanding of these complex activities is fuelled by such questions. It should build on ‘a consideration of the immediate context and the effects of biological and cultural history on cognition and action’.31 It should also take into account the composite specificity of the circus – a scientific study of which must perforce address many disciplines. Neuroscience, for instance, may enlighten the complexity of acrobatic practices from two aspects, ‘the motor aspect (coordination) and the perceptive aspect (control)’,32 which are interdependent and interact ‘under the actor’s intentional control’.33 Yet these two aspects alone can neither assess nor explain the many processes engaging circus actors in their creative productions. Nor

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can aesthetic studies of the field of performing arts alone, regardless of whether they are based on history, on the analysis of dramaturgy, philosophy or other human sciences provide exhaustive tools in this sense. ‘There is the material world of physics and biology on the one hand, and the immaterial and mental world of culture, beliefs and art, on the other. Such a dualism is radically questioned by cognitive science.’34 Circus actors actually feel this impossible dualism that supposedly sets thought and art in opposition to physics and biology; they spend their entire life combining them, alchemists transmuting matter into spirit, bodies and objects into works of art, emotions into thoughts, reality into imagination and imagination into reality. All of the elements forming the ‘nature of the art’35 of the circus must be addressed and clarified to understand what circus actors create and offer us. Cognitive science meets such requirements. By drawing on the resources of neuroscience but also of linguistics, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, epistemology and anthropology; by questioning the human mind applying a thought process approach rather than a philosophical and conceptual approach. For the actual question is: What do the circus actors bring into play? What constitutes their relationship with the world? How are their representations of the world constructed? Or: What is imagination? How do we, as spectators, fire our own imagination in response to their works? Neuroscience, human equilibration, motor control, mirror neurons, linguistics, semiotics, the modelling of movements, robotics, recording techniques for gesture, sounds or brain processes, the study of notations that are specific to each circus discipline, of sensory-motor stereotypes and invariants, of functional and cultural analogies, of information processing and human behaviour, and their possible applications in circus medicine, disease prevention and therapies, the creation and circulation of shows, vocational training schemes, technical, artistic, and industrial innovation . . . The paths opened up as a result of specific scientific works on the circus lead to an unlimited field of research for cognitive science and technologies when applied to circus actors, disciplines and audiences.36 The art of risk, disequilibrium and impermanence practised by the circus actor elicits a particular meaning from his performance.

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It relates us to what Jean Genet calls ‘the million-years-old genealogical certainty’. Francisco Varela, the proponent of the theory of enactivism, closes one of his books thus: If the keystone of cognition is its faculty of allowing meaning to emerge, then information is not predefined as an intrinsic order but matches the regularities emerging from cognitive activities themselves . . . Representation does not play a key role anymore, but emergence does. So the basic idea is that cognitive faculties are inextricably linked to the history of what is being experienced, just like a previously non-existent path appears while walking.37 It is indeed in the path journeyed by circus artists that the reality they would share with us will then appear.

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PART TWO

The Spectator’s Performative Experience and ‘Embodied Theatrology’

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Introduction: Towards an Embodied Theatrology? Gabriele Sofia*

Introduction The concept of ‘embodied theatrology’ was originally proposed by Marco De Marinis in March 20111 by way of an ‘invitation’ for collective reflection: ‘We could already start thinking in terms of an embodied theatrology, in which even the researcher’s body, hence his subjectivity, would somehow be engaged.’2 Like a pebble thrown in a pond, the invitation sent waves in different directions, almost to the point of acquiring the dimensions of a ‘methodological provocation’. This will be the topic of my reflections in the present introduction to Part 2 of the book. At the root of such a notion, there is an epistemological shift related to the theories of embodied cognition proposed by the biologist Francisco Varela and to studies by multidisciplinary teams that collaborated with him.3 I am referring to the idea that our cognitive functions are not merely the result of neuronal computations but rather a process that emerges from the interaction between the human body and the environment. ‘Action’ (the 49

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interaction with the environment) thus becomes central to the understanding of cognitive processes. This new paradigm replaces the idea whereby the motor system is regarded as the brain’s slave and instead places motricity at the centre of every cognitive process. Hence, this model furnished some key terms that have been particularly useful for theatre studies, primary among which is the notion of ‘embodiment’. Yet one gets the impression that this concept is being used as a remedy to a semantic void – related to the absence of a term that could indicate the integrity of body-mind systems – rather than by way of an overall reflection on the acquisition of a new model of cognition. It appears as though the term ‘embodiment’ has been taken more for a shortcut than for a real issue. The notion of embodied theatrology, in my opinion, could first of all suggest the opposite application of the term ‘embodiment’: to regard it no longer as a solution but as a challenge to theatre studies, as a perspective capable of questioning research practices that are taken for granted in the study of the performative event. In his essay, Marco De Marinis himself does not posit the notion as a final solution but uses it to underline the issue of the researcher’s subjectivity, a problem that is scarcely tackled even today. In fact, the issue of embodiment incorporates the theatrical relation in its entirety: both the way in which the performer’s body thinks and decides, and the way in which the spectator (therefore, also the scholar) perceives and participates to the performative event. Just as the theories on embodied cognition in the cognitive sciences strive to go beyond a cerebrocentric vision of the human being, in the same way an embodied theatrology could highlight the cerebrocentric outlook that still characterizes a good part of contemporary theatre studies.4 Of course, it is perfectly natural for critical approaches toward art to be affected by the models that are dominant at a given point in history. However, at a moment in which some epistemological paradigms are undergoing important changes, it seems appropriate to reflect on ways in which the leaps forward made by cognitive science could find resonance in the methodologies applied in researching the theatrical event.

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Embodied cognition: Three important aspects Among the innovations furnished by the embodied model, in my opinion there are three particularly important elements for theatrology: the direct link between mechanisms of perception and the motor system (between perception and action), the concept of consciousness as a circular process between the human body and the environment, and the obsolescence of the logical dichotomy between interior and exterior.

Action and perception These are no longer seen as radically distinct functions but as processes that share common neuronal substrates, as shown in the research on mirror neurons, which we have spoken about in the first section of the present volume. Although classical physiology assigned different neuronal circuits to the processes of action and perception, recent studies have shown a direct physiological connection between these two functions. Which means that each time we perceive an action, it resonates in our body-mind system which ‘translates’ the action according to our motor and biographical baggage, our learning systems, and our cultural conditioning. Anticipating the discovery of the mirror mechanism, however, Varela had already sensed that such a direct connection furnished the basis for new models of cognition: ‘By using the term action we mean to emphasize once again that sensory and motor processes, perception and action, are fundamentally inseparable in lived cognition. Indeed, the two are not merely contingently linked in individuals; they have also evolved together.’5

The relationship between one’s own body and the environment The second point concerns the hypothesis that consciousness is not a product of the brain but emerges from the relationship between one’s own body and the environment. In one of his last interviews, Varela declared: ‘The mind is nothing but the body in motion.’6 The

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embodied (or ‘enactive’) model instead holds that the way by which we experience and become conscious of the world consists of a circular process between the human being and the environment: each time we ‘perceive’ the world, we are actually acting upon it, that is we are modifying the object that we intend to perceive. If every perceptive act modifies the very object of perception, then there is no pre-determined world that can be perceived ‘as it is’. Instead, the world itself is established and modified by the individual who perceives it. What we refer to as ‘perception’ is not a passive process; it is not data collection, but the result of a continuous interaction between the individual and the world.7 Moreover, if we also consider the fact that the environment inhabited by the individual is usually constituted by other human beings, then we would notice that our experience of the world depended also on the way in which other individuals interact with the world.8 The environment, therefore, is not shared but rather ‘co-constituted’ by the human beings who inhabit it.9

Overcoming the logical opposition between inside and outside Adopting the paradigms of embodied cognition inevitably implies overcoming the logical opposition between inside and outside. This also means overcoming various other dichotomies such as intention and action, thought and movement, mind and body. Each of our actions is guided by our sensorial descriptions that are visual, auditory, proprioceptive, and kinaesthetic in nature which, in turn, require the activation of motor programmes that modify action itself and the perceived environment at the same time. In this sense, an ‘executed’ action always results from sensory feedback that continues to modify that action, again in an ongoing circular process. Every single action, therefore, is not equivalent to the physical-muscular execution of mental content, but must always be regarded as a process emerging from the comparison between the individual’s potential actions and the spatio-temporal dimension of the interaction with the environment. In other words, the structure we are used to identify as ‘intention’ is inseparable from the motor capabilities and the possibilities for action furnished by the environment. Action, therefore, is a ‘structurally intentional’ process:

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‘As the classical behaviourist stimulus-response model failed by neglecting internal determinations of action, the reverse model minimizing the role of external determinations of intentional action is misleading as well. To be able to act in a goal-directed way implies not only controlling one’s action as intended, but also being receptive to the contextual constraints of the external environment within which the action is taking place.’10 From the cognitive perspective, at this level, the dichotomy between inner world and outer world loses its validity: ‘Our intention is to bypass entirely this logical geography of inner versus outer by studying cognition not as recovery or projection but as embodied action.’11 Thus the human body is not the ‘external’ executor of a hypothetically ‘internal’, intentional process, but it is that which generates intention and makes it possible at the same time: ‘The body is not the instrument of the intention but its organ: it allows the expression of intention in the world.’12

Embodied theatrology and theatre studies: The performer’s side Let us now try to understand how these three points could influence the study of the actor–spectator relationship. Let us consider the very last point discussed and try to focus our attention on the many instances in which it was necessary to refer to the rigid opposition between inside and outside when speaking about the actor’s technique. Is such opposition perhaps not the basis of Diderot’s Paradoxe? Is it not the same dichotomoy that conditioned attempts to understand the differences between Stanislavski’s and Meyerhold’s respective techniques? Or again, the difference between the method based on ‘emotive memory’ and that based on the ‘line of physical actions’ that were both developed by Stanislavski? The examples are many, but what concerns us presently is to underline how such a rigid opposition has often proved ‘useful but incorrect’,13 if not deceitful. Evidently, such tensions did not merely concern scholars or experts studying the work of the masters, but could also be found in the language and terminology of the masters themselves.14 Eisenstein himself highlighted the shortcomings of such a dichotomy in his description of the actor’s work: ‘What is wrong is the articulation of the

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problem in these terms, because it carries the weight of tradition, the imprint of a dualistic vision of the world: that is the division of the unity of all expressions, psychical and motoric, which should instead be understood as a unitary process.’15 From the neurocognitive point of view, the redundancy of the opposition between inside and outside becomes more evident in studies on the ‘body schema’, a mechanism that, among its many functions, includes the unconscious integration of allocentric and egocentric information.16 Shaun Gallagher later redefined the mechanism in terms of ‘body schematic process’.17 Nowadays, the analysis of such a process appears to be fundamental in order to comprehend the importance of the motor system in the cognitive process, as Gallagher himself argues in the volume aptly entitled, How Body Shapes the Mind.18 Regarding the actor, the hypothesis is that the performer’s body schema is somewhat modified or ‘dilated’ owing to actor training, resulting in a sort of ‘performative body schema’,19 which gives the actor a different way of acting and deciding onstage.20

Embodied theatrology and theatre studies: The spectator’s side One of the most radical theories posited by Varela concerns the idea that subjectivity, understood as first-person experience, no longer constitutes something intimate and inexplorable; instead, by virtue of the fact that consciousness entails a process of circular interaction with the world, subjectivity can somehow be studied scientifically. Certainly, contemporary neuroscience continues to consider human experience as ‘the hard problem’,21 but the innovation lies precisely in considering subjectivity as a scientific problem and no longer as a variable to minimize or ignore. What Varela launched in the 1990s was a real challenge, one that highlights epistemological issues that are evidently common to both cognitive science and theatre studies. As it is known, in the second half of the twentieth century, disciplines such as Theatre Anthropology, the New Theatrology and Ethnoscenology underlined that the study of the theatrical event, in its most essential dimension, consisted of the study of the relationship between actor and spectator. From this perspective, the ‘scholar–

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spectator’ can no longer retain the privilege of an external point of view onto the theatrical event, but finds him/herself studying an event that, whether s/he likes it or not, s/he is collaborating to create. In other words, when a scholar analyses a theatrical event, s/he studies, in one way or another, his/her own experience of the event. Here we turn back to the problem solicited by De Marinis: how is it possible to integrate the study of one’s own experience in the analysis of a performative event? That is, how can one ‘discipline’ – to use a term that was dear to Varela – the study of one’s own subjective experience to the point of turning it into a datum of scientific validity? Drawing upon the tradition of continental phenomenology (particularly that of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty) Francisco Varela had envisaged the application in neuroscience of Husserl’s phenomenological techniques, thus founding the so-called ‘neurophenomenological’ approach.22 But the need to understand how one’s subjectivity might influence the event under investigation does not concern only cognitive science and philosophy. In anthropology, for instance, such a topic was often reflected upon, leading to the awareness that every researcher is conditioned by his/ her own ethnocentricities; the latter cannot be entirely eliminated but, one way or another, they can be figured out. The same thing counts for those ethno-sciences that are specifically dedicated to the study of performative practices: ‘The point of departure of Ethnoscenology consists in assessing the researcher’s sedimented prejudices, which have slowly deposited themselves in his/her ways of thinking, perceiving and acting in the course of his/her personal and collective history.’23 Consequently, in order to establish how the researcher’s firstperson experience can in some way be scientifically engaged in the analysis of a theatrical event, one would first have to analyze the sensorimotor mechanisms that subtend such an experience, which is primarily the ‘performative’ experience of the spectator.

The spectator’s performative experience The second chapter in Part 2, originating from the collaboration between Corinne Jola and Matthew Reason, presents data on the spectators’ experience of ‘proximity’ and ‘co-presence’ in relation to

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different performative practices. The study forms part of a broader project conducted by Jola using various experimental techniques researching the cognitive characteristics of the performer’s and the spectator’s mutual presence.24 The project attempted to remedy the basic deficiency in experimental investigations of the spectator that utilized video to research live arts.25 The notion of ‘the spectator’s performative experience’, in fact, was born to underline the difference between a spectator who attends a live performance and other forms of spectatorial experiences (at the cinema, in front of the television, etc.). The concept, however, also highlights the active, ‘performative’, role that the spectator is required to assume during a performative event.26 Embodiment theories enable us to focus on four characteristics, four points of interest that are useful for the reflection upon the particular cognitive traits of such an experience, which can be defined: relational, embodied, predictive and co-constituting. Let us try to analyze these points in brief.

Relational First and foremost, the spectator is a relational figure, and can only be studied in the relationship with the performer. Hence the need to reject the idea of a ‘standard’ spectator capable of providing a more-or-less reliable model. Cognitive science can suggest some mechanisms – possibly common in a considerable number of individuals – that enable the spectator’s experience, but it cannot forecast how such mechanisms will be organized when stimulated by a given event. In other words, cognitive science can analyze – in an extremely partial manner – the how, but not the what. For this reason, it might be preferable to relinquish the hope that neuroscience could arrive at offering objective criteria whereby one would be able to assess the efficacity of a performance. In fact, the quantity of contingent, cultural and biographical variables is such that it would render any solution provided by neuroscientific experiments impossible, given that only artistic experience in its entirety can resolve problems of such complexity. Moreover, one must not forget that very often the spectator plays an active role in the collective dynamics of the public, whose mechanisms of emotive contagion have recently become the object of studies in the so-called ‘social neuroscience’.27

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Embodied Having spoken about the direct connection between perception and the motor system, it seems almost banal to indicate the spectator’s experience as ‘embodied’. One must not forget, however, that defining experience as being ‘embodied’ by virtue of its motor basis also means considering it as essentially biographical. Our motor system, in fact, is a continuously developing process, which is modified and reorganized according to our everyday activities. The motor system can thus be considered the depository of our biography, which resonates with the perception of every action. It is precisely for this reason that the experience of the same performance can vary, radically even, from person to person. In the theatre, each perception of an action engages the totality of our past motor experiences, thus bringing us, in a more or less conscious way, to a veritable activity of choice and reconstruction, to a ‘performative’ activity.

Predictive One of the reasons given for the presence of the mirror mechanism in humans is related to the rapidity in the reaction and response to a given stimulus: the ability to react as fast as possible to a stimulus constitutes a mechanism that is fundamental for survival. To this end, our cognitive system is equipped with a considerable amount of predictive mechanisms that include but are not limited to the mirror mechanism.28 The spectator’s experience is strongly conditioned by such anticipatory mechanisms. The actor plays with the spectator’s predictive disposition, by creating multiple dynamics of expectation and surprise. Such dynamics are distributed at different levels, from that of the single action to the dramaturgical level of the whole performance, and constitute one of the sources of pleasure for the spectator’s experience. Every instance in a performance, in fact, is lived according to the elaboration of the previous moments and the prediction of the consecutive events. In this sense, we could say that, at the cognitive level, there is a certain tendency to regard perceived events as ‘narratives’. Such a predisposition is founded upon predictive mechanisms. Although such a mechanism is well known at the dramaturgical level (all it

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takes to understand this is to read any scriptwriting manual) what may be surprising nowadays is that similar dynamics are at play also at the level of the single action. The spectator makes an ongoing elaboration of information (physical, postural, kinaesthetic, but also dramaturgical data) received up to any given moment so that s/he may predict the directions that could be taken in the next moments of the performance’s flow.

Co-constituting As noted beforehand, co-constitution refers to the idea that our experience of the world also depends on the way in which other individuals interact with it, and therefore ‘co-constitute’ the world with us. In the theatre, such a mechanism fulfils a particular role. If the actor, who co-constitutes the theatrical space with the spectator, uses extradaily neuromotor routines in the interaction with the theatrical space, then the spectator’s experience of the same will necessarily be modified: it is an extradaily experience. In other words, an object that is perceived in a certain manner in everyday life will be perceived in a different manner the moment it is used by an actor, that is by someone who interacts with that object according to extradaily techniques. These four characteristics can be summed up as follows: if the life experiences of an individual emerge from the interactions with others and with the environment – Varela speaks of an empathic mesh29 – given that the other individuals that co-constitute the environment are actors (people who organize themselves differently to the way they do in everyday life) the individual spectator’s experience will also be extradaily. Such an experience is fundamentally different from both all the other daily experiences and other spectatorial experiences in which the artist does not coconstitute a space with the spectator. The scholar also needs to consider such a ‘dilated’ or ‘extradaily’ way in which the spectator lives the theatrical event, not in order to reject or minimize it but, as De Marinis suggested, in order to rigorously employ his/her own subjective experience in the study of the event.

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Conclusions: What about the director? In the last chapter of Part 2, the scholar Lorraine Dumenil shows us that issues related to the involvement of the spectator’s ‘senses and flesh’ occupied a central role in the theories of Antonin Artaud. Actaully the writings of the great French master perhaps provide the best example of a deep merging between theoretical reflection and first-person experience. It is not by chance that the physiological dimension of the theatrical experience is often evoked by the same Artaud. At this point, the question arises as to whether such new methodological prospects might also be of benefit to the study of the director’s work. Does one of the fundamental tasks of the director not involve the analysis of his/her own first person experience so that s/he may organize the spectator’s experience? Although the director has often been studied as a ‘thinker’ or ‘disembodied creator’ of sorts, frequently his/her work has been associated with the spectator’s experience.30 It is therefore possible to imagine that the same cognitive functions that characterize the spectator’s experience could, in some way, also condition the director’s work.31 Clearly, such preliminary reflections deserve further research, but what concerns us here is the appreciation of the vast extent of topics accessible to an embodied approach.

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4 Body and Corporeity in the Theatre: From Semiotics to Neuroscience. A Small Multidisciplinary Glossary Marco De Marinis*

Introduction I would like to start from the conclusions advanced by Jean-Marie Pradier in a recently published paper: 1 No general theory of the theatre can be accepted nowadays, just as no scientific datum can lead to any generalization. 2 We have to accept the idea that we must deal with the need both to incessantly redefine and clarify the levels of organization, and to consider the relationships between them. 3 We are condemned to collaborate, in the sense that, with humility and ambition, each individual must consider himself an open system. Voluntarily and consciously open.1 61

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These statements, to which I subscribe entirely, imply the following: (a) they confirm the necessity for theatre studies to pursue that ‘interlace of theory, practice and history’ which, for over 20 years, I have been calling New Theatrology;2 (b) however, they do not exclude the need to develop new theoretical models – partial and temporary as these may be – or, better still, to develop ‘new paradigms’, to study the theatrical experience from both sides (i.e. in relation to both the actor and spectator); (c) such new paradigms would obviously have to be multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary, perhaps also a little un(-)disciplined (as North American Performance Studies want to be, at times exaggerating a little in my opinion). Surely, these would have to be born from a ‘new alliance’ between what to date we have been calling the humanities and the natural or life sciences, a distinction that is fairly outdated; (d) at the same time, we would, as far as possible, need to avoid giving birth to new disciplinary ‘monsters’ such as, for example, a neurobiology of the theatre. It is in this sense that I would like to propose a multi- or, rather, a trans-disciplinary glossary, which may prove helpful to the development of new paradigms of theatrical experience. This pocket lexicon is placed under the sign of the body and corporeity, but the complex subject that it is attempting to encompass, or to outline, is the spectator’s experience, aptly defined by Gabriele Sofia as ‘a performative experience’.3 Let us, therefore, start from the ‘theatrical relationship’ (i.e. the actor–spectator relationship), the central, albeit not exclusive, object of the New Theatrology.4 Nowadays, the affirmation that the theatrical relationship engages the body as well as the mind, muscles no less than thought, senses and nerves at least as much as imagination and emotion – for both the spectator and the actor or performer – might indeed sound banal. Theatre makers have always known all this, but the point is that theatre theory and scholars have not. The truth is that it was only during the twentieth century that the corporal dimension of the theatrical experience, from both sides of

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the barricade, started to be fully and explicitly accepted within theatre theory. Thus, theatre scholarship started to overcome the disembodied, logo-centric and culture-studies paradigms in which it had been imprisoned since Aristotle. After all, the delay sustained by theatre studies in accepting the body and corporeity within their theoretical discourse ought to be related to the delay and the difficulties long sustained by the humanities, including semiotics, linguistics and anthropology, with regard to the same matter. In speaking of delays and difficulties I am not really referring to the body as an object of study, but I am thinking above all about the body as sujet agent-patient (as Greimas would put it) or, better still, as the ‘constitutive dimension’ of every cultural and social phenomenon, particularly of each single aesthetic experience. Nowadays, the situation has changed profoundly; one even has the impression that an excessive emphasis is being placed on body issues, from bio-politics to neuro-aesthetics. In any case, concepts such as ‘body-mind’, ‘embodiment’, ‘incorporated knowledge’, ‘embodied knowledge’, ‘somatic societies’, etc. demonstrate how the body has become a real protagonist (if not the protagonist) in the theoretical discourse of humanities and social sciences.5 One thing was particularly important: to become conscious of the fact that the spectator, no less than the actor, is equipped with a body, a mind and an encyclopaedic and intertextual competence. It is with and in his body that the spectator experiences the performance, this is how he perceives, lives, understands and responds to it. (One could perhaps speak of ‘body techniques’ as conceived by Marcel Mauss, in view of the work that the spectator truly carries out at the theatre).6 Even so, we are dealing with a fact that has always been known by theatre makers, but that scholarship was late in recognizing. Realization came primarily from experiments by the New Theatre (Living Theatre, Grotowski, Brook, Odin Teatret, Open Theatre, etc.), and also from the acquisitions of both the humanities (semiotics included) and life sciences. The encounter between theatre and the life sciences has developed during the last three decades thanks to a series of important international initiatives that were often promoted by theatre makers. Such initiatives have contributed to the growth of debate and research related to the biological bases of the performing

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arts, beyond the clichés and dogmas of cultural relativism. I shall quote just three examples: the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA ), founded by Eugenio Barba in 1979; xHCA (Questioning Human Creativity as Acting) developed in Malta in 1995 by the theatre director, scholar and pedagogue John Schranz, with the precious collaboration of Ingemar Lindh (who passed away in 1997) and of the cognitive scientists Richard Muscat from the University of Malta and Glyn Goodall from the University of Bordeaux 2; Ethnoscenology, launched in Paris also in 1995 on the initiative of Jean-Marie Pradier.7 Again, my aim in the present chapter is merely to draft a list of new concepts regarding the body and corporeity in the theatrical relationship as they have been proposed in different disciplines between the humanities and life sciences during the twentieth century.

Body/flesh A distinction proposed by phenomenology has influenced artistic practices of the body and every subsequent attempt at elaborating a theory on the same topic. First came Edmund Husserl’s distinction between Körper, the body as res extensa, a thing, and Leib, the body as it is lived and enacted, a lived unity of perception and movement.8 Such a distinction was taken up and further developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who separated the concept of ‘body’ from that of ‘flesh’ (chair), the first to attribute philosophical value to such a concept.9 It regards one’s own body, which constitutes a perspective that is shared by all, a line of contact with the outside. In performance art, especially body art, we often witness artists’ attempts at rediscovering their own body, as Leib or chair. In other words, the body artist, with extreme, excessive and violent actions, strives to re-appropriate himself of his own body and its authentic truth, beyond every alienation-reification, beyond and against any reduction of the body to an object of consumerism, to mere merchandise. What is interesting about body art and other extreme experiences on the contemporary stage (such as in Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty) is that the passage from body to flesh (i.e. from the body-as-object to one’s own, lived body) is often represented by butchered meat

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(i.e. the viande). In other words, in order to re-appropriate oneself of one’s own body, to redeem it from alienation, apparently it is often indispensable to spur it to the limit, and beyond, to subject the body to extreme tests, to violate it even, indeed degrading it to the state of viande. In this regard, the paintings of Francis Bacon constitute, perhaps, the most prominent example in the visual arts.

Corporeity It could be useful to relate, perhaps even merge, the idea of a singular, phenomenic, lived body with the notion of corporeity. According to Enrico Pitozzi,10 this refers to the ‘singular and nonuniversal expression of a phenomenic body, such as can be found on the stage of Jan Fabre, Romeo Castellucci, Jan Lowers, Fura dels Baus’, but it is also reflected in both body art (from Gina Pane to Marina Abramovich) and contemporary dance (Pina Bausch, William Forsythe, Saburo Teschigawara). In relation to the contemporary stage, Pitozzi thinks it useful to distinguish between the body as a universal category and the corporeity of singular experience. In other words, the advantage of adopting the concept of corporeity lies in that, thanks to a phenomenic approach towards the body, it would enable a better rendition of the true novelty present in the research of twentiethcentury masters, the Founding Fathers of the modern stage. It is not by chance that, years back, I had related such novelty to the ‘rediscovery of the body’.11 Actually, it was the rediscovery of the ‘sensitive body’ (i.e. of the concrete body, no longer regarded from the outside, but via ‘a profound research of its internal dynamics’).12 A body delivered, on the one hand, from the sphere of symbols, and on the other hand, from the sphere of forms, and brought back to its materiality. From this point of view, it is actually ‘not a matter of studying the body in motion but movement in the body’.13

Kinaesthesia Concerning the relationships between outside and inside, between movement and feeling, expression and emotion in the human being, it is interesting to note how the paradigm of the ‘physical induction

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of emotion’, or ‘kinaesthesia’, affirmed itself in the work of twentieth-century theatre masters, the pedagogue-directors. Such a paradigm, embrionically already present in Lessing in the eighteenth century, and further developed by François Delsarte in the nineteenth century, grants a solution to the vexata quaestio identification versus non-identification regarding the actor–character relationship (Diderot, etc.). The pedagogue-directors’ practical experience shows that the actor who seeks an efficient feeling on the stage, in relation to the scope of the part/score, or of his performance, must not start from feelings, but from the body, that is from movement, gesture, physical actions. Those very movements, gestures, physical actions would then induce the sensations/feelings/mental states that are appropriate to the situation. What the latter Stanislavski (the Method of physical actions), Meyerhold (Biomechanics) and Artaud (Affective athleticism) – to mention but the most important three – undoubtedly have in common is the adoption of such a paradigm. However, it was, above all, modern dance (a field generally freer from psychological constrictions and from the demands of representation with respect to theatre) that developed work on kinaesthesia – that is on the sensations the dancer feels in movement – feelings that the dancer could work upon consciously at a later stage.14 It is most interesting that, in the course of the twentieth century, the same paradigm would appear to work just as well in the theatrical, actor–spectator relationship. In this case, kinaesthesia evidently regards the sensations/feelings that the actor’s movements induce/stimulate in the spectator. Often, due to the particular power/force/efficacy of such movements, the spectator would experience the actor’s very same sensations/feelings. (I speak of movements, but it has been shown that the same phenomenon occurs with ‘voice’, from diction to song.)15 The first to theorize such mechanism of induction/stimulation, to my knowledge, was S. M. Eisenstein in his 1923 manifesto entitled ‘Expressive movement’.16 This idea, however, is also explicitly present at the same time in Meyerhold’s work on Biomechanics, and would constitute the subject of Artaud’s fascinating theories in the 1930s.17 At this point, the following question arises: how do we explain such a mechanism? In other words, wherein lies the power of a

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gesture to induce/stimulate the sensations/feelings of he who beholds it, possibly those very same sensations/feelings of he who executes that gesture? Clearly, as Aristotle had already pointed out, this is all related to a human being’s innate predisposition towards imitation and identification. In the course of the twentieth century, however, the breakthrough that various disciplines made consisted in imagining a mimesis and an identification which no longer just involved the mind, psychology and emotions, but which also concerned primarily the body (i.e. the brain, the nervous system, sense organs, muscles, the skin). We hear, for instance, of ‘muscular empathy’ (Gombrich); something that, after all, we have all more or less experienced as common spectators. In this sense, however, we would need to also mention all the Einfühlung theoreticians, including Visher, Lipps, Volkelt and Worringer. Today, mirror neurons seem to confirm that simple gestures are not enough to stimulate a response in he who looks, but we require ‘intentional movements’, possessing a goal, an impulse. In other words, we need ‘actions’, according to the terminology adopted by the masters of the contemporary stage, from Stanislavsky to Grotowski. In this sense, the notions of mimisme and rejeu (replay, reexecution), developed by the Jesuit Marcel Jousse in his rather anomalous and original studies on the anthropology of the gesture and the word, are still quite useful and revealing.

Mimism/play/replay In Anthropologie du geste (1969), published posthumously, Jousse presents a study of the human being conceived as ‘an interactionally miming animal’,18 centred on the concept of ‘mimism’. According to Jousse: ‘We actually know things only to the extent that they play themselves, “gesture” themselves in us.’19 Apart from ‘mimism’, ‘play’ and ‘replay’ constitute another two key concepts for Jousse. As E. De Rosa, an expert on the French scholar, points out, in Jousse’s terminology: ‘Play’ refers to that necessary and unconscious gesticulation produced in the human being by the movement of things detected by his organs; it is the irradiation of the plastic and sonorous

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gestures of things within human musculature. ‘Play’ refers to the totality that enters us, in spite of ourselves, and obliges us to express it. ‘Play’, therefore, is an impression phase followed by an expression phase, which Jousse in fact calls ‘replay’. Such ‘replay’ is a kind of ‘re-emergence’: the external interactions penetrated within the human being reverberate in his entire musculature and forces him to re-do the gestures of things, to reproduce them, to mimic them.20 In this regard we can consider the possibility of conceiving the knowledge and understanding of things, actions, of words themselves, in physical, muscular terms. Thus, we can especially connect interpretation and interaction, knowing and tasting, understanding and eating. Such a possibility provides a particular stimulus for a reconsideration of the theatrical relationship (and aesthetic experiences in general) in non-logocentric terms. Independently of Jousse, what we might indeed call a ‘manducatory paradigm’ appears to have affirmed itself throughout the twentieth century in the field of aesthetics and the philosophy of art, to the extent that such a paradigm allows us a literary interpretation, in truly physical–corporal terms, of expressions such as aesthetic ‘pleasure’ or ‘enjoyment’ (think of theoreticians such as De Andrade, Calvino and Barthes, among others). In order to focus on theatre and the theatrical relationship, I shall cite Richard Schechner’s proposal for a ‘rasaesthetics’ that is for a ‘rasic theatre’, which derives its name from the theory on tastes (rasa) developed in classical Indian theatre.

Rasic theatre The American theoretician reminds us that, juxtaposed and as an alternative to the ‘occidental’ (Platonic–Aristotelian) model of aesthetic experience, based on looking-hearing, therefore on the ‘distance’ and ‘logos’ of interpretation/comprehension, there exists a markedly different model that has been operant for millennia, a model we might call Asiatic. This is related to ‘tasting’, therefore to the mouth, the digestive apparatus – a model related to the ‘body’, hence based on ‘synesthetic’ and ‘kinaesthetic’ participation. There is a country and a culture in which such an alternative model of

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fruition has known an admirably precise and fascinating theorization: ancient India, more precisely classical Indian theatre. Its famous treatise, the Natya-Sastra, highlights two notions, bhava, ‘emotion’, and rasa, ‘taste’, and outlines a vision of theatre as an art that permits the spectator to ‘taste’ emotions, to ‘savour’ them as if they were (and together with) food. Schechner calls this ‘rasic theatre’, also stating that the experience of rasa aesthetics is visceral, felt ‘in the gut’.21 We might be tempted to interpret the distance between these two models of aesthetic experience, especially in performance, in terms of the ‘mind/body’, or ‘brain/gut’ opposition: as if rasic theatre were ‘headless’, akin to that ‘gastronomical’ theatre that Brecht attacked vociferously in his own time. But that would be a mistake: just like any other kind of aesthetic, polysensorial and kinesthetic experience, such theatre may be visceral, but not necessarily ‘brainless’.

A second brain Actually, guts also have a brain, or rather they ‘are’ a brain. As neuroscience has by now ascertained, the human being possesses a real brain in the belly, known as the ‘second brain’, ‘abdominal brain’ or ‘enteric nervous system’ made up of 100 million neurons, more than there are in the spinal cord. These millions of neurons allow the ‘enteric nervous system’ to operate independently from the ‘head’ brain, although it is still connected to the latter via the vagus nerve. It sends more information than it receives.22 Given the above, the opposition contrasting the Greek (occidental) model with the Asian model does not reflect the mind/body, or brain/ intestines dichotomy, but the ‘first brain/second brain’ opposition. As Schechner again notes, ‘the rasic system of response does not preclude the eye and the ear during actual performance, but [. . .] it works directly and strongly on the enteric nervous system’.23 On the contrary, in western aesthetics, based on vision and hearing, the enteric nervous system is programmatically excluded. Considering the way in which it has been codified first in Greek culture (consider Aristotle’s Poetics) and then in Judeo-Christian culture, aesthetic experience in the West is essentially based on logos and on distance: it is a disembodied experience, fundamentally concerned with comprehension/interpretation and characterized by

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the removal of the body and the lower senses, the nerves, movement, and direct physical participation. The above provides ample demonstration that, for an adequate study of the body and corporeity issue in the theatre, we cannot limit our references to humanities or social sciences, but we must look at the life sciences, especially biology and neurobiology. That is precisely what Victor Turner’s and Richard Schechner’s Performance Theory attempted to do, especially in Turner’s ultimate proposal for a bio-anthropological synthesis in the study of ritual. Better still, for a global approach capable of reconciling cultural and biological needs, genetic determinism and learning. Body, Brain, and Culture is the title of Turner’s last writing, the final chapter of his posthumous publication, The Anthropology of Performance, in which the scholar posits the (slightly crude) hypothesis of a ‘coadaptation, perhaps in the ritual process itself, of genetic and cultural information’.24 Such reference to the life sciences is what Jean-Marie Pradier’s ‘Ethnoscenology’ attempts to do. In the wake of Barba’s Theatre Anthropology (the Italian director was the first to speak of the actor’s scenic bios), from a transcultural and multidisciplinary perspective Ethnoscenology seeks to investigate the biological bases of performative practices and spectacular behaviour, once more taking both the spectator and the actor into account.

Performative practices The biological theory of performative practices and the theatrical relationship (actor–spectator) which Pradier has long worked upon,25 intends to show that: (a) in the animal world, there exists a ‘pre-human performativity’, which is basically constituted of the reactions of living organisms in the presence of other living organisms (camouflage, courtship dances, etc.); (b) ‘human performativity’ also derives from such animal performativity, its biological bases and its genetic determinisms; and (c) both actors and spectators invest the theatrical relationship with biological needs above and beyond their cultural (social, aesthetic and spiritual) needs, thus elaborating

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genetic determinisms in no less measure than conscious, learned and ‘free’ behaviour. To sum up, above and beyond being human thinking beings (endowed with a neocortex), in the theatre we are (or at least should return to being) also ‘animals’, better still ‘living organisms’ (equipped with, among other things, an archaic brain and an enteric nervous system, or second brain) and we should also behave as such. When we find ourselves, as spectators, in the presence of other living organisms, typical physical and cognitive reactions, which are absent in other situations, are triggered within us. Kinesthesia, or muscular empathy, is one such reaction since, as experimental studies have shown, it results from mere biological movements (which Eisenstein, as already noted, called ‘expressive’) recognized by the observers ‘also in the absence of any anthropomorphic silhouette’.26 On the importance for the actor to ‘recover animality’, there is a whole strand of twentieth-century theatre literature that spans from Meyerhold and Evreinov up to Grotowski, Suzuki and Barba, via Copeau and Decroux, among others. In conclusion, according to Pradier, performative behaviour – on both sides of the actor–spectator barricade, it is worth repeating – is a highly specialized elaboration of innate, genetically determined faculties and needs, based on cultural learnings. This leads us towards the last term of our small glossary: ‘embodied simulation’.

Embodied simulation The discovery of mirror neurons by a team of researchers from the University of Parma about twenty years ago, has produced broad interest and has had considerable repercussions in the field of aesthetics, particularly in theatrology (e.g. see the neuro-aesthetics of Zeki and Ramachandran, and the attempts at a neuro-aesthetics of the theatre by Calvo Merino, Hagendoorn and Gallese).27 It actually goes as far as furnishing empirico-experimental confirmations for numerous theories and hypotheses formulated in the course of the twentieth century regarding the role of the body (brain included) in aesthetic experience and the understanding of performative practices.

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In identifying the neural basis of the human being’s mimetic behaviour, the discovery of mirror neurons allows us a better understanding of the theatrical relationship, the spectator’s identification with the character, spectator–performer empathy and kinesthesia. Thus, we arrive at grasping the real content of metaphors like eating, enjoyment and rasaesthetics. Such a discovery, however, has far-reaching consequences. What has emerged is a model for the comprehension processes of actions and intentions that is completely different from the cognitivistpropositional, logo-centric model. This considerably different model is based on a motor, instead of a propositional, representation of actions and intentions. As Vittorio Gallese points out thanks to a process of motor equivalence between what is acted and what is perceived, since both situations are subtended by the activation of the same neuronal substrate – a population of mirror neurons – a form of direct comprehension of the other’s action becomes possible. Both the predictions concerning our own actions and those related to the actions of others are, in fact, modelling processes based on simulation. The same logic which subtends the modelling of our actions also subtends the modelling of the actions of others. To perceive an action or the intention that determined it – and to understand its meaning – is equivalent to internally simulating that action. This allows the observer to utilize his own resources in order to penetrate the world of the other by means of a modelling process that has the features of an unconscious, automatic and pre-linguistic mechanism of motor simulation . . . Mirror neurons provide a constitutive map of the relationship between agent and object: the mere observation of an object that is not the target of an action does not evoke any response from them.28

Provisional conclusions Given the observations made so far, we clearly have the possibility to reconsider the theatrical relationship and the spectator’s experience. Hence, we should be able, for instance, to redeem the ‘pre-interpretative reactions’ proposed in the 1980s especially in the scientific circles of Theatre Anthropology.29 As part of the

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spectator’s competence, we would then be able to include the ‘motor heritage’30 which affects the degree of mirror neuron activation in the spectator as he watches specialized performances (mime, dance, etc.). In other words, we would be able to consider the quality of the spectator’s motoric comprehension of such performances. For instance, one could easily imagine that a ballet dancer’s vision of a classical dance performance, thanks to a more solid ‘motor heritage’, would result in a much better comprehension of the performance than that of a spectator lacking such artistic skills. The same discourse would evidently apply in the case of a modern dancer beholding a modern dance performance. Are we sure, however, that a better motor comprehension would always guarantee a better intellectual understanding and a more intense empathic reaction? Clearly, we need to avoid passing from one kind of reductionism (cognitivist, logo-centric) to the opposite, biological kind. Nevertheless, when it comes to modelling the spectator’s competence, there is an urgent need for a deep reconsideration of the instruments at our disposal. We could thus leave more space for the body and corporeity, possibly beginning with the above-mentioned ‘motor heritage’, in a ‘theatrical system of receptive pre-conditions’ that I proposed some time ago.31 In any case, it is clear that the multidisciplinary discoveries and proposals summarized in the above pocket dictionary could have important effects on theatrology in the near future. We can already start thinking in terms of an embodied theatrology, in which even the researcher’s body, hence his subjectivity, would somehow be engaged. The time has come also for theatre scholars to deal with what the American philosopher David Chalmers has called neuroscience’s ‘hard problem’: consciousness (‘the real hard problem of consciousness is the issue of experience’). A problem that Gabriele Sofia has rightly proposed to be tackled in the field of theatre studies: ‘Scientific analysis, both in the theatre and in neuroscientific laboratories, cannot exclude the subject. The real problem is how to integrate him.’32

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5 Audiences’ Experience of Proximity and Co-presence in Live Dance Performance Corinne Jola and Matthew Reason

Introduction Spectators’ experiences while watching dance have recently gained much attention in scientific research. Cognitive neuroscience, a field that generally studies the neuronal processes linked with sensory stimulation, action execution, memory, language, attention, emotion and consciousness has, over the last ten years, sought to better understand how the human brain responds to watching dance movements. For example, neuroscientific publications have dealt with the neuronal responses of expert or novice spectators watching dance.1 The majority of these studies are based on the theory of mirror neurons, brain cells often described as forming a mirror neuron network. The brain areas containing these cells showed functional relevance for action execution, such as dancing, but also for passive observation.2 This overlap of brain activity during passive action observation and action execution has been explained in terms of a ‘mirroring’ mechanism: an internal, sub-threshold neuronal resonance of the movements that are seen as if the spectator him/ herself was moving. To some extent, the findings of this research 75

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capture the neural basis of the ephemeral experience of watching dance. However, there are limitations to such studies, including – and most relevant to this chapter – the technological challenges accompanying research on audience responses to live performance. Due to the constraints of brain imaging technologies and the requirement to fulfil the scientific principles of reliability and reproducibility, scientists generally employ digital displays (e.g. images, video recordings) for all types of experiments that require visual perception. While this approach has enhanced our understanding of the complex neuronal processes of perception and cognition, as a research approach into the responses of spectators to dance, it neglects numerous possible experiential differences between watching dance live and on mediated platforms (e.g. on video). Such differences include the social experience of going to the theatre and the sense of expectation that may develop in a live setting. Here, we focus on another, perhaps more elusive, difference, which is the impact of the dancer’s live ‘presence’ on the spectators’ experience. While a video recording is able to capture a performance in terms of its appearance in time and space, and represent this to us, there remains the frequently articulated feeling that something is lost in the process: the presence of the performer. Our research thus explores the impact of the dancer’s live presence on the spectators’ neuronal responses. To this end, we shall firstly articulate our understanding of presence, drawing on theoretical literature from the performing arts; we shall then engage with empirical research on the effects performer proximity and co-presence have on the experiences of the audience. At the outset, we acknowledge the limitations of our discussion, including the focus on an already published study based on a particular set of circumstances3 described in more detail below in the ‘Dataset’ section. However, we hope that by beginning to think about presence – central to artistic discourses about performance – as a modulating factor in action observation, we can place presence also within a scientific discourse on spectatorial experiences of dance.

Defining presence, questioning presence In the Oxford English Dictionary, the etymology of ‘presence’ is rooted in the Latin praesentia: ‘being at hand’. Two ideas are central

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to the concept. The most obvious is that of ‘proximity’ in space and simultaneity in time: being present in the here and the now. The other is that presence has a relational component. ‘Being at hand’ implies a dynamic relationship between two factors, which in terms of dance becomes the ‘co-presence’ between spectators and performers. A third meaning of presence is not derived from the above etymological analysis but is provided in the same dictionary in a further definition: ‘The impressive manner or appearance of a person: Richard was not a big man but his presence was overwhelming.’ Such a description of ‘stage presence’, what might also be called charisma and associated with ‘star’ power, is an important concept, but one that we do not develop further in this chapter. Presence, as discussed here, is therefore associated with the temporal and spatial relationship between spectator and performer. As such, it is directly linked to the main elements of live performance, which Wurtzler describes as ‘characterized by spatial co-presence and temporal simultaneity of audience and event’.4 For some performance scholars, this quality of presence has an ontological importance, with one example being Beckerman’s assertion of the difference between watching action on screen and on stage: ‘Eliminate the actuality of man and eliminate theatre. The experience of seeing human beings battle time and space cannot be the same as seeing visual images upon a screen.’5 If we translate such attitudes from the theatre to dance we have a sense that something is lost in the process of even the most faithful recording. More than simply occupying the same time and space as each other, co-presence implies a kind of mutuality, that is, an awareness or active going between performer and recipient. Stanton Garner, for example, notes that it is not only the audience that is looking, but that the gaze of the spectator is returned, the performers looking at the audience and asserting their subjectivity.6 Similarly, Erika Fischer-Lichte describes how ‘performances are generated and determined by a self-referential and ever-changing feedback loop’.7 This description is again of a co-presence, a mutual relationship between watched and watcher that impacts upon both. Such descriptions have been questioned. In writing about audiences’ perceptions of liveness across different art forms and media, Barker, for example, puts an emphasis on co-presence as ‘the sine qua non for theatre and performance studies’. Barker suggests

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that an important element in this relationship is that of ‘experienced risk’, in the sense that the performance is not ‘ “locked” and might be shaped by the audience responses’. However, Barker dismisses this as a ‘strange notion’, pointing out that audiences typically see a performance only once and are therefore unable to truly know in what ways it might have changed in their presence alone.8 Meanwhile, in his book Liveness, Auslander pointed out the ways in which mediatization (from recordings to large screen relays to live broadcasts to amplification) complicates the apparent essentialism of performer–spectator relationship. Most particularly, Auslander challenges the ‘unreflective assumptions’ that he perceived as underpinning value judgements based on liveness.9 In relation to ideas of presence, these ‘unreflective assumptions’ might include ideas of an ‘energy that supposedly exists between performers and spectators’, that live performance automatically establishes a ‘community’ either within the audience or between spectators and performers, and that of a cultural value or authenticity that is associated with having been at or in the presence of the performer. Elsewhere, Auslander questions the assumption that ‘the presence of the actor as one living human being before others is spiritually and psychologically liberating in itself’.10 At a theoretical level the importance and impact of audience– performer co-presence is therefore contested. Additionally, scientists are more inclined to position forms of presence that go beyond the pure sharing of time and space between two people as something metaphysical that would resist empirical investigation. Moreover, a study based on stimuli that, as Barker11 puts it, are not ‘looked at’ and shaped by the spectators, causes concern for the reliability of scientific measures.12 One of the objectives of this research is thus to explore how these ideas of presence are manifested experientially amongst audiences and whether we can empirically investigate the psychological effects of these experiences as well as the neuronal basis of presence when watching dance. As indicated above, discourses around presence are overlapping and often in conflict. Presence might be articulated in terms of simple temporal and spatial co-existence (proximity) or as a mutual reciprocity between performer and audience (copresence). Interestingly, Copeland presents what he describes as a ‘litmus test’ for presence, suggesting that ‘perhaps being “in the presence of” a performer means that we could, if we so desired,

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reach out and touch (that) someone’.13 Here presence becomes direct and unmediated proximity and it is this most absolute form of presence that we sought to investigate here.

Dataset The dataset utilized here was taken from a published study that investigated how the visual experience of spectators modulates their neuronal activity in the form of sensorimotor resonance when watching dance.14 Spectators with experience in watching ballet, or Indian dance or spectators with no experience watched three types of solo performances: ballet (concatenated solo parts from a classical version of Sleeping Beauty), Bharatanatyam (a classical Indian dance performance and henceforth referred to as Indian dance) and a miming act (consisting of non-verbal actions originally employed as a non-dance control condition and henceforth referred to as acting control condition). Notably, the different solos were all designed to be performed for the same duration (five minutes), using the same spatial extensions in a dance studio (6.8 m in width and 13.5 m in length). At points, the performers were at close quarters – in a context where the participants could, although none did, ‘reach out and touch’ them. The fact that the spectators’ neuronal responses were probed in situ, while they were watching the live performances, is uncommon for such a study. Moreover, participants’ subjective experiences were also assessed by means of a qualitative audience interview immediately after the performances. Further, a bundle of post-hoc questionnaires assessed spectators’ individual characteristics, such as their empathic abilities by means of the Autistic Questionnaire15 and the Interpersonal Relationship Index,16 and their enjoyment of watching the solos by means of rating scores from 1 (did not enjoy it at all) to 10 (enjoyed it very much) for each individual performance. Age and gender were also assessed. Spectators’ neuronal responses were measured indirectly by externally stimulating the hand and forearm area of their motor cortex and measuring the motor evoked potential that the stimulation evoked.17 The more the cortex is engaged in a movement (e.g. preparation of an action, observation of a movement), the higher its excitability; the higher the excitability, the lower the

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threshold to trigger an action potential. Thus, if the passive spectator is mentally fully drawn into the dance movements observed, the motor-evoked potentials in the arm and hand muscle groups will be larger. The qualitative interviews had a semi-structured format, with one specific prompt asking participants how they felt the circumstances of the performance had impacted on their experience. The material gathered from these responses was then grouped thematically and analyzed in the light of the à priori theoretical conceptions of presence described above. Notably, we tested neuronal responses in a live setting in an attempt to match the spectators’ visual experience. However, ‘liveness’ in itself was not investigated in the original study, nor has it received attention in the form of an experience in later studies.18

Qualitative interviews The discussion of the spectators’ responses in this section is divided into the themes of ‘proximity’ and ‘co-presence’, as identified above. Within these themes, the nature of spectators’ responses had diverse expressions: these include differences in the value placed on the experience; differences in emotional response; and differences in the description of the audience/performer relationship.

Proximity The least complex responses articulated the benefits of being closer to the performer in terms of being able to see more and see better. ‘I could see exactly what they were doing’ said one spectator. For some this included the ability to see particular details of the costume, which produced both positive (appreciative of the detail and precision) and negative responses (one spectator felt that the fabric of the ballet dancers’ dress would have looked better from a distance). However, the predominant benefit of proximity in this context was the greater access it gave to the performer’s face. Spectators reported this in terms of being able to see facial expressions and the emotions conveyed through the eyes. What is crucial here is the centrality of the face to establishing an empathetic relationship

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with the performer. One spectator remarked: ‘I really enjoyed being that close to a person’s thoughts and emotions’, while another commented: ‘You can see more of her facial expressions, her emotions, there were some smiles and some, you know, just basically the dancer’s emotions, so you were able to connect more and feel more of her movement.’ It is worth noting that these examples are one-directional, describing the spectator’s gaze upon the performer. The audience contrasted this proximity to the experience of distance in a large theatre setting and compared it to the experience of film and television. If considered purely in these terms, then closeness simply enables live dance to replicate the access to facial expressions, which constitutes a primary element in the experience of film and television. Indeed, for some spectators this was the extent of their articulation. Proximity in this sense, therefore, might allow greater empathy with the performer, but was not connected to anything particular to the live performance or to a sense of copresence.

Co-presence However, presence impacted other participants in additional ways that can be discussed in terms of co-presence. Crucially, here it was not just the performer who was close to the spectator – which is the experience of watching a close-up on screen – but a shared moment, a mutual closeness in which the spectator was also close to the performer. Again, it is worth stressing that this elicited a diversity of responses, both in terms of what was noticed and the value that was placed upon it. For some spectators, mutual proximity results in the sense of having established a direct and reciprocal relationship with the performer. ‘I was responding to the way she was smiling and the way she was looking’ said one spectator, ‘because of the smile, she made you want to smile.’ Another noted that she felt the performer was ‘asking me to smile about something . . . I felt I had to smile’. There is a mutual presence here, a reciprocity that can be thought of in terms of an empathetic, face-to-face connection. For these spectators who related proximity to reciprocity the experience was intense, intimate, real and, as a result, pleasurable and enhanced.

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For other spectators these same elements – mutual presence and reciprocity – produced very different, negative responses. In some instances this was because the intensity was too much or because the sense of being mutually involved was uncomfortable. One commented: ‘You do feel a bit self-conscious when the dancer’s performing just for you’, another that ‘I was almost too scared to look at her face and it was more like look at her feet and look at the bottom of the dress . . . I did think, no I don’t want to look her in the eye.’ Another that: ‘They came up quite close, which was quite weird, and they looked you in the eye as well [which felt] a bit disconcerting. Like you’re the audience I guess, they shouldn’t be, you should focus on them rather than them focus on you sort of thing.’ The self-consciousness that such mutual presence elicits produces a sense of involvement in the performance, which is experienced both positively and negatively in clear contrast to the spectators’ sense of invisibility when seated in the collective audience of a theatre or watching film or television. Notably, for some spectators, the combination of closeness and co-presence resulted in a particular kind of ‘specialness’ in the experience. For many this was articulated as the sensation that the performer was dancing just for them: ‘It was like performed just for me’, said one spectator; ‘they were performing for me’, said another; ‘it almost felt like they were doing it just for me.’ For those spectators with a particular disposition (habitus) to a particular form of dance, this produced a particularly intense, emotional response. This was mainly the case with ballet, as illustrated by this particular spectator: ‘the fact she was doing it for me, you know, it was wonderful, I just felt so special, oh I’ll cry [laughs]’.

Quantitative analyses Experiencing presence Of the twenty-nine participants (eighteen female), all but ten spectators (five female) made some form of statements about presence (proximity, reciprocity, specialness) in relation to the live solo performances seen. We then grouped all the statements in the two categories: proximity and co-presence outlined above.

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Presence was described as a neutral experience in only four instances, which were thus collated with the cases that did not discuss presence. We argue that the spectators who did not mention presence did not experience it as something special, but rather neutrally. We therefore refer to the group as ‘N/A’, when no information of presence was given or when presence was experienced as neutral. As can be seen from Table  5.1, there were more positive than negative responses to proximity compared to co-presence. The number of times proximity or co-presence was mentioned with a positive, negative, or N/A connotation was, however, equally distributed [Chi-square, df(4)=5.453, p=0.244]. Also, the Pearson chi-square showed no significant gender differences regarding the valence of the responses, neither for proximity [p=0.668] nor closeness [p=0.280]. Notably, and this is also true for all of the following analyses, the number of observations is very small. Hence, while it is possible that some tendencies would reach significance with a larger sample size and/or if spectators were asked to give a response to each type of presence by means of a questionnaire, one should also take into account that these observations stem from previously analyzed data. Therefore, due to multiple testing, a higher significance threshold should be considered. Seven spectators specifically linked notions of presence to only one of the three performance types. In total, 75 per cent of experienced ballet spectators and 78 per cent of the novice group (but only 38 per cent of Indian dance spectators) talked about their

TABLE 5.1 Distribution of audiences’ (N=29) evaluations of proximity and co-presence. 10* refers to the total number of spectators who did not mention presence at all in relation to these performances (i.e. neither proximity nor co-presence).

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experience of presence. However, the different proportions do not deviate significantly from an equal distribution [p=0.145]. The chisquare showed a very strong trend for more positive than negative proximity notions for ballet dancers (6 vs 1) compared to novices (2 vs 4; [df(1)=3.856, p=0.053]).19 No such trend was observed for co-presence [p=0.221]. We then investigated whether individual characteristics such as age, enjoyment, or empathy were affected by notions of presence (positive-negative-N/A) using univariate ANOVA s. Age was significant for neither proximity [p=0.156] nor co-presence experiences [p=0.941], and was thus not discussed further. However, spectators’ average enjoyment ratings across the three solos depended on their evaluation of the experience of presence [F(2,28)=4.637, p=0.019]. Spectators who reported proximity as a negative experience [5.07±1.75],20 enjoyed the performances significantly less [p=0.028] than those who either reported proximity as a positive experience [7.30±1.78] or who did not report proximity as either positive or negative [7.19±1.04; p=0.028]. Furthermore, enjoyment ratings for the individual performances led to significantly different evaluations of proximity for Indian dance [F(2,28)=4.500, p=0.021] and showed a trend for ballet [F(2,28)=2.776, p=0.081]. Descriptive data and the post-hoc t-test for the effects of the proximity experiences on individual enjoyment ratings are shown in Figure 5.1. Co-presence statements showed a very strong trend toward a significant effect on the average enjoyment ratings [F(2,28)=3.208, p=0.057]. Spectators who experienced co-presence negatively exhibited a very strong trend of significantly lower enjoyment ratings [5.33±1.58] compared to those who did not mention copresence in the interviews [7.29±1.09; p=0.054]). However, positive co-presence experiences across the three performance styles was not significantly different from either negative or neutral experiences [6.96±2.13; p≥0.213]. For the performance-specific enjoyment ratings, we observed a very strong trend toward the significant effect of co-presence on the acting control condition [F(2,28)=1.886, p=0.053] and a trend toward a significant effect on enjoyment ratings of ballet [F(2,28)=2,574, p=0.095]. See Figure 5.1 for further contrasts. Neither tests for empathic abilities showed significant links with proximity or co-presence experiences (AQ : p≥0.668; IRI : p≥0.156).

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FIGURE 5.1 Effect of presence experiences on enjoyment ratings (Mean±SD). Top: Proximity; Bottom: Co-presence.

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As we had previously found that the ability to take another person’s perspective – one of the subscales of the IRI – modulated sensorimotor simulation,21 we tested the four IRI subscales22 independently. We found a strong trend toward the significant effect of co-presence ratings on perspective-taking [F(2,28)=3,052, p=0.064]. Post-hoc t-tests showed that spectators who reported negative co-presence experiences [16.20±3.70] when compared to those who reported neutral co-presence [20.94±3.82] scored lower on perspective-taking abilities. None of the other subscales or ttests reached significance [p≥0.132].

Neuronal modification Descriptive values and post-hoc t-tests on the effects of presence experiences (positive-negative-N/A) on the spectators’ performancespecific sensorimotor resonance23 in the forearm and hand muscle groups are shown in Figure  5.2 for proximity and Figure  5.3 for co-presence. Proximity analyses showed no significant main effect [all p≥0.176]. Notably, the interaction between performance and proximity showed a trend towards a significant effect in the hand if age was not considered as a covariate factor [F(2,26)=2.682, p=0.087]. This trend is based on the differences in proximity experience in response to watching ballet [F(2,26)=2.526, p=0.099] rather than in response to Indian dance-specific movements [F(2,26)=0.053, p=0.948]. However, none of the post-hoc t-tests reached significance [p≥0.171]. The same analysis for co-presence showed, however, a significant main effect in how it was experienced on the forearm [F(2,52)=5.700, p=0.009] and a strong trend toward a significant main effect of dance-specific differences on the hand [F(1,25)=2.941, p=0.099]. All other p-values were ≥0.120. This means that co-presence experiences have a significant effect on sensorimotor resonance on the forearm in both dance-specific movements and that only hand MEP s were responsive to dance-specific performances. The posthoc t-test showed that co-presence experienced negatively led to significantly reduced MEP s in the forearm [−0.96±1.13] compared to co-presence experienced positively [0.80±1,22; p=0.012] or neutrally [0.64±1.07; p=0.017].

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FIGURE 5.2 Effects of proximity on sensorimotor simulation. Mean±SD of MEPs in the forearm (top) and hand (bottom) in response to how proximity was experienced (positive-neutral-negative).

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FIGURE 5.3 Effects of co-presence on sensorimotor simulation. Mean±SD of MEPs in the forearm (top) and hand (bottom) in response to how co-presence was experienced (positive-neutral-negative).

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Discussion Presence is an elusive and far-reaching term that shifts between metaphysical, phenomenological and temporal/spatial descriptions. Importantly, however, two-thirds of our spectators noticed and reported presence experiences. Drawing upon some of the diverse conceptual discussions and differences in understanding the relevance of presence, we identified two connected areas – proximity and co-presence – that we felt we could empirically interrogate through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. We defined proximity in terms of a ‘nearness’ in space, characterized as the potential ability to touch the performer (even if that was never acted upon). Co-presence was defined in terms of a sense of reciprocity, that both spectator and performer were ‘mutually’ aware of each other sharing the same time and space. Notably, proximity and co-presence as two forms of presence experience were found to be a useful and encompassing concept here since all of the spectators’ notions could be assigned to either group and were often mentioned equally. However, we found suggestions of different relationships with both proximity and copresence across different forms of performances and categories of spectators. These differences are further discussed below. The qualitative interviews showed that spectators were more likely to talk about experiences of proximity than of co-presence; we also observed a tendency for spectators to report a more diverse experience of co-presence (positive and negative) than of proximity. The quantitative data further showed that spectators who had visual experience in Indian dance mentioned presence experiences in general proportionally less than experienced ballet spectators or novices. This is rather surprising, since presence in the form of proximity was often related to facial expressions that are hugely relevant in the Indian dance employed here. That presence was an important element of Indian dance can be seen in the spectators’ low enjoyment ratings for this performance if they also experienced proximity negatively. We thus propose that Indian dance spectators were more familiar with forms of presence and were therefore less likely to report it. Importantly, we found that presence experiences were significantly associated with enjoyment ratings in both proximity and co-presence experiences. This is of huge relevance since enjoyment was previously found to be linked with neuronal responses to watching dance.24

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Here, negatively experienced proximity led to a reduced enjoyment of the Indian dance and, to a lesser extent, to reduced enjoyment when watching the ballet. Furthermore, negatively experienced co-presence was found to reduce enjoyment in watching the acting control condition and, to a minor degree, also in watching ballet. Particularly for co-presence, we found that the experience was significantly linked to sensorimotor resonance in the forearm across all dances. Positively experienced co-presence and neutral experienced co-presence led to increased sensorimotor resonance when compared to negative experienced co-presence. This is in line with other studies which found that negative emotional valence reduces sensorimotor resonance in relevant muscle groups.25 In our examination, it thus seems that while sensorimotor resonance is modulated by co-presence for a variety of dance moves, proximity experiences affect sensorimotor resonance dependent on the dances. In particular, the differences in proximity are further manifested in the tendency for spectators’ sensorimotor resonance when watching ballet only. Moreover, MEP s classified for proximity experiences in response to Indian dance showed a different – although not significant – pattern with neutral experiences showing the smallest MEP s. This is in line with the study by Borgomaneri et  al. which found an increase in excitability for positive as well as negative emotional stimuli compared to neutral stimuli.26 In our study, another interesting difference between spectators’ experiences was that experienced ballet spectators exhibited a strong tendency to report proximity more often as a positive than as a negative experience when compared to novices. We therefore propose that different forms of performance invite or depend upon different forms of presence. Drawing on other research with dance audiences we would suggest that ballet is experienced as a visual form, whereby proximity produces a stronger visual encounter, but in comparison to other dance forms it does not rely on mutuality between performer and audience. The experience of presence and particularly co-presence is therefore connected to specific aesthetic traditions as well as to neuronal processes. There are some limitations to this study. First, only a few differences in our sample reach statistical significance levels. This is not surprising considering the small sample. Second, the analyses were based on an existing dataset and significance levels should be corrected for multiple testing. Moreover, the original dataset

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explored differences in neuronal responses based on spectators’ visual experience. Here we were not able to include visual expertise as an additional factor. Aspects of visual familiarity with the performances are thus not visible in this study. Finally, for comparison reasons, the sensorimotor resonance tests were based on previously conducted analyses, which looked at dance-specific movements only. This means that differences in the acting control condition were related to the dances and not treated independently. Nevertheless, we showed that spectators experienced presence in particular ways during a performance, and that differences in how they are reported are potentially linked to how audiences resonate with the observed actions. This is an important aspect for future research on action observation and social interaction. It is also interesting to relate our findings to understandings of kinaesthetic empathy. Here we found that co-presence experiences and empathic abilities were linked. Spectators who experienced copresence negatively scored lower on perspective-taking abilities than those who experienced co-presence positively. While proximity could be characterized as involving the self looking at the other, protected by the aesthetic and psychological barrier of the fourth wall, co-presence entails the return of the gaze and, within that, the existential challenge that comes from being looked at. We propose that this can be too challenging if the spectator is lacking in perspective-taking abilities. This finding expands Jola et al., where experiencing performers’ closeness was challenging for certain spectators’ personalities.27 Thus, we may term a kinaesthetic response that includes a negative and hindering enjoyment, a kinaesthetic dissonance characterized by uneasiness or discomfort at the reciprocal presence of the other. Inevitably this short study perhaps raises more questions than it answers. To some degree, depending on the type of performance, we found that both proximity and co-presence affect enjoyment. We thus suggest that experiences of different forms of presence affect spectators’ enjoyment of dance. While proximity, in terms of providing the spectator with the opportunity to see more and see better, might be considered less problematically enjoyable, enhancing a sense of kinaesthetic empathy, the challenging experience of copresence impacts in ways that are more unique to live experience and raises questions about the discomforting experience of empathy that is present in several types of dances.

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Acknowledgements: The research presented in this chapter was developed as a part of a larger project ‘Watching dance: Kinaesthetic Empathy’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK.

Further references R. M. Conroy, ‘Dance’, in A. C. Ribeiro (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Aesthetics (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012). F. Hall, ‘Dance Notation and Choreology’, in R. Copeland, C. Marshall (eds), What Is Dance? (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). Corinne Jola, Phil McAleer, Marie-Hélène Grosbras, Scott A. Love, Gordon Morison, Frank E. Pollick, ‘Uni- and Multisensory Brain Areas are Synchronised Across Spectators when Watching Unedited Dance’, i-Perception 4 (2013). Valerie Preston-Dunlop, Lesley-Ann Sayers, ‘Gained in Translation: Recreation as Creative Practice’, Dance Chronicle 34(1) (2011). Matthew Reason, ‘Watching Dance, Drawing the Experience and Visual Knowledge’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46(4) (2010). Matthew Reason, Corinne Jola, R. Kay, D. Reynolds, J.-P. Kauppi, Marie-Hélène Grosbras, J. Tohka, Frank E. Pollick, ‘Spectators’ Aesthetic Experience of Sound and Movement in Dance Performance’, The Psychology Aesthetics and the Arts (under revision).

6 Theatre and Science: Reflections on Theatrical Efficacy in Antonin Artaud Lorraine Dumenil*

From the plague to mirror neurons: A hypothetical reading A part of the most recent research in theatre studies has developed an interdisciplinary attention on converging points between theatre and science. This new perspective has attempted to identify an a posteriori scientific legitimacy in the current developments of cognitive neuroscience for the revolutionary intuitions of certain director-dramatists from the past century (Meyerhold, Eisenstein, Stanislavski, and Barba). Theatre scholars have been conscious of the danger underlying the attempt to make a sort of latest ratio of neuroscience. Rather than treating neuroscience like a deus ex machina, capable of resolving the ‘unforeseen’ problems of theatre theory (not to mention the evident anachronism of such an attempt), they have sought to study the fruitful passages that could originate between the two disciplines. Starting from a consideration of the evident interest in the sciences on the part of theatre makers from the past century,1 scholars have done their utmost to show how 93

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the current scientific episteme would allow for a completion and broadening of particular dramaturgical conceptions. Primary among such conceptions is the conviction that the efficacy of scenic action is rooted in the complex interpersonal relationship between the actor and the spectator. In this sense, the discovery of mirror neurons has attracted the attention of theatre scholars. Enabling the study of a ‘shared space of action’ between he who acts and he who observes, this indeed constitutes what Clelia Falletti has defined as a magnificent gift from neuroscience, ‘a concrete, physical grounding for the actor/ spectator connection, which is the very grounding underlying theatre itself – the very stuff that theatre is made of’.2 Should we, therefore, regard this ‘shared space of action’ as a new name for a phenomenon that has already been addressed with the aid of other conceptual instruments borrowed from psychology and anthropology?3 Perhaps. The fact remains that, with its precision and the emphasis it places upon the visual component of our capacity for mimesis, the neuro-scientific perspective opens renewed trajectories towards an understanding of theatrical action. We would like to illustrate this by proposing a small anachronistic reading of the theories belonging to one of the greatest revolutionary figures in twentieth-century theatre: Antonin Artaud.4 We shall be looking at his theory of effective action, which is strictly linked to the issue of the ‘gratuitousness’ of the theatrical act. Thus, we shall try to show how recent discoveries in neuroscience, particularly those related to the mirror neuron system, shed new light upon his theoretical views on theatre and enable a clarification of relative issues, above all those regarding the strong will to conceive theatre as a science that is ultimately certain of its effects. In the perspective of a theatre whose explicit aim is ‘to heal life’, Artaud tries to imagine the conditions according to which theatrical representation might ‘really’ affect the spectator. To this end, he turns to a double, strongly paradoxical image: on the one hand, the image of the magician, and on the other hand, that of the surgeon. Concerning the efficacy of theatre, Artaud actually writes that ‘it really is a matter of magic’,5 an idea he would take up again twenty years later when he speaks of the ‘truly healing magic of a theatre restored to itself’. Artaud underlines that the ‘magical’ quality of theatrical representation is deeply related to its faculty of illusion. Theatre makes us believe in the reality that unfolds onstage; we the

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spectators, engaged in the ‘as if’ domain, are truly affected by such a spectacle. Following Lévi-Strauss’ famous analysis of an Indian ritual in his article on ‘symbolic efficacy’, we know that magic is fundamentally a matter of belief; what guarantees its efficacy is the adhesion to a system of representation. Artaud emphasizes this: ‘our ability to believe, to delude ourselves, is immense’.6 Consequently, ‘theatre is the most impossible thing to save in the world. An art based entirely on the power of illusion, which it is now unable to evoke, is left with nothing but extinction’.7 To become extinct, or radically change its paradigm, resting no longer on ‘the verisimilitude or the non-verisimilitude of action’ but ‘on communicative force and the reality of such action’.8 In order for such ‘communicative force’ to be effective, it would have to be born again from a functioning that is based on science. As Artaud himself affirmed in ‘An Affective Athleticism’: ‘the time of random magic, of poetry that is not supported by science, is over’.9 Artaud writes in the first manifesto for the Alfred Jarry Theatre, which he founded in 1926: The spectator who comes to us knows that he comes to undergo a true operation, in which not only his mind, but his senses and flesh are also at stake. He will hence go to the theatre as if he is going to the surgeon or the dentist. In that same state of mind, obviously thinking that he will not die for it, but that it is a serious matter and he will not come out intact.10 Theatrical representation is conceived as a medical operation affecting the entire ‘body-mind’11 of the spectator. The reference to a surgeon or a dentist serves as a guarantee of theatrical action’s efficacy, of its real, not virtual, nature. Nevertheless, in attempting to provide a scientific basis for the efficacy of action on the spectator, Artaud bumps into the problem of distance: how can one imagine the efficacy of action at a distance? In what way can viewing a gesture produce real effects in the spectator’s body? Therein lies the old problem of catharsis, which Artaud attempts to resolve, by invoking the model of the plague. In his writing, it is possible to find formulations which echo certain current neuro-scientific findings. It might therefore be worth risking a little anachronistic reading of the theory in The Theatre and its Double, in the hope that this would allow us to fuel the paradoxes too often viewed as lacking in clarity.

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The magician, the surgeon, and neuroscience The famous distinction between the magician and the surgeon established by Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction allows us to clarify what separates magic from medicine, that is, the two therapeutic models to which Artaud refers. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician heals a sick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient’s body. The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself . . . The surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating into the patient’s body . . .12 The difference between a surgeon and a magician lies in the kind of relationship they establish with the patient’s body. The magician’s activity is based on a contact which maintains distance, whereas the surgeon’s efficacy implies a profound intimacy between the operator and the body of the infirm. In his reference to surgery, Artaud imagines the real, unquestionable, ‘scientific’ efficacy of the theatrical device that affects the body as if such a device were really touching it. With reference to magic, Artaud instead indicates the strongly paradoxical nature of such an action, which lies in touching at a distance. Such a phenomenon would indeed be difficult to imagine without thinking of the sympathetic influences between beings that are characteristic of the magical universe. The author evokes the plague as a model to explain the function of theatrical action,13 because the way in which this epidemic acts couples both the magical efficacy of distant contact and the scientific precision of an illness that affects the body directly. The plague is defined as a subtle infection; even though it does not require actual contact, it still has a real organic effect: a ‘palpable contact, albeit subtle’, which ‘cannot be restricted to an infection via direct contact’14 and ‘organically produces the most excessive of disorders’.15 However, it is difficult, as one might imagine, to think of such a reference to the plague as something other than a metaphor . . . In

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any case, the descriptions found in The Theatre and its Double, if one takes them literally, could generate a paradigm which functions in a way that is closely related to this ‘shared space of action’. It is in such a space that recent studies have identified the possibility of a new understanding of the theatrical device. Attempting to define the ‘magical mimetism’ at the heart of theatrical action, Artaud suggests that we imagine it as a mechanism of ‘resonance’ between the actor and the spectator: To create art is to deprive a gesture of its reverberation in the organism, whereas this reverberation, if the gesture is made in the conditions and with the force required, incites the organism and, through it, the entire individuality, to take attitudes in harmony with the gesture.16 Artaud invites us to rediscover the true science of the actor, a science that would replace ancient magic and allow the mechanism of theatrical action to be based on scientific foundations. There is, Artaud reminds us, a ‘science of the emotions’, which lies in an intimate knowledge of the way the human body functions. Such a science proposes two convictions, which would then be supported by neuro-scientific findings: on the one hand, there is the inseparability of mind and body,17 and on the other hand, there is the motor embodiment of the spectator who beholds an action as it happens before his eyes. This point was tackled in more depth at a July 1936 conference that the artist held during his trip to Mexico, where he extended the theory on theatre he had started in Paris. In the essay ‘La fausse supériorité des élites’, Artaud affirms that theatre is ‘a sacred act which involves both he who sees it and he who performs it’. The principle of such a theory lies in ‘the basic psychological idea of theatre’ that is constituted by the following realization: ‘a gesture that we behold and that the mind reconstructs in images is as valuable as a gesture we perform’.18 Here Artaud develops a scene that is precisely that of the ‘shared space of action’, in which watching a gesture is equivalent to executing that same gesture. The emphasis is placed on the faculty of vision, which allows us to shift the weight from the models of psychology or of magic (symbolic efficacy), or again that of surgery (‘medical’ efficacy, which plays on the effective, surgical manipulation

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of the body) towards the neurobiological model of ‘embodied simulation’. The efficacy of theatre engages the powers of visual contagion, of touching at a distance, which relies on the mimetic power of a vision.

Catharsis and gratuitousness There is more to it. One of the main reasons why Artaud identifies theatre with the plague, beyond the way in which infection occurs without a direct contact between the two phenomena, lies in the gratuitousness of the performed action. Artaud also sees gratuitousness because the plague-stricken person carries out ‘acts that are useless and lacking in present benefits’ (‘des actes inutiles et sans profit pour l’actualité’) and the infected organism dies ‘without material destruction’ (‘sans destruction de matière’).19 As far as theatre is concerned, gratuitousness refers both to the actor, who does not really carry out the actions he prepares (‘he is entirely penetrated and upset by his own emotions without any benefit for reality’20) and to the spectator, who is deeply changed by what he sees without any threat to his life. Thus, theatre ‘provokes, without killing, the most mysterious alterations in the individual’s mind’.21 The analogy between theatre and the plague, as we have seen, is based on an inversion of terms: the plague kills without modifying the body, while theatre modifies the organism – of both actor and spectator – without killing it. The plague induces people to carry out acts of no real consequence, whereas the theatre produces alterations without the execution of any real act. It transpires, therefore, that the notion of ‘gratuitousness’ is utilized in a strongly paradoxical manner – almost contradicting any form of logical reasoning. Such a model of gratuitousness is, however, particularly important with regard to a definition of how theatrical catharsis works because, according to Artaud, ‘gratuitousness’ consists essentially of the fact that we may at the same time realize and not realize an action: the actor may execute an action which lacks absolutely nothing for it to be considered real, but it remains virtual. In the same way, a spectator may experience a total crisis, without rising from his chair or doing a single action. Artaud adds, ‘the mind believes what it sees and does what it believes’.22 Vision and action exchange prerogatives: watching the actor’s action

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accomplished, the spectator ‘reconstructs it with images’, something which activates a certain ‘doing’ within him. No matter how virtual that may be, it is in no way less real: I defy any spectator to whom such violent scenes will have transferred their blood, who will have felt in himself the transit of a superior action, who will have seen the extraordinary and essential movements of this thought illuminated in extraordinary deeds . . . I defy that spectator to give himself up, once outside the theatre, to ideas of war, riot, and blatant murder . . . let it not be forgotten that though a theatrical gesture is violent, it is disinterested; and that the theatre teaches precisely the uselessness of action which, once done, is to be done no longer.23 If it is true, as we have learned from the discovery of mirror neurons, that the sight of an action produces a neuronal discharge in the spectator whereby virtual potentials for action are activated, we then understand that the element of ‘gratuitousness’ that defines catharsis recognizes the ‘shared space of action’ between actor and spectator24 as a new interpretation that clarifies the matter. If the spectator no longer needs to execute the action upon seeing it, that is because he has already carried it out, simulating it in his own body. What the gratuitousness of theatre brings into play is what Vittorio Gallese defines as the mechanism of ‘embodied simulation’;25 this implies that observing an action brings about its virtual execution.

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PART THREE

The Complexity of Theatre and Human Cognition

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Introduction: Complexity, Cognition, and the Actor’s Pedagogy Victor Jacono We see ourselves as process immersed in process beyond ourselves . . . Process is the immanence of the infinite in the finite.1

Stanislavski, to begin with In the dialogues between theatre and cognitive neuroscience, reference has often been made to the work of Konstantin Stanislavski. His interest in the psychological and physiological studies of his time (in particular, the theories of Ribot, Sechenov, and Pavlov) and the ways in which these may have influenced his famous ‘system’ has been widely debated. The importance of such a debate derives also from the fact that his so-called ‘system’, in its various transformations, challenges and rejections, continues to influence approaches to actor training to this very day. What interests us in the present chapter, instead, is the actor’s pedagogy as exemplified in Stanislavski’s research-based ‘work upon himself’ engaging human cognition in its complexity to foster the actor’s creative growth. 103

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The reference to complexity in this case does not imply that Stanislavski was familiar with the complexity theories that during the course of the twentieth century would gradually usher science from the epistemology of modernity into the systemic and ecological understanding of life processes. Jonathan Pitches has actually argued that Stanislavski’s ‘system’ was fundamentally Newtonian, i.e. rooted in the analytical and mechanistic epistemology of modern science.2 I disagree with Pitches, and instead posit that the actor’s pedagogy, when it follows the example of Stanislavski’s research, is de facto an example of the general complexity rationale advocated by the French epistemologist Edgar Morin for all fields of inquiry, especially the life sciences: ‘knowing is at the same time separating and connecting, it is to make analysis and synthesis’.3 In his pedagogical novel, An Actor’s Work on Himself, Stanislavski systematically identified and exemplified the principal elements of the actor’s work according to what, for him, were the laws of an innate organic and creative nature.4 According to Stanislavski, in the actor this creative order worked at a subconscious level, and conscious technique helped the actor in two ways, in ‘getting the subconscious to start working’,5 and in giving the actor ‘the ability not to get in its way once it does’.6 On the one hand, Stanislavski provides the actor with a system of analytical tools proper that ‘has to be studied in its separate parts and then grasped as a whole, so as to understand its overall structure and fundamentals’.7 On the other hand, the Russian director instructs the actor to put the ‘system’ (analysis) aside and to allow nature to work onstage.8 Stanislavski emphasizes the above in the first part of the final chapter of An Actor’s Work on Himself. In the second part,9 he makes some further important statements about his system. While noting that science had yet to explain the workings of the subconscious, he claims to have dedicated all his efforts in order to find practical ways of indirect access to it, i.e. to nature’s creative order or ‘inspiration’.10 He lauds those actors who are capable of mastering such a technique whereby every minimal gesture is calculated and every performative step they make moves logically and coherently to the next. Still, what such technical excellence lacked, according to Stanislavski, was the unpredictable that ‘snatches the floor from under our feet and suddenly transports us onto another terrain, which the spectator has never stepped upon but now realizes to have always known it, by intuition . . . the

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unpredictable gushes from the depths of organic nature, and even the actor is overwhelmed by it, dominated, dragged in a sphere he himself does not know’.11 Stanislavski describes this actor’s performance as: splendid in its daring illogicality, rhythmic in its a-rhythmicality, psychological in the very negation of common psychology. Rich in leaps. It subverts every norm and it is precisely because of this that it is beautiful and appealing. But it cannot be repeated . . . The actor himself can do nothing. It is not he who creates, but his nature and he is but an instrument in its hands.12 Nature is Stanislavski’s creative artist. Stanislavski’s creative nature couples logic and coherence with spontaneous inspiration, the order of the machine with the unpredictable. To some this seems to be a contradiction. Morin would say that such an apparent contradiction resonated with the dialogical core of complexity.13 We, as living beings, are complex creative machines; Stanislavski knew this, both analytically and in synthesis, that is in the complex experience of performance, by sensing (feeling) himself proprioceptively and others kinaesthetically in the performative act.

Epistemology: ‘How knowing is done’14 How is knowing done in the actor’s pedagogy? As the epistemologist Isabelle Stengers points out, ‘tools modify the ones who use them. To learn how to use a tool is to enter in a new relation with reality, both an aesthetic and practical relation’.15 The actor’s pedagogy is a stark reminder that the knower’s primary tool of knowledge, the performer’s primary instrument, is him/herself. Stanislavski, the author of the ‘system’ observed in no uncertain terms that ‘no science of art can be packed up in books and extracted for it to be taught to students and put back in circulation qua living creative units A, B or C! The human being himself, Man in his entirety, is the book of creative work.’16 Beyond the acquisition of performance skills, actor training is a systematic research process leading to a modification of the self, opening to the possibility of entering with the totality of one’s being in a new aesthetic and practical relation with reality. The actor’s pedagogy thus addresses complex problems

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related to human knowing, being and doing, or better acting, integrated in performance. Beginning with Stanislavski and Copeau (to mention the Russian and French roots), those who took up pedagogy as a research-based practice in the theatre may indeed have referred to a variety of theoretical instruments and practical examples that allowed them to advance their analyses of the complex problems they were addressing. What is important to keep in mind is that this research is taking place subjectively and inter-subjectively by living people mastering a live art form. It is a research conducted analytically, yes, but ‘in life’, to borrow one of Stanislavski’s expressions, i.e. in the complexity of a living process. The following extract from a letter Stanislavski sent to Elizabeth Hapgood in 1936 is quite telling: What does it mean, writing a book about the system? It does not mean writing down something that is already cut and dried. The system lives in me but it has no form. It is only when you try to find a form for it that the real system is created and defined. In other words, the system is created in the very process of being written down.17 It is easy for historiographic analyses of performance, which are mainly literature-based, to lose sight of the living complexity that is performance. In this sense, historiography risks treating the performative dimension of the actor’s pedagogy as some sort of black box (reminiscent of the behaviourist approach long discarded in psychology), looking merely at documented inputs (social, political, cultural, philosophical, scientific . . .) and the resulting outputs (problematic for the fleeting nature of performance and the necessary partiality of its traces in non-performative supports). Scholarship often happens by way of an analysis of such inputs and outputs, seeking particularly to disentangle them and to interpret them in terms of influences that might have served as points of reference, as points on a map, for the complex live navigation, the living synthesis, that is performance and performative research in the actor’s pedagogy. This may be because we are constrained by language, and even more so by writing, the invention that launched science as an objective undertaking detached from the contingencies of subjective and inter-subjective lived experience. Writing and

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reading, however, are complex processes undertaken by complex living beings, just as in acting and spectating. Knowing is primarily performative, a complex, living process connecting complex living beings, no matter how abstract the technological supports and traces, the texts or maps, of such a living process.

Action at the core of cognition The exchange with cognitive neuroscience interests us because it throws light upon the complexity of human knowing through studies on how our biological organization is related to how knowing is done. It is interesting to notice that cognitive science looks at knowing in terms of interconnected biological, psychological, social and cultural levels of organization. As the psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Merlin Donald points out,‘under the right circumstances a small change in the individual nervous system can generate a huge change at the level of culture’.18 At the same time, brain scientists are becoming increasingly aware of how socio-cultural dynamics, qua the concrete environmental conditions in which everyday living is situated, affect the development of the individual at the genetic level.19 Connections between levels of organization can be traced both ways, bottom-up (from genes to culture) and top-down (from culture to genes). Ultimately, the process integrating these levels can be identified in action, intended as the situated, relational (intentional) doings of living beings that evolved sophisticated nervous systems (brains) in the course of interactions with their environment. Action is the main connection between theatre and cognitive neuroscience. Brain scientists, in fact, hold that the complexity of our nervous system is designed for one purpose: to improve the efficiency of our actions. We are not passive processing machines but organisms built for interacting in the world . . . Elaborate sensory and memory capabilities are of use to an organism only in improving how it interacts with the world . . . learning and memory functions are of use only in enabling an animal to draw on its history to modify its future actions. Effective action is the ultimate goal for all internal processing.20

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In the theatre, irrespectively of the thematic, aesthetic and poetic choices made for a given performance, those choices will always have to be rendered in action. Whatever those choices may be, it is through action that the live experiment in what it means to be human – which theatre aspires to be – can take place with the spectator. Action narrates (with and without words) the human condition in its biological, psychological, social and cultural complexity. From its beginnings, from Stanislavski’s psychophysical approaches to Meyerhold’s biomechanics, the actor’s pedagogy ultimately sought to understand the complexity of human action, because the creative process in the theatre depended on the ability to recreate an action charged with creative potential for both the actor and the spectator. Stanislavski and Meyerhold analyzed the mechanics of action also by referring to the science available at their time, but more importantly, they undertook this task through the experience of action itself. Theirs is a primary example of embodied knowing, certainly embedded within the socio-cultural and political dynamics of their time and influenced by the scientific knowledge available to them at the time, but mediated by the complex fabric that action sets in motion in live performance. Both as theoreticians and as practitioners, the benefits that can be gained from the exchange between theatre and cognitive neuroscience may indeed depend on our ability to comprehend the nature of this fabric in its complexity.

The complex fabric of knowing In the course of the twentieth century, thanks to important developments in disparate fields of inquiry, along with gaining new insights on nature’s creative order, we saw the possibility of changing our very conception of cognition or knowing itself. With the heritage of Descartes, Newton, and Laplace, modern science regarded knowing as the faculty of a bodiless mind seeking objectively to fit all the pieces of the cosmic puzzle in the order of a reversible and predictable clockwork. To understand the workings of such a sophisticated clockwork, all we had to do was to analyze it, break it down further and further with the conviction that understanding the parts would bring us to an understanding of the whole.

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The second law of thermodynamics reinstated the notion of the irreversibility of time (i.e. the irreversibility of natural processes) to eighteenth-century science. Quantum physics revealed events at the atomic and subatomic levels that challenged consolidated analytical procedures. On the other hand, General Systems Theory allowed us to figure out connections between levels of organization all the way up from molecules to ecosystems,21 and the theory of selforganization revealed how at each level interactions among elements could give rise to the spontaneous emergence or transformation of dynamic patterns. Dynamical Systems Theory22 provided the mathematics that allowed us to model such phenomena. Fractal geometry allowed us to picture the iterative processes seemingly underlying nature’s most sophisticated pattern formations and Chaos Theory, again based on the principle of iterative processes, provided the mathematical modelling for nature’s unpredictability. Thus, twentieth-century science started regarding nature as a complex and dynamic system of interconnected complex systems, which we could no longer approach merely via analysis and in which an imperceptible change at the micro level could bring about a conspicuous change at the macro level. As Morin points out, we would now have to reconsider the relationship between parts and wholes in terms of emergence, in which the synthetic whole is more than the sum of the parts (exhibiting properties not present in the parts) and at the same time less than the sum of the parts (inhibiting properties found in the individual parts).23 These developments were of fundamental importance for the life sciences, including neuroscience, but their influence was pervasive, interesting fields spanning from education to health, from politics to business management.24 What interests us in the present context, however, is what such developments implied for the very way we think about knowing, i.e. for our epistemology. If before knowing was regarded as the faculty of a bodiless mind looking objectively upon a stable cosmos, a science open to complexity problematized human cognition by situating it within the very fabric of the natural processes it sought to know. From a complexity perspective, human knowing is regarded as a subjective, i.e. an active, relational process that takes place within and between living systems that are organized biologically, psychologically, socially, culturally, and ecologically. Regarding knowing as a process embedded across levels of organization, and no longer merely as the workings of a conscious,

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reflective mind, science could now consider processes affecting human cognition that lay beyond the limits of conscious reflection. In their review of cognitive studies on memory, Rémy Versace et al. provide a picture that is telling of the complex processes from which knowledge emerges: Memory is episodic since it contains traces that reflect the contents of past experiences. It is multimodal since the properties of these experiences, conserved within the traces, are distributed across multiple neuronal systems that are responsible, in particular, for sensorimotor and emotional processing. Memory is dynamic because, on the one hand, its content evolves constantly throughout life and, on the other, because knowledge emerges almost continuously from the dynamics of the neuronal system. Items of knowledge are no longer fixed entities but, on the contrary, are constantly evolving as a function of the status of the neuronal system that generates them. Finally, memory is functional and situational because knowledge emerges from the subject’s activity in a given situation. This emergence of knowledge depends on a type of resonance between the properties of the past experiences which have shaped the neuronal networks and the properties of present experiences.25 A picture of human knowing which practically replicates that articulated in the testimony of Odin Teatret actress Julia Varley: The [actor’s] process can be bound to physical sensations, abstractions, fragments of information that are perceived in different ways by the brain and that are remembered/forgotten by a memory that is more probably situated in cells than in thought . . . Why is it so difficult to understand that the body remembers and that action contains such a quantity of information that can never be controlled by consciousness?26 Of course, factors affecting cognition extend beyond the individual system also in terms of the social and cultural dimensions that have evident effects on the very development of our cognitive abilities, as epigenetics and studies on feral children have shown.27

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Pedagogy as the space for creative, conjoint action Within a complexity perspective that regards cognition as an active process organized at different levels, we need to highlight that all instances of human knowing are necessarily embodied and embedded within the complex fabric of nature. In this respect, our complexity outlook on cognition resonates with the phenomenological perspectives adopted by neurobiologist Francisco Varela, philosopher Evan Thompson and psychologist Eleanor Rosch, in The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. In their ‘enactive’ view, Varela, Thompson and Rosch held that ‘cognition is not the representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs’.28 More recently, the physiologist Alain Berthoz and the philosopher Jean-Luc Petit again coupled phenomenology (in particular that of Husserl) and cognitive science again to highlight the centrality of action in knowing: ‘the brain is essentially an organ for action’.29 According to Berthoz and Petit, our experience of the world is primarily kinaesthetic. They see the world as the potential space for action, and this space is inter-subjectively co-constituted, i.e. by our ‘taking part in a conjoint action through which there arises a unique world which is, at the same time, a world for several agents’.30 Theatre, essentially the actor–spectator relationship, is a perfect manifestation of the space for action, indeed for creative action, as illustrated by Clelia Falletti in the chapter opening the present volume. A key neuronal mechanism subtending the possibility of conjoint action, as several studies in the present volume have pointed out, can be identified in the mirror neuron mechanism, which again is telling of the centrality of action to cognition. Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and philosopher Corrado Sinigaglia, in fact, claim that ‘a brain which acts is also and above all a brain which understands’.31 Since Rizzolatti came across the so-called ‘mirrorneurons’ in the early 1990s, his research team at the University of Parma has focused its studies on a mechanism that unifies action perception and action execution . . . The essence of this mechanism – called the mirror

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mechanism – is the following: each time an individual observes another individual performing an action, a set of neurons that encode that action is activated in the observer’s cortical motor system.32 The mirror mechanism, therefore, seems to allow us to understand the actions of others at a very basic, motor level, although as Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia themselves point out, this mechanism ‘solely allows us to understand the actions of others “from the inside”, encoding them in terms of our own motor possibilities’.33 Moreover, Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia show that this mirror mechanism is also involved in the observer’s processing of the intentions of the doer, always at the basic motor level.34 It is no wonder that this research has attracted the attention of theatre practitioners and theoreticians, inevitably marking a new series of debates on the importance of the neurobiological level of the actor–spectator relationship.35 Studies on this mirror mechanism, however, may also help us gain a better understanding of the inter-subjective dimension of the actor’s pedagogy. There are instances in a performer’s training when s/he is required to watch (observe) and immediately to do. In such instances, the performer needs to inhibit the preoccupation with ‘understanding’ intellectually, as well as linguistically and culturally, the difficulty of the technique observed in order to be able to engage that same technique immediately, at the motor level, by way of ‘kinaesthetic learning’. The Balinese master I Wayan Lendra, comparing Grotowski’s approach to training36 with the formation undergone by apprentices of Balinese traditional theatre, noted that kinaesthetic learning is the most important aspect of the learning process in both Balinese traditional training and in Grotowski’s training. Verbal communication, describing what is being learned, is not a part of the training process. This is an ancient way in which a novice learns through the body directly rather than through a preliminary mental process. Grotowski says that ‘the body itself functions like a brain’; it can record and later recall movement patterns and emotion in a seemingly instinctive way when stimuli are given.37

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The wording adopted by I Wayan Lendra is, of course, indicative of an understanding that still equates ‘the brain’ with an intellectual instrument that functions distinctly from ‘the body’. The research on the mirror mechanism can nowadays allow us to appreciate the ‘silent’ mechanics of a brain which, working for the most part beyond the immediate access of conscious experience, is integral to a body that is capable of sounding cognitive processes (including learning) kinaesthetically, proprioceptively, as well as intellectually and linguistically. Further observations on the mirror mechanism by Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, however, may provide insights also on the inter-subjective dimension of actor training. In fact, the neuroscientist and the philosopher argue that the mirror mechanism enabling the observer to make sense of the doer’s behaviour on the basis of his own motor possibilities provides the ground for a basic sense of self and other. Hence, they point out that the richer and more diversified is our motor repertoire the sharper is our sensitivity to others’ actions, so that our capability to make sense of others turns out to be rooted in our capability to make sense of ourselves. It follows that . . . the more individuals share their own motor repertoire with each other, the more finegrained is the experience they make of action possibilities when these action possibilities are relative both to their own selves and to other selves.38 Thanks to this research, we can perhaps come to appreciate better the importance that the pedagogical tradition in the theatre has put on a diversified actor training, drawing upon different performance disciplines and traditions. These observations by Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, however, also help us to consider the importance of joint training and training exchanges as occasions in which ‘individuals share their own motor repertoire with each other’. Such shared motor repertoires constitute the basis of that complex, fine-grained experience from which creative acts emerge, not only as performance, but also as potential insights into the complexity of human cognition itself. This is because in the tradition of the actor’s pedagogy the scope of training is not merely that of achieving some sort of physical fitness for the stage. Perhaps the most

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important aspect of systematic actor training is the dilation of consciousness.

Knowing between and beyond levels of consciousness In spite of consciousness being recognized as the habitat of all theories39 – all scientists and scholars go about their studies consciously, albeit at times more intuitively than rationally – understanding the nature of consciousness, let alone explaining how it may be connected to neuronal processes, remains one of the most difficult challenges for the cognitive sciences. Having said that, a good part of the literature in neuroscience continues to associate declarative memory or knowledge with conscious processes, whereas it associates nondeclarative memory or knowledge – including skill – mainly with unconscious processing. The attention that is given in the actor’s pedagogy to developing a consciousness of self in performance that is not declarative, in the sense that it does not involve verbal reflection – obviously because otherwise it would distract the actor from the flow of performance – might allow us to reconsider the above-mentioned distinctions in the neuroscientific taxonomy of memory. The trained actor develops a consciousness that might prove difficult to explain in words, but that can nevertheless be distinguished clearly and knowingly in action. In the course of systematic training and performative experience, performers refine their sensitivity at a more elusive level of consciousness. Stanislavski spoke of an understanding based on feeling, asserting time and again that ‘in the theatre, knowing means feeling’.40 Meyerhold spoke of the importance for the actor to develop the ability to see himself, as through a mirror, while in action,41 and Decroux attributed his performative talent to his innate ability to act as though he were looking at himself.42 In the final phase of his research Grotowski also showed a growing interest in the performer’s potential to raise himself to a ‘higher’ level of consciousness which would then enable him to ‘descend’ back into action with a renewed level of awareness.43 An awareness which, as Grotowski specifies, ‘means the consciousness which is not linked to language (the machine for thinking), but to Presence’.44

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In this regard, we cannot help noticing the proximity of the above considerations to cognitive science’s renewed interest in the phenomenological theories on ‘pre-reflective’ self-consciousness, which is ‘related to the idea that experiences have a subjective “feel” to them, a certain (phenomenal) quality of “what it is like” or what it “feels” like to have them’.45 Does the systematic training that the performer undergoes in his/her pedagogy actually dilate his/her consciousness at such a ‘pre-reflective’ level? It is not within the scope of the present chapter to examine such proximity in depth. Rather, the reference to such a proximity between a consciousness related to the performer’s ‘Presence’ and studies of a phenomenal pre-reflective self-consciousness serves again to highlight the complexity of levels – levels of consciousness even – from which knowing emerges.

To conclude The actor’s pedagogy as a research-based approach to the performer’s creative growth is indeed a fascinating example of the complex organization of human cognition. Knowing emerges from the complex motion of biological, psychological, as well as social and cultural mechanisms. At the core of such a complex motion we find action. Such complexity fills us with wonder, especially when we consider how we are biologically organized for knowing, in its holistic, performative sense, and how social and cultural performance may in turn affect our biological capacity for knowing. Admittedly, the present introduction could only provide the space for a general overview of such complexity. The chapters in this section provide deeper insights into more specific aspects of the complexity of human cognition in the theatre and the actor’s pedagogy. Luciano Mariti’s chapter sheds light onto the complexity of performed time, in contrast with the analytical conception of time. John J. Schranz’s contribution is particularly interesting for its focus on how the neuronal mechanisms that subtend action endows the performer’s doings with a complex narrative capacity, indeed a complex relational capacity that is potentiated by actor training – a perspective that Schranz developed first-hand in the very context of the actor’s pedagogy. Finally, Gabriele Sofia, Silvia Spadacenta, Giovanni Mirabella and Clelia Falletti provide us with

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an experimental study suggesting how actor training may indeed affect the dynamics of ‘embodied language’, yet another exciting territory of research that exemplifies the complexity of human cognition in the connection between language and motricity. It is clear from the rough map sketched in the present introduction, as well as from the more specific and in-depth articulations of the other chapters in Part 3, that there is a vast and complex territory to be explored through interdisciplinary exchange, debates and possible experimentation. In view of the exciting road ahead, I would like to close with the words of the Italian scholar Fabrizio Cruciani, a maître who was among the first and few to foster complexity thinking in theatre scholarship: ‘considering the complexity of the theatre, a complex system of relations and levels of organization such as the theatre is, what is required is both a complexity of learning and the aptitude to investigate each diverse level’.46

7 A Rope over an Abyss1 John J. Schranz

The tightrope walker2 began his performance: stepping out of a small door he started walking over the rope, stretched between two towers, suspended over the marketplace and the people. When he reached the exact middle the small door opened again and a buffoon-like, garishly dressed scoundrel jumped out and followed him with quick steps. ‘Forward, lamefoot!’ he shouted in a heinous voice. ‘Forward, lazybones, smuggler, pale-face, or I shall tickle you with my heel! What are you doing here between towers? The tower is where you belong. You ought to be locked up; you block the way for one better than yourself.’ With every word he came closer until, when but one step behind . . . he uttered a devilish cry and jumped over the man who stood in his way. The man . . . lost his head and the rope, tossed away his pole, and plunged into the depths . . . Zarathustra did not move; it was right next to him that the body fell, badly maimed and disfigured, but not yet dead. Recovering consciousness after a while, the shattered man saw Zarathustra kneeling by him. ‘What are you doing 117

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here?’ he asked . . . Answered Zarathustra, ‘You have made danger your vocation; nothing contemptible in that. Now you perish of your vocation: for that I will bury you with my own hands . . .’ Meanwhile evening came, and the marketplace hid in darkness. The people scattered; even curiosity and terror grow weary. But Zarathustra sat on the ground near the dead man, lost in thought, forgetting time. At last night came; a cold wind blew over the lonely one . . . Hoisting the corpse on his back, Zarathustra started on his way.3

I narrated. I can narrate Nietzsche’s narrative: how Z slung the corpse over his shoulder, how he picked it up, how he grasped it, even . . . not how Z effected the grasp, however, nor how he tightened each finger muscle. Such actions embody stories, too, with beginnings, developments and ends – but they are unwordable. Nor can they be read . . . in words, that is, because otherwise, read them we definitely can. We have learnt to read them. As used there, however, ‘read’ refers to functions of ours that differ greatly from how we handle written words – it is meaningful metaphorically, and only because of the primacy we accord the written word as against other (extremely potent) sensibilities of ours. It means that we recognize Z’s grasping action. We re(-)cognize it, cognize it again, come to know it again . . . ‘again’, because we know it already: in our own grasping act. In execution, we know that intricate action’s complexity, countless infinitesimal events occurring throughout this structure we are – neurons, nerves, tendons, ligaments, muscles, blood vessels, arteries, joints, brain cells, senses. This structure’s myriad micro-actions converge in a bewilderingly complex, time-bound, sequence, to completing that grasping action. No doer could truly cognize that sequence, let alone word it. Were it possible to enumerate its constituent events, they would far outnumber events worded in the most complex play text. And yet we ‘know’ that grasp. We know it in this system we each are – a unique ‘knowing’, which we call ‘embodiment’.

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In observing Z grasping, our embodied knowing resonates with his action via the Mirror Neuron System (MNS ). The story of Z’s grasp, unwordable as ours, activates our personal, grasping history. We ‘know’ them both; the key word is ‘both’. We ‘know’ both ours and Z’s. One is what one is only in the minute details of that knowing; the vast body of knowing each embodies, all one’s stories. Everyone’s unique story makes the unique Human Being what one is. Together, then, they form our species’ unique story. Compared to the completeness of embodied stories, other stories – those knowable and narrable verbally – partial as they are, emerge as the palest of pale shadows. Crucial ones, of course! All are! Not on that plane, however, lies the essence of Performer’s work, but in the vast body of embodied knowing. A performer’s actions and micro-actions fire us. We resonate with him, mostly unaware. One’s resonance reveals aspects of the essence one embodies, which Grotowski discusses in Tu es le fils de quelqu’un. For Performer, training is the route to being true to that embodied knowing. Only then can he hope to strike resonance in beholders. ‘Beholder’ captures better than ‘audience’ that which happens between the two – what beholders do is grasp and hold firmly onto the energy of the miracle that should be occurring: Performer’s epiphany, the sharing of all that Performer is. The word ‘performer’ derives from the Old French parfournir. The prefix par- is as in ‘per-meate’, ‘per-suade’ (i.e. ‘completely’); fournir means ‘give’, thus implying that Performers give completely. Performers produce nothing material for beholders to take, the only giving possible thus being that of the self. At some point in the fourteenth century, by influence of the Old French word forme, the letter ‘n’ became ‘m’. Nowadays, the implication of ‘form’ makes us associate ‘perform’ with ‘take someone else’s form’ – antithetical to the originally implied ‘complete giving’, the ‘sharing’ here being discussed. Performer offers his experiences for beholders to hold on to in memory, personal experiences constituting his uniqueness while making him fils de quelqu’un. Only one key can grant beholders access to Performer’s offer – one’s unique, personal experiences, which may enable one to mentalize, in turn possibly engaging theory of mind. One can only relate to the performer via one’s

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own experiences. This sharing occurs in the resonance of systems common to both: their mirror neuron system (MNS ). Though common to both, however, unique components distinguish those systems: respective personal experiences, without which the MNS could never exercise its potent abilities. A glance at how Performer– Beholder encounters work will lead to what engages us most: events occurring in performers themselves, a territory that could throw open windows onto what it means to be Human.

Performer–beholder encounter – Distilled Encounter is, at one level, a matter of conviction. To be touched, we must recognize human doings in performers’ work. Textual narratives can only help. Human doings are always responses to needs, hopes, fears, sadness, joy, anger, love, hate . . . the entire gamut. In performance, only the quality of Performer’s doings induces recognition – triggered kindred experiences convince us we are sharing in facets of the human condition.4 A crucial caveat; it isn’t a matter of realism, naturalism or whatever – in highly abstract dance we still perceive human actions, doings, feelings,5 finding them convincing or mediocre, skin-deep histrionics, because abstract though a performance structure may be, its material remains completely human: Performers.6 At best, imitation doings may convince their executors of being excellent imitations – as mental processes function, an action is guided by the intention to execute it; it cannot be guided by the intention to imitate (an action). Imitation launches different functions, as is now known, resulting in an absolute mismatch between mental processes governing the events. The executor, therefore, convinces neither himself nor, consequently, the beholder. On the contrary, the path to emulation might serve better than the path to imitation, which is why Stanislavski used to shout, time and again: ‘Don’t show me! Do it!’ For Performer to find conviction in his doings, his must be doings, guided by the intentionality of specific doings, not by intention to imitate. Only by Performer finding conviction in his own doings can I, as beholder, find my own conviction, sensing that, in such a context I, too, could take that action, constituting an unspoken

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confession, though I generally don’t realize that. How could beholders get there unless Performers confess, their actions reflecting personal conviction and potential truth? Another caveat: ‘confessing’ does not imply revealing what one is, did or does. Instead, it is about finding that one could, for example, do what Macbeth did, if one were to block one’s better judgement to the point of allowing oneself to revert to the wild – alternatively, that one could truly fulfil one’s deepest belief in loving to the absolute, as Romeo did . . . though never having allowed oneself to come anywhere near loving like that. Of such possibilities does Performer need to find conviction through his work. How otherwise could the encounter occur, once the Beholder can only meet his own truth in finding convincing the Performer’s doings . . . his mirror?7 At a second level it is what the jargon calls ‘being held’ by performers. ‘He was gripping’, we say; ‘he gripped me’. What do we mean? Another common locution helps understanding: ‘I found myself on the edge of my seat’. In that position one leans forward, tensely hanging onto Performer’s every action, attentively participating in its unfolding. Leaning forward embodies a wish to be elsewhere, at one with the performer, in this case even ahead of him, anticipating his doings. A shift of a look, a swivel, a flash of muscular lunges – each could reveal a still hidden though intuited intention. Again, it’s not about narrative twists; too often are those relied facilely upon. No, it is Performer’s presence, shifting every split second. Narrative twists, on the contrary, come only at intervals, often long ones. Performer is a living work of art, a constantly shifting sand dune of embodied actions and doings, allowing us to perceive feelings and states of mind shifting – in the performer and in us beholders. We find ourselves with him, his work convincing us . . . suddenly: an unexpected action. A glance suffices, a withheld step – and we must start reviewing all we had constructed, rethinking ourselves; back to level one, then: conviction. If Performer works as he should, the miracle occurs; in a flash we find ourselves re-writing our convictions and, with him again, renewed. That must be the essence of performance, for that is Life itself: if there is one thing the Human Being is, then it is constant change, awareness, discovery – learning. When no miracle occurs, there is no performance: only facile, drab play-acting.

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Performer, says Patrice Pavis, ‘speaks and acts on his own behalf (as an artist and as a person) and thus addresses the audience, whilst the actor represents his character and pretends not to know he is only a theatre actor. The performer stages his own self, while the actor plays the role of another.8 When the miracle fails the beholder traipses off, barely touched, with but one, meagre memory: the story line, which is so limited compared to myriad stories the actions could have found resonance in us, had the actor been Performer. Nietzsche’s words return: ‘the people scattered; even curiosity and terror grow weary’. Zarathustra leaves that pseudo-performer, that ‘buffoon-like, garishly dressed scoundrel’, to his ego-centred braggadocio. Shouldering the Seiltänzer’s corpse, Zarathustra goes heavy-heartedly to bury he who ‘made danger his vocation’ and ‘perished for his vocation’, victim of traders in sensationalism, scrambling to satiate the milling crowd’s insatiable desire for facile, consumable divertissement.

Bridge builders Halfway across the vast chasm his rope had bridged, Nietzsche’s rope-dancing Performer was sent plummeting to his death. Grotowski calls beholders ‘witnesses’ who ‘enter into states of intensity because, so to say, they feel presence. And this is thanks to Performer, who is a bridge between the witness and this something. In this sense, Performer is pontifex, builder of bridges’.9 Harnessing the then little-used arch, Rome created the Pantheon (still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome) and Trajan’s bridge over the Danube, unsurpassed in length and span for over a thousand years. Profound technique and engineering mastery created beautiful, mighty bridges, unleashing stone’s potentials and fulfilling their designers’ visions. Even bridges between human beings unleash physical potentials and visions, but they are infinitely more complex. They can lead to fulfilment . . . or deadly outcomes. We have named three foundations underpinning Performer/ Beholder encounters: conviction, apprehension and that great facilitator: the MNS . Our phylogenetic baggage acquired this ‘technically’ brilliant attribute and another equally brilliant one, episodic memory, both evolved over millions of years of patient

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nature’s sophisticated experimentation, two most crucial functions, responsible for much that makes us human. Our abilities to be convinced (or otherwise) of the truth of others’ doings, apprehending goings on and anticipating events (or failing to), are rooted firmly in those systems. On them may at any moment depend our remaining alive. They are the grounds decisions mature in – how we relate to our environment, potential threats, possible leaps of quality or fortune, potentially wonderful/threatening encounters. Consider one such function – we always strive to discover others’ thoughts, feelings, intentions . . . humour, sadness, happiness, discomfort, solitude, satisfaction, tension, ease, wariness. . . a vast range. When duped, we feel we failed to read someone’s insincerity. That wording is imprecise. It’s not that we did not read: we read sincerity where there was a lie. A bridge failed. We perceive why Stanislavski demands extreme precision in performers’ minutest actions. He entreats an indifferent, walk-on performer to do something – anything! – even merely scrutinize a small detail on a painted backdrop, because even such an action generates resonance in beholders, by engaging the MNS , as we now know. Directing Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, Stanislavski cut the lengthy text heavily, while still instructing actors to learn their cut lines and think them through when onstage while others were speaking. Wasted effort? Not at all! He intuited that, unlike simulated ‘listening’, such precise thoughts generate images and resultant intentions, triggering networks of embodied micro-actions – and beholders resonate. That was 1909: eighty years before the discovery of MNS . Building bridges – any bridges – demands great skill. Life’s interpersonal bridges demand dauntingly great discipline and technique. No rehearsals are possible; one can only intuit, feel around, recall experiences, sense possibilities, obstacles, pitfalls . . . Then – just do it, and succeed or fail. ‘Pot luck’ Stanislavski calls that,10 stressing that Performers must do otherwise. Indeed they do. They construct performative material, developing endless variations of minute, refined details, kept in abeyance, open to moments when, in performance, impulses call creatively. Unpredictable in those variations’ interplay, Performers bounce combinations off each other in the heat of the moment, surprising themselves as in life and finding their own conviction – for beholders to do likewise. ‘Our Art is alive’

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said Stanislavski. ‘What was good yesterday, will not serve today; today’s performance will be different from that of tomorrow’s.’11 Refined, disciplined and unpredictable variations mark every art: in painting, brushstrokes; in sculpture, chiselling. When a brush strokes, however, it’s done. That’s it. Fixed there, it stays on that canvas, no question of it reoccurring or not: a painting cannot ‘reoccur’. Having time as its foundation, performance differs fundamentally, its creativity evanescent: unlike pigment or marble, no fixed outcome of any action remains for artists to contemplate, no product one could possess. We may liken it to music’s highly disciplined, dynamic variations, though music’s rigorous scansion gives musicians a firm bridge for interrelating, whilst Man’s immensely complex, intentional action defies any such scansion.12 Consider that complexity: we are able to initiate an action seven seconds before we even know ‘we want to’ take it.13 A person twelve years comatose is giving ‘yes’/‘no’ responses to precise questions.14 Students taking handwritten notes learn more than others taking computer notes,15 their entire motor system embodies writing’s flow, curves, strokes, lines, dots, variations of energy, space, time – handwriting’s idiosyncrasy is revealing. In contrast, repetitive finger displacements tap keyboards: vertically, horizontally and diagonally. Man’s golden key is his embodied responses to constant, mostly unrecognized stimuli, impulses and intentions. In that embodied flow, responses develop into actions which, while retaining all we have been (experientially, genetically and phylogenetically) make us what we are – preparing us for what we may encounter. We thus build bridges to our context – in turn building bridges to us. Working with performers in the studio, a question gradually emerged. It asks about bridges between Performers in performance, as also about life’s interpersonal bridges: ‘How can I accelerate the refle(x)(ct)ive process in order to arrive faster at the optimal decision for the just action in relation to the other and, therefore, also in relation to myself?’ Born of exercises designed over years of work, those same exercises keep re-elaborating it. Like the exercises, it is about control and freedom, about the discipline enabling freedom, that discipline being akin to the MNS . To understand others’ doings, the MNS freely echoes them by embodiment, thus gaining some insight into those doings. At the same time, with memory’s rigour it juggles precisely with one’s history, refining it in the process. In a final

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flourish, though doing everything necessary to execute those mirrored actions, the MNS recognizes them as not one’s own – thus refraining from actually executing them. That’s how the MNS functions. That’s how Performer works. Stunningly, they map each other. How to mature that ‘discipline enabling freedom’? How to ‘accelerate the refle(x)(ct)ive process . . .’? In life, our myriad doings follow decisions taken unknowingly – and we reap the fruit or pay the price: ‘pot luck’. Hundreds of Roman bridges still stand. Discipline, technique and mastery – not luck – enabled Rome to fulfil its physical potential and creative visions. Likewise, Performers cannot bank on luck. Performers’ work exists only in shared time and space – knowing how performer–beholder bridges happen and how they affect encounter might therefore seem useful to some. Studying which conditions favour creativity is not ‘create[ing] inspiration by artificial means’,16 warns Stanislavski. That would be teleologically utilitarian, like prescriptive, would-be-predictive education policies – ‘whoever builds a house for future happiness, builds a prison for the present’.17 Performer performs mainly out of personal need; beholders are that need’s inevitable outcome, not an aim. ‘True expression is that of a tree’,18 says Grotowski – a tree does not ‘want to’ express: it just does. Performer’s lodestar is his own truth and conviction. What intrigues us, instead, is training’s effects on performers qua human beings. Performers are human matter fulfilling itself in, through and by itself.19 An analogy (partial, as it excludes composing) is a violin tuning itself to play itself. In dance, singing, sport, music or theatre, performers engage nothing extrinsic to themselves: their work done, no artwork separate to them is left.20 Stanislavski calls his book The Work of the Actor upon Himself, highlighting training’s iterative nature. Why train, however, once theatre’s actions are identical to everyday life’s? Are they, indeed? Everyday life actions differ profoundly. Their consequences are unforeseeable. Moreover they are unrehearsed, executed with a ‘just do it’, naïve credulity: even when carefully deliberated, actual ‘doings’ are acts of faith, their success or failure unpredictable. ‘I’ve done it!’ we think, joyfully; alternatively – a tiny slip, and chagrin burns. On the contrary, performance actions’ dynamics are scrupulously rehearsed, aesthetically analyzed and designed with the complexity

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of music, sculpture and painting: ‘I’ve done it!’ makes sense only regarding performance quality, in fact, whilst the actions’ outcomes entail no unpredictability – Macbeth will pull off Duncan’s murder. To hope to find conviction in performative actions notwithstanding such profound differences, performers must imbue them with life’s pot-luck trust and its contrasting sense of consequences. An embodied ‘grammar’ – unperceived – makes our everyday actions Human. Training is Performer’s path to master, discipline, and organize it, becoming both artist and objet d’art. This is what intrigues us.

Unity of being Training to achieve this state impacts the unity that one is.21 Since 1994, Gottfried Schlaug’s research has gradually revealed that instrumental music training affects structural developments in the brain, even resulting in certain sectors (corpus callosum and cerebellum) increasing in volume.22 Theatre performers must empower so many human faculties that I call them ‘decathlonists of the arts’. Performer orchestrates voice, sounds and silence, sculpts himself, is poetic with language, a psychologist with feelings, a sportsman in harnessing energy, a dancer with every displacement, a painter in spatial composition. The analytic self-scrutiny necessary is daunting, as is the harnessing of memory. ‘One cannot be creative and observe oneself at the same time’ asserts Stanislavski.23 Performers must approach that frontier. Defining what we call ‘micro-actions’ may help clarity. In neuroscientific literature they are constituents of an action, referred to as movements, mere body-part displacements, not including the idea of goal.24 While composing dramaturgies, Performers analytically review over-arching intentions of governing actions. Often, micro-actions emerge, with recognizable, clinically precise intentions of which performers had been completely unaware. Respecting them, they effect crucial, compositional changes. Music composers do this continually, changing a demi-semi-quaver, adding accents, caesurae, varying tempo; music’s annotation system helps us understand that, but – handling a spoon?! Handling a spoon is handling a spoon, no? No! Just as handling a knife isn’t just that! The truth of picking anything, convincing or otherwise, lies

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in its possible myriad dynamics, resultant to intentionality’s (often unrecognized) shifts. Infinite, disciplined, variations emerge. When the floodgates open for those variations to occur ungoverned, when ‘the song sings me’,25 when Flow results – performance’s miracle happens. Training unleashes these abilities, recognizing previously unknown ‘knowns’ and allowing them free, disciplined rein. Our interest escalates when that ability spotlights ‘unknown’ intentions in everyday life actions, showing the Performer empowered also qua human being. Our research generated two fundamental, startlingly simple exercises, which seemingly border on the banal: (1) two persons move around, balancing a 1.5 m stick between them at the abdomen, lightly pressing on its tips at the linea alba, above the musculus pyramidalis; (2) starting with the thumb/index-finger hold, a person ‘exudes silk-threads’ from some 150 points upon himself, spinning webs in space. What is banal is the description; valid exercises eschew verbalization. They require embodiment. Encountering each exercise’s twenty-five stages takes over six months. They are never ‘completed’ – one works with them for years. The following tentative discussion of threadwork tries to provide some access, something only embodiment could achieve. Facing threadwork, one simultaneously experiences objectivity and subjectivity.26 As such, nothing is taught: it invites awareness of many factors one already is sensitized to (albeit unawares). One crucial factor is resistances, operating in both performance and everyday life. When swimming, water’s resistance is evident; many others, however, we are oblivious of: that of air as we walk, or the ground’s to the feet. Pressure at the interface we sometimes know, but we fail to see it as an interplay of resistances. In everyday life we sense few of the muscular events accompanying fleeting intentions. Stanislavski stresses their importance for performance: ‘Feel your muscle-tones’, and ‘now I felt it, and in our language, to understand is to feel’.27 Threadwork sensitizes one to resistances’ role in the truth of action. Entire dramaturgies are rooted there. Threadwork operates around one, banal action: ‘pick a thread’ by one end, drag it in mid-air, leave it hanging, pick it again, drag, leave . . . endlessly, hundreds of thousands of times through its evolving stages; then the thread recedes, dissipates, and attention dilates, responding openly to events in flow.28 Forgetting the thread is not engaging in mere form, forgoing intentionality – where intention

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is absent, there is no action. Instead, one engages at lightning speed in unconsidered, extremely precise instances, generated there and then in an equally precise, self-ordained (though evolving) structure. In that burgeoning, spinning cosmos, one recognizes one’s potential for organizing actions in space and time – as with grammar: acquiring it from birth and fluent by age four, we only create poetry after studying and mastering that grammar we never knew we knew . . . though true poesis needs us to ‘forget it’ again.29 That is threadwork’s essence.30 At that point, one is working on possibilities of intention. Not on intentions – on possibilities of intention. Observing, one sees limbs, joints, body parts executing aesthetically perfect actions at multiple spinning points, the practitioner oblivious of them, focused as he is on his other (parallel) actions in progress. Such oblivious actions clearly engage deep brain functions, with intentions too tenuous to be recognized. Trainees may here be stopped abruptly and asked to remember their last five actions. Initially they struggle, finding it impossible – that familiar mental blank of being stopped in mid-speech with ‘can you please repeat that?’ Trained performers extract considerably long sequences from the fast, free-flowing magma, then explore them via dynamical variations . . . and at times ‘the song sings you’. Images come. Performer ‘plays’. He leads them and is led by them. The path to performer dramaturgy unfolds. We are extraordinary beings: responding although comatose, starting something before knowing we want to, learning from handwriting, expanding brain sectors by playing instruments – all so improbable. Two million years ago our progenitors pushed themselves out of themselves, achieving ‘episodic memory’, our unique faculty of trigger-free, willed recall – a key to how we became, says cognitive neuroscientist Merlin Donald.31 Performers train that faculty. Several scientists have observed threadwork, notably Giacomo Rizzolatti and, more recently, Tsutomu Fujinami. First observing it in Malta, convinced it could reactivate autistic children’s deficient MNS , Rizzolatti started investigatory meetings in his Parma laboratory. A considerable grant application followed encouraging trials in a Florence clinic. Initially approved, it unfortunately fell through, following sweeping administrative changes in Italy. Tsutomu Fujinami, whose work at JAIST (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) focuses on embodied transmission and acquisition of skill, happened upon our work in 2009, when a new trainee intake

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started a formation process. His ongoing studies and observations, though still at an early stage, are very encouraging, particularly as another chapter opens: for Performer qua Human Being. In the following daily-life situations, trained performers noticed that: 1 Opening a bottle of water, the left hand held the bottle while the right unscrewed the cap; unknowingly, hands were switched for pouring. Understanding soon dawned: the dominant hand unknowingly undertook each governing action – unscrewing, pouring. 2 Descending a steep street of wide steps, the legs were proceeding diagonally. Reflection revealed the mathematics elaborated unknowingly: lengthened footsteps reduce weak knee stress. 3 Walking, one hallux was avoiding pressure. Not finding an explanation, the step was appropriately changed . . . immediately resulting in a totally unheralded jab of powerful pain. 4 Strolling in a park, the foot due to step forward pressed instead into the ground – focusing, the eyes spotted a previously unnoticed snake. Crucially, they noticed. Equally crucially, they asked ‘why?’. Noticing incongruity – asking why – understanding. Noticing unplanned micro-actions – analyzing them – cognizing decisions taken on unrecognized intentions.32 This is keyed ‘episodic memory’ working in top gear. Nietzsche’s garish, megalomaniacal show-off killed Performer’s precursor viciously, admonishing him for not staying put in ‘the tower where you belong’. The keyed Performer leaps forth defiantly, riding the rope bridging the abyss between the animal and the divine, reaching out to know what was, what is, what could be, revealing that training ‘episodic memory’ might enable one to arrive faster at the optimal alternative for the just action, in relation to the other and, therefore, also in relation to oneself . . . hopefully mastering that rope enough to stem the tragedies we inflict on our personal encounters . . . on our contexts . . . and on our only, possible world.

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8 The Actor’s Embodied Language: Preliminary Investigations of a Pilot Experiment Gabriele Sofia, Silvia Spadacenta, Clelia Falletti, and Giovanni Mirabella*

Introduction More than thirty years of research in Theatre Anthropology have shown that there is a difference between the control and organization of actions in everyday life and the control and organization of actions in a ‘situation of organized representation’1 (i.e. where an actor engages at least one beholder in a theatre relationship). This difference is the outcome of what would appear to be something that is quite simple: if everyday-life actions are executed with the aim of realizing the actions’ objectives, in performance the actor needs to satisfy both an action’s objectives and, at the same time, with that very action, he must stimulate, attract, surprise and guide the beholder’s attention. This particular complexity makes it 131

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necessary for actors to submit to specific training regimens, depending on which theatre tradition each specific actor belongs to. Much of this training aims specifically at developing an awareness and control of action that are more accurate than those normally employed in the execution of actions in everyday life. The actor studies his own motoric act in greater detail, both pragmatically as well as via a series of exercises consisting of limitations and constraints which, together, ‘dilate’ the control mechanisms that operate in the everyday execution of action.2 This present study hypothesizes that the training which the actor undergoes for motoric control could affect the neural circuits that subtend executive and motoric functions. The point of departure is that of the so-called theory of embodied language.3 According to this theory, the understanding of a verb semantic is achieved by the reenactment of the motor schema associated with the action described by that verb. For example, the comprehension of a word that refers to a transitive verb – let us say, grasping – requires the activation of that sector of the motor cortex that controls the action of grasping. This hypothesis is indirectly supported both by studies carried out using neuroimaging techniques as well as by behavioural experiments.4 Buccino et al., for example, noted that, after asking a subject to listen to sentences implying the use of a certain effector, a slowing down was visible when the subject was then asked to execute actions involving the same effector.5 Similar results were reported by Sato et al., working on a ‘go’/‘no go’ paradigm.6 In their experiment, some healthy subjects were asked to press a button (go) when shown verbs involving feet or hands; alternatively, not to press the button (no go) when shown abstract verbs. It was noted that reaction times for pressing the button were longer for verbs describing actions carried out with the same effector (the hand) with which one needed to press the test button (the interference effect). These findings confirm the role of the motor system in the comprehension of action-related language. In the wake of the Buccino findings, Giovanni Mirabella and his team designed another experiment7 aimed at two yet unresolved issues around the interaction between language and the motor system, namely: (a) Is the motor system indeed necessary for language comprehension or is its activation merely an epiphenomenon? (b) At which point does the interference causing the lengthened reaction time initiate, and when does it end? The paradigm adopted in their

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experiment is a variant of the one employed by Sato et  al. – the difference being that Mirabella et al. asked the subjects to execute a reaching movement towards a peripheral target that appeared on a touchscreen. Reaching movements are of a higher ecological relevance than key-pressing actions: primates are continually executing reaching actions when they are outside of the context of neurophysiological laboratories, actions such as those whereby they procure food, for example. Whilst effectively confirming Sato et al.’s conclusions, Mirabella et  al.’s results provide more of the puzzle’s missing pieces. They have shown, first of all, that even percentages of error are indicators of interference. They have then shown that this interference can be noted very early – even as early as 50 ms from the ‘go’ signal, and that it only occurs when the giving of a reply necessitates a semantic analysis of the verb. When, in fact, the subject’s response must be in relation to the colour in which the verb is written (if the verb is written in green the subject is to reach the target, but if it is written in red he must refrain from moving), the linguistic interference on movement ceases. Even here, these results agree with the theory of embodied language; they show a connection between the understanding of verbal descriptions and the sensory-motor experience of the action itself. In light of these discoveries, it was felt that this paradigm could be used to carry out studies on performers, the hypothesis being that if it is true that theatre training affects motor control, studying the interaction between action verbs and movement in actors might reveal some differences with respect to healthy non-performers. This research is the outcome of a collaboration between the Dipartimento di Storia dell’Arte e Spettacolo and the team of neurophysiologist Giovanni Mirabella, a collaboration funded by Sapienza University of Rome in the context of the project: ‘The Psychophysiology of the Actor and of the Spectator: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry’, directed by Professor Clelia Falletti.

Materials and methods Subjects Twenty-nine subjects were involved in the experiment: thirteen actors and a control group of sixteen subjects. All twenty-nine

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FIGURE 8.1 The age of the subjects of the experiment.

subjects underwent two tasks which shall be here referred to as ‘Experiment 1’ and ‘Experiment 2’. The subjects’ mother-tongue was Italian and they were right-handed. None of them were informed of the objectives of the experiment. The actors were selected on the basis of the kind of training regimen they undergo and of their being constant in training.8 Figure 8.1 gives the age of each subject and, in the case of actors, their acting experience in years.

Verbs used as stimuli In all tests, verbs were presented visually. In ‘Experiment 1’ thirty Italian verbs were used, all in the infinite mood. These thirty verbs were in three groups of ten: ten ‘hand action’ verbs (e.g. tagliare, i.e. ‘to cut’), ten ‘foot action’ verbs (e.g. correre, ‘to run’) and ten abstract verbs (e.g. scordare, ‘to forget’). Chosen to be homogenous in length, number of syllables and lexical frequency, the verbs were those used by Sato et al. in their experiment.9 In ‘Experiment 2’ only five verbs for each category were used; again they were homogenous as to length, number of syllables and lexical frequency.

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Behavioural test Experiment 1 (semantic task) In this experiment, participants sat at a distance of about 50 cm from a 17 inch touchscreen (MicroTouch, sampling rate 200 Hz). Non-commercial software, CORTEX (see www.cortex.salk.edu) was used to control the presentation of the visual stimuli and to record the subjects’ responses. The temporal frequency of the stimuli was synchronized to that of the monitor. The participants responded to two series of 240 trials: a total of 480. Each trial started with the presentation of a red circle 2.8 cm in diameter at the centre of the screen. The participants had to touch this circle with their right-hand index finger; after a period of time, ranging from 400 to 700 ms, a verb appeared above the circle for the participants to read. If the verb was one ‘of movement’ (‘go’), independently of whether the verb was a ‘hand verb’ or a ‘foot verb’, participants were to reach, within a maximum time lapse of 600 ms, another red circle that appeared on their right at a distance of 15 cm from the centre of the screen. If, instead, the verb was abstract (‘no go’), the participants were to remain motionless at the appearance of the circle on the right, their finger remaining fixed on the red circle at the centre. The mechanism is represented in Figure  8.2. Every time the task was carried out correctly a sound signal informed the subject accordingly, at which point the subject could break the finger/screen contact and proceed with the subsequent trial. The lateral target could appear either 53.2 ms or 332.5 ms after the presentation of the verb, this stimulus presentation time being known as SOA (‘stimulus onset asynchrony’). The verb remained visible up to the conclusion of the trial. All verbs were red; all were presented on a black background. Each verb was presented eight times for each of the two SOA times. Verb presentation was randomized; if there was an error, the verbs in question were presented again at random, until the the trial sequence had been completed correctly.

Experiment 2 (non-semantic task) ‘Experiment 2’ consisted of 360 trials presented in two blocks of 180 each. Unlike ‘Experiment 1’, where participants carried out the

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FIGURE 8.2 Schematic representation of the mechanism underlying ‘Experiment 1’. ‘Go’ phases are shown on the left; ‘no-go’ on the right.

tasks on the basis of the semantic nature of the verb, in this experiment, the signal to which participants had to respond was the colour in which the verb was presented. Each trial started with a grey circle being presented on the touchscreen. Participants had to make a verb appear on the screen by touching that circle with their right-hand index finger. Each time a green verb appeared, the subject had to reach and touch a grey circle lateral target that appeared on the right. If, instead, a red verb appeared, the subject had to keep the index finger firmly fixed on the grey circle at the centre of the screen. For each SOA , each verb was presented twelve times – six times green and six times red. As in the preceding experiment, each time the task was carried out correctly, a sound signal informed the subject.

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Data analysis The parameters measured in each of the two experiments were: (a) the reaction time (RT ) (i.e. the time lapse from the presentation of the go signal to the index finger breaking contact with the screen so as to reach the lateral target); (b) the movement time (MT ) (i.e. the time lapse between the index finger breaking contact with the screen and its arriving at the lateral target); and (c) the number of errors each subject made (e.g. these could be instances of leaving the central target in no go trials or, in go trials, excessive delay in reaching the lateral target or instances of not reaching the lateral target). For ‘Experiment 1’, the average reaction time (RT ) and the average movement time (MT ) were calculated for each verb category (hand verbs and foot verbs), for the two SOA times (53.2 ms and 332.5 ms), and also the average of errors. For ‘Experiment 2’ the RT and MT of the abstract verbs were also calculated. To ensure the statistical validity of the results, a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA ) was employed. The Mauchley test was used to evaluate the ‘sphericity assumption’ and, where appropriate, the degrees of freedom were adjusted following the Greenhouse-Geisser procedure. The Bonferroni correction has been applied to all tests post-hoc.

Discussion of the preliminary results As the study is still in progress, the current sample groups will be augmented by more actors and non-actors. The preliminary results have shown no difference between the two groups with regard to the interference effect: the results achieved by the actors are statistically identical to those of non-actors. However, the results obtained in ‘Experiment 1’ show that the actors make fewer mistakes than the non-actors and their reaction times (RT ) are faster. Moreover, in ‘Experiment 2’, where subjects respond to colour stimuli, not to the meaning of the verbs, the interference on movement disappears.

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The differences emerging from ‘Experiment 1’ would seem to confirm how extraordinarily plastic the human brain is, even in adults. Deducting, in fact, the average of the subjects’ years of doing theatre (25.4) from their average age (47.6) one could roughly state that the age at which one starts out on one’s theatre apprenticeship is around 22, that is when one would have already arrived at adulthood. A closing observation: the control subjects had, on average, a higher level of education than the actors. As a consequence, it is possible that the results would be even clearer if subjects were better matched with regard to their education levels. This notwithstanding, it must be kept clearly in mind that actor training is not just a matter of physical education – it is a training in dual process thinking.10

Conclusion At the current stage of the research, the results indicate that there are no differences with regard to linguistic ability, whilst voluntary control of action emerges as being more efficient in actors than in non-actors. This could indicate that training sharpens an actor’s ability to concentrate on a given task and/or to execute it faster and with more precision. It would appear desirable to proceed with this line of research, from time to time focusing on particular executive functions in an effort to understand which show modifications. Finally, it is worth pointing out that in the context of the interdisciplinary encounter between theatre and neuroscience this is the first time that a study has sought to show how theatre training modifies the neurobiology of action. The indications provided by this research, albeit partial, could turn out to be valuable pointers for future research.

9 Perception and the Organization of Time in the Theatre Luciano Mariti*

Theatre performance can do away with everything, even the actor, but not time. Only the quality of temporal articulation allows a performance to become meaningful. Hamlet deprived of its syncopations, its setbacks, would be reduced to a dull, albeit sustained, journey towards revenge; yet, we recognize it as a broken turn of time that swells the anomalous wave of dramatic events. What would become of Chekhov’s The Seagull, were it to be deprived of its rare and unnatural decrescendo? To compose an action or a performance lacking in temporal quality is tantamount to building sand castles without water. The merits of a performance are, for the most part, of a temporal nature: a book might have some tedious passages, but in theatre, if the tempo falters at any point, one risks losing the audience. Theatre is primitive and organic, as Peter Brook notes. It is ‘like wine: if it is not good in the moment one drinks it all is lost’.1 Similarly, the incompetence of an amateur actor is immediately noted when he does not respect the ‘tempi’, the rhythms of his lines: he comes in on the ‘downbeat’ when he should come in on the ‘upbeat’, and vice versa. The importance of temporal structures, beginning with the rhythm with which the director or the performer disciplines our inner voice, 139

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is astonishing. As with every living form of art, theatre is not contained in time, but knows its very being as time. We all know this. Yet, even among the most respected of studies on performance there is an astonishing disinterest concerning time. Compared to the numerous books on space, studies on time can be counted on one hand. Is such an historiographical neglect to be attributed to idle scholarship or to the fact that, as St. Augustine pointed out, we all know what time is – this terribly embroiled enigma – but we are unable to explain it? Is it because time is pure illusion, considering that the present lies paradoxically in the moment in which it tends not to be any more? Or is it due to the fact that we can know time solely through its spatial effects: when it becomes a clock, when it calcifies in the untenable spring of a worn feminine face or expresses itself in the injurious signs of old age borne with nonchalance by brave patients of time? Conceiving of time is a complex theoretical enterprise, above all because time is not merely the form in which phenomena appear to us. It is also the modality with which each one knows and comprehends the self, given that every single one of us not only has memory, but is the self’s memory: deprived of memory, one could but throw bridges of inanity upon one’s illusory existence. Generally, time is functionally subdivided into three distinct aspects: duration, order and frequency, and it appears in some way inseparable from its twin, space (simultaneity, for instance, relates to plural temporal events, but also to plural objects in space). There is a difference between space and time, however, which belongs to the anthropological dimension (in contrast to physics, where separating time and space, disjointing chronotopy, does not make sense): whereas space allows us to move freely in all directions, the arrow of time appears to be unidirectional and irreversible. Time and space are irreducible: the becoming of space implies time, but time is proper also to an immobile entity. In sum, and notwithstanding everything, time differs from space because it unfolds in one dimension. According to some scientists, time could be thought of as space expressed in a single dimension. In fact, considering factual experience, the irreversibility of time is fundamental; it marks the dimension of necessity and determinism which eludes human control. The arrows of time that we experience in everyday life have been summed up in three forms: thermodynamics (heat passes from warmer to cooler bodies, not vice versa); electromagnetics (light diffuses from the lamp to its environment, not the other way round); psychology (we

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remember the past, not the future). The latter example is familiar to us, in that the law of thermodynamics establishes the modes of entropy, i.e. of the future as a form of degeneration: in fact, this is what happens to our bodies. Such a premise is necessary, because a theory of perception should not commit the methodological error that would lead us to speak of time ‘in a certain way’. It is a methodological mistake to look at and think of time in spatial terms (reducing it in terms of quantities, measurements, distinctions, segments). One would be confusing time with the instruments adopted to measure it: with movement and velocity, therefore with space; or even confusing it with the Augustinian line which ‘measures’ the ticking of instants as steps would measure a stroll on a beach. Time, instead of being understood as time, is understood in spatial terms, as Bergson has already pointed out in his criticism of the Aristotelian concept of time. Whereas time, unless one wishes to falsify it, is the mind’s flow, indivisible but changing, ‘river-run’ (as Joyce would put it), and as such it can neither be fixed nor segmented. Time is a heterogeneous flux which, in our fear of running out of it, we call ‘present’. After all, one of the most evident differences between art and science lies in their respective presence and absence of subjective time. Science tends to affect spatial operations: it calculates, measures, and therefore excludes time from life, whereas art is woven in lived and personal time. On the one hand, a ‘scientific’ attitude would aim at subdividing nature according to its points of articulation, as a good butcher would, dissecting and breaking bodies at the joints; on the other hand, it advocates a systematic negation of personality as a condition of events, convinced that we live in a strictly impersonal world. (Such reasoning, as we shall see, ultimately brings us to the negation of the spectator and of theatre as a living cosmos.) The laws of science are objective and true for all. On the contrary, as Proust points out, ‘life is true for all, but different for each one’, because it is woven in subjective time, in interior duration. Moreover, such a misunderstanding, which substantially confuses the ‘quality’ with the ‘quantity’ of time, comes from human language. This is linear and ordered in a way that makes us think in spatial concepts which tend to de(-)fine, to fix the mobility and heterogeneity of, for instance, indefinite or confused perceptions such as those related to sensations and emotions. This conditions the Humanities, including performance studies, which exercise a science made of

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words: one that is incapable, for example, of describing the complexity of an event or of a performance pitched on simultaneity – and that is no small matter! As a result, language would be inadequate to tell the shifting experience of time, a flux that consists of an uninterrupted sense of duration that everyone feels inside: the ‘concurrent’ lasting of what has been, in what is, and what is yet to be. In order to approach life’s temporal quality we need an intuition of time that cannot be reduced to spatial movement. All remember Zeno’s famous paradox of ‘Achilles and the tortoise’. The Eleatic arguments against movement come from conceiving Achilles’ motion as being infinitesimally ‘divisible’ in space; whereas if we were to consider each of the hero’s steps as a simple and inseparable unity, then it would be evident that after a certain number of such ‘indivisible’ steps he would catch up with and then overtake the tortoise. Turning to performance studies, first we need to remember that the attempt to analyse and specify the temporal forms of performance, in the absence of criteria juxta propria principia, has succumbed to the most popular model in the Humanities: Genette’s narratology. The latter is based on the distinction between the story’s chronological sequence of events and the order in which these are narrated, as well as on the categories of ‘duration’, ‘order’ (subsequently defined more appropriately in terms of ‘velocity’), and ‘frequency’. Such a framework, superimposed upon the inherent instability of performance, would itself turn from an instrument into the very object and end of research, thus imprisoning the analyst. However, many tempos do not fit into a prescribed framework (the tempos of voice, of gesture and action, of affection and of things, of the story and the narrative, of perception and of reality on stage). Such a model naturally relates to the written dramatic text, whose time is, of itself, far too easy to define and prescribe. Above all, it cannot render that temporal ‘quality’ which is particular to performance, a quality drawn from the actor–spectator relationship: a ‘living’ relationship that draws upon the ‘forces’, not the forms, of time. The continuum of temporal perception in the unfolding of performance is an indivisible process, not the sum of a series of predefined forms; it does not concern how the spectator reads time, but how he lives and feels it. We are interested in such a specific aspect of temporal perception, one that would allow us to try orientating our critical investigations in a different direction.

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The dogma of an ‘immaculate Perception’ (i.e. of the body as object, not the exploring and explored body) has long since collapsed. Such a dogma is not only psychological or cognitive, it is also sociological; as such it has already been profaned by two important figures: the Living Theatre, who were well aware of their struggle against a broken theatre, deprived of an effective relationship between actors and spectators; and Grotowski, who stressed that: ‘This must be clear from the very beginning. We are not concerned with just any audience, but a special one.’2 We are nowadays convinced that perception is constructive and not merely representative: rather than limiting themselves to observing, spectators produce their own perceptions. Nobody is invited to the theatre, but each one hosts theatre within oneself. We know that the Leib, the living and experienced body of the spectator, installs itself kinaesthetically within the theatrical world it inhabits; that it is capable of preserving engrams, and therefore of generating memories; that it is constantly intentional and semantically in motion. Finally, we can say that perception is not a matter of optics, but of connections, of ‘being with’. Providing scientific backing to substantial knowledge acquired in theatre practice, the discovery of mirror neurons allows us to take a few steps forward. As all know, it is mechanism that regulates – ‘at the pre-reflective, pre-cognitive level’ – interpersonal relationships via a process of ‘simulation’, which generates, not only in the person who ‘acts’ but also in the person who ‘observes’, ‘a shared space of action’, the same state of motor, corporal and emotive change.3 The functional mechanism at the basis of this double activation pattern in mirror neurons is an ‘embodied simulation’ which, in turn, produces an interpersonal ‘attuned intention’. It is not automatic behaviour; neither a copy nor the much-hated ‘imitation’. Not readable bodies, but embodied bodies attract the spectator, allowing him to penetrate unconsciously in the world of others and to establish a direct connection with the actor, due to a biological necessity and not an automatism. Establishing a resonance with the performer’s action, not only does the spectator immediately participate in the action’s process, but also activates his own ‘dramaturgical competence’ in full ‘body-to-body’ contact with the actor. Such a mechanism lies, moreover, at the basis of the comprehension of ‘intentionality’ in the actions of others. The attribution of intention is triggered by the obligatory activation of such a mechanism of

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simulation and is of an anticipatory and predictive nature, because observer and agent possess and share the same motor repertory. We are capable of, or perhaps programmed for, prediction. The actor’s art, therefore, lies in triggering intentions and in modifying the course forecast by the sensory-motor process. By inhibiting such a process – since intentions are potential actions – or transforming it, actors induce doubt and unease, leaving the spectator unsettled and disorientated. It is gambling with sense, exploiting predictability to give space to the unpredictable and hence to a new vision. Now – and this is the crux of the matter – according to neuroscientific studies that date back decades to the work of Libet,4 milliseconds elapse between the activation of motor programme neurons and an action’s execution. Let us focus on this time lapse. A pause at the ‘precognitive level’ is opened in the actor–spectator relationship: as action is automatically set in one direction, what emerges is a suspension related to the formation of consciousness. An expectation that corresponds to the lapse of time between an action and its becoming evident to consciousness. An empty interval that casts a shadow upon future time. Presumably, what is happening at the precognitive level is the origin of what, at the ‘cognitive level’, is known as the temporal characteristic of ‘duration’ (which, considering that it is change in permanence, is the only true category of time). And duration is fundamental to the perceptive–active dimension of the actor– spectator relationship. Think of ‘suspension processes’ which dictate rhythm. These generate, as we shall see, a rather distinct correlation such as suspense (i.e. a kind of truly embodied temporality). This captures the spectator like no other; here, time is revealed as a strong state of consciousness, as if it were consciousness itself. Such interstitial time, which generates ‘forms of discontinuity’, seems to produce a foundational dialectic of temporal phenomena, of rhythmic and musical forms. A dialectic of discontinuity based upon elementary rhythmic unity, that is, a unity made up of an upbeat (arsis) and a downbeat (thesis), of a weak and a strong, a short and a long beat, of an accent and a pause . . . that is a unity made up of a beat marked by consciousness and one that is indistinct. Think of the phenomenon which induces the perception, for three seconds at least, of the alarm clock’s (or a dripping tap’s)

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tic tic tic tic as tic tac tic tac. It is as if the mind, in an attempt to defeat the perceived dull but real monotony, had an absolute need for variance, for a distraction, that is for the activation of rhythm. The very exhilarating force of rhythm lies in its being ordered repetition, predictable but not monotonous. As we have seen, action is in itself heuristic, in that its forms determine certain modes of observation and interpretation in advance. We, in fact, detect a major ‘spontaneity’ and naturalness in movements that are open to prediction, those in which future attitudes or movements are forecast (e.g. the aesthetics of ‘grace’ in classical ballet, or those passages in a melody that are more easily remembered than the irregular parts). On the contrary, a movement that is too unpredictable is useless and satisfies only itself, because it does not herald an expectation that can be fulfilled. At the same time, it is true that consciousness is aroused when behaviour does not obey automatisms and habits (which, as such, need not become self-conscious), when a course deviates and sense is not saturated, not closed in itself. It is no coincidence that, for centuries, performance has known an efficient technique consisting of repeating a line or gesture twice, followed by an inevitable variance in the third repetition. The brain is an organ that seeks recurrent and predictable schemas, but with the pleasure of unpredictable variation, and in so doing it distinguishes art from mere machinery. The dialectic of discontinuity can also be retraced in other typologies of rhythm, such as in any gesture that comprises a contraction and a release, in any action made up of a tension and a relaxation, or in any movement that comprises a thrust and a rest. Similarly, the difference between a mere pulsation and forms of metric and rhythmic mental organizations lies in the fact that the latter contain a distinction between strong and weak beats. Even if we were not to take the thought stimuli deriving from cognitive and neuro-scientific studies into account, we are all aware that each time an action or a scene includes a temporal suspension a need arises in the spectator’s consciousness to generate a process that would fill the gap. Hence, a discontinuity based on suspension is the only strategy towards setting an expectation, promising a renewal, the satisfaction of a desire or, sociologically speaking, a need. It is the only way that allows us to comprehend time as a process, and to transform the spectator into a desiring subject who, prepared for

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expectation, discovers the desire to desire, and transforms the arrow of time into the arrow of action. On the contrary, any uniform course that homogenizes fictional time with the spectator’s time weakens and eliminates the consciousness of such a process – the degree zero of fictional time. Instead, in suspension, irreversible time remains open, because suspension always prepares a new expectation: both in an acting fragment and in the macro-time of performance, which begins precisely with a rupture from everyday life, establishing an expectation. The same temporal characteristic that Peter Szondi has defined an ‘everlasting now’, that is ‘an absolute succession of present moments’, is rather an expectation, because performance advances by hypotheses and is therefore open to the future at each instant in coalescence with a present that coexists with the past. According to Stanislavski, those same pauses, the moments of inaction ‘are the moments which our attention awaits, and the reason why it monitors the entire course of energy’, and which allow us to perceive dynamicity even in immobility.5 The director who wants duration and dynamicity to be felt works at discontinuity: visible cuts, pauses, blackouts. The strategy underlying the ‘knitting’ of the story (i.e. the plot) already breaks that homogeneity constituted by the logic and the chrono(-)logy of the fabula. In any case, suspension is the most effective method because it enables the possible negation of action and therefore makes it unpredictable. In an unequivocal statement, Eugenio Barba affirms that: ‘Every action becomes a story when something prevents it from racing towards its conclusion.’6 Allow me to make some reflections on music now. In music, time is, obviously, of fundamental importance. Yet, the essential materiality of music is found at the border of its complete dissolution; whereas the power of theatre lies precisely in the fact that time is captured in its concrete and indissoluble relationship with objective and subjective reality. What is striking, however, is that theatre masters continuously tend to consider performance or acting, in their most excellent of examples, as similar to music: from J. J. Engel to Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Pitoëff, D’Annunzio and Barba (who makes the comparison with dance), up to Orson Welles who ‘saw’ music in the cinema of Fellini. It is clear that they are referring to the performance’s temporal process. Or rather to a performance that they feel lies not in the form but in the ‘force’ of the event, that which in its happening compels change – besides

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being also a way to define a type of performance that specifies itself as a dance of the living, in which ‘stimulation’ prevails over ‘representation’. Music, specifically, has ‘an inclusive meaning’.7 A musical stimulus, or a series of musical stimuli, does not indicate concepts or extramusical objects, but other musical events that are about to happen. A musical event (be it a note, a phrase or an entire section) is meaningful in so far as it announces another musical event, thus arousing our attention. In short, an inclusive musical meaning is ‘the product of an expectation’ just as it is in theatre, especially when theatre approximates dance. Of course, expectation feeds on past experience or on the models which organize our stimuli. But without a suspension that generates expectation, that is, without suspended impulses, performance, like music, is dead, without dynamism. That is what spurs me to focus on suspension. Let us, therefore, turn back to performance to analyse suspension and that extreme form of suspended action we call ‘suspense’. This is a particularly interesting form in relation to the perception of time, because it allows us to see and feel time in all its power. It is a qualitative, not quantitative, aspect of performance time that represents perhaps the highest degree of feeling in performance; it is certainly a powerful magnet that binds us, the whole body-mind, to performance. In such a moment, the spectator struggles, by means of embodied simulation, in an attempt to stop or accelerate the course of time. In performance, the processes of suspension are generally caused by a delay in satisfying something that is desired or that has to happen. However, for something desired to be delayed it would have to be previously announced. Hitchcock, a person we cannot fail to quote in this context, explains the ‘suspense’ effect by distinguishing it from surprise and from mystery, noting that such a distinction is based on announcements and previews that are transmitted to the public: ‘one must inform the public at every opportunity’.8 In other words, there would not be any suspense in the fairy tale Cinderella if we were not previously warned that she has to leave the ball at midnight. The performance’s development, in its organic sense, is a progressive succession of planting and payoff, sowing announcements and prospective actions that will be or will not be realized. Playwrights and scriptwriters also know that in

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order to redeem a weak scene all that is required is to start the clock ticking, setting a time limit onstage: a device Ionesco treats with irony by altering the function of the pendulum clock in The Bald Prima Donna. Such a temporal terminus produces an expectation containing the development of a temporal tension that often results in a strong feeling (of anxiety, fear, or attraction, or the pleasure that results from the expectation of pleasure), because the terminus resembles the end of something. In the development of a dramatic sequence the articulation of such time limits is obviously fundamental, because rather than closing an action it re-launches and re-opens it towards the future. Such a mechanism emerges more clearly in one of the most recurrent dramatic (and literary) models. Let us recall, to cite but one example among many, the story of the blasphemous Don Giovanni that is entirely captured in the theological question: ‘How much time does a man have to repent.’ But think also of the postponed urgency required of Hamlet in completing his mission, the time limit set by Shylock for that famous loan, or the exemplary vicissitude of Everyman. Think of Hofmannsthal’s Play of the Rich Man’s Death or the deadlines imposed on Faust or on Nathan, the wise Jew from the homonymous play by Lessing, who defers time to construct a narrative trap for Saladin. Processes of suspension are based, for the great part, on a procedure that consists in engendering an impulse or desire in the spectator only to then distance its satisfaction. There are, of course, different ways to excite the spectator’s impatience: for instance, treating the performance as if it were a striptease (an evocative comparison used by Roland Barthes). The excitation here resides in the ‘hope’ to see the sex (a college student’s dream) or to know how the story ends. Another form of suspension lies in the spectator’s desire to witness certain events, or to view certain objects the vision or knowledge of which is delayed. It is a suspension which generates suspicion and that dilates Othello’s mind. In brief, the phenomena of suspension we are here referring to occurs when the satisfaction of desire is delayed, or hindered. Temporal suspensions are obtained in general by planting unknowns upon past events, as exemplified in the dramaturgies of Chekhov, Ibsen and many others – a device often mediated by flashbacks. But also by distributing unknowns in the ‘present’, via an interruption

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of a link in the chain of time. Whereas concerning the future, the difficulty to predict it renders the signs of suspension more visible. Notably, applying the ‘simultaneity’ of action inevitably produces unknowns, necessarily suspending the vision of an essential part of the dramatic action to the point of breaking the performance into fragments; this is often the case in avant-garde or research theatre. In other words, suspensions present us with a paradox: a performance has to move forward, but in reality it does all it can not to advance, to suspend such a commitment. Or else, to become more interesting, it moves along false tracks. Alternatively, performance suspends sequences and their respective meanings as soon as they hatch like chicks from their egg. This is what happens, for example, in the unpredictable sequences of Odin Teatret performances (even when these are called Hamlet or Don Giovanni), thus provoking cognitive and emotive shocks. After all, it is precisely when a tendency or custom is delayed or inhibited that meaning is objectified and becomes the centre of attention. It is such a meaning that magnifies and transforms even the most ordinary of actions into a story. The passage from suspension to suspense is a passage to the drama’s extreme temporal limit. In suspense time presents itself as such, it makes itself seen and felt. It is not by chance that the first characteristic of suspense, due to such a felt consumption of time, is that it appears to be almost imposed upon the spectator. The spectator feels imprisoned, just like Jeffries, the protagonist in Hitchcock’s Rear Window who witnesses the coming of danger from his window, but – in a condition comparable to that of the spectator – cannot move because his legs are in plaster. Similarly, in suspense, the spectator experiences a temporality of his own, unbreakable, materially inflexible, compact which cannot be fragmented, unable to exit the temporal flow in which he finds himself completely immersed. The duration of temporal suspension can also be brief (like a suspended ‘impulse’) while still implying a strong intensity, as happens in the very few seconds that separate the intensio of two lovers, ready to kiss, from the distensio of the kiss. In fact, no gesture, action, word, not even the most simple word, is innocent in theatre, because the temporal silence that precedes and follows a gesture, word, line and action can contain a mute energy bubble capable of igniting and dilating atoms of present time. Therefore, efficacious directorial prosodies place pebbles, meanders,

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vortices and jolts in the river of time so that the waves may crush meaningless images and undertows may break the reflections. Hence, one can find moments of an almost suspended time, one that does not follow the measure, a vertical time as distinct from linear, ordinary time. Peter Brook calls it the ‘present moment’, which is ‘the unique reference by which an act of theatre can be judged’.9 It is a quality of time in which reception is transformed into deep perception, in a shimmer or an integration of consciousness. The lines of force of a mise-en-scène (what needs to be identified for a non-descriptive analysis of performance) essentially travel via accelerations or decelerations. Acceleration unites and opens a direction with intensity. Deceleration tends to form an enlightening and flagrant synthesis that has been called Satori or To, pregnant instant (Lessing), gestus (Brecht), psychological gesture (M. Chekhov), engram, pathosformel, schemata . . . in which the spectator’s consciousness is established only in the oblivion of its other possibilities. Here time is not only affective and fluent, it folds back on itself, it tends to block physically, it is aware of its own existence: a kind of ‘auto affection’ of time that Kant considered the most original form of awareness. It is a process similar to that of an hourglass. All the nonhomogenous and con(-)fused matter that has served to prepare the performance, the many confused grains arranged in parallel or simultaneously must then, in performance, align and arrange themselves in sequence. A forced serialization presents itself as intrinsically irreversible. The ‘present moment’ is the neck of the hourglass in which a state of consciousness is formed and reception blooms into perception before opening up in a thousand parallel points in the spectator’s memory. Of course, in performance there are many ways to obtain the necessary augmentation of a duration, both by deceleration and acceleration. Ellipsis, for example, or ‘random’ actions that run in all but the desired direction (typical in Commedia dell’Arte and in comedy). Also, the most interesting ‘obligatory’ scenes that generate expectation: the case of Oedipus in which the spectator, resonating with the character, desires and at the same time fears the inevitable scene in which the protagonist will learn the truth about himself. Even so, beyond possible strategies of composition, I wish to underline that suspension, and suspense even more so, is not merely a matter of deceleration or acceleration, but is related above all to

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the intensity of a duration, which is lived in the body-mind’s pleasure of feeling present to itself, to the rhythm of a heartbeat. Fundamentally, suspension is a process of distortion, to various degrees of temporal alteration (which is almost hyperbolic in suspense) that can act as a magnifying glass in deceleration. A magnifying glass on what? On consciousness, which dilates while everything else becomes smaller. Think of shared time, via embodied simulation, between the dilated consciousness of Othello and that of the spectator. One can, of course, cite a thousand examples of suspension and suspense. Think of the successful attempt to slow down time, objectified in a block of ice slowly melting in Nekrosius’ Amletas. The slow tempos of Noh actors and the infinite tempos of Butoh actors also come to mind. The difference between Western and Eastern theatre lies mainly in the use of time. Rather, such difference is determined by a culture that loves the harmonic and silent depth of the ‘flowing river’ of time, those imperceptible transformations which nurture the silent revolutions of an Orient that stays away from worshipping the deafening liturgy of the event – a true mania in the West’s way of perceiving reality and a cardinal point of our performance culture. We have seen that suspension is a constitutive element of performance. If we consider that the impression of rhythm depends on the existence of stressed and unstressed beats, and on their grouping, then it becomes evident that the prerequisite for the perception of rhythm is itself also based on a suspension or expectation, or better on the perturbation of continuity, derived from the prospect of repetition. A succession of ‘atonal’ tempos would appear incomplete and arouse expectations of completeness, prospects of stress just as, on the contrary, an uninterrupted succession of ‘accents’ would require a relaxation. In any case, the perception of rhythm expects the mind to group one or more atonal beats with a stressed beat. Is such stress not the sign of consciousness? Anything stressed is, in some way or other, marked by consciousness. It is also for this reason that time is consciousness; it is via the proper use of rhythm that theatre may sometimes offer us, in the brief moment of a flash, even the revelation of our existence. Such consciousness of time is itself, at heart, consciousness of the body, since the body is the limit of time, because it is a limit unto itself. In fact, no sooner a limit, be it physical or mental, appears,

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behold how true time, without it being summoned, appears and shakes our consciousness. The finitude of the body constitutes the basso continuo of human action and thought. Humans know this: they have invented theatre also for this reason, to look in the mirror and govern time, to model, dilate and condense it, to tear it from the root of the real. To become the masters of time, to the point of wanting to capture it, apparently forever, in those tin boxes that contained the first cinematographic films. Ultimately, however, one aspect needs to be reaffirmed: lived time during performance, the time of the live event, is a dimension that is not completely accessible to scientific analysis. The mind cannot perceive time directly and immediately, for the same reason that the eye cannot observe itself. Objects perceived by the eye would remain invisible without the eye, but they are not the eye and exist by themselves. The same applies to time. It is accessible to the extent that it is spatialized, but if we consider time as it is lived by the spectator in the unfolding of a performance, in which immediacy must give way to construction, we realize that it is not possible to measure or analyze such lived time. It is not a form. It is a force that is not subject to the reflection that would break its unstoppable flow; it cannot be immobilized. It is like music, which has no substance, impelled to vanish eternally. It can be seen, but as consciousness revealing itself. Even the theatre masters have always known this. Stanislavski (like Michael Chekhov) was always averse to considering temporhythm as a ‘measure’. He proposed adequate exercises and invited the actor to search for his own interior tempo-rhythm in view of a correspondence with the exterior tempo-rhythm. Meyerhold understood that the metric scheme was a preventive spatialization of time, therefore it was necessary ‘to break off time prevision’;10 that cliché was calcified, non-organic time, repeatable but empty, exactly because it was calculated and spatialized. It is perhaps such a temporal misunderstanding that Eugenio Barba, who studies theatre as he lives it, confesses. He speaks of his dramaturgy as a dramaturgy of dramaturgies, as the interlacing of the actors’ individual threads woven in a living text. He then questions whether the metaphor of weaving can be misleading because it suggests the possibility of extracting the various dramaturgies out again from the final result of this interlacement: ‘I should have spoken

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not of weaving, but of “perfume” . . . After the process it is no longer possible to go back. It is impossible to extract from the perfume the different aromatic essences which compose it.’11 The director thinks of the relationship between score and performance; but what are analysis and process if not the respective spatialized time (its quantity) and the continuous and heterogeneous time of performance (its quality) left to its irreversible flow and its own quantum sparks in its simultaneous development? This is a process-time, autonomous and indescribable because every description, every analysis can only be based on spatialization. Hence, the analysis of theatrical time remains partially beyond any form of scientific analysis.

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PART FOUR

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Applied Performance

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Introduction: Does Art Therapy Work as a Rehabilitative Tool? Giovanni Mirabella

Art therapy can be defined as a form of psychotherapy, which uses the medium of art to facilitate personal expression and the understanding of emotions.1 Whether it can be a useful rehabilitative tool has been a long-standing topic for debate. There is a great deal of observational and anecdotal evidence that different types of arts-based therapy can improve the quality of life, and even the cognitive functions of patients suffering from any one of several different mental health problems (e.g. dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism, schizophrenia, psychosomatic disorders). For instance, by inserting ‘art therapy’ and ‘mental disease’ as search concepts in Google, I got about 71,000 hits. Most sites report enthusiastic claims about the effectiveness of art therapy. Sentences such as ‘Art therapy has provided mental health treatment for clients who have experienced trauma, grief & loss, depression, chronic illness, substance abuse, and more’ are pretty common. However, there is not yet enough systematic evidence to show convincingly that art therapies are effective for people with mental illness. Except for a few remarkable exceptions, rigorous clinical investigations have rarely been performed. Many studies suffer due 157

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to small sample sizes,2 limited duration,3 and heterogeneous populations (e.g. type and stage of mental disease).4 Each of these issues becomes very relevant when assessing the risks and benefits of any medical therapy. Thus, case studies5 or studies with very few patients6 are unlikely to provide any definitive evidence of art therapy efficacy, as their results are likely to be highly influenced by the variability of the patients’ personal traits. Similarly, if different types of mental disease (e.g. different types of dementia)7 are included in a study, the efficacy of art therapy cannot be really addressed, as sparing abilities across patients might differ considerably, affecting their cognition and artistic predisposition in unpredictable ways. In some instances, pilot studies have prompted large multicentre studies. Probably, the most relevant example is the MATISSE trial (Multicentre study of Art Therapy in Schizophrenia: Systematic Evaluation).8 This randomized controlled trial was conceived to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of group art therapy as an adjunctive treatment for adults with schizophrenia. It was prompted by the results of a pilot study, which suggested that this intervention could help bring about clinically important reductions in the negative symptoms associated with schizophrenia.9 On these grounds, art therapy was included in the United Kingdom NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) guidelines for the treatment of schizophrenia (i.e. clinicians were recommended to consider referring all people with schizophrenia for art therapy).10 However, evidence from a large cohort of patients was lacking. To fill this gap, about 420 schizophrenic patients were involved in the MATISSE trial. They were subdivided into three subgroups of equal size. Group art therapy was administered to one subgroup, while the other two received either active treatment (i.e. patients were engaged in collective activity) or standard care treatment. No evidence of a population-level effect of group art therapy over the other treatments was found, either in terms of global mental health functioning improvements, or other health-related outcomes. A follow-up analysis on the same data showed that even when considering specific subgroups of patients (i.e. those with more severe negative symptoms) and those with an explicit preference for art therapy, no evidence of improvement was shown.11 Along the same lines, even though some exploratory studies suggested that music provides cognitive or behavioural benefits to people suffering from dementia,12 a Cochrane review stated that the

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methodological quality of most of these studies prevented any final conclusions from being drawn.13 The poor quality of the studies was also fundamental in the failure to find evidence for the use of art therapy in the treatment of psychosomatic and eating disorders.14 Does the above represent the failure of art therapy as a tool for rehabilitating people with mental diseases? In my opinion, this is not the case, but it surely prompts some reflections. Medical treatments to arrest or reverse most neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia) are rather limited and sometimes completely lacking. In fact, most medical interventions aim to alleviate symptoms, not to cure the disease. Under such circumstances, the improvement of the quality of life of patients and of their caregivers represents a goal of primary importance. In principle, art therapy has the potential to foster both psychological and emotional health, by enhancing self-expression, and developing better interpersonal functioning. However, art therapy cannot be thought of as a panacea. It is very unlikely that all people with mental/brain diseases could benefit from art therapy; different forms of art (e.g. music, dance, painting, drawing, clay manipulation, theatre) might produce different results depending on the requested skills. These are key points, which rely directly on the neural mechanisms underlying behavioural changes. It has been demonstrated that the brain circuits of adults can change as a consequence of brain injury, transplantation of body parts,15 as well as during learning.16 This phenomenon has been named brain plasticity. Potentially, artistic performance could promote some form of brain plasticity that, at least to some extent, might restore the damage caused by the disease. Relevantly, plastic changes are experience-dependent, thus they are strictly related both to the activities carried out by patients and to the state of health of their brains. From these considerations, it follows that it is really improbable that any form of art intervention could be effective on persons with very advanced neurodegenerative disorders. If patients cannot accurately remember, assess their behaviour or mental state, or lose the ability to communicate, they will probably be incapable of enjoying the artistic experience. Consequently, they would not be able to learn, because the damage to their brain tissues would be too extensive. Unfortunately, in many instances by the time schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed, many cognitive abilities will have

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already been severely compromised, meaning these illnesses are not suitable for art therapy. In addition, both in schizophrenia17 and in Alzheimer’s disease18 there is no precise and unique brain site that is affected. Often the damage is rather diffused and varies a lot across patients. The overall framework of Parkinson’s disease is different. This disease emerges when dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta start to die, producing a marked deficit of dopamine content in the striatum.19 Thus, even though such damage causes abnormalities in a large brain network, it is well localized. Therefore, in principle, it is plausible that art therapy might exert a strong drive for the strengthening of dopaminergic pathways spared by the pathology or elicit some plastic changes that might allow other brain regions to partially replace the lost functions. It is not a coincidence that there is more evidence showing that art therapy can produce improvements in the quality of life of patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease than from other neurodegenerative diseases.20 Of equal importance, for the efficacy of therapeutic intervention, is the type of art employed. This is because each artistic discipline relies on diverse cognitive and motor abilities, entails different emotional involvement and requires a different amount of intersubjective relationships. In this respect, a main distinction can be drawn. Artistic disciplines such as drawing, painting, sculpting, or playing music surely have the potential to allow patients to express themselves freely and spontaneously, but they have a limited impact on whole body motor control. Dance has this last feature, but, as in the previously mentioned artistic forms, the degree of personal interaction, notably in the kind of interactions that normally occur in real life, is scarce. The case of theatre is different, because it is more holistic.21 Performers are required to develop conscious means to control and order movements, and to predict, represent and modify emotions. The strict coupling between motor and emotional control, and the need to manage social situations, makes theatre an ideal tool for rehabilitative purposes. This is because through theatrical training patients might tap new, unused strategies to carefully control themselves within a protected environment (i.e. in a place where they do not feel judged by others). Thus, theatre, thanks to its unique features, might allow patients to (re)acquire the management of their social, psychological and emotional life and to transfer these abilities to real situations. Some preliminary data,

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collected on Parkinson’s disease patients, seems to confirm this hypothesis.22 Finally, a third element must be taken into account, which is the length of the rehabilitation programme. Plastic changes take time to be well established, especially in unhealthy brains. Thus, short-time interventions are very prone to fail or to produce non-lasting effects.23

Conclusion At present, despite several attempts, the effectiveness of art therapy as a rehabilitative tool for people suffering from mental/brain diseases is very weak. This is due to the poor quality of many studies. Thus, to assess the real effects of the arts in health, it is absolutely necessary to bring more scientific rigour into this area, in order to produce the critical mass of data necessary to generalize beyond individual cases. In this respect, new instruments, allowing for the quantitative evaluation of parameters such as quality of life and social skills need to be further developed and validated. In fact, to obtain multifaceted evaluations, study outcomes have to be gathered not only on clinical scales and via neuropsychological tests, but also by exploiting psychophysical tests and brain imaging techniques. However, the impact of participating in artistic activities has to be evaluated in relation to the type and stage of the mental/ brain disease and the kind of artistic discipline employed. Possibly, more holistic forms of art, such as theatrical training, have a higher chance of success, because they can potentially allow patients simultaneously to regain self-confidence, to develop higher selfcontrol and to (re)acquire social competence. This is compatible with the neural mechanisms that are thought to subtend behavioural changes (i.e. brain plasticity). Plastic changes, that is the reshaping of brain circuits, are experience dependent, thus they depend upon the activities carried out by patients. At the same time, their efficacy is likely to depend upon the state of health of the brains. Thus, artistic disciplines that require a large spectrum of skills, such as theatre, are likely to produce the largest effects, provided that the neural substrate of the recipient is not too compromised and that the intervention would have a proper duration. With an epidemic of neurodegenerative diseases looming on the horizon, and taking into account that almost none of the medical

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treatments available are able to arrest or reverse them, the reason why there is a vibrant interest in developing appropriate complementary therapies aimed at improving the personal and social life of patients and caregivers is very clear. Art therapy can be a powerful intervention, but as with any other ‘medicine’ we need to understand how and when to administer it, while being mindful of the possible risks. Acknowledgements: I wish to thank the ‘Fondazione Neurone’ for its financial support.

10 Use of Theatrical Techniques and Elements as Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorders Jenna Gabriel, Elisa Angevin, Tamara E. Rosen and Matthew D. Lerner

Introduction Autism spectrum disorders (ASD ) are developmental disorders defined by social communication deficits, as well as restricted and repetitive behaviours.1 These symptoms significantly affect the ability to form friendships and understand the social world and are often highly treatment-refractory; thus, a significant research effort in recent years has focused on treatments for social deficits in ASD.2 Group social skills interventions (GSSI s) are a widely used approach for treating the core social deficits of ASD. GSSI s aim to develop pro-social behaviours and often include direct instruction and in-group skills practice. Treatment approaches vary, but typically involve either a structured-learning approach, in which a therapist didactically teaches skills, and/or social performance 163

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training, in which participants are implicitly taught through enacting behaviours themselves. In recent years, a growing number of practitioners and researchers have noted that outcomes targeted in GSSI s are similar to goals in theatre training.3 This consonance has led to efforts to understand theatre training as a discrete – and a potential differentially effective – approach to improving social skills in ASD. In this chapter, we review leading cognitive models of processes underlying social deficits in ASD. We then specify several specific elements of theatre, elucidate theoretical links between these models and elements, and review current literature examining these links. Finally, we discuss implications for future research and practice.

A brief review of the cognitive models of ASD Several cognitive models have been useful in characterizing social deficits associated with ASD. The first model is the theory of mind (ToM) hypothesis.4 This model posits that children with ASD exhibit categorical impairments in their ability to understand the mental states of others.5 Accordingly, ToM deficits have been linked to social communication impairments among individuals with ASD.6 The second model is that of social pragmatics. This model suggests that there are basic expressive and receptive capacities (e.g. language syntax, emotion recognition, non-verbal communication) that are required for the effective use of social content (e.g. basic language abilities) and that these abilities are especially impacted in ASD.7 For example, although content may be intact (i.e. saying the right words), the form or delivery may be unusual (e.g. tone of voice, body language, reciprocal conversation). These unusual behaviours could lead to social exclusion as deficits in reciprocal conversation may make it difficult to converse with and connect to peers.8 A third model suggests that deficits in emotion recognition lead to social difficulties wherein individuals with ASD struggle to understand and identify emotions.9 For instance, individuals with ASD exhibit difficulty in identifying complex emotions in facial expressions.10 These difficulties may make it harder to understand

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the feelings of others,11 which may have consequences for social competence. A fourth framework is weak central coherence,12 which suggests ASD is characterized by a tendency to focus on details rather than an integrated whole.13 This may affect verbal and semantic processes14 and implies that an individual with ASD could experience the social world as mostly disjointed details, impeding the development of a holistic and intuitive social capacity.15 A fifth model suggests that social knowledge is explicitly impaired in ASD.16 This model suggests that explicit social knowledge of how to behave in a given social situation is crucial to enacting that behaviour and is impaired in ASD.17 For example, it has been proposed that difficulties maintaining friendships stem from deficits in explicit knowledge of peer etiquette. Within this framework, then, the other models presented here fall in the contrasting social performance category18 in that they describe capacities impacting social behaviour regardless of explicit social knowledge.19 As such, while the social knowledge model indicates a direct relationship between knowing what to do and doing it, it also provides a framework wherein non-knowledge-related (i.e. performancerelated) factors may be considered. A sixth theory, known as the enactive mind model, suggests that early in development, individuals begin to have social (and proto-social) experiences by actively making sense of their social environment.20 The social experiences accrued as this continues may become crucial for later social development. The enactive mind model indicates that this trajectory is derailed early on in ASD. Individuals with ASD may fail to spontaneously attend to their social environment, and a snowball effect may ensue wherein they repeatedly miss out on the practicing of these social experiences that are thought to be crucial for the development of social abilities. For example, an individual with ASD could miss a fleeting gaze or smile or be unaware of an attempt from a peer to engage in conversation, thereby failing to connect to the rich array of complex opportunities for social connection they may encounter in daily life. The next set of models can be conceptualized in a self-regulation framework. The first model in this framework is that of executive dysfunction, which purports that individuals with ASD have impairments in planning, problem-solving, and flexible thinking.21

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These deficits could lead to an array of problems impacting social functioning, such as cognitive rigidity leading to perseveration on an inappropriate topic in conversation. The next model in the self-regulation framework is that of mooddysregulation, which suggests that social difficulties may partially arise from difficulties with mood-regulation.22 In ASD, this may lead to an array of social problems, including limited social interaction, rejection from peers, and aggression towards others. The last model suggests that social motivation, or the innate drive to seek out social information, interactions, and relationships, is diminished in individuals with ASD.23 With an impaired drive to attend to social information, important social learning opportunities may be missed, which could lead to under-developed social competence.24

Elements of theatre and theoretical links to the cognitive models The cognitive models discussed above represent distinct ways to understand how social impairments arise within ASD. Many of the skills presumed to be impaired in ASD – including theory of mind, empathy, emotion regulation, and adaptive behaviour – are frequently theorized to be enhanced through participation in theatre programming.25 However, ‘theatre programming’ encompasses many distinct elements, specifically theatre games, improvisation, collaborative co-creation, the rehearsal process, and performance. Herein, we describe each in detail, elucidate their theorized link to cognitive skills, and describe how they may relate to the listed cognitive models.

Theatre games Theatre Games are structured games that are designed to be enjoyable and that ask actors to perform comical or play-based exercises, often in collaboration with others.26 Examples include ‘The Mirror Game’, a partner game in which one actor must mimic another’s facial expressions and movements in sync;27 ‘Where’, in

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which actors adjust their movements to respond to pretend environments (e.g. as if the room were a winter park);28 ‘Pass the Clap’, in which actors must remain in-sync while passing a rhythmic sound;29 and ‘Gibberish’, in which actors use made-up sounds, vocal intonation, and facial expressions to communicate phrases, which are then guessed by viewing participants.30 A number of cognitive skills are implicated when participating in theatre games, and different games are thought to involve different competencies. First, theatre games are closely related to play, which assumes a willingness to participate. Second, games like ‘Pass the Clap’ involve joint attention. Third, games like ‘The Mirror Game’ and ‘Gibberish’ require actors to understand and appropriately respond to nonverbal cues.31 Fourth, games like ‘Gibberish’ involve the identification of complex emotions underlying facial expressions, vocal inflections, or other physical cues. Fifth, games such as ‘Where’ prompt actors to respond to directions individually (e.g. how one actor should change his movements based on the prompt of ‘winter park’) and holistically (e.g. how everyone’s movements can fit together to create a winter wonderland). Sixth, the requirement that participants adapt to others assumes the implication of flexible thinking. Finally, theatre games allow for participant choice. In theory, the resultant personal investment in the process of play acts as a motivating factor for continued participation.32 A number of cognitive models of ASD are theoretically implicated when participating in theatre games. The propensity to engage in pretend play and take another’s perspective suggests theatre games may inform the theory of mind model. The reliance on nonverbal communication could link theatre games to social pragmatics. Identifying emotions from physical cues could suggest a link with emotion recognition. The need to focus on the ‘whole’ picture suggests theatre games may inform the weak central coherence model. The flexible thinking required could inform the executive dysfunction model. Finally, the assumed intrinsic desire to participate suggests theatre games could inform the social motivation model.

Improvisation Improvisation prompts players to think of characters, scenes, situations, problems, and/or lines in the moment – a process

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governed by the theatrical rule of ‘Yes, and’,33 a rule that assumes an actor must accept the suggestions of his partner to move the action forward. A number of cognitive skills are implicated in improvisation. First, deciding how to respond to another’s suggestion is thought to require perspective taking.34 Second, actors must recognize emotions communicated through facial expressions and body language. Third, improvisation asks actors to work together to develop a cohesive story, which requires an ability to focus on the integrated whole. Fourth, actors must perform actions without specific prompts or scripts. Fifth, improvisation requires flexible thought,35 which could implicate emotion regulation, as actors must navigate possible disagreements. Finally, improvisation empowers actors to contribute content to the scene, a design that compels actors to continue in the process. Improvisation could theoretically inform a number of cognitive models. Perspective-taking links improvisation with theory of mind. The need to respond to nonverbal cues suggests improvisation could inform the social pragmatics model. Improvisation may also inform the weak central coherence model, as actors must focus on the scene’s integrated ‘whole’. Since scenes are not scripted, improvisation could inform the social performance model. Flexible thinking suggests a relationship with executive dysfunction. Selfregulation during arguments could implicate the mood-dysregulation model. Finally, the desire to imbue improvised scenes with preferred content may link improvisation to the social motivation model.

Collaborative co-creation Many performances are created through a process that gives equal voice to the playwright, director and actors,36 and stresses the collaborative nature of creating original work. Though there is no one accepted term for the writing and creating process, for the purposes of this chapter, the term collaborative co-creation will be used. As in any group problem-solving process, a number of cognitive skills are implicated in collaborative co-creation. First, actors must reflect on their own work and constructively critique each other’s, which requires perspective-taking. Second, collaboration asks

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actors not only to understand what they should do, but also to enact that knowledge appropriately. Third, the collaborative cocreation process asks actors to focus on the whole story being created without getting lost in details. Collaborative co-creation requires group problem-solving, which requires actors to organize their thoughts, plan accordingly, and work together to solve the central problems. Disagreements can arise, which require actors to regulate their emotions. Finally, actors are active contributors to the content of the story, which theoretically motivates their continued participation.37 Thus, a number of cognitive models are implicated in collaborative co-creation. Perspective-taking could link collaborative co-creation to theory of mind. The weak central coherence model could be informed by collaborative co-creation, as actors must focus on the ‘whole’ story. Enacting appropriate behaviours based on one’s social knowledge suggests a link to social performance. By providing repeating opportunities in which to perform social behaviours, collaborative co-creation could inform the enactive mind model. The need for organized problem-solving links collaborative co-creation to the executive dysfunction model. Self-regulation could theoretically link collaborative co-creation to the mood-dysregulation model. Finally, the theoretical desire to participate could inform the social motivation model.

The rehearsal process The rehearsal process is the most traditional image of ‘acting’. In scriptwork, this requires actors to answer three questions: What is my objective? (What do I want to see happen?) What is my obstacle? (What is preventing this?) and What are my tactics? (What can I do to overcome those obstacles?).38 A number of cognitive skills are theoretically implicated in rehearsal. First, script analysis asks actors to take on the perspective of their character, which may require social awareness, theory of mind, and empathy.39 Second, actors must embody their character’s emotions. Third, actors must be able to identify character’s emotions from complex clues within the script or a scene partner’s body language. Fourth, actors must never lose sight of how their character fits into the overall story, which requires that they maintain a global focus.

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Different rehearsal processes are assumed to involve different cognitive skills. Some stress an actor’s ability to perform a role in the exact same way as another (i.e. preparing an understudy). Rehearsals of this nature require that an actor imitate another’s facial expressions, vocal inflections, and physical movements, essentially creating a script of behaviours actors must know. Conversely, a rehearsal process that gives actors autonomy over how to represent their character’s actions without explicit modelling directs actors to enact the behaviours based on their knowledge of their characters’ thoughts and motivations. Either rehearsal process provides actors with extended opportunity to practice their actions and responses. Thus, a number of cognitive models are theoretically implicated. Perspective-taking could suggest that rehearsal informs the theory of mind model. Expressing a character’s emotions could involve social pragmatics. Identifying characters’ emotions in each scene suggests a link to emotion recognition. Global focus links rehearsal to the weak central coherence model. A rehearsal process that assumes actors need explicit instruction in their character’s actions could inform the social knowledge model. Conversely, a process that assumes actors must utilize existing knowledge to perform their character’s behaviours could inform the social performance model. By providing actors repeated opportunity to practice, the rehearsal process may link to enactive mind.

Performance Performance is widely accepted as the final product of rehearsal, in which the play is performed for an audience.40 Live performance is often full of unexpected events, like forgetting a line or missing an important prop. Thus, performing requires actors to simultaneously concentrate on lines, emotions, the audience, and other actors, while maintaining awareness of the story they are telling.41 This is assumed to involve many cognitive skills. First, responding to audience reaction and scene partners’ cues requires perspective taking. Second, actors must be able to improvise if problems arise, a process that requires an awareness of the whole story and implicates flexible thinking. Finally, performance can be an anxiety-inducing experience; if unexpected emotions arise, actors must self-regulate.

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A number of cognitive models are thus implicated. Perspectivetaking could link performance to the theory of mind model. Focusing on the whole story could implicate weak central coherence. Flexible thinking could link performance with executive dysfunction. Finally, self-regulation may inform mood-dysregulation.

Empirical and anecdotal evidence There is a small but growing body of empirical and anecdotal literature examining theatre-based interventions for individuals with ASD. Here, we discuss specific elements of theatre for which literature has examined their capacity to inform the previously discussed cognitive models. Where empirical literature exists, we highlight these results first; where none exist, we discuss anecdotal literature, which may provide a foundation for testable hypotheses (See Table 10.1).

TABLE 10.1 Elements of theatre and cognitive models of ASD they may inform Element of theatre

Cognitive models of ASD

Theatre games

Theory of mind* Social pragmatics* Emotion recognition Weak central coherence Executive dysfunction** Social motivation

Improvisation

Theory of mind* Social pragmatics* Weak central coherence Social performance* Executive dysfunction* Social motivation (Continued)

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TABLE 10.1 (Continued) Element of theatre

Cognitive models of ASD

Collaborative co-creation

Theory of mind** Weak central coherence Social performance* Enactive mind Executive dysfunction** Mood-dysregulation* Social motivation

The rehearsal process

Theory of mind* Social pragmatics* Emotion recognition* Weak central coherence Social knowledge Social performance

Performance

Theory of mind Weak central coherence Executive dysfunction Mood-dysregulation

* Denotes empirical literature has examined the element’s capacity to inform the cognitive model. ** Denotes anecdotal literature exists, which could form the foundation for a testable hypothesis.

Theatre games and improvisation Several studies have examined the relationship between interventions based in socio-dramatic activities and social pragmatic and cognitive outcomes in ASD. These interventions use both theatre games and improvisation. To date, no study has distinguished between the two when assessing outcomes. Thus, for the purposes of this chapter, we discuss the two together. Medium-to-large effect sizes have been found for various social outcomes, including skills such as social assertion,42 emotion identification,43 anxiety reduction,44 increased observed positive behaviours,45 decreased solitary play,46 and increased participation

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in make believe and role play.47 These results are consistent with the social performance, social pragmatics, emotion recognition, mooddysregulation, and theory of mind models. Anecdotal reports suggest similar relations between theatre games and increased self-awareness,48 improved behaviour regulation,49 nonverbal communication and perspective-taking,50 independent socialseeking behaviour,51 emotion regulation,52 and flexible thinking53 – an outcome that would be consistent with the executive dysfunction model.

Collaborative co-creation No study to date has explicitly examined effects of collaborative co-creation. However, anecdotal reports suggest relationships between collaborative co-creation and improved social interaction skills, flexible thinking, and perspective-taking abilities54 – outcomes that would be consistent with the social performance, executive dysfunction, and theory of mind models.

Rehearsal process Two empirical examinations have been conducted employing an intervention addressing the rehearsal process. Medium-to-large effect sizes have been found for facial identification,55 social functioning,56 and theory of mind skills.57 These results are consistent with the emotion recognition, social pragmatics and theory of mind models. Anecdotal reports suggest a similar relationship between rehearsal and emotion identification, perspective-taking, and socially appropriate behaviour, as well as a link between script analysis and better understanding of cause and effect58 – a relationship that would be consistent with the weak central coherence model.

Performance No study has yet investigated performance as a mechanism for learning social or cognitive skills in ASD.

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Discussion This chapter has distinguished between specific components of theatre, outlined theoretical links between these components and the cognitive models of ASD, and reviewed the evidence as it relates to these relationships. While there are many gaps in the existing literature, there is abundant anecdotal evidence suggesting the potential of theatre to improve social skills, as well as a plethora of existing theatre-based therapies and successful, in-demand community organizations. The Social Competence Intervention Program (SCIP ),59 Socio-Dramatic Affective-Relational Intervention (SDARI ),60 and Social Emotional NeuroScience Endocrinology Theatre (SENSE Theatre)61 are all examples of theatre-based GSSI s which have amassed some empirical evidence for their efficacy. In the community, recreational theatre programmes for individuals with ASD are numerous and growing, so here we present only a sample: Daytime Moon Creations,62 Imagination Stage,63 The Miracle Project,64 The Red Kite Project,65 and Spotlight.66 The growing demand for similar programmes suggests an urgent need to clearly and precisely evaluate their efficacy. Here we suggest directions for future research. First, we suggest investigators examine each element of theatre independent of structures designed to support its therapeutic use. Though existing interventions are grounded in theatre literature, developmental theory, and current evidence on GSSI s, the relationship between theatrical elements that form their foundations and desired outcomes has not been substantiated. For example, SCIP 67 relies on theatre games and improvisation as therapeutic strategies, yet auxiliary supports such as take-home exercises and explicit discussions about social skills were built into the structure in advance of evaluation, limiting ability to precisely identify the specific role of the theatrical elements in question. Second, we suggest an in-depth examination of the rehearsal process. As discussed, different rehearsal processes are assumed to involve different cognitive skills. Studies such as those of Corbett et al.68 suggest a relationship between rehearsal, facial identification, and theory of mind skills. In these studies, though, individuals receiving therapy are paired with a typically developed peer who models facial expressions and vocal inflections for the character’s lines. In this way, the individual with ASD is not using his own knowledge in rehearsal, but instead is instructed in what to say and

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how to say it. Conversely, addressing questions of objective, obstacles, and tactics asks actors to consider that behaviours have consequences and that one can, in a sense, achieve a desired social outcome by changing one’s behaviour – an important realization before understanding complex social dynamics. Third, we suggest research into collaborative co-creation and performance. The collaborative process is an embodied task and provides ample opportunities to observe and develop pro-social behaviours. Understanding what differentiates the collaborative co-creation process from improvisation (the ensemble having time to plan/rehearse scenes) and from rehearsal (the group co-creating original content) could have implications in our understanding of group problem-solving behaviours and social motivation. In both recreational and intervention settings, performance often is dismissed as only an obligatory final celebration; understanding the specific cognitive skills required to take part in a live production is rich ground for future investigation. Overall, it is clear that more research is necessary to understand the relationship between individual elements of theatre – theatre games, improvisation, collaborative co-creation, the rehearsal process, and performance – and the cognitive models of ASD – theory of mind, social pragmatics, emotion recognition, weak central coherence, social knowledge, social performance, enactive mind, executive dysfunction, mood-dysregulation, and social motivation. The links posited in this chapter may serve as concrete guideposts for future research with promising implications for advancing novel, engaging, and uniquely valuable approaches for addressing core deficits of ASD.

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11 Theatre as a Valuable Tool for Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation Nicola Modugno, Imogen Kusch and Giovanni Mirabella

Introduction There is growing evidence to show that the impairment of the general state of health and the social life of Parkinson’s disease (PD ) patients is determined not just by motor symptoms, but also by the simultaneous presence of neuro-psychiatric and/or neuro-vegetative disorders (non-motor symptoms).1 Most medical treatments aim to reduce motor disturbances, neglecting the other aspects. However, even when motor improvements are evident, patients experience a deterioration in their daily lives.2 This evidence emphasizes that PD patients need a more complex approach rather than just pharmacological or surgical treatment. Theatre training could be a very effective form of cognitive rehabilitation. In fact, due to its similarity to real-life situations, patients might learn, or re-learn, social and emotional strategies in a protected environment and transfer them to everyday life situations.3

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Parkinson’s disease Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease that causes motor disturbances (e.g. slowness, rigidity, tremor, hypokinesia, gait and balance disorders) and non-motor disturbances such as neuropsychiatric (e.g. depression, anxiety, cognitive impairments) and neurovegetative (e.g. decreased control of urinary bladder, sexual dysfunctions) disorders. Consequently, the general health and the social lives of patients are deeply impaired.4 Parkinson’s disease is mainly caused by functional abnormalities of a group of nuclei located subcortically, collectively known as basal ganglia (see Figure 11.1). These are part of a complex network of neuronal circuits organized in parallel, which integrate activity from several cortical regions. In fact, it is now recognized that the basal ganglia are subdivided anatomically into functional domains that have topographically organized connections with a bewildering array of different cortical areas, spanning from frontal, to temporal, parietal and limbic areas. This extended network allows the simultaneous control of motor, cognitive, affective and psychological functions in order to produce flexible and adaptive behaviours.5 Dopamine neurons (i.e. those which produce a neurotransmitter named dopamine) provide key modulatory influences on basal ganglia processing. They are mainly located in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SN c) and in the ventral tegmental area (see Figure  11.1). Their dopaminergic projections target all intrinsic nuclei of the basal ganglia, even though terminals are particularly abundant in the dorsal and ventral striatum.6 The emergence of Parkinson’s disease has been linked to dopamine depletion.7 Neuronal loss starts in the SN c, and produces a marked deficit of dopamine content in the striatum, which is particularly overt in the dorsolateral region of the putamen, thus impinging mostly onto the motor function. The first symptoms of Parkinson’s disease appear when dopamine level is about 70–80 per cent lower than normal in the striatum, which corresponds to a loss of about 50 per cent of nigral dopamine cells.8 At this stage, motor deficits such as hand tremor or arm rigidity appear, and the disease can be diagnosed. However, Parkinson’s disease starts several years before it becomes clinically evident. Plastic changes in the dopaminergic nigrostriatal system during the pre-symptomatic phase are likely to compensate for the effects of neurodegeneration and to delay the

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FIGURE 11.1 Coronal view of the brain, showing the main basal ganglia nuclei. C, cortex; STR, striatum; GPe, globus pallidus pars externa; GPi, globus pallidus pars interna; Th, thalamus; STN, subthalamic nucleus; SNc, substantia nigra pars compacta; SNr, substantia nigra pars reticulata.9

appearance of the disease.10 Nevertheless, during this period subtle or apparently isolated non-motor symptoms often appear.11 These are called ‘non-motor’ or ‘associated’ symptoms. They are present in several Parkinson’s patients but they are extremely heterogeneous. Common pre-symptomatic symptoms are hyposmia, constipation, sleep disorders and psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression.12 Those symptoms, and some others (e.g. hypomania, psychosis, obsessive compulsive disorders, apathy, anhedonia, attentive disorders, and urge incontinence) might also appear during the progression of the disease, significantly worsening the patient’s quality of life.

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Thus, even though motor phenomenology is always predominant in Parkinson’s disease, there is now a consensus around the idea that this is not a pure motor disorder, but a multifaceted one. The most widely used pharmacological treatment of Parkinson’s disease is based on the administration of dopaminergic drugs (mainly levodopa).13 Using this approach, optimal control of motor symptoms is achieved in the initial stages of Parkinson’s disease. However, with chronic treatment, the duration of benefits after a dose of levodopa becomes progressively shorter, and side effects of the dopaminergic medications begin to appear.14 Typically, patients begin to experience fluctuations in motor function alternating between ON -states with good motor control, which follow the drug assumption, and OFF -states characterized by a bad antiParkinsonian effect, during which motor difficulties appear. Fluctuations can also occur in non-motor aspects of the disease (e.g., pain, anxiety, depression). In addition, during the ON states, patients can suffer from involuntary movements of the limbs and the trunk, known as dyskinesias.15 In the most extreme cases, patients can experience rapid oscillations between ON and OFF states without an apparent association with the levodopa dose.16 Neurosurgical therapies, such as pallidotomy and deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus and the internal segment of the globus pallidus, can provide effective treatment for advanced Parkinson’s disease, because they markedly improve motor complications and reduce the need for medication.17 Nevertheless, neurosurgery has its risks (e.g. in a non-negligible number of cases it causes adverse cognitive and psychiatric events18) and it is expensive. In addition, non-motor symptoms are poorly recognized or not sensitive to standard medical treatments, even though they tend to be highly invaliding. Thus, with the progression of Parkinson’s, the increasing difficulties in actually managing the disease leads to social isolation, as patients start to feel embarrassed by their symptoms, with a consequent deterioration of their social functioning and quality of life. All in all, at present, there is a gap between the best available medical treatment effect and patients’ expectations. In some instances, there may be a paradoxical discrepancy between an objectively good control of motor disturbances and an increasingly negative feeling of well-being reported by patients.

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As a consequence, assisting PD patients is very challenging. In order to obtain the best result, neurologists should take into account several variables. Primarily, they should couple medical knowledge with the unique features of each individual (e.g. age, occupation, and lifestyle). They should listen carefully to each patient’s complaints, and develop a communication form appropriate to the patient’s and caregivers’ cultural background, so as to satisfy the numerous requests for explanations about disease progression, treatments, and adverse reactions. Most of the time neurologists cannot answer all these requests on their own, and in any case they need diverse expertise because of the intrinsic limitations of the medical treatment. Complementary rehabilitation strategies which exploit such disciplines as psychotherapy, music, dancing and theatre should be employed, as they might be able to produce positive effects on non-motor cognitive and affective symptoms, particularly depression, anxiety, social relations and self-confidence. In principle, these activities might regenerate an equilibrium between residual functions of PD patients and their needs, helping them to maintain their hobbies and activities in daily life. In other words, complementary therapies are not thought to offer a cure for Parkinson’s disease, but they may help to tackle its social and psychological aspects, making coping with the disease easier. Ideally, the best outcome could be obtained by using a multidisciplinary team in which several people with different roles and specialisations work side-by-side. However, the real effectiveness of these complementary approaches has not been explored with proper randomized controlled trials.19 Most studies suffer from having small and/or heterogeneous samples, and sometimes methodologies are not rigorous enough. In addition, most of the time, interventions do not last more than a few months. It is not surprising that, even when positive effects seem to emerge, they do not outlast the treatment.20

The theatre experience Aware of such evidence, and convinced that a crucial step in Parkinson’s rehabilitation was to employ a novel approach to complement the medical treatment, about ten years ago we included

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theatre workshops in our rehabilitation programme at IRCCS Neuromed Hospital. Sometimes choices are the outcome of very lucky events, and ours was a case in point. One of our number, Nicola Modugno, was in contact with the director of a theatre company, Imogen Kusch. From the many discussions about the way in which Parkinson’s disease affects the lives of patients and the work of a theatre actor, a challenging idea arose. To be successful on stage, actors train to develop a wide range of skills to be able to control their own actions, movements and emotions; they exercise themselves so they can quickly react to whatever happens around them. The degree of success an actor achieves on stage depends on the credibility of his performance. If this were the case, then by means of theatre training, PD patients would be able to tap into new, unfamiliar strategies to carefully control their bodies and minds. In other words, patients, like actors, could develop conscious means to control and order movements and to predict, represent and modify emotions in real time and space. The bet was that, through theatre training, patients would (re)acquire the management of their social, psychological and emotional difficulties and would be able to transfer these new abilities to their real lives. With this idea in mind, we first recruited a group of professional actors capable of interacting with patients suffering with mental health issues. We then selected twenty-four PD outpatients of IRCCS Neuromed Hospital, according to the following criteria: (1) being affected by a moderate form of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (Hoehen Yahr stage 2–4); (2) being in stable treatment with L-dopa and L-dopa agonists; (3) not having severe sensory (visual or auditory) deficits; and (4) not having severe movement dysfunctions.21 Twelve patients were randomly assigned to a theatre workshop-based rehabilitation programme (theatre group) while the other twelve underwent a standard rehabilitation therapy based on physiotherapy (control group).22 We told patients that they were taking part in a study, but, in order to prevent complaints, we did not tell the people of one group what the other was experiencing. None of the patients from the two groups refused to participate, but four patients left the study because of logistic problems (they moved to another town to follow their families). Physiotherapy consisted of individual two-three hour daily sessions, three days per week, (eighteen hours/month), for three

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years with two physiotherapists. The theatre workshop, specifically developed and run by the theatre company, consisted of six hour daily sessions, for two consecutive days once or twice a month, for a total of eighteen hours/month for three years. The initial part of every workshop focused on exercising basic skills. All subjects were trained in controlling breathing, posture, gait, coordination, and manual tasks. Then, patients were taught how to approach theatre texts and analyse them. During the second part of the workshops, patients trained and rehearsed individually or in groups, together with actors, working on improvisation or sketches. Sketches were always directed by the actors of the company with the aim of recreating onstage the behaviours and emotions that can occur in real life. Through such training, patients were guided to express themselves and to communicate with each other both verbally and non-verbally. Slowly, patients got closer to each other. Gradually they formed a group where mutual understanding and respect increased, becoming elements of the therapy per se, as witnessed by the following episode. One of our patients was a very jovial, fun-loving man in his early eighties; he lived in a little village where he was popular and loved by everyone. When he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he became depressed and stopped going to the bar for his daily midmorning coffee and game of cards, because he was ashamed of his tremor, of spilling his coffee while stirring it, and of his OFF -phases, during which he might not even be able to walk the few steps to the toilet. When he came to theatre class, he soon distinguished himself with his performance and entertainment qualities and slowly regained his confidence. In one of our ‘everybody-sit-in-a-circle-and-sayhow-they-feel’ sessions he explained why he did not want to go to the bar anymore; everybody told him to go back. They stressed that, ‘Surely people miss you there!’ When we met again, the week after, people asked him if he had gone to the bar again, and he proudly answered: ‘Yes, actually people really did miss me, I dare say that they got bored to death in my absence’. ‘And did you spill your coffee?’ people asked him, and he replied: ‘No. Actually the tremor came in quite handy, because all I had to do was just put the spoon into the cup and the tremor took care of the stirring; the alternative was no sugar . . . but I hate bitter coffee!’. The creation of such a community made PD patients psychologically stronger when facing the outside world. In addition, after some periods of training, some

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of the patients wrote scripts and sometimes acted them with the help of the director. In order to collect scientific evidence to demonstrate whether, how, and possibly when therapies affected the Quality of Life (QoL) of patients, we employed five clinical scales.23 The UPDRS was used for rating patients’ mood and cognition (UPDRS 1); the activities of daily living (UPDRS 2); motor symptoms (UPDRS 3), and the complications of the therapy (UPDRS 4). The PDQ 39 Scale measured the QoL by summoning the scores of its eight subscales (mobility, activities of daily living, emotional well-being, stigma, social support, cognition, communication and bodily discomfort). The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (measuring the level of daytime drowsiness) and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (measuring the level of depression) were also used to rate non-motor symptoms. The Schwab and England Scale was used to assess the degree of functional independence in daily living. All patients underwent the clinical evaluation at the beginning of the monitoring period, after one year, two years and three years. A neurologist (NM ), blind to the study group, evaluated PD patients. Overall, we found that during the three years of the study, PD theatre patients showed a significant improvement in most of the non-motor clinical scales (especially those tapping into the affective domains) and, to a lesser extent, in the UPDRS 3.24 In comparison, the scores of the control group remained substantially unchanged. In addition, in the theatre group, the improvement in non-motor clinical scales took place faster than in the motor scale, which became evident only after two years.25 This finding might suggest that the latter effect can be triggered by the former. In conclusion, this experience confirms our initial hypothesis, i.e. that the acquired techniques needed to manage the emotional, cognitive and relational demands of a stage performance push PD patients to regain full control of their own personality, increase their self-confidence and re-establish appropriate social bonds, first on the stage and then in real life.

Conclusions Our study represents the first scientific evidence that theatre techniques can be successfully utilized as a therapeutic tool for

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the rehabilitation of PD patients. Despite the fact that a number of methodological limitations must be taken into account (e.g. the sample was relatively small, and only patients affected by a moderate form of Parkinson’s disease were tested), this quantitative demonstration of the efficacy of theatre in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease could open the doors to other clinical trials and confirms that the use of complementary approaches can bridge the gap between the best effects of the pharmacological therapy and the achievement of a better QoL. At the same time, such an effect once again suggests that Parkinson’s disease cannot be a pure motor disturbance.26 In line with this claim, it has been suggested that the slowness of movements, bradykinesia, in PD patients may be attributable to an improper evaluation of movement energy costs.27 In a series of experiments, PD patients and healthy controls were asked to move their arms to a previously specified target at different speeds a given number of times. Both were able to make the required movements with the same accuracy, but PD patients needed significantly more trials before reaching the required number of repetitions. As the accuracy of patients was the same as that of controls, Mazzoni et  al.28 concluded that the loss of dopamine did not cause bradykinesia through a speed/accuracy tradeoff; rather, it affected decision-making through a faulty evaluation of the costs of movements. In other words, Parkinson’s disease weakened the key link between motivation and movement gain. Looking at Parkinson’s disease from this perspective, on the one hand the genesis of neuropsychiatric symptoms and their link with motor disturbances can find an explanation. On the other hand, it might be hypothesized that as theatre training requires a complex set of cognitive abilities, it might promote learning and neural plasticity that circumvents and/or partially restores neural circuits underlying evaluative processes that are impaired by Parkinson’s disease. It is well known that cortical and subcortical plasticity might occur as a consequence of brain injury29 as well as during learning.30 Therefore, one future objective will be to measure the efficacy of our approach by probing for a reshaping of circuitry using resting state functional magnetic resonance.

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12 Theatre and Therapy: ‘Care’, ‘Cure’, or Illusion? Jean-Marie Pradier

Asking questions about ‘the theatre which heals’ requires us first of all to clarify several points: 1 What theatre are we talking about? In what culture? What society? 2 What relationship to the theatre is under discussion: dramatic literature? The way the performance is received? Or its practice? 3 What type of theatre practice? 4 What pathologies are we talking about? 5 What are the causes we attribute to illness? 6 What are the concepts and methods we use for healing? 7 If the theatre is capable of ‘healing’, can it also be pathogenic? So many questions lead to others. It is necessary to retrace the genesis of the idea that theatre has therapeutic virtues, by specifying the beneficiaries of this therapy and the nature of pathologies. Are we talking about social therapy? Individual? Group? Physical suffering? Psychic? In the same way we need to pick out the elements 187

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which are absent from scientific medicine yet present in the theatre. I mean: what is lacking in our medicine – that can be found in the theatre – for it to be completely effective? We have to examine the history of theatre stricto sensu and the history of western medicine, considering whether it is a universal question or a historical, local preoccupation. From an ethnoscenological or anthropological point of view, theatre stricto sensu1 is an historical and cultural sub-ensemble of organized human performing behaviour (OHPB ). This behaviour is astonishingly diverse, even within a single society. Note that, in France, the adjective ‘performing’ is often replaced by théâtral, whose particularly broad field of connotation includes a negative or pejorative semantic charge. This is how the word théâtralisme entered clinical vocabulary to designate theatrical manifestations in attacks of hysteria. Note that although the word ‘theatricalism’ also exists in English, in the sense of affected, mannered, exhibitionist, this type of connotation does not appear in, for example, Chinese or in Korean when referring to live performance. Considered as a ‘noble art’ in European societies, particularly in France, the privileged status of the theatre has led to an underestimation, if not contempt, for forms of performance which allow the audience to defend itself against oppression by the powerful, or the misfortunes of daily life, through comic denunciation, laughter, mockery and derision. Not to mention erotic performances which, through the pleasure of the eye, satisfy the spectator’s scopic drives! We can refer to the Koteba in Mali, or the Talchum in Korea, a form of masked open-air dance performance which takes place in the middle of a circle formed by spectators. The themes treated relate to stories from society: defrocked monks, aristocrats held up to ridicule, an old man who would like to seduce a young girl, etc.

The theatrical aspect of treatment Attributing a healing potential to theatre – in western culture – should not make us lose sight of the theatrical dimension of scientific, popular and ethnic therapeutic practices: Lila of the Gnawas in Morocco, Ubanda, Candomblé, Macumba, Di Xi in China, N’doep of the Lebou people in Senegal, Nôtre Dame de Lourdes for catholics, Tarantella and many others. Certain practices in ethnopsychiatry

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were born from the integration of this savoir-faire. Let us mention the research of Dr Louis Mars in Haiti on what he called ‘ethnodramas’; the initiative of Dr General Henri Collomb (1913–1979) at the hospital at Fann in Dakar, where he founded a school of psychiatry ‘which was one of the first to try to put into practice the foundations of an anthropological approach to madness. Relying on the teaching he received from African healers when he made himself their pupil, Collomb’s work aimed at the social rehabilitation of the mentally ill and the development of original treatment structures in place of the asylum, recognizing and respecting the culture of his patients.’2 In French-speaking Africa a ‘theatre of participation’ developed starting in the 1980s, sometimes with an explicitly curative aim as much on a social as well as on the mental level: ritual theatre, didiga, theatre for development, théâtre utile (educational theatre), therapeutic koteba, theatre-debate, etc.3 The great lesson of ethnopsychiatry was to put the pretensions of official medicine’s ‘purely scientific nature’ into perspective. Yet as an indirect consequence, the very fact that its object is the vast field of psychiatry (nowadays extending to neurology) contributed to the impression that interest in the ‘dramatization’ of treatment did not concern the medicine of the soma, the organs, the biological body. However, if so-called ‘traditional’ or ‘ethnic’ treatment practices seem theatrical to our Euro-American eyes, we forget that the exercise of medicine does not derive from a science of the body’s mechanics – as the iatromechanists thought – but has to take account of the imaginary, feelings and the irrational. The human being in toto, in other words. Easy to say! The difficulty of thinking about the human being in toto gave birth to a hybrid speciality: psychosomatic medicine, whose conception is attributed to the German psychiatrist Heinroth (1773– 1843), who attempted to oppose medicine’s organicist drift.

Care and cure The very notion of curare (to heal) invites discussion. Contemporary western medicine operates a distinction between what in English is called ‘cure’ and ‘care’. It remains to define the ‘ill’ at the origin of illness, whether the patient perceives it or is ignorant of it. In fact it is possible to suffer from an illness which is never expressed in suffering or external signs. At the other extreme, the hypochondria

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of the malade imaginaire convinces the patient that s/he is suffering from an illness. We should also mention theatrical somatizations which sometimes are only the symptom of a physiological or psychic imbalance. Finally, the patient’s estimation of the illness’s seriousness and the way it is expressed are strongly codified by culture, education and personality. One patient can scream in agony over a little injury while another suffers a mortal illness in silence. Lastly, ‘belief’ can encourage the patient to refuse allopathic treatment and believe in the virtues of some pseudo-medical, religious or other doctrine.

The poet, the actor and the doctor Nowadays when medical and surgical technology, as well as pharmacology, is experiencing remarkable development, a critical reflection draws our attention to three points: (a) the medicalization of society, notably in industrial countries; (b) the overconsumption of medicines, particularly in France; and (c) the dehumanization of care with the rapid development of medical engineering – imaging, robotization, tele-medicine (medicine at a distance). To make up for the excessive technicity of treatment, in 2006 the cancerologist Marc Ychou, Professor of Medicine at Montpellier University, created the first programme of theatrical experiences for cancerologists, which he entrusted to the theatre director Serge Ouaknine. In 2013 this programme was introduced into the fourthyear curriculum of the cancerology module in medical studies. In cooperation with the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art Dramatique de Montpellier, 240 medical students from Montpellier and Nîmes, divided into small groups, spent a week working with the director and with actors, over an intensive period of four half-days each lasting four hours. The École d’Art Dramatique trained four actors for this compulsory module. As Professor Jacques Bringer, head of the endocrine illnesses service at the Lapeyronnie hospital and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier, comments concerning the ordinary training of medical students, ‘[we train] competent students, expert in technology, but who are not familiarized with other markers: presence, the level of the voice, the choice of words’.4

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The ‘chiefs’, experienced heads of clinics, all report cases of favourable progress among their patients triggered or helped by the ‘gift’ of certain doctors. This gift is a quality of ‘presence’ analogous to that of great actors. Work on the placebo effect confirms the importance of ‘belief’ on the state of health. It is strange to note that a placebo administered to a patient by carers who are unaware that the product contains no active substance is more effective than one administered by a carer who knows what it is in advance. Research on the placebo underlines, however, that it is important to distinguish the illness itself and its development from the perception of the illness and suffering by the patient, and from its symptoms. In fact a tumour can develop without the patient knowing or suffering particular symptoms. The effect of the doctor’s charisma has been known for a long time: in fifth-century Athens doctors were selected by public oratorical sparring matches undertaken by the candidates. Once chosen by the population, the doctor gave a performance by putting the patient and the treatment on stage, in a form which recalls the ‘medicine shows’ during the conquest of the American West. Jouanna writes that even the private doctor is a public person: ‘In the exercise of his art he is always performing. Some of them try to profit from theatrical effect to amaze the public and mask their incompetence.’5 A Hippocratic author compares bad doctors to walk-on actors who appear in tragedies: ‘These people [charlatan doctors] strongly resemble the walk-on actors who are made to appear in tragedies. Just as these extras have the appearance, dress and masks of actors without being actors, in the same way many among the doctors are doctors in name, very few in fact.’6 Elected by the people, the doctor has to know how to convince, in a culture of discourse more inclined to believe in the effectiveness of the word and the assurance of tone than in treatments which remained distinctly uncertain. Doctors and actors are the people who relieve others’ ills by the power of evocation. Doctors add the gesture which heals to their voices; actors animate the text by the moving gesture. We have to remember that anatomy performances were very popular in Europe; after all, in English we say that surgery takes place in a theatre! In whatever civilization, it is difficult to evoke any absolute rationality of medicine or even to speak of science where medicine

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is concerned.7 Plato’s Phaedrus compares the theoretical pretensions of medicine and of dramatic poetry to affirm something obvious: doctors are not made by fragments of book-learning; tragedies are not written with scraps of recipes. We know that the same exercise proposed by a charismatic theatre director does not produce the same effect when it is directed by one with no charisma. The art of the actor and that of the doctor both involve handling suggestion, illusion and individual and collective emotions. So we find numerous therapeutic professions in human societies. Roberte Hamayon notes that shamanic practice is an art, as is sorcery, exorcism, leveurs de maux (medecine man), bonesetters, healers, mediums, priests, prophets, therapists . . . the list of practices involving the manipulation of beliefs, the imaginary, emotions and feelings is infinite.

Katharsis and the effect of science Katharsis is perhaps the first notion to have provoked the irruption of an ‘effect of science’ in discourse on the theatre. The word catharsis, from the Greek κἁθαρσις is forged from the preposition catha (καθα, against) and the verb airô (αιρω, I lift), to lift up, take away; cathairô (καθαιρω, I clean), to purify. In classical times Zeus catharsios is the purifying Jupiter. The catharsion udôr designates the lustral water. Today in Athens a cleaning lady is a catharistria (καθαριστρια) – and cleans the catharma (καθαρμα) – the dirt and rubbish. The term ‘catharsis’ – employed by Aristotle – had also woven complex links, since archaic times, with rituals of purification and exorcism.8 The medical art, established on the basis of the theory of humours, resumed the original meaning of the word. For a doctor catharsis designates purges, enemas, bleedings and surgical techniques of excision. Whatever encumbers and soils the body (just like the spirit, the streets, the city or the world) must be removed. In a medicine particularly concerned with nourishment, diets, digestion and the evacuation of organic waste, catharsis is meant largely in its physiological materiality. The notion evokes a dietetics of the passions. It refers to emotional substances which resist absorption, analogous to the undigested residues of various ingested foodstuffs

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and the intestinal secretions which combine with them to form the faecal mass. After all, we describe a psycho-rigid, blocked, tense, repressed person as ‘constipated’. Catharsis, in the sense of vomiting, purging, enema and bleeding, is mentioned several times in Hippocratic writings.9 In Hippocratic medicine, cathartic action consists of evacuating everything which encumbers the body, after fluidifying the substances and freeing the orifices – taking care to ‘consider the country, the season, the age and the illnesses in which it is right to [have recourse] to a depletion or not’. Unlike the theory of humours, catharsis has lasted through the centuries, showing itself to have remarkable powers of adaptation. For Christians it implies toughening; for Rousseau it is superficial; it is transformational for Diderot and Lessing; useful for actors according to Goethe; commented upon by Schiller and Nietzsche; incorporated in politics by Brechtians; and, above all, it is the delight of psychologists and therapists.10 The publication in 1880 of Jacob Bernays’ book on the Aristotelian notion of catharsis started the era of its triumph in clinical practice.11 This study by the uncle of Freud’s future wife arrived at the moment when Breuer took charge of a theatre-loving patient who has passed into history under the pseudonym of ‘Anna O’. The case of this patient, who became a serious and incurable morphine addict, has long been considered the prototype of a cathartic healing. In fact the notion of catharsis enflamed people’s minds more than it refined the spirit of observation. For some time, notes Ellenberger, ‘catharsis was one of the mostdiscussed subjects among the learned, and one of the themes of conversation in the blasé salons of Vienna. A historian of literature, Wilhelm Wetz, complained that after Bernays’ book there was such enthusiasm for the theme of catharsis that few people remained interested in the history of the drama’.12 The word catharsis arrived in France in medical dictionaries in 1865, under the form catharsie, meaning ‘all natural or artificial evacuation, by whatever way’. Every ‘effect of science’ contains a share of illusion:13 what is discussed is considered as the object of the real, not as the object of history and culture. This enthusiasm for catharsis – or purging – caused people to forget to take account of the totality of the theoretical foundation of the medical theory which founded it. The second proposition of the Hippocratic aphorism is unambiguous: (22) ‘Diseases which arise from repletion [being full] are cured by

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depletion [emptying]; and those that arise from depletion are cured by repletion; and in general, diseases are cured by their contraries.’

To purge or to fill? The interpretation of the notion of catharsis by Breuer and Freud14 – its resumption in the notion of abreaction, its popularization in the word défoulement (psychological release) led to the accent being placed on depletion (like a rubbish-chute) at the expense of repletion (filling up). Whether spontaneous or induced, catharsis in clinical practice indicates an emotive reaction by which the subject is freed, either by words or gestures, from the repressed tendencies in the subconscious or obsessions resulting from an archaic affective trauma. This is to forget that the imaginary, emotion, aesthetics are indispensable to nourish eutonia, motivation and creation. Our urban, civilized, intellectualized, puritan, bourgeois theatre is far from the attitude of the audience in ancient Greece. The tragedy we imagine is civilized. We forget the shouters and hecklers who interrupt the actors; the ordinary folks who loudly applaud their favourite actors and eject the ones they dislike; the squalling brats allowed into even the most obscene comedies; the aggressive strongarms who chuck out anyone who takes their place. We have to hear them surittein (whistling), klôzein (chuckling), pternoktupein (stamping their feet).15 Any violence during the Dionysia was considered a sacrilege. Yet violence was indeed present, especially in the ‘fringe’ events, to the point that an assembly had to be held in the theatre after the festival to judge the offences. In certain respects, the violence in Greek theatres is reminiscent of the violence in our stadiums nowadays. People went to the theatre to get a good dose of emotion – just as nowadays people go to demonstrations and, no doubt, take part in certain dangerous actions. Similar ingredients are to be found: an uncontrollable crowd, the food and drink they bring with them, the performance, its duration, the light, the stars, partisan spirit, competition, objects which could serve as projectiles. One text reports that a poet–provocateur from the late fifth century, Hegemon, arrived at a competition with his coat full of stones: ‘Here are the stones, whoever wants to throw them can.’ Such theatre was more like the boulevard du crime in Paris and the

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popular tours so well recounted by Camille Beuve in his memoirs,16 than the pageant in honour of ‘tragedy’ skilfully composed by the winner of the prix de Rome Louis Billotey for the Palais de Chaillot. In Iran, the crowds who rush to a Ta’zieh performance come to feed on strong emotions; commemorating the martyrdom of the Imam Husayn, the musical drama is played during the month of Muharram on the day of Ashura. Its name, of Arabic origin, means ‘expression of sympathy, of mourning, and of consolation’. Sympathy: sun pathein, to suffer with. The audience weeps, laments and suffers with the incredible pleasure given by the happiness of collective emotions. The lilâ of the Gnawas in Morocco have the same power to emotionally transport the people who invite the musicians to come for a whole night. As the performance is going on, the hosts who feel the urge enter into the circle and fall into a perfectly codified trance. In this case it is not the performance which is the cause of the emotional production. It is only a pretext. Very early in modern scientific literature, psychologists highlighted the fact that humans are probably the most emotive of all animal species. For Donald Hebb,17 the regulation of emotions is the basis of social organization. This idea was taken up, notably by the German sociologist N. Elias18 who assures us that the history of human civilization can be understood as the history of the control of emotions. For these reasons human societies have invented a great variety of practices which ensure (a) the production and enjoyment of emotions; (b) control of those emotions; and (c) their integration. The Greeks were familiar with the mood disorder expressed by discouragement, worry, affective indifference and lack of motivation. Xenophon speaks of αθυμια (athumia), forged from αθυμος (thumos), the vital force, preceded by the privative α (alpha) which gave us our athymia. Emotional inhibition is sometimes observed in posttraumatic neuroses19 in victims of violence, terrorism, rape, war, accidents, etc. It is interesting to note that the method proposed by the psycho-physiologist Susana Bloch for training actors, Alba Emoting, has been found to be effective in re-establishing emotional activity in people with athymia. Unlike exercises founded on affective

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memory, Bloch makes use of muscle-tone, postural and respiratory models of fundamental emotions (Emotional Effector Patterns).20 Performing the emotion – with no premeditated intention – encourages the emergence of the subjective state. The physical action gives birth to the emotion, not the other way round. The book by neurophysiologist Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain,21 has popularized a theory of the emotions which no longer makes them a ‘disorder of consciousness’. Indeed for several decades now, research has been showing the major role of emotions in both individual and collective life. For their part, ethnopsychiatry and the anthropology of emotions have been enriched by research on brain plasticity and the dynamic of intersynaptic networks: if the contemporary concept of emotion renews the ancient idea of vital force, psychic energy, it is no less apparent that brain activity, understood as a complex system, is underpinned by the nature and intensity of learning experiences. In a way, societies are immersed in emotional cultures, in the psycho-biological sense of the term, characterized by a fluctuation around two opposing poles, excess and lack. In our intellectualized cultures, with activities broken down into elements, with cramped imaginations, art, aesthetic enjoyment and the play of the imaginary have been separated into ‘serious’, ‘socialized’ instances of daily life. In the past, religious practice – for better or worse – offered in a totality what is now lived as a distinct event, dissociated from the ordinary course of life. We go to a concert to listen to a Bach cantata, which originally was meant for a church service. Emotional savoir-vivre – what we could trivially call emotional ‘mastery’ or in a barbarous expression ‘emotion management’– the control of emotions is a necessity, as much for individual as for collective life. From the extreme diversity of cultural techniques which aim to achieve this I shall mention three main groups. I maintain that the symbolic, physical, scholarly, technical and performance techniques they relate to cannot in any way be forced into a single matrix. These three groups correspond to the different ways the central nervous system operates, and which are the object of diffuse or specific learning experiences. I shall identify: (a) techniques of integration, which tend to obtain controlled psychosomatic relaxation (hatha yoga; Kayakalpa of the Siddha; relaxation; meditation);

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(b) techniques of activation, which act on states of consciousness by arousing subcortical structures and inhibiting cortical control (trance; psychedelic experience; breathing alkalosis or rebirthing); and (c) techniques of rationalization, objectification and elaboration which, unlike the foregoing, aim at transforming emotional events into intelligible objects (verbal or written expression; artistic practices; private or public ‘admissions’, confession, private journal, dialogue). Texts from late antiquity give the impression that there was a medical theory of stimulation, according to which the emotions which form the climate of a play engender similar affective states in the audience by empathy. The perceived emotion accentuates or dampens the ardour of the passions, leading to either euphoria or depression. The doctor–philosopher Caelius Aurelianus (widely agreed by philologists to date from the fifth century AD )22 defends this idea: Thus, after reading there should be a play or a mime if the fools suffer from sadness; or on the contrary a play which contains sadness and tragic dread if they are affected by childish gaiety. For it is right to correct the quality of alienation by its opposite, so that the state of the soul also may recover the average condition of health.23 The effectiveness of the scene does not derive solely from the centrifugal emotional movement it generates. It also emanates from the concentration of physical and psychic energy in the dramatic action. Hence the peril it represents for virtue. The theatre as a place of sexual incitement through erotic and sensual arousal has been a theme for centuries, reaching our own times in treatises of morality and pedagogical or medical theories. The Latin poet Ovid (43 BC –17 AD ) evokes the erotic power of the theatre in his Remedies for Love: But there are reasons why you should not frequent the theatre until love, entirely banished from your heart, has left it empty. The heart is softened by the citharas, the flutes, the lyre, the singing, the arms with their harmoniously cadenced movements.

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We see fictional lovers dancing there, endlessly. With what art an actor teaches his audience voluptuousness!24 What of our industrialized societies? Already, in Aristotle’s time, the theatre audience no longer ran out terrified at the sight of the Furies, whose appearance in Aeschylus’ Eumenides caused the death of young children and accidental miscarriages. Today the theatre is quantitatively a minor art, although it enjoys the status of a major art. It is not so much its spectacular and truly phatic aspects which matter, but rather that it provides a living for those who do it. It is characteristic to observe both the number of amateur actors and candidates for the profession, and the ‘by-products’ which claim an association with the theatre in the fields of personal development, clinical practice and education. The catalogue of institutionalized dramatized therapies is impressive. One only has to consult Current Psychotherapies by Corsini and Wedding, now in its tenth edition (March 2013) to be convinced.25 The title of the book published by Renée Emunah, Director of the Drama Therapy programme at the California Institute of Integral Studies, sums up the foundations of this type of practice: Acting for Real.26 In fact, a certain theoretical consensus emerges from the multiple propositions claiming a connection with the theatre, whether it be psychodrama – in its different versions, playback Theatre, or whatever else . . . What is proposed is a relational practice founded on the freedom of the imagination, the liberty to play with multiple identities (sexual, bodily, multi-sensorial) as much on the perceptive as on the performative level, integrating psycho-biological archaisms and ideation, language, emotions and affects, narcissism and altruism. Paradoxically, in contemporary industrial societies the ‘ideal’ theatre has become one of the rare situations in which the individual–actor can explore, stimulate and taste his own wholeness. The practice of theatre, ideally, embraces the real through the medium of fiction, liberating the imaginary more than anything ordinary life can offer. I say ‘ideally’, because so much complexity and potentiality requires what the Greeks called sophrosuné, measure and wisdom, inasmuch as an excess of the same substance can turn out to be pathogenic. To conclude, I would say that the theatre – live performance – is not therapeutic, but that the need to resort to the practice of theatre reveals the deficiencies in both personal and social lives.

NOTES

Preface 1

Wilhelm Dilthey, Introduction to the Human Sciences, vol. I (1883) (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989).

2

Joseph P. Huston, Marcos Nadal, Francisco Mora, Luigi F. Agnati, Camilo José Cela Conde (eds), Art, Aesthetics, and the Brain (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015).

3

The tenth session of ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology), which took place in Copenhagen and Louisiana (Denmark) in 1996 under the title ‘The Performer’s Bios: The Whispering Winds in Theatre and Dance’, was dedicated to the relationship between theatre and dance; it produced ample reflections and material. On this topic see the work demonstration (available at www.odinteatret.dk) which was created for the occasion by four Odin Teatret actors.

Part 1 Introduction *

Translation by John J. Schranz.

1

Quoting Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 243, Gallese and Guerra give their definition of peri-personal space: ‘The defining properties of peri-personal space consist in its being multisensory (i.e. based on the integration of visual, tactile, auditory and proprioceptive information), body-centered (encoded not in retinal, but in somatic coordinates) and motor in nature. Peri-personal space and its range can be construed, again quoting Merleau-Ponty, as “the varying range of our aims and our gestures”.’ (Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra, ‘Embodying Movies: Embodied Simulation and Film Studies’, Cinema 199

200

NOTES

3 [2012], p. 207). See also Giacomo Rizzolatti, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese, ‘The Space Around Us’, Science 277 (1997). In 1908 Poincaré defined the space that we call ‘peri-personal’ in terms of the mutual ‘co-ordination resulting from the multiplicity of parries’ allowed by the extension of our arms (Jules-Henri Poincaré, Science and Method [London: Routledge, 1996]); in 1905 Ernst Mach, physicist, physiologist (and philosopher), explained that our body ‘maps’ the space around us, measuring and experiencing it by virtue of what he calls ‘the points of physiological space’ – i.e. the ‘aims of our various movements of grabbing, looking and locomotion’ (Ernst Mach, Knowledge and Error [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976]). Both are extensively quoted in Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 56–60. 2

See Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain, p. 104: ‘The mirror neuron system and the selectivity of the responses of the neurons that compose it, produce a shared space of action, within which each act and chain of acts, whether ours or “theirs”, are immediately registered and understood without the need of any explicit or deliberate “cognitive operation” ’.

3

Vittorio Gallese interviewed by Mario Mozzoni, ‘Neuroscienze controverse: il caso dei neuroni specchio’, Brain Factor, 29 May 2009: ‘The discovery of motor resonance mechanism of mirror neurons has shown that the motor system, far from being a mere muscle controller and a simple executor of commands coded elsewhere, is able to perform cognitive functions that for a long time have been erroneously considered prerogative of psychological processes and neural mechanisms of a purely associative kind’ (Engl. transl. of the extract in Nicola Simonetti, ‘Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind: A Reductive Interpretation of the Mirror Neurons System’, Research in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences 2[2] [2014]).

4

For definitions, see Eugenio Barba, The Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre Anthropology (London, New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 13–35 and 104–8; for the ‘paradox of the performer who, unmoved, is able to move the spectator’, see Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, The Secret Art of the Performer: A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 186–204.

5

Performers’ training produces deep changes in the very structure of the brain motor programme; in turn these changes cause outcomes far beyond any prediction in the learning and memorizing processes. A

NOTES

201

research on the performer is a research on creativity, in regard to its biological aspect (questioning the emerging of consciousness) and in its ethical aspect (as creativity is a natural need of the human being, or rather one of his primary rights/duties which enhances selfdevelopment). 6

Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain, p. 146: ‘Whichever cortical areas are involved, whether motor or visceromotor centres, and whatever the type of mirroring induced, at neural level the mirror neuron mechanism embodies that modality of understanding which, prior to any form of conceptual and linguistic mediation, gives substance to our experience of others.’

7

To create ‘ambiguity’ implies the activation of not one but two or more potential motor acts. The actor’s strategy of playing in the ambiguity allows him to construct depths of meanings: the actor, in this way, while nurturing his own dramaturgy, also arouses the dramaturgy of the spectator.

1 The ‘Mirror Mechanism’ and Motor Behaviour 1

Giuseppe di Pellegrino, Luciano Fadiga, Leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti, ‘Understanding Motor Events: A Neurophysiological Study’, Experimental Brain Research 91(1) (1992). Available at: www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/psyifp/ aeechterhoff/wintersemester2011-12/vorlesungkommperskonflikt/ dipellegrino_etal_understmotorevents_ebr1992.pdf (last accessed 14 July 1992).

2

Giacomo Rizzolatti, Rosolino Camarda, Leonardo Fogassi, Maurizio Gentilucci, Giuseppe Luppino, Massimo Matelli, ‘Functional Organization of Inferior Area 6 in the Macaque Monkey: II . Area F5 and the Control of Distal Movements’, Experimental Brain Research 71 (1988). Available at: www.symbiotic.cs.ou.edu/~fagg/ classes/neurocog/restrict/papers/rizzolatti_etal_1988.pdf (last accessed 4 February 1988).

3

Leonardo Fogassi, Pierfrancesco Ferrari, Benno Gesierich, Stefano Rozzi, Fabian Chersi, Giacomo Rizzolatti, ‘Parietal Lobe: From Action Organization to Intention Understanding’, Science 302 (2005).

4

Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, ‘The Functional Role of the Parieto-Frontal Mirror Circuit: Interpretations and Misinterpretations’, Nature Reviews. Neuroscience 11 (2010).

202

NOTES

Available at: www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~pineda/COGS260Mirroring/ readings/Rizzolatti_NatureRevNeurosci10.pdf (last accessed 10 March 2010). 5

J. Magali Rochat, Fausto Caruana, Ahmed Jezzini, Ludovic Escola, Irakli Intskirveli, Franck Grammont, Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Maria Alessandra Umiltà, ‘Responses of Mirror Neurons in Area F5 to Hand and Tool Grasping Observation’, Experimental Brain Research 204(4) (2010). Available at: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC2903687/ (last accessed 26 June 2010).

6

Evelyne Kohler, Christian Keysers, Maria Alessandra Umiltà, Leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti, ‘Hearing Sounds, Understanding Actions: Action Representation in Mirror Neurons’, Science 297 (2002). Available at: www.unipr.it/arpa/mirror/pubs/ pdffiles/Kohler-Keysers%202002.pdf (last accessed 24 June 2002).

7

Valeria Gazzola, Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, Christian Keysers, ‘Empathy and the Somatotopic Auditory Mirror System in Humans’, Current Biology 16(18) (2006). Available at: www.bcn-nic.nl/txt/people/ publications/gazzola2006sound.pdf (last accessed 19 September 2006).

8

Maria Alessandra Umiltà, Cristina Berchio, Mariateresa Sestito, David Freedberg, Vittorio Gallese, ‘Abstract Art and Cortical Motor Activation: An EEG Study’, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6(311) (2012). Available at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/ fnhum.2012.00311/full (last accessed: 16 November 2012).

9

Beatrice Sbriscia-Fioretti, Cristina Berchio, David Freedberg, Vittorio Gallese, Maria Alessandra Umiltà, ‘ERP Modulation during Observation of Abstract Paintings by Franz Kline’, PLoS One (2013). Available at: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/ journal.pone.0075241 (last accessed 9 October 2013).

10 Katrin Heimann, Maria Alessandra Umiltà, Michele Guerra, Vittorio Gallese, ‘Moving Mirrors: A High-density EEG Study Investigating the Effect of Camera Movements on Motor Cortex Activation during Action Observation’, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 26(9) (2014). Available at: www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ jocn_a_00602#.VLeRU9pd5fw (last accessed September 2014).

2 Body Presence and Extrapersonal Space Perception *

We would like to thank all the collaborators of the studies presented and Silvia Cafaro for the English language editing.

NOTES

203

1

See for instance Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1997); Margaret Wilson, ‘Six Views of Embodied Cognition’, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9 (2002). For radical embodied frameworks, see Anthony Chemero, ‘Radical Embodied Cognitive Science’, Review of General Psychology 17 (2013), and Luis H. Favela, ‘Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience: Addressing “Grand Challenges” of the Mind Sciences’, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (2014).

2

James Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin 1986), p. 614.

3

Wilson, ‘Six Views of Embodied Cognition’.

4

Henri Poincaré, La Science et l’hypothèse (Paris: Flammarion, 1907); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, Collection Tel, 1945).

5

E.g. Ian P. Howard, Human Visual Orientation (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 1982).

6

E.g. Giorgia Committeri, Gaspare Galati, Anne-Lise Paradis, Luigi Pizzamiglio, Alain Berthoz, Denis LeBihan, ‘Reference Frames for Spatial Cognition: Different Brain Areas Are Involved in Viewer-, Object- and Landmark-centered Judgments About Object Location’, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16(9) (2004); Gaspare Galati, Gina Pelle, Alain Berthoz, Giorgia Committeri, ‘Multiple Reference Frames Used by the Human Brain for Spatial Perception and Memory, Experimental Brain Research 206 (2010).

7

Fred H. Previc, ‘The Neuropsychology of 3-D Space’, Psychological Bulletin 124 (1998); Fred H. Previc, Carolyn Declerck, Bert de Brabander, ‘Why Your “Head is in the Clouds” During Thinking: The Relationship between Cognition and Upper Space’, Acta Psychologica 118(1) (2005).

8

Otto-Joachim Grüsser, ‘Multimodal Structure of the Extrapersonal Space’, in Alan Hein and Marc Jeannerod (eds), Spatially Oriented Behavior (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1983).

9

Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension (New York: Anchor Books, 1966).

10 E.g. Dennis R. Proffitt, Jeanine Stefanucci, Tom Banton, William Epstein, ‘The Role of Effort in Distance Perception’, Psychological Science 14 (2003); Dennis R. Proffitt, ‘Embodied Perception and the Economy of Action’, Perspectives on Psychological Science 1 (2006); Simone Schnall, Jonathan R. Zadra, Dennis R. Proffitt, ‘Direct Evidence for the Economy of Action: Glucose and the Perception of Geographical Slant’, Perception 39 (2010).

204

NOTES

11 Jessica K. Witt, Dennis R. Proffitt, William Epstein, ‘Perceiving Distance: A Role of Effort and Intent’, Perception 33 (2004). 12 Proffitt et al., ‘The Role of Effort in Distance Perception’. 13 Mila Sugovic and Jessica K. Witt, ‘An Older View on Distance Perception: Older Adults Perceive Walkable Extents As Farther’, Experimental Brain Research 226 (2013). 14 Proffitt, ‘Embodied Perception and the Economy of Action’. 15 James M. Kilner, Yves Paulignan, S.J. Blakemore, ‘An Interference Effect of Observed Biological Movement on Action’, Current Biology 13(6) (2003); Yen Foung Tai, Christoph Scherfler, David J. Brooks, Nobukatsu Sawamoto, Umberto Castiello, ‘The Human Premotor Cortex Is Mirror Only for Biological Actions’, Current Biology 14(2) (2004); Chia Chin Tsai and Marcel Brass, ‘Does the Human Motor System Simulate Pinocchio’s Actions? Coacting with a Human Hand versus a Wooden Hand in a Dyadic Interaction’, Psychological Science 18(12) (2007); Chia Chin Tsai, Wen-Jui Kuo, Daisy Lan Hung, Ovid J. Tzeng, ‘Action Co-representation Is Tuned to Other Humans’, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20(11) (2008); Narender Ramnani and R. Christopher Miall, ‘A System in the Human Brain for Predicting the Actions of Others’, Nature Neuroscience 7 (2004); Margaret Wilson and Günther Knoblich, ‘The Case for Motor Involvement in Perceiving Conspecifics’ Psychological Bulletin 131(3) (2005). 16 Paul E. Downing, Yuhong V. Jiang, Miles Shuman, Nancy Kanwisher, ‘A Cortical Area Selective for Visual Processing of the Human Body’, Science 293(5539) (2001). 17 Truett Allison, Aina Puce, Gregory McCarthy, ‘Social Perception from Visual Cues: Role of the STS Region’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4(7) (2000). 18 Massimo Matelli and Giuseppe Luppino, ‘Parietofrontal Circuits for Action and Space Perception in the Macaque Monkey’, Neuroimage 14(1) (2001). 19 B. M. Lidy Verburg-Van Kemenade, Neil G. Muggleton, Vincent Walsh, Ayse P. Saygin, ‘Effects of TMS over Premotor and Superior Temporal Cortices on Biological Motion Perception’, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 24(4) (2012). 20 See David Kemmerer, ‘The Semantics of Space: Integrating Linguistic Typology and Cognitive Neuroscience’, Neuropsychologia 44(9) (2006). 21 Chiara Fini, Marcel Brass, Giorgia Committeri, ‘Social Scaling of Extrapersonal Space: Target Objects Are Judged as Closer When the

NOTES

205

Reference Frame Is a Human Agent with Available Movement Potentialities’, Cognition 134 (2015). 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Gunnar Declerck and Olivier Gapenne, ‘Actuality and Possibility: On the Complementarity of Two Registers in the Bodily Constitution of Experience’, Phenomenology and Cognitive Science 8 (2009). 25 Henri Bergson, Matière et mémoire (1896; Paris: PUF, 2004). 26 Proffitt et al., ‘The Role of Effort in Distance Perception’ (2003); Vittorio Gallese and Corrado Sinigaglia, ‘The Bodily Self as Power for Action’, Neuropsychologia 48 (2010). 27 Declerck and Gapenne, ‘Actuality and Possibility: On the Complementarity of Two Registers in the Bodily Constitution of Experience’ (2009). 28 Ibid. 29 See Yan Coello and Yvonne Delevoye-Turrell, ‘Embodiment, Spatial Categorization, Action’, Consciousness and Cognition 16 (2007). 30 Chiara Fini, Lara Bardi, Nikolaus Troje, Giorgia Committeri, Marcel Brass, ‘Priming Biological Motion Changes Extrapersonal Space Categorization’, submitted to Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 31 Gunnar Johansson, ‘Visual Perception of Biological Motion and a Model for its Analysis’, Perception & Psychophysics, 14(2) (1973). 32 Ayse Pinar Saygin, Stephen M. Wilson, Donald J. Hagler jr, Elizabeth Bates, Martin I. Sereno, ‘Point-light Biological Motion Perception Activates Human Premotor Cortex’, The Journal of Neuroscience 24(27) (2004). 33 Nikolaus Troje, ‘Decomposing Biological Motion: A Framework for Analysis and Synthesis of Human Gait Patterns’, Journal of Vision 2(5) (2002); Dorita H.F. Chang and Nikolaus F. Troje, ‘Perception of Animacy and Direction from Local Biological Motion Signals’, Journal of Vision 8(5) (2008). 34 Roman Liepelt and Marcel Brass, ‘Top-down Modulation of Motor Priming by Belief about Animacy’, Experimental Psychology 57(3) (2010); Christoph Teufel, Paul C. Fletcher, Greg Davis, ‘Seeing Other Minds: Attributed Mental States Influence Perception’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14(8) (2010). 35 Barbara C. Müller, Marcel Brass, Simone Kühn, Chia Chin Tsai, Wieteke Nieuwboer, Ap Dijksterhuis, Rick B. van Baaren, ‘When Pinocchio Acts Like a Human, a Wooden Hand Becomes Embodied.

206

NOTES

Action Co-representation for Non-Biological Agents’, Neuropsychologia 49(5) (2011). 36 The same as in Müller et al., ‘When Pinocchio Acts like a Human’. 37 Chiara Fini, Giorgia Committeri, Barbara C. N. Müller, Eliane Deschrijver, Marcel Brass, ‘How Watching Pinocchio Movies Changes our Subjective Experience of the Extrapersonal Space’, PlosOne 10(3) (2015). 38 Tamer Soliman, Alison Gibson, Arthur M. Glenberg, ‘Sensory Motor Mechanisms Unify Psychology: The Embodiment of Culture’, Frontiers in Psychology 4 (2013). 39 Simone Schnall, Kent Harber, Jeanine Stefanucci, Dennis R. Proffitt, ‘Social Support and the Perception of Geographical Slant’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008). 40 Marcello Costantini, Giorgia Committeri, Corrado Sinigaglia, ‘Ready Both to Your and to My Hands: Mapping the Action Space of Others’, PLoS One 6 (2011); Pasquale Cardellicchio, Corrado Sinigaglia, Marcello Costantini, ‘Grasping Affordances with the Other’s Hand: A TMS Study’, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 8(4) (2013); Mattia Gallotti and Chris D. Frith, ‘Social Cognition in the We-Mode’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (2013). 41 Marcello Costantini, Ettore Ambrosini, Corrado Sinigaglia, Vittorio Gallese, ‘Tool-use Observation Makes Far Objects Ready-to-hand’, Neuropsychologia 49 (2011); Emily K. Bloesch, Christopher C. Davoli, Noam Roth, James R. Brockmole, Richard A. Abrams, ‘Watch This! Observed Tool Use Affects Perceived Distance’, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 19 (2012). 42 Barbara Tversky and Bridgette Martin Hard, ‘Embodied and Disembodied Cognition: Spatial Perspective Taking’, Cognition 110 (2009). 43 Chiara Fini, Marcello Costantini, Giorgia Committeri, ‘Sharing Space: The Presence of Other Bodies Extends the Space Judged as Near’, PlosOne, 9(12) (2014). 44 Downing et al., ‘A Cortical Area Selective for Visual Processing of the Human Body’. 45 Martin A. Giese and Tomaso Poggio, ‘Neural Mechanisms for the Recognition of Biological Movements’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4(3) (2003). 46 Fini et al., ‘Sharing Space’. 47 Fini et al., ‘Social Scaling of Extrapersonal Space’.

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207

48 Previc, ‘The Neuropsychology of 3-D Space’; Previc et al., ‘Why Your “Head Is in the Clouds” During Thinking’. 49 Grüsser, ‘Multimodal Structure of the Extrapersonal Space’. 50 Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 51 Beatriz Calvo-Merino, Daniel Glaser, Julie Grèzes, Richard E. Passingham, Patrick Haggard, ‘Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: An FMRI Study with Expert Dancers’, Cerebral Cortex 15(8) (2005). 52 Ibid.

3 The Circus Actor *

Translation by Alexandra Teissier.

1

The circus actor is also called an ‘artist’ since he is often the originator of the shows he performs.

2

Philippe Goudard, Philippe Perrin, Michel Boura, ‘Les Arts du Cirque: Histoire et spécificités d’une activité physique artistique (1ère partie)’, Cinésiologie 30(140) (1991).

3

Philippe Goudard, Le Cirque entre l’élan et la chute (Montpellier: Editions Espaces 34, 2010), p. 19.

4

Created in 1990 in Nancy, France, by Michel Boura, Denys Barrault, Philippe Perrin and Philippe Goudard.

5

Benoît Bardy and Brice Isableu, ‘De l’intérêt de la complexité des habiletés dans les arts du cirque’, in Philippe Goudard and Denys Barrault (eds), Médecine du cirque (Montpellier: L’Entretemps, 2004), p. 114.

6

Publications and works are available at: http://philippegoudard. net/?page_id=2472.

7

Pascal Blanchard, G. Boetschet, Nanette Jacomijn Snoep, sous la direction de Lilian Thuram, ‘Exhibitions. L’Invention du sauvage’, Beaux Arts (Hors-Série, Nov. 2011).

8

Henry-Jacques Stiker, Corps infirmes et sociétés (Paris: Dunod, 1997), p. 155.

9

Antoine de Pluvinel, L’instruction du roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval / par messire Antoine de Pluvinel . . . enrichy de grandes fig. en taille douce . . . desseignées [sic] et gravées par Crispian de Pas, dédicace au roi par René de Menou, éditeur (Amsterdam: Schipper, 1666).

208

NOTES

10 Arcangelo Tuccarro, Trois dialogues de l’exercice de sauter et voltiger en l’air (1599; Archival Facsimiles limited, 1987), p. 197. 11 See Marthe and Juliette Vesque, ‘Le journal de Marthe et Juliette Vesque (1904–1947)’, MuCEM (Musée des Civilization Europe Mediterranée). 12 Guyot-Daubès, Les hommes phénomènes. Force, agilité, adresse (Paris: Masson, Libraire de l’Académie de Médecine, 1885). 13 See the revue Actualités scientifiques (Paris, from1902). 14 G. Strehly, L’acrobatie et les acrobates (1880; Paris: Solène Zlatin, 1977). 15 Waldemar Deonna, Le symbolisme de l’acrobatie antique (Brussels: Latomus, Collection 9, 1953). 16 Paul Bouissac, Circus and Culture. A Semiotic Approach (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1976). 17 Paul Bouissac, La mesure des gestes. Essai sur les problèmes méthodologiques de la description et de la transcription des comportements acrobatiques, MA diss., Lettres, Paris, 1970; and Idem, La mesure des gestes. Prolégomènes à la sémiotique gestuelle (The Hague-Paris: Mouton, 1973). 18 Philippe Goudard, Bilan et perspectives de l’apport médical dans l’apprentissage et la pratique des arts du cirque en France, MA diss., Médecine, Université de Nancy I, 1989; Philippe Goudard, Philippe Perrin, Michel Boura, ‘Intérêt du calcul de la charge de travail pendant l’apprentissage des arts du cirque’, Cinésiologie 31(143) (1992), pp. 141–50. 19 Philippe Perrin, ‘L’équilibration dans les sports acrobatiques’, in Goudard and Barrault (eds), Médecine du cirque, pp. 19–27; Brice Isableu and Benoît Bardy, ‘Contrôle de la distribution des masses: Modélisation et perspectives au cirque’, in Goudard and Barrault (eds), Médecine du cirque, pp. 29–34; Denys Barrault, ‘Les pertes de figure en acrobatie’, in Ecrits sur le sable, ed. by Philippe Goudard and M. P. Barberet (Montpellier: Artistes Associés pour la Recherche et l’Innovation au Cirque, 1994), pp. 143–52; Francis Lestienne, Philippe A. Liverneaux, F. Thullier, ‘Perception de l’espace: Rôle du mouvement céphalique dans l’orientation du regard’, in Ecrits sur le sable, pp. 167–79; N. Holtz, ‘La jonglerie des chiffres’, in Ecrits sur le sable, pp. 181–7. 20 Goudard, Le Cirque entre l’élan et la chute. 21 Philippe Perrin, Francis Lestienne, Philippe Goudard, ‘L’équilibre du funambule’, in Ecrits sur le sable, pp. 129–34. 22 Thierry Pozzo and C. Studeny, Théorie et pratique des sports acrobatiques (Paris: Vigot, 1996), p. 27, p. 19.

NOTES

209

23 ‘You could still feel the human motion underlying the abstraction . . . It is quite remarkable how little information is needed to detect a human body in motion’. Ivar Hagendoorn, ‘Dance, choreography and the brain’, in Francesca Bacci and David P. Melcher (eds), Art and the Senses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 515. 24 Dominique Jando, ‘Les numéros de cirque: Un chaos organisé pour le plaisir des sens’, in Noël Daniel, The Circus, 1870–1950 (Cologne: Taschen, 2008), p. 346. 25 Philippe Goudard, Arts du cirque, arts du risque, instabilité et déséquilibre dans et hors la piste, MA diss. Arts du spectacle, Montpellier, 2005; Lille, A.N.R.T., 2008. 26 Philippe Goudard, ‘Captation et traitement du son des numéros de cirque: une expérience au Centre National des Arts du Cirque (1991–1993)’, in Yvan Nommick and Philippe Goudard (eds), Musique et cirque, une relation féconde (Colloque Université Montpellier 3 and RIRRA 21, 2013; forthcoming). 27 Paul Bouissac, ‘Volumes sonores et volumes gestuels dans un numéro d’acrobatie. Pour une expression mathématique des gestes’, Langages 3(10) (1968), pp. 128–31. 28 Francisco J. Varela, Invitation aux sciences cognitives (Paris: Seuil, 1996), p. 120. 29 Ibid. 30 Gwenaêlle Abolivier, ‘Fascination du cirque: ce que nous disent les sciences cognitives. Entretien avec Philippe Goudard, scientifique et artiste de cirque’, Ricochet-Jeunes.org, Institut suisse jeunesse et médias ISJM (2014). Available at: www.ricochet-jeunes.org/ magazine-propos/article/426-fascination-du-cirque-ce-que-nousdisent-les-s (last accessed 12 May 2014). 31 Varela, Invitation aux sciences cognitives, p. 199. 32 Benoît G. Bardy, ‘De l’intérêt de la complexité des habiletés gymniques et acrobatiques’, in D. Hauw and J. F. Robin (eds), Activités gymniques et acrobatiques (Paris: Editions Revue EP &S, 1998), Dossiers EP &S no. 39, p. 13: ‘La complexité mécanique, motrice ou perceptive de ces habiletés [acrobatiques] . . . révèle, par la pression temporelle, énergétique ou attentionnelle qu’elle engendre, les limites fonctionnelles de ce système.’ (‘The mechanical, motor or perceptive complexity of these [acrobatic] abilities . . . via the temporal, energetic or attentional pressure that it engenders, reveals the functional limits of this system.’) 33 ‘. . . des relations [sont] déterminées entre des variables perceptives générées par le mouvement lui-même et des variables motrices qui

210

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contrôlent le mouvement sur la base de ces informations. Ces lois en revanche ne sont pas déterminées, car elles sont sous le contrôle intentionnel de l’acteur. L’intention apparaît dans ce contecte comme un élément déterminant du couplage qui vient organiser une relation spécifique entre le flux d’informations et le(s) paramètre(s) essentiel(s) de l’action.’ (‘. . . relationships are determined among the perceptive variables generated by movement itself and motor variables that control movement on the basis of such information. These laws, however, are not determined, because they are under the actor’s intentional control. In this context, intention appears to be a determining element for the coupling that will organize a specific relationship between the flux of information and the essential parameters of action.’) Benoît G. Bardy, ‘Approche des systèmes d’action en gymnastique’, in Hauw and Robin (eds), Activités gymniques et acrobatiques, recherches et applications (Paris: Éditions Revue EP &S, 1996), Dossiers EP &S no. 25, p. 64. 34 Edmond Couchot, La nature de l’art. Ce que révèlent les sciences cognitives sur le plaisir esthétique (Paris: Hermann Editeurs, 2012), p. 7. 35 Ibid. 36 Philippe Goudard, ‘Etre auteur de cirque en 2052’, SACD, Paris. Available at: www.ca.blog.sacd.fr/index.php/author/philippe-goudard/ (last accessed October 2013). 37 Varela, Invitation aux sciences cognitives, pp. 111, 112, 122.

Part 2 Introduction *

Translation by Victor Jacono.

1

The suggestion was made on the occasion of the Third International Conference ‘Dialogues between Theatre and Neuroscience’ organized by the Department of Performance Science and Arts at Sapienza Università di Roma.

2

The essay in which De Marinis originally presented this notion was published in 2012: Marco De Marinis, ‘Corpo e corporeità a teatro. Dalla semiotica alle neuroscienze. Piccolo glossario multidisciplinare’ in Clelia Falletti and Gabriele Sofia (eds), Prospettive su teatro e neuroscienze (Rome: Bulzoni, 2012). The English translation of the essay is the first contribution to this section of the book.

NOTES

211

3

Francisco Varela is not the first or the only person to speak about embodied cognition. In my view, his perspective, perhaps also due to the ongoing connections Varela made with oriental cultures and meditation practices, lends itself better to the dialogue with theatre cultures. In the present chapter, when discussing ‘embodied cognition’, we shall refer mostly to the in-depth studies and research conducted by Varela and his collaborators. The following are the main literary references: Francisco Varela, Connaître. Les sciences cognitives, tendances et perspectives (Paris: Édition du Seuil, 1989); Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge, MA : Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991); Francisco Varela, ‘Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy to the Hard Problem’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 3 (1996).

4

Generally speaking, neuroscientific studies on creativity are still extremely cerebrocentric. Paradoxically, such a trend seems to be growing in interdisciplinary contexts such as neuroaesthetics. I have analyzed this problem in an article due to be published soon under the title ‘Embodied Creativity. Formation de l’acteur et neurosciences de la créativité’, in Isabelle Capron Puozzo (ed.), La créativité en éducation et en formation. Perspectives théoriques et pratiques (Bruxelles: Editions De Boeck, in press).

5

Varela et al., The Embodied Mind, pp. 172–73.

6

Francisco Varela, Autopoïese et emergence, in Réda Benkirane (ed.), La Complexité, vertiges et promesses. 18 histoires de sciences (Paris: Le Pommier, 2002), p. 174.

7

‘The point of departure for the enactive approach is the study of how the perceiver can guide his actions in his local situation. Since these local situations constantly change as a result of the perceiver’s activity, the reference point for understanding perception is no longer a pregiven, perceiver-independent world but rather the sensorimotor structure of the perceiver (the way in which the nervous system links sensory and motor surfaces). This structure – the manner in which the perceiver is embodied – rather than some pregiven world determines how the perceiver can act and be modulated by environmental events.’ (Varela et al., The Embodied Mind, p. 173).

8

An essay written in collaboration between the philosopher Dorothée Legrand and the Italian neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni presents the following clarification on the phenomenon: ‘A primary intersubjective relation is made possible through the sharing of a common world, by virtue of the execution and observation of goal-directed actions: the goal of one’s action becomes represented as something that can be

212

NOTES

shared in the sense that the object is not only one’s own intentional object but also the intentional object of others.’ (Dorothée Legrand and Marco Iacoboni, ‘Intersubjective Intentional Actions’, in Franck Grammont, Dorothée Legrand, Pierre Livet [eds], Naturalizing Intention in Action (Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2010), pp. 238–239). 9

The concept of the ‘co-constitution of the world’ has been recently taken up again in the cognitive sciences thanks to the collaboration beetween the neuroscientist Alain Berthoz and the philosopher Jean-Luc Petit in their book Phénoménologie et physiologie de l’action (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006). The concept is related to the notion of ‘Mitkonstitution’ proposed by Husserl in his works on the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929–35, Iso Kern (ed.) (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973).

10 Dorothée Legrand, ‘Body Intention and the Unreasonable Intentional Agent’, in Grammont et al. (eds), Naturalizing Intention in Action, p. 165. 11 Varela et al., The Embodied Mind, p. 172. 12 Legrand, ‘Body Intention and the Unreasonable Intentional Agent’, p. 166. 13 I borrow such formulation from the actress Julia Varley who used such a definition for the notion of ‘sub-score’ in a discussion that was perfectly related to the one articulated in the present chapter: ‘Precision is the actor’s intelligence; it is not knowing which between intention and action comes first; it is the score that has become sub-score and viceversa. Precision occurs when one can no longer ask the actor whether it is dictated by an interior motivation or an exterior physical movement, when such terms are no longer relevant and technique becomes life.’ (Julia Varley, ‘Sottopartitura: ancora un termine utile e sbagliato. Risposta a Patrice Pavis’. In Marco De Marinis [ed.], Drammaturgia dell’attore [Bologna: I Quaderni del battello ebbro, 1997] p. 115). 14 One must remember, however, that the great masters often denounced the impossibility of describing theatrical processes with precision. On the contrary, the reference to different disciplines such as yoga and physiology was actually due to the necessity of drawing upon a more precise terminology. I have tackled some of these examples specifically in the article: ‘Towards a 20th Century History of Relationships between Theatre and Neuroscience’, Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença/Brazilian Journal of Studies on Presence 4(2) (2014).

NOTES

213

15 Sergej M. Ejzenstejn, ‘La biomeccanica come tecnica di realizzazione del movimento quodiano – Lezione del 28 marzo 1935’, in Alessia Cervini (ed.), Sulla Biomeccanica. Azione scenica e movimento (Rome: Armando Editore, 2009), p. 62. 16 The concept of body schema, which is broadly debated in both the cognitive sciences and in philosophy, could be defined as the process that integrates the pre-conscious neuromotor mechanisms that allow a given action to take place. For discussions on the notions of body image and body schema, I suggest the following interesting volume: Helena De Preester and Veroniek Knockaert (eds), Body Image and Body Schema: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Body (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2005). 17 Cf. Shaun Gallagher, ‘Dynamic Models of Body Schematic Processes’, in De Preester and Knockaert (eds), Body Image and Body Schema. 18 Shaun Gallagher, How Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 19 I have tackled the actor’s ‘performative body schema’ in numerous writings that can serve as more in-depth references: Gabriele Sofia, ‘The Effect of the Theatre Training on Cognitive Functions’, in Nicola Shaughnessy (ed.), Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being (London: Methuen, 2013); Idem, Achieved Spontaneity and Spectator’s Performative Experience. The Motor Dimension of the Actor–Spectator Relationship, in Helena De Preester (ed.), Moving Imagination: Explorations of Gesture and Inner Movement (Advances in Consciousness Research-AiCR ) (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013); Idem, Le acrobazie dello spettatore. Dal teatro alle neuroscienze e ritorno (Rome: Bulzoni, 2013). 20 This is similar to what Theatre Anthropology described as ‘extradaily body’ or that organization of the body-mind that the actor achieves by freeing him/herself of everyday automatisms and creating equivalent behaviour in order to attain a second nature. See Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, The Secret Art of the Performer: A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (Cardiff, London, NewYork: Routledge 1991). 21 See David J. Chalmers, ‘Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3) (1995). 22 See Varela, ‘Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy to the Hard Problem’. 23 Jean-Marie Pradier, ‘L’ethnoscénologie. Vers une scénologie générale’, L’Annuaire théâtral: Revue québécoise d’études théâtrales 29 (2001), p. 53.

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NOTES

24 Corinne Jola, Marie-Hélène Grosbras, Frank E. Pollick, ‘Arousal Decrease in “Sleeping Beauty”: Audiences’ Neurophysiological Correlates to Watching a Narrative Dance Performance of 2.5 Hrs’, Dance Research Electronic 29(2) (2011); Corinne Jola, Ali AbedianAmiri, Annapoorna Kuppuswamy, Frank E. Pollick, Marie-Hélène Grosbras, ‘Motor Simulation without Motor Expertise: Enhanced Corticospinal Excitability in Visually Experienced Dance Spectators’, PLoS ONE 7(3) (2012); Corinne Jola and Marie-Hélène Grosbras, ‘In the Here and Now: Enhanced Motor Corticospinal Excitability in Novices when Watching Live Compared to Video Recorded Dance’, Cognitive Neuroscience 4(2) (2013); Corinne Jola, Phil McAleer, Marie-Hélène Grosbras, Scott A. Love, Gordon Morison, Frank E. Pollick, ‘Uni- and Multisensory Brain Areas are Synchronised Across Spectators when Watching Unedited Dance’, i-Perception 4 (2013). 25 The best-known example is perhaps that given in the following article: Beatriz Calvo-Merino, Corinne Jola, Daniel E. Glaser, Paul Haggard, ‘Towards a Sensorimotor Aesthetics of Performing Art’, Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008). 26 This role was defined already many years ago in terms of the spectator’s dramaturgical activity. See Marco De Marinis, ‘Dramaturgy of the Spectator’, The Drama Review 31(2) (1987). 27 Guillaume Dezecache, Laurence Conty, Léonor Philip, Robert Soussignan, Dan Sperber, Julie Grèzes, ‘Evidence for Unintentional Emotional Contagion Beyond Dyads’, PLoS ONE 8(6) (2013). 28 Alain Berthoz has defined the brain as a ‘projection machine’. Such a definition is based on a rather simple logic: to face any kind of event, our body-mind system needs a certain amount of time; if we had to face all events by reacting in the moment these happen, we would be constantly late and our actions would be constantly inefficient in relation to the environment. In short, the brain cannot simply react to the environment but it continuously needs to elaborate hypotheses on ‘what could happen’, selecting at each moment that behaviour which would appear most appropriate to an efficient interaction with the environment. 29 Varela, ‘Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem’, p. 340: ‘Experience is clearly a personal event, but that does not mean it is private, in the sense of some kind of isolated subject that is parachuted down onto a pre-given objective world. It is one of the most impressive discoveries of the phenomenological movement to have quickly realized that an investigation of the structure of human experience inevitably induces a shift to considering

NOTES

215

the several levels on which my consciousness is inextricably linked to those of others and the phenomenal world in an empathic mesh.’ 30 Think of Grotowski’s definition of the director as ‘a professional spectator’. Jerzy Grotowski, Il regista come spettatore di professione (1984), in Ludwik Flaszen and Carla Pollastrelli (eds), Il Teatr Laboratorium di Jerzy Grotowski 1959–1969 (Pontedera: Fondazione Pontedera Teatro, 2001). 31 Such cognitive functions are probably used in a different way. One can, for instance, imagine that the director needs to absorb signals with major rapidity, so that s/he may give indications to actors in a more efficient way.

4 Body and Corporeity in the Theatre *

Translation by Victor Jacono.

1

Jean-Marie Pradier, ‘Etnoscenologia, etologia e biologia molecolare’, in Clelia Falletti and Gabriele Sofia (eds), Nuovi dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze (Rome: Editoria & Spettacolo, 2011), p. 74.

2

Marco De Marinis, Capire il teatro. Lineamenti di una nuova teatrologia (1988; rev. and extended edn, Rome: Bulzoni, 2008); Idem, ‘New Theatrology and Performance Studies. Starting Points Towards a Dialogue’, The Drama Review 55(4) (2011).

3

Gabriele Sofia, ‘Dai neuroni specchio al piacere dello spettatore’, in G. Sofia (ed.), Dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze (Rome: Edizioni Alegre, 2009), p. 140; see also, by the same author, Le acrobazie dello spettatore: Dal teatro alle neuroscienze e ritorno (Rome: Bulzoni, 2013), chapter 4: ‘L’esperienza performativa dello spettatore’.

4

De Marinis, Capire il teatro.

5

With regard to semiotics, see Jacques Fontanille, Soma et séma: figures du corps (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2004); without omitting the early contributions by Patrizia Magli, from Patrizia Magli, Corpo e linguaggio (Rome: Editoriale L’Espresso, 1980), particularly to, Patrizia Magli, Il volto e l’anima. Fisiognomica e passioni (Milan: Bompiani, 1995). With regard to philosophy, in the broad sense of the term, see Michela Marzano, Dictionnaire du corps (Paris: PUF, 2007). In any case I am in complete agreement with Jean-Pierre Triffaux, when, in reference to Ariane Mnouchkine and Pippo Delbono, among others, he writes: ‘Again and again, it remains necessary to affirm that theatre is an art of the body’ (Jean-Pierre Triffaux, Le double drame de la représentation, in André Helbo (ed.), Performance et savoirs [Brussels: De Boeck, 2011], p. 130).

216

NOTES

6

Nearly thirty years ago, the conclusion of my ‘treatise’ on theatre semiotics was already dedicated to the ‘work of the spectator’ (Marco De Marinis, The Semiotics of Performance [1982; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992], chapter 7).

7

Regarding such initiatives, their underlying theoretical issues, and especially regarding the biological basis of the performing arts, see ‘Teatro e neuroscienze. L’apporto delle neuroscienze cognitive a una nuova teatrologia sperimentale’, Francesca Bortoletti (ed.), a special edition of Culture Teatrali 16 (2007); G. Sofia (ed.), Dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze (2009); C. Falletti and G. Sofia (eds), Nuovi dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze (2011); C. Falletti and G. Sofia (eds), Prospettive su teatro e neuroscienze: Dialoghi e sperimentazioni (Rome: Bulzoni, 2012); Marco De Marinis, Il teatro dell’altro. Interculturalismo e transculturalismo nella scena contemporanea (Florence: La casa Usher, 2011), especially the chapters ‘Dal preespressivo alla drammaturgia dell’attore: saggio su La Canoa di Carta’ and ‘Contro la distanza: verso nuovi paradigmi per l’esperienza teatrale’.

8

Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950).

9

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible. Followed by Working Notes (1964; Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). To be precise, Antonin Artaud had already attempted to confer theoretical value to flesh in the brief and dense essay entitled ‘Position de la chair’ (1925); see in English, Collected Works of Antonin Artaud, trans. Victor Corti (London: Calder and Boyars, 1971).

10 Enrico Pitozzi, ‘Corpo/corporeità’, an unpublished article kindly furnished by the author (p. 3 of the manuscript). This article forms part of a volume of writings that is currently in progress under my direction. Its purpose is to propose a lexicon for the new theatrology. See also the PhD dissertation by the same author, currently in the process of publication: Il corpo, la scena, le tecnologie. Per un’estetica dei processi d’integrazione, DAMS , Bologna University. 11 Marco De Marinis, In cerca dell’attore: Un bilancio del Novecento teatrale (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000), chapter V. 12 Pitozzi, ‘Corpo/corporeità’, p. 3. 13 Ibid., p. 2. Regarding the affinities between such a perspective and the recent findings of neuroscience on mirror neurons, see below. 14 In this regard, see De Marinis, In cerca dell’attore. 15 See Culture Teatrali 20 (2010), an edition that is entirely dedicated to ‘Theatre of Voice’.

NOTES

217

16 Sergej Michajlovicˇ Ejzenštejn, ‘Il movimento espressivo’, in collaboration with Sergej Tretjakov, in S. M. Ejzenštejn, Il movimento espressivo. Scritti sul teatro, Pietro Montani (ed.) (Venice: Marsilio, 1998). 17 See De Marinis, In cerca dell’attore, particularly chapter 8: ‘Verso l’azione efficace’. 18 Marcel Jousse, Anthropologie du geste (1969; Paris: Gallimard, 1974), p. 228 (Engl. edn, The Anthropology of Geste and Rhythm, ed. by Edgard Sienaert [2nd edn, Durban: Mantis Publishing, 2000]). 19 Ibid., p. 59. 20 Note by E. De Rosa in ‘Prefazione’ to Marcel Jousse, L’antropologia del gesto, transl. by E. De Rosa (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 1979), quot. in Antonello Colimberti, ‘Marcel Jousse e una “nuova teatrologia dei sensi” ’, Teatro e neuroscienze, p. 125. By the same Colimberti, see also Marcel Jousse: un’estetica fisiologica (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2005). In this case, we are very close to the notion of ‘embodied simulation’ currently put forward by neuroscience. See below. 21 Richard Schechner, ‘Rasaesthetics’, The Drama Review (T171), 45(3), Fall 2001, p. 35. 22 See Michael D. Gershon, The Second Brain (New York: Harper & Collins, 1998). 23 Schechner, ‘Rasaesthetics’, p. 38. 24 Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: Paj Publications, 1986). 25 See, among others, Jean-Marie Pradier, ‘Towards a Biological Theory of the Body in Performance’, New Theatre Quarterly 21 (1990); Idem, ‘L’animal dramaturge’, Degrés 97, 98, 99 (Spring-Autumn 1999), pp. 86–98, pp. B1–B23. 26 Jean-Marie Pradier, ‘Le public et son corps: Eloge des sens’, Théâtre/ Public 120 (1994), p. 27. 27 See the already quoted Teatro e neuroscienze; Dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze; Nuovi dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze; Prospettive su teatro e neuroscienze. 28 Vittorio Gallese, ‘Il corpo teatrale: Mimetismo, neuroni specchio, simulazione incarnata’, Teatro e neuroscienze, p. 21 (my italics). 29 See Eugenio Barba, Nicola Savarese, The Secret Art of the Performer: A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (London-New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 203, under the entry ‘Pre-expressivity’. See also, in this volume, Clelia Falletti, ‘The Shared Space of Action’, where

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NOTES

corresponding to the actor’s pre-expressive there is the spectator’s pre-reflexive, ‘that modality of understanding which, prior to any form of conceptual and linguistic mediation, gives substance to our experience of others’ (the phrase in quotation marks is from Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford and New York: Oxford University, Press, 2008), p. 146. 30 I am here referring to the theory advanced by Elodie Verlinden in a paper entitled ‘Le corps du spectateur: Approche pluridisciplinaire’, presented at the conference ‘Spectacle vivant et interdiscipline’ held in Brussels in April 2011. By the same author, see also ‘Danser avec soi’, in Helbo (ed.), Performance et savoirs, pp. 157–169. 31 See De Marinis, Capire il teatro, pp. 55–6; Idem, ‘Toward a Cognitive Semiotic of Theatrical Emotions’, in Versus 41 (1985); Idem, ‘Dramaturgy of the Spectator’, The Drama Review 31(2) (1987); Idem, ‘Sociology’, in André Helbo, J. Dines Johansen, Patrice Pavis, Anne Ubersfeld (eds), Approaching Theatre (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987); Idem, ‘Cognitive Processes in Performance Comprehension: Frames Theory and Theatrical Competence’, in Tim Fitzpatrick (ed.), Performance. From Product to Process (Sydney: Frederick May Foundation for Italian Studies, 1989). 32 Gabriele Sofia, ‘Ritmo e intenzione scenica. Ipotesi su teatro e neurofenomenologia’, Nuovi dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze, p. 83.

5 Audiences’ Experience of Proximity and Co-presence in Live Dance Performance 1

See Bettina Bläsing, Beatriz Calvo-Merino, Emily S. Cross, Corinne Jola, Juliane Honisch, Catherine J. Stevens, ‘Neurocognitive Control in Dance Perception and Performance’, Acta Psychologica (Amst) 139(2) (2012); Vassilis Sevdalis and Peter E. Keller, ‘Captured by Motion: Dance, Action Understanding, and Social Cognition’, Brain and Cognition 77(2) (2011).

2

For an overview of the brain areas found to be relevant in passive dance observation, see Julia F. Christensen and Beatriz Calvo-Merino, ‘Dance as a Subject for Empirical Aesthetics’, Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts SI , 7(1) (2013).

3

Corinne Jola, Ali Abedian-Amiri, Annapoorna Kuppuswamy, Frank E. Pollick, Marie-Hélène Grosbras, ‘Motor Simulation Without Motor

NOTES

219

Expertise: Enhanced Corticospinal Excitability in Visually Experienced Dance Spectators’, PLoS ONE 7(3) (2012). 4

Steve Wurtzler, ‘ “She Sang Live, but the Microphone was Turned Off”: The Live, the Recorded and the Subject of Representation’, in R. Altman (ed.), Sound Theory Sound Practice (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 89.

5

Bernard Beckerman, Dynamics of Drama (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1979), p. 7.

6

Stanton Garner, Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 48.

7

Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 38.

8

See Martin Barker, Live to Your Local Cinema: The Remarkable Rise of Livecasting (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 57 and 44.

9

Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 2.

10 Ibid., p. 37. 11 Barker, Live to Your Local Cinema. 12 See also Corinne Jola and Marie-Hélène Grosbras, ‘In the Here and Now: Enhanced Motor Corticospinal Excitability in Novices when Watching Live Compared to Video Recorded Dance’, Cognitive Neuroscience 4(2) (2013). 13 Roger Copeland, ‘The Presence of Mediation’, The Drama Review 34(4) (1990), p. 34. 14 Corinne Jola, Ali Abedian-Amiri, Annapoorna Kuppuswamy, Frank E. Pollick, Marie-Hélène Grosbras, ‘Motor Simulation Without Motor Expertise: Enhanced Corticospinal Excitability in Visually Experienced Dance Spectators’, PLoS ONE 7(3) (2012). 15 AQ ; Simon Baron-Cohen, Sally Wheelwright, Richard Skinner, Joanne Martin, Emma Clubley, ‘The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ ): Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/High Functioning Autism, Males and Females, Scientists and Mathematicians’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 31(5–17) (2001). 16 IRI ; Marc H. Davis, ‘A Multidimensional Approach to Individual Differences in Empathy’, JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology 10(85) (1980). 17 E.g. Eric Wassermann, Charles Epstein, Ulf Ziemann, Oxford Handbook of Transcranial Stimulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

220

NOTES

18 Jola and Grosbras, ‘In the Here and Now’. 19 p-values ≤ 0.050 are considered as significant. Due to the small sample size, we also report p-values that show a p-value ‘near’ statistical significance (see, e.g., N. A. Desbiens, ‘A Novel Use for the Word “Trend” in the Clinical Trial Literature’, American Journal of the Medical Sciences 326(2) (2003). We defined p-values between 0.050 and ≤0.060 as a ‘very strong trend’, p-values >0.060 and ≤0.080 as a strong trend, and p-values >0.080 and 0.110 is considered non-significant. Clearly, we should investigate our preliminary results further by creating targeted experimental designs that test specific hypotheses based on these findings. All post-hoc t-tests are Bonferroni adjusted. 20 Mean±SD. 21 Jola et al., ‘Motor Simulation without Motor Expertise’. 22 Perspective Taking (the tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others); Fantasy (taps respondents’ tendencies to transpose themselves imaginatively into the feelings and actions of fictitious characters in books, movies, and plays); Empathic Concern (assesses ‘other-oriented’ feelings of sympathy and concern for unfortunate others) and Personal Distress (measures ‘self-oriented’ feelings of personal anxiety and unease in tense interpersonal settings. See Davies, ‘A Multidimensional Approach’. 23 Here, we used the same data set as in Jola et al., ‘Motor Simulation without Motor Expertise’. We therefore used the same analysis approach in exploring dance-specific MEP s gained by subtracting the acting control MEP s from the dance performance MEP s. This differs from the approach in Jola and Grosbras, ‘In the Here and Now’, where only the novices from the live performance were included in the analyses and where all three performance MEP s were subtracted from the MEP s at rest. According to both studies, we included age as a covariate. 24 Jola et al., ‘Motor Simulation without Motor Expertise’; Grosbras and Jola, ‘In the Here and Now’. The proposition that enjoyment acts as a modulator of sensorimotor activity is evidently based on significant effects found for appreciation on neuronal activity; e.g. Beatriz Calvo-Merino, Corinne Jola, Daniel E. Glaser, Patrick Haggard, ‘Towards a Sensorimotor Aesthetics of Performing Art’, Consciousness and Cognition 17(3) (2008); Zaira Cattaneo, Carlotta Lega, Chiara Gardelli, Lofti B. Merabet, Camilo Cela-Conde, Marcos Nadal, ‘The Role of Prefrontal and Parietal Cortices in Esthetic Appreciation of Representational and Abstract Art: A TMS Study’,

NOTES

221

Neuroimage 99 (2014); Emily S. Cross, Louise Kirsch, Luca F. Ticini, Simone Schütz-Bosbach, ‘The Impact of Aesthetic Evaluation and Physical Ability on Dance Perception’, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 5 (2011); Marie-Hélène Grosbras, Haodan Tan, Frank E. Pollick, ‘Dance and Emotion in Posterior Parietal Cortex: A Low-frequency rTMS Study’, Brain Stimulation 5(2) (2012). 25 Peter G. Enticott, Bronwyn A. Harrison, Sara L. Arnold, Kaitlyn Nibaldi, Rebecca A. Segrave, Bernadette M. Fitzgibbon, Hayley A. Kennedy, Kristal Lau, Paul B. Fitzgerald, ‘Emotional Valence Modulates Putative Mirror Neuron Activity’, Neuroscience Letters, 508(1) (2012). 26 Borgomaneri et al., ‘Motor Mapping of Implied Actions during Perception of Emotional Body Language’. 27 Corinne Jola, Frank E. Pollick, Beatriz Calvo-Merino, ‘ “Some Like It Hot”: Spectators Who Score High on the Personality Trait Openness Enjoy the Excitement of Hearing Dancers Breathing without Music’, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (2014).

6 Theatre and Science *

Translation by Victor Jacono.

1

This is the objective of Luciano Mariti’s essay, ‘Transiti tra teatro e scienza: Dalla mimesis tou biou al bios della mimesis’, in Gabriele Sofia (ed.), Dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze (Rome: Alegre, 2009); but in this sense one can also refer to Clelia Falletti’s contribution to this volume, ‘The Shared Space of Action’.

2

Falletti, ‘The Shared Space of Action’ who quotes Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

3

We refer, for instance, to the mimetic faculty that the anthropologist Marcel Jousse – who followed the intuitions of Aristotle in this case – regards as the defining characteristic of the human being, or else to the Einfühlung theory developed in the German psychological aesthetics of the nineteenth century.

4

‘Le théâtre et la science’ is the title of an essay written by Artaud in July 1947 (see Antonin Artaud, Œuvres, ed. by Evelyne Grossman [Paris: Gallimard, Quarto, 1956]).

5

Antonin Artaud, ‘Manifeste pour un théâtre avorté: “Le Théâtre Alfred Jarry” ’ (1926), in Artaud, Œuvres, p. 233.

6

Ibid.: ‘Notre capacité à croire, à nous illusionner est immense.’

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NOTES

7

Ibid.: ‘Le théâtre est la chose du monde la plus impossible à sauver. Un art basé tout entier sur un pouvoir d’illusion qu’il est incapable de procurer n’a plus qu’à disparaître.’

8

Ibid.: ‘L’illusion ne portera plus sur la vraisemblance ou l’invraisemblance de l’action, mais sur la force communicative et la réalité de cette action.’

9

Antonin Artaud, ‘Un athlétisme affectif’ (1935), in Artaud, Œuvres, p. 589: ‘C’est assez d’une magie hasardeuse, d’une poésie qui n’a pas la science pour l’étayer.’

10 Artaud, ‘Le Théâtre Alfred Jarry’, p. 227: ‘Le spectateur qui vient chez nous sait qu’il vient s’offrir à une opération véritable où non seulement son esprit mais ses sens et sa chair sont en jeu. Il ira désormais au théâtre comme on va chez le chirurgien ou le dentiste. Dans le même état d’esprit, avec la pensée évidemment qu’il n’en mourra pas mais que c’est grave et qu’il ne sortira pas de là-dedans intact.’ 11 On the notion of ‘body-mind’ see Eugenio Barba, The Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre Anthropology (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). 12 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, ed. Hannah Arendt (1936; London: Fontana, 1968). 13 In ‘The Theatre and the Plague’, Artaud himself points out that before him the functional analogy articulated between the theatre and the epidemic had been contemplated by St Augustine: ‘In The City of God St. Augustine complains of this similarity between the action of the plague . . . and the theatre’ (Antonin Artaud, ‘Le Théâtre et la peste’ [1933] in Œuvres, p. 517). Even so, it is evident that, although starting from the same consideration, Artaud’s approach to the analogy would develop in the opposite direction to that of St. Augustine. 14 Artaud, ‘Le Théâtre et la peste’, p. 511: ‘une communication pondérable, quoique subtile [qui ne saurait se réduire à] la contagion par simple contact’. 15 A letter to André Rolland de Renéville dated 8 April 1933, in Artaud, Œuvres, p. 399: ‘Sans toucher le corps [la peste] produit organiquement les désordres les plus excessifs.’ 16 Artaud, ‘En finir avec les chefs-d’oeuvres’, in Œuvres, p. 197. ‘Faire de l’art, c’est priver un geste de son retentissement dans l’organisme, et ce retentissement, si le geste est fait dans les conditions et avec la force requises, invite l’organisme et, par lui, l’individualité entière, à prendre des attitudes conformes au geste qui est fait.’ Note here that Artaud establishes a fundamental difference between theatre and art, in that theatre, according to the French author, should not be considered

NOTES

223

what is commonly understood as ‘art’. One fundamental difference would indeed reside in the theatrical gesture’s capacity for resonance. 17 In this case, we refer to the theses developed by Damasio who showed that emotion is profoundly rooted in the body: see Antonio Damasio, Descarte’s Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Putnam Publishing, 1994). Here, Artaud considers the ‘organism’ as a key to ‘individuality as a whole’, an intuition that he would himself specify in the notion of ‘affective athleticism’, dedicated to the actor’s work, and to its capability of acting upon the spectator by means of a physical modulation of emotions. The actor indeed knows that ‘every emotion has organic foundations’ (‘toute émotion a des bases organiques’). By working his own body into an ‘affective musculature corresponding to the physical location of emotions’ (‘une musculature affective qui correspond à des localisations physiques des sentiments’) the actor can produce those same emotions in the spectator, who sees his own body in motion (Artaud, ‘Un athlétisme affectif’, pp. 584–9). Thus, Artaud fuses his theory of specular ‘identification’ to his intuition of a fundamental monism of the human body that would eventually be scientifically theorized by Damasio in his attempt to highlight the corporal basis of emotion. 18 The text was first published in the journal El Nacional on 25 July 1936: ‘On a oublié que le théâtre est un acte sacré qui engage aussi bien celui qui le voit que celui qui l’exécute et que l’idée psychologique fondamentale du théâtre est celle-ci: un geste que l’on voit et que l’esprit reconstruit en images a autant de valeur qu’un geste que l’on fait’ (‘La fausse supériorité des élites’, in Artaud, Œuvres, p. 725). 19 Artaud, ‘Le Théâtre et la peste’, p. 516. 20 Ibid.: ‘l’état de l’acteur que ses sentiments sondent intégralement et bouleversent sans profit pour la réalité.’ 21 Ibid.: ‘le théâtre sans tuer provoque les altérations les plus mystérieuses dans l’esprit d’un individu.’ 22 Ibid.: ‘L’esprit croit ce qu’il voit et fait ce qu’il croit.’ 23 Artaud, ‘En finir avec les chefs-d’oeuvres’, p. 555: ‘je défie bien un spectateur à qui des scènes violentes auront passé leur sang, qui aura senti en lui le passage d’une action supérieure, qui aura vu en éclair dans des faits extraordinaires les mouvements extraordinaires et essentiels de sa pensée . . . je le défie bien de se livrer au-dehors à des idées de guerre, d’émeute et d’assassinat hasardeux . . . Mais qu’on n’oublie pas qu’un geste de théâtre est violent, mais qu’il est désintéressé; et que le théâtre enseigne justement l’inutilité de l’action qui une fois faite n’est plus à faire.’

224

NOTES

24 Artaud explains the matter of ‘resonance’ as follows: theatrical images surprise the spectators because they echo images that would have already appeared in them; these enable the spectators to ‘see’ the ‘extraordinary and essential movements of their own thought’ (cf. Artaud, ‘En finir avec les chefs-d’oeuvres’). Also in this case we can recognize a strong intuition of what would be theorized by the team of neuroscientists in Parma. 25 Vittorio Gallese, ‘Empathy, Embodied Simulation and the Brain’, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 56 (2008).

Part 3 Introduction 1

Matthew Goulish, 39 Microlectures in Proximity of Performance (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 12.

2

See Jonathan Pitches, Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).

3

Edgar Morin, Restricted Complexity, General Complexity. Presented at the Colloquium ‘Intelligence de la complexité: épistémologie et pragmatique’, Cerisy-La-Salle, France, June 26 2005. Translated from French by Carlos Gershenson. Available online at: http://cogprints. org/5217/1/morin.pdf (last accessed February 2015), p. 25.

4

A more holistic picture of the theories that might have influenced Stanislavski’s conception of nature (from the conception of the spirit of Nature held by German Romanticism, to Theodule Ribot’s theories integrating the psychological and the physiological, to the principles of Hatha Yoga) can be gained from Rose Whyman, The Stanislavsky System of Acting: Legacy and Influence in Modern Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

5

Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work (Part One 1938, Part Two 1953), trans. and ed. Jean Benedetti, (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 612.

6

Ibid.

7

Ibid.

8

Ibid.

9

I have come across this second part in the Italian translation from the Russian original, Konstantin S. Stanislavskij, Il lavoro dell’attore su se stesso (1938), Gerardo Guerrieri (ed.) (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2000). Curiously, the whole part, which should constitute Stanislavski’s

NOTES

225

conclusion for the whole opus, is entirely missing in Jean Benedetti’s 2008 edition. 10 Stanislavskij, Il lavoro dell’attore su se stesso, p. 539. 11 Ibid., pp. 539–40. 12 Ibid., p. 540. 13 Morin, Restricted Complexity, General Complexity, p. 16. 14 I take this formulation from the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who with his cybernetic understanding of mental process shifted the question of epistemology from ‘how knowledge is possible’ to ‘how knowing is done’. See Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson, Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2005), p. 20. 15 Isabelle Stengers, ‘The Challenge of Complexity: Unfolding the Ethics of Science In Memoriam Ilya Prigogine’, in Paul Cilliers (ed.), Thinking Complexity: Complexity and Philosophy, vol. 1 (Mansfield: ISCE Publishing, 2007), p. 94. 16 Konstantin S. Stanislavskij, ‘Conversazioni al Teatro Bol’šoj 1918– 1922’, in Fabrizio Cruciani and Clelia Falletti (eds), Konstantin S. Stanislavskij – L’attore creativo (2nd edn, Florence: La Casa Usher, 1989), p. 71. 17 Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work, p. 687. 18 Merlin Donald, A Mind so Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness (New York and London: Norton & Co., 2001), p. 284. 19 Although still in their infancy, studies in epigenetics are gaining further understanding into how cognitive processes are affected by the interaction between environmental and genetic variation. See Gene E. Robinson, Russell D. Fernald, David F. Clayton, ‘Genes and Social Behaviour’, Science 322 (2008). 20 Michael S. Gazzaniga, Richard B. Ivry, George R. Mangun, Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of Mind (New York and London: Norton & Co., 2002), p. 447. 21 See Ludwig von Bertalanffy, ‘The History and Status of General Systems Theory’, The Academy of Management Journal 15(4), ‘General Systems Theory’ (1972). 22 For the application of dynamical systems theory to acting, see John Lutterbie, Toward a General Theory of Acting: Cognitive Science and Performance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 23 Edgar Morin, Restricted Complexity, General Complexity, p. 7.

226

NOTES

24 See Jan Bogg and Robert Geyer (eds), Complexity, Science and Society (Oxford and New York: Radcliffe Publishing, 2007). 25 Rémy Versace, Élodie Labeye, Guillemette Badard, Marylène Rose, ‘The Contents of Long-term Memory and the Emergence of Knowledge’, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 21(4) (2009), p. 550 (my italics). 26 Julia Varley, ‘Sottopartitura: ancora un termine utile e sbagliato. Risposte a Patrice Pavis’, in Marco De Marinis (ed.), Drammaturgia dell’Attore – Teatro Eurasiano no. 3 (Bologna: I Quaderni del Battello Ebbro, 1997), pp.112, 113. 27 Always in relation to the actor’s pedagogy, the topic of feral children was discussed in depth by John J. Schraz during the first, 2009 edition of the international conferences ‘Dialogues between Theatre and Neuroscience’ held at La Sapienza, Università di Roma. See John J. Schranz, ‘Parliamo di vesciche’ in Gabriele Sofia (ed.), Dialoghi tra teatro e neuroscienze (Roma: Edizioni Alegre 2009), pp. 97–115. 28 Francisco. J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1991), p. 9. 29 Alain Berthoz and Jean-Luc Petit, The Physiology and Phenomenology of Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 1. 30 Ibid., p. 258. 31 Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 9. 32 Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, ‘The Functional Role of the Parieto-frontal Mirror Circuit: Interpretations and Misinterpretations’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11 (2010), p. 264. 33 Corrado Sinigaglia and Giacomo Rizzolatti, ‘Through the Looking Glass: Self and Others’, Consciousness and Cognition 20 (2011), p. 64. 34 Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia specify that ‘claiming that the mirror mechanism plays an important role in processing others’ intentions is not tantamount to state that mirror-based intention understanding covers all varieties of understanding others’ intentions. Nor does it involve the assumption that every kind of intention understanding depends on (is related to) the activation of the mirror mechanism’. Sinigaglia and Rizzolatti, ‘Through the Looking Glass’, pp. 68–9. 35 In this regard see Gabriele Sofia, Le acrobazie dello spettatore: Dal teatro alle neuroscienze e ritorno (Rome: Bulzoni, 2013).

NOTES

227

36 This aspect of the performer’s pedagogy acquired special relevance in Grotowski’s intercultural work, beginning particularly with his ‘Theatre of Sources’ phase of research, ‘which dealt with the source of different traditional techniques, with “what precedes the differences” ’, in Jerzy Grotowski, ‘From the Theatre Company to “Art as Vehicle” ’ (1993), in Thomas Richards, At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 120. 37 I Wayan Lendra, ‘Bali and Grotowski: Some Parallels in the Training Process’, in Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford (eds), The Grotowski Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 323. 38 Sinigaglia and Rizzolatti, ‘Through the Looking Glass’, p. 71. 39 Merlin Donald calls consciousness ‘our intellectual home’. See Donald, A Mind So Rare, p. 25. 40 Stanislavski, ‘Original Draft Preface’ to An Actor’s Work, p. xxiv. 41 See Fausto Malcovati (ed.), Vsevolod Mejerchol’d: L’attore biomeccanico (2nd edn, Milan: Ubulibri, 1998), p. 58. 42 See Étienne Decroux, Parole sul mimo (1963; Rome: Dino Audino Editore, 2003), p. 37. 43 Grotowski, ‘From the Theatre Company to “Art as Vehicle”’, pp. 124–5. 44 Ibid., p. 125. 45 Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind. An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 49. 46 Fabrizio Cruciani, ‘Il luogo dei possibili’ (1992), in Clelia Falletti (ed.), Il corpo scenico (Rome: Editoria & Spettacolo, 2008), p. 168.

7 A Rope over an Abyss 1

These insights into the underlying levels of my work in Performance pedagogy are the fruit of a 21-year-long collaboration with my friend and colleague, neuroscientist Professor Richard Muscat, Pro-Rector of the University of Malta, discussions which are mutually enlightening, often exhilarating and – predictably, given the two disciplines – sometimes amusingly heated. Neither could these insights have happened without those performers who allowed me to observe and guide their work in this latest ten-year phase of my research, starting from 2004, when Glen Calleja and I began collaborating on his monologue, Ir-Rikkieb tat-Tempesta (The Rider of the Storm).

2

Nietzsche’s word is Seiltänzer – rope dancer – which adds value to the tightrope walker’s performance.

228

NOTES

3

Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Book 1, Zarathustra’s Prologue, sections 6, 7 and 8.

4

Aesthetically, too, but we can only hint that here. Gregory Bateson signals its importance: ‘all organisms – not just art critics and philosophers – rely on aesthetics all the time’. Gregory Bateson and Margaret C. Bateson, Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (New York: Macmillan, 1987), p. 192.

5

Three elements constitute Bharatanatyam, India’s oldest classical dance form: Nritta, Natya and Nritya. Nritta is Pure Dance, constituted of taal (time measure) and laya (rhythm). Nritta dancers embody rhythm’s language, creating space and time patterns, emphasizing pure dance unrelated to bhaava (psychological state). Surprisingly however, watching Nritta we still cannot free ourselves completely of perceiving actions, doings, feelings.

6

We still perceive and feel human events in the Lycra tubes hidden dancers of Alwin Nikolais’ ‘Mask Props+Mobiles’ (1953).

7

‘I yearn, nostalgically, for a mirror, like Alice’s, to encounter there the universe of your and my experiences.’ Eugenio Barba, La canoa di carta: Trattato di Antropologia Teatrale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993), p. 241 (my translation); Engl. edn: The Paper Canoe (London and NewYork: Routledge, 1995), p. 163.

8

Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts and Analysis (Toronto: UTP, 1998), p. 262. To avoid any (highly improbable) misunderstanding, the word ‘character’ obviously refers to the role – in Pavis’ original French, personnage (not caractère, of course).

9

Jerzy Grotowski, ‘Performer’, in Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford, The Grotowski Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 375.

10 Jean Benedetti, Stanislavski: An Introduction (London: Methuen, 1989), p. 37. 11 Vasili O. Toporkov, Stanislavski in Rehearsal. The Final Years (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1979), p. 154. 12 Labanotation is one such effort. Natya Shastra is another, more complex, effort. 13 The 0.3ʺ gap of Libet’s 70s/80s tests was dramatically pushed to 7ʺ by Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, John-Dylan Haynes, ‘Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain’, Nature Neuroscience 11(5) (2008), indicating impressive cross-nodal operations. 14 David Cyranoski, ‘Neuroscience: The Mind Reader’, Nature 486 (2012).

NOTES

229

15 Pam Müller and Daniel Oppenheimer, ‘The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard, Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking’, Psychological Science 25(6) (2014). 16 Kostantin S. Stanislavski, My Life in Art (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), p. 350. 17 Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude and the Other Mexico (New York: Grove Press, 1985), p. 283. 18 Jerzy Grotowski, ‘Pragmatic Laws’, in Eugenio Barba, Nicola Savarese, Secret Art of the Performer (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 237. 19 Human matter fulfils itself in all performative fields, raising itself technically to observability levels in becoming objet d’art. Though our discourse is aesthetic, ‘observability’ is here used as in control theory: studying which conditions enable inferring a dynamical system’s internal state uniquely from the measurements of its outputs. 20 Recordings are another matter altogether, outside this discussion’s scope. 21 ‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’ asks Yeats in Among School Children, invoking the chestnut tree as paragon of the much yearned for, but elusive, unity of being, echoed by Grotowski’s later words, herein cited. 22 See, for instance, Krista L. Hyde, Jason Lerch, Andrea Norton, Marie Forgeard, Ellen Winner, Alan C. Evans, Gottfried Schlaug, ‘Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development’, Journal of Neuroscience 29(10) (2009); Catherine Y. Wan and Gottfried Schlaug, ‘Music Making as a Tool for Promoting Brain Plasticity Across the Life Span’, Neuroscientist 16(5) (2010); and Siobhan Hutchinson, Leslie Hui-Lin Lee, Nadine Gaab, Gottfried Schlaug, ‘Cerebellar Volume of Musicians’, Cerebral Cortex 13(9) (2003). 23 Fabrizio Cruciani and Clelia Falletti, L’attore creativo (Florence: La casa Usher 1989), p. 115 (my translation). 24 See Giacomo Rizzolatti and Maddalena Fabbri-Destro, ‘Mirror Neurons and Mirror Systems in Monkeys and Humans’, Physiology 23(3) (2008). 25 ‘Suddenly, that song starts singing us. That ancient song sings me; I no longer know whether I am discovering it or whether I am that song.’ Jerzy Grotowski, ‘Dalla compagnia teatrale a L’arte come veicolo’, in Thomas Richards, Al lavoro con Grotowski sulle azioni fisiche (Milan: Ubulibri, 1993), p. 134 (my translation). 26 See Grotowski’s illuminating discourse on ‘I-I’, in Grotowski, ‘Performer’, p. 376.

230

NOTES

27 Stanislavski, My Life in Art, p. 348. 28 First seeing threadwork in 1994, Clelia Falletti, then active in Odin Teatret’s ISTA s (International School of Theatre Anthropology) as its scientific team’s member, described it as Laban’s icosahedron without the structure. 29 Brain functions fool us into believing decisions are digital – yes/no, will/won’t. They aren’t. They are analogic, developing ceaselessly throughout brain nodes our doings bias, throughout all that we are (q. v. note 13). We are freest in/by entrenching biases. 30 Observing threadwork, French cognitive psychologist Glyn Goodall recognized precise altered state signs – altered states after which, however, one recalls one’s actions in clear, fine detail. 31 I discuss this in more depth elsewhere: What a Piece of Work is Man (Paris: IDEA World Congress acts, 2013, forthcoming). Fundamental to this discourse are Merlin Donald’s writings: Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Cambridge, MA , and London: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Idem, A Mind so Rare: the Evolution of Human Consciousness (New York: Norton & Co, 2001); Idem, ‘Skilled Performance and Artistry’, Is the Human Mind Unique?, a CARTA symposium (Salk Institute, California, 2013). 32 Could such awarenesses be indicators that performer training, in enabling uniquely refined and structured, embodied, non-verbal ‘narratives’, may be somehow ‘bridging’ procedural (embodied) and declarative (verbal, narrative) memory systems?

8 The Actor’s Embodied Language *

Translation by John J. Schranz.

1

Theatre Anthropology is a discipline founded by Eugenio Barba in 1979. It is described as ‘the study of the behaviour of the human being when it uses its physical and mental presence in an organized performance situation’. Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, The Secret Art of the Performer: A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (London and NewYork: Routledge 1991), p. 7.

2

See Gabriele Sofia, Le acrobazie dell’attore. Dal teatro alle neuroscienze e ritorno (Rome: Bulzoni, 2013).

3

Martin H. Fischer and Rolf A. Zwaan, ‘Embodied Language: A Review of the Role of the Motor System in Language Comprehension’, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 61 (2008); Friedemann

NOTES

231

Pulvermüller, The Neuroscience of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Vittorio Gallese and George Lakoff, ‘The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-motor System’, Conceptual Knowledge Cognitive Neuropsychology 22 (2005); Vittorio Gallese, ‘Mirror Neurons and the Social Nature of Language: The Neural Exploitation Hypothesis’, Social Neuroscience 3 (2008). 4

Olaf Hauk, Ingrid Johnsrude, Friedemann Pulvermüller, ‘Somatotopic Representation of Action Words in Human Motor and Premotor Cortex’, Neuron 41 (2004); Marco Tettamanti, Giovanni Buccino, Maria Cristina Saccuman, Vittorio Gallese, Massimo Danna, Paola Scifo, Ferruccio Fazio, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Stefano F. Cappa, Daniela Perani, ‘Listening to Action-related Sentences Activates FrontoParietal Motor Circuits’, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 17 (2005); Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, Stephen M. Wilson, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Marco Iacoboni, ‘Congruent Embodied Representations for Visually Presented Actions and Linguistic Phrases Describing Actions’, Current Biology 16 (2006); Véronique Boulenger, Olaf Hauk, Friedemann Pulvermüller, ‘Grasping Ideas with the Motor System: Semantic Somatotopy in Idiom Comprehension’, Cerebral Cortex 19 (2009); Giovanni Buccino, Lucia Riggio, Giorgia Melli, Ferdinand Binkofski, Vittorio Gallese, Giovanni Rizzolatti, ‘Listening to Action-related Sentences Modulates the Activity of the Motor System: A Combined TMS and Behavioral Study’, Cognitive Brain Research 24 (2005).

5

Buccino et al., ‘Listening to Action-related Sentences Modulates the Activity of the Motor System’.

6

Marc Sato, Marisa Mengarelli, Lucia Riggio, Vittorio Gallese, Giovanni Buccino, ‘Task Related Modulation of the Motor System during Language Processing’, Brain and Language 105 (2008).

7

Giovanni Mirabella, Sara Iaconelli, Silvia Spadacenta, Paolo Federico, Vittorio Gallese, ‘Processing of Hand-related Verbs Specifically Affects the Planning and Execution of Arm Reaching Movements’ PlosOne 7(4) (2012):e35403.

8

The theatre groups who accepted and participated in the experiment with their actors were: Teatro Tascabile from Bergamo (3 actors), Teatro La Madrugada from Milan (2), Abraxa Teatro from Rome (2), Teatro-Studio Vocabolo Macchia from Lugnano in Teverina, Terni (2), Teatro Ridotto from Bologna (1), Teatro delle Selve from Pella, Novara (1), Teatro Natura from Rome (1), Gruppo Taiko from Rome (1).

9

Sato et al., ‘Task Related Modulation of the Motor System during Language Processing’.

10 The primary aim of the very foundations of the training which we are here addressing is to expunge any and all kinds of automatism in the

232

NOTES

performer, be they those of behaviour, thinking or decision taking. For a discussion on dual process thinking, see Jonathan St B.T. Evans, ‘Dual-processing Accounts of Reasoning, Judgment and Social Cognition’, Annual Review of Psychology 59 (2008) as well as the recent Reasoning, Rationality and Dual Processes: Selected Works of Jonathan St B. T. Evans (Hove and New York: Psychology Press, 2014). Both provide a solid background on the subject – although they do not specifically address the theme of performer training.

9 Perception and the Organization of Time in the Theatre *

Translation by Victor Jacono.

1

Peter Brook, Il punto in movimento.1946–1987 (Milan: Ubulibri, 1988), p. 214.

2

Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 41.

3

Also for its bibliography, see Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

4

Benjamin Libet was the first to apply neurophysiological methods to study the relationship between brain activity and the conscious intention of executing a particular movement. The results have been subject to much debate, updated by the studies of Edelman and Tononi; see Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination (London: Allen Lane Penguin Press, 2000), and partially confirmed and refined by the team of John-Dylan Haynes in 2008: Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, John-Dylan Haynes, ‘Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain’, Nature Neuroscience 11(5) (2008); and the more recent contribution: John-Dylan Haynes, ‘Beyond Libet: Long-term Predictions of Free Choices from Neuroimaging Signals’, in Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Lynn Nadel (eds), Conscious Will and Responsibility: A Tribute to Benjamin Libet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). See Benjamin Libet, ‘Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1985); Idem, Mind Time. Il fattore temporale nella coscienza (Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 2007).

5

See Konstantin S. Stanislavskij, Il lavoro dell’attore su se stesso, ed. Gerardo Guerrieri (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2000), pp. 418–36. Eugenio

NOTES

233

Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy: Burning the House (New York and London: Routledge, 2010), p. 93. 6

Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy, p. 93.

7

The definition comes from Leonard B. Meyer, Emozione e significato nella musica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), p. 66 (Engl. edn: Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1956)).

8

Quoted in François Truffaut, Il cinema secondo Hitchcock (Parma: Pratiche Editrice, 1992), p. 61.

9

Peter Brook, The Open Door: Thoughts on Acting and Theatre (New York: Anchor Books, 2005), p. 100.

10 Vsevolod E. Mejerchol’d, L’attore biomeccanico (Milan: Ubulibri, 1988), p. 105. 11 Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy, pp. 204 and 205.

Part 4 Introduction 1

Katherine Killick and Joy Schaverien, Art, Psychotherapy, and Psychosis (London: Psychology Press, 1997).

2

E.g. Deborah L. Elkis-Abuhoff, Robert B. Goldblatt, Morgan Gaydos, Caitlin Convery, ‘A Pilot Study to Determine the Psychological Effects of Manipulation of Therapeutic Art Forms among Patients with Parkinson’s Disease’, International Journal of Art Therapy 18(3) (2013).

3

E.g. Claudio Pacchetti, Francesca Mancini, Roberto Aglieri, Cira Fundarò, Emilia Martignoni, Giuseppe Nappi, ‘Active Music Therapy in Parkinson’s Disease: An Integrative Method for Motor and Emotional Rehabilitation’, Psychosomatic Medicine 62 (2000).

4

E.g. Clarissa A. Rentz, ‘Memories in the Making: Outcome-based Evaluation of an Art Program for Individuals with Dementing Illnesses’, American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias 17 (2002).

5

Valeria Drago, Paul S. Foster, Michael S. Okun, I. Haq, Atchar Sudhyadhom, Frank Skidmore, Kenneth M. Heilman, ‘Artistic Creativity and DBS : A Case Report’, Journal of the Neurological Sciences 276 (2009).

6

For example Elkis-Abuhoff et al., ‘A Pilot Study’.

234

NOTES

7

For example Rentz, ‘Memories in the Making’.

8

For example Mike J. Crawford, Helen Killaspy, Thomas R. Barnes, Barbara Barrett, Sarah Byford, Katie Clayton, John Dinsmore, Siobhan Floyd, Angela Hoadley, Tony Johnson, P. Eleftheria Kalaitzaki, Michael King, Baptiste Leurent, Anna Maratos, Francis A. O’Neill, David Osborn, Sue Patterson, Tony Soteriou, Peter Tyrer, Diane Waller, ‘Group Art Therapy as an Adjunctive Treatment for People with Schizophrenia: Multicentre Pragmatic Randomised Trial’, British Medical Journal 344(7847) (2012).

9

Phil Richardson, Ken Jones, Chris Evans, Peter Stevens, Anna Rowe, ‘Exploratory RCT of Art Therapy as an Adjunctive Treatment in Schizophrenia’, Journal of Mental Health 16(4) (2007).

10 NICE – ‘Schizophrenia: core interventions in the treatment and management of schizophrenia in adults in primary and secondary care’ (2009), update Clinical Guidelines 82. 11 Baptiste Leurent, Helen Killaspy, David Osborn, Mike J. Crawford, Angela Hoadley, Diane Waller, Michael King, ‘Moderating Factors for the Effectiveness of Group Art Therapy for Schizophrenia: Secondary Analysis of Data from the Matisse Randomised Controlled Trial’, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 49(1703-11) (2014). 12 For a review see Orii McDermott, Nadia Crellin, Hanne Mette Ridder, Martin Orrell, ‘Music Therapy in Dementia: A Narrative Synthesis Systematic Review’, International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 28 (2012). 13 Annemiek C. Vink, J.S. Birks, S. Manon, S. Bruinsma, Rob J. Scholten, ‘Music Therapy for People with Dementia’, Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews 3, CD 003477 (2004). 14 Gärd Holmqvist and Cristina Lundqvist Perrsson, ‘Is There Evidence for the Use of Art Therapy in Treatment of Psychosomatic Disorders, Eating Disorders and Crisis? A Comparative Study of Two Different Systems for Evaluation’, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53 (2012). 15 Robert Chen, Leonard G. Cohen, Marc Hallett, ‘Nervous System Reorganization Following Injury’, Neuroscience 111 (2002); Angela Sirigu, Claudia Vargas, Jean-Michel Dubernard, ‘Novel Hand Representations in the Human Motor Cortex after Hand Allograft’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 155 (2011). 16 E.g. Thomas Elbert, Christo Pantev, Christian Wienbruch, Brigitte Rockstroh, Edward Taub, ‘Increased Cortical Representation of the Fingers of the Left Hand in String Players’, Science 270 (1995); Mikhail

NOTES

235

A. Lebedev, Giovanni Mirabella, Irina Erchova, Matthew E. Diamond, ‘Experience-dependent Plasticity of Rat Barrel Cortex: Redistribution of Activity Across Barrel-columns’, Cerebral Cortex 10 (2000). 17 Elisa Canu, Federica Agosta, Massimo Filippi, ‘A Selective Review of Structural Connectivity Abnormalities of Schizophrenic Patients at Different Stages of the Disease’, Schizophrenic Research (2014). 18 Clive Ballard, Serge Gauthier, Anne Corbett, Carol Brayne, Dag Aarsland, Emma Jones, ‘Alzheimer’s Disease’, Lancet 377 (2011). 19 Herbert Ehringer and Oleh Hornykiewicz, ‘Distribution of Noradrenaline and Dopamine (3-Hydroxytyramine) in the Human Brain and Their Behavior in Diseases of the Extrapyramidal System’, Klinische Wochenschrift 38 (1960), in English in Parkinsonism Related Disorder 4 (1998); José A. Obeso, María C. Rodríguez-Oroz, Manuel Rodríguez, Javier Arbizu, José M Giménez-Amaya, ‘The Basal Ganglia and Disorders of Movement: Pathophysiological Mechanisms’, News in Physiological Science 17 (2002). 20 E.g. Kathryn Sharp and Jonathan Hewitt, ‘Dance as an Intervention for People with Parkinson’s Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis’, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Review (forthcoming); Nicola Modugno, Sara Iaconelli, Mariagrazia Fiorilli, Francesco Lena, Imogen Kusch, Giovanni Mirabella, ‘Active Theatre as a Complementary Therapy for Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation: A Pilot Study’, The Scientific World Journal 10 (2010). 21 See Chapter 12 by Pradier for a theoretical (and provocative) introduction of theatre as a potential tool to heal illnesses. 22 Modugno et al., ‘Active Theatre as a Complementary Therapy for Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation’; see also, Chapters 11 and 10 (by Modugno et al. and by Gabriel et al.) for the description of two studies in which theatrical training is exploited to rehabilitate Parkinson’s patients and children affected by autism spectrum disorders. 23 See, for example, Pacchetti et al., ‘Active Music Therapy in Parkinson’s Disease’.

10 Use of Theatrical Techniques and Elements as Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorders 1

American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edn (Arlington, VA : American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013).

236

NOTES

2

Camilla McMahon, Matthew D. Lerner, Noah Britton, ‘Group-based Social Skills Interventions for Adolescents with Higher-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review and Looking to the Future’, Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics 4 (2013).

3

Matthew D. Lerner and Karen Levine, ‘The Spotlight Program: An Integrative Approach to Teaching Social Pragmatics Using Dramatic Principles and Techniques’, Journal of Developmental Processes 2 (2007); Blythe A. Corbett, Joan R. Gunther, Dan Comins, Jenifer Price, Niles Ryan, David Simon, Clayton W. Schupp, Tylor Rios, ‘Brief Report: Theatre as Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 41 (2011); Laura Ann Guli, ‘The Effects of Creative Drama-based Intervention for Children with Deficits in Social Perception’, PhD diss., 2004.

4

Simon Baron-Cohen, ‘Theory of Mind and Autism: A Review’, International Review of Research in Mental Retardation 23 (2000); Fred R. Volkmar, Catherine Lord, Anthony Bailey, Robert T. Schultz, Ami Klin, ‘Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45(1) (2004).

5

Baron-Cohen, ‘Theory of Mind and Autism’.

6

Ibid.; see also Uta Frith, ‘Autism and Theory of Mind in Everyday Life’, Social Development 3(2) (1994); Matthew D. Lerner, Tiffany L. Hutchins, Patricia A. Prelock, ‘Brief Report: Preliminary Evaluation of the Theory of Mind Inventory and its Relationship to Measures of Social Skills’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 41(4) (2011).

7

Robert L. Koegel and William D. Frea, ‘Treatment of Social Behavior in Autism Through the Modification of Pivotal Social Skills’, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 26(3) (1993); Matthew D. Lerner, Camilla M. McMahon, Noah Britton, ‘Promoting the Social and Emotional Development of Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder’, in Thomas Gullotta and Carl Leukefeld (eds), Encyclopedia of Primary Prevention and Health Promotion Adolescence, vol. 3, 2nd edn (New York: Springer, 2014).

8

Lynn K. Koegel, Mi N. Park, Robert L. Koegel, ‘Using Selfmanagement to Improve the Reciprocal Social Conversation of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 44(5) (2014).

9

Nirit Bauminger, ‘The Facilitation of Social-emotional Understanding and Social Interaction in High-functioning Children with Autism: Intervention Outcomes’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 32(4) (2002); Janine P. Stichter, Melissa J. Herzog, Karen Visovsky, Carla Schmidt, Jena Randolph, Tia Schultz,

NOTES

237

Nicholas Gage, ‘Social Competence Intervention for Youth with Asperger Syndrome and High-functioning Autism: An Initial Investigation’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 40(9) (2010). 10 Bauminger, ‘The Facilitation of Social-emotional Understanding’; Stichter et al., ‘Social Competence Intervention’. 11 Mirko Uljarevic and Antonia Hamilton, ‘Recognition of Emotions in Autism: A Formal Meta-analysis’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 43(7) (2013). 12 Francesca Happé, ‘The Weak Central Coherence Account of Autism’, in Fred R. Volkmar, Rhea Paul, Ami Klin, Donald Cohen (eds), Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Vol. 1: Diagnosis, Development, Neurobiology, and Behavior (3rd edn; Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2005). 13 Uta Frith, ‘Autism: Explaining the Enigma’, Developmental Psychology 21(3) (1989); Volkmar et al., ‘Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders’. 14 Happé, ‘The Weak Central Coherence Account of Autism’. 15 Ami Klin, Warren Jones, Robert T. Schultz, Fred R. Volkmar, ‘The Enactive Mind, or from Actions to Cognition: Lessons from Autism’, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 358(1430) (2003); Volkmar et al., ‘Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders’. 16 Frank M. Gresham, ‘Social Competence and Students with Behavior Disorders: Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, and Where We Should Go’, Education and Treatment of Children 20(3) (1997). 17 Elizabeth A. Laugeson, Fred Frankel, Catherine Mogil, Ashley R. Dillon, ‘Parent-assisted Social Skills Training to Improve Friendships in Teens with Autism Spectrum Disorders’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 39(4) (2009). 18 Lerner et al., ‘Promoting the Social and Emotional Development’. 19 McMahon et al., ‘Group-based social skills interventions’. 20 Klin et al., ‘The Enactive Mind’. 21 Claire Hughes, James Russell, Trevor W. Robbins, ‘Evidence for Executive Dysfunction in Autism’, Neuropsychologia 32(4) (1994); Sally Ozonoff, Bruce F. Pennington, Sally J. Rogers, ‘Executive Function Deficits in High-functioning Autistic Individuals: Relationship to Theory of Mind’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 32 (1991). 22 Ya-Chih Chang, Jenny Quan, Jeffrey J. Wood, ‘Effects of Anxiety Disorder Severity on Social Functioning in Children with Autism

238

NOTES

Spectrum Disorders’, Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities 24(3) (2012); Connor M. Kerns, Philip C. Kendall, Hana Zickgraf, Martin E. Franklin, Judith Miller, John Herrington, ‘Not to Be Overshadowed or Overlooked: Functional Impairments Associated with Comorbid Anxiety Disorders in Youth with ASD ’, Behavior Therapy (2014); Carla A. Mazefsky, John Herrington, Matthew Siegel, Angela Scarpa, Brenna B. Maddox, Lawrence Scahill, Susan W. White, ‘The Role of Emotion Regulation in Autism Spectrum Disorder’, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 52(7) (2013). 23 Coralie Chevallier, Gregor Kohls, Vanessa Troiani, Edward S. Brodkin, Robert T. Schultz, ‘The Social Motivation Theory of Autism’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16(4) (2012). 24 Ibid. 25 See Thalia R. Goldstein, ‘Psychological Perspectives on Acting’, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 3(1) (2009). 26 Clive Barker, Theatre Games: A New Approach to Drama Training (London: Methuen, 1977). 27 Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theatre: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques (Evanston, IL : Northwestern University Press, 1999). 28 Ibid. 29 Lerner and Levine, ‘The Spotlight Program’. 30 Spolin, Improvisation for the Theatre. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Sally Bailey, Barrier-free Theatre: Including Everyone in Theatre Arts – In Schools, Recreation, and Arts Programs – Regardless of (Dis)Ability (Enumclaw, WA : Idyll Arbor, 2010). 35 Spolin, Improvisation for the Theatre. 36 Kirk Lynn and Shawn Sides, ‘Collective Dramaturgy: A Co-consideration of the Dramaturgical Role in Collaborative Creation’, Theatre Topics 13(1) (2003). 37 Dave Sherratt and Melanie Peter, Developing Play and Drama in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (New York: David Fulton Publishers, 2002). 38 Toby Cole, Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002).

NOTES

239

39 Thalia R. Goldstein and Ellen Winner, ‘Engagement in Role-play, Pretense, and Acting Classes Predict Advanced Theory-of-Mind Skill in Middle Childhood’, Imagination, Cognition, and Personality 30 (2011); and, by the same authors, ‘Enhancing Empathy and Theory of Mind’, Journal of Cognition and Development 13(1) (2012). 40 Aldo Tassi, ‘Metaphysics of Performance: The “Theatre of the World” ’, Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 1988 (Boston University, MA ). See www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Meta/MetaTass.htm. 41 Bailey, Barrier-free Theatre. 42 Matthew D. Lerner, Amori Y. Mikami, Karen Levine, ‘Socio-Dramatic Affective-Relational Intervention for Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome and High-functioning Autism: A Pilot Study’, Autism 15(1) (2011). 43 Guli, The Effects of Creative Drama-based Intervention; Lerner et al., ‘Socio-Dramatic Affective-Relational Intervention’. 44 Matthew D. Lerner, Casey D. Calhoun, Amori Y. Mikami, Andres De Los Reyes, ‘Understanding Parent-Child Informant Discrepancy in Youth with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 42 (2012). 45 Laura Ann Guli, Margaret Semrud-Clikeman, Matthew D. Lerner, Noah Britton, ‘Social Competence Intervention Program (SCIP ): A Pilot Study of Creative Drama Program for Youth with Social Difficulties’, The Arts in Psychotherapy 40 (2013); Matthew D. Lerner, Amori Y. Mikami, ‘A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial of Two Social Skills Interventions for Youth with Highfunctioning Autism Spectrum Disorders’, Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities 27 (2012). 46 Guli et al., ‘Social Competence Intervention Program (SCIP )’. 47 Danielle M. Thorp, Aubyn C. Stahmer, Laura Shreibman, ‘Effects of Sociodramatic Play Training on Children with Autism’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 25(3) (1995). 48 Guli et al., ‘Social Competence Intervention Program (SCIP )’. 49 Ibid. See also: Amanda Pierce, Erica Malovich, Kate Grieves, Putting the Spotlight on Northeast Arc’s Spotlight Program: Examining the Efficacy of a Social Pragmatics Program, Unpublished manuscript, Salem State College School of Social Work, Salem, MA . 50 Lerner and Levine, ‘The Spotlight Program’; Cindy B. Schneider, Acting Antics: A Theatrical Approach to Teaching Social Understanding to Kids and Teens with Asperger Syndrome (London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2007).

240

NOTES

51 Lerner and Levine, ‘The Spotlight Program’. 52 Pierce et al., Putting the Spotlight on Northeast Arc’s Spotlight Program. 53 Jenna Gabriel, ‘Everyone Can Play: Using Theatre to Promote Developmental Gains’, Autism Spectrum News (Summer 2012); Lerner and Levine, ‘The Spotlight Program’; Schneider, Acting Antics; Sherratt and Peter, Developing Play and Drama. 54 Gabriel, ‘Everyone Can Play’; Sherratt and Peter, Developing Play and Drama. 55 Corbett et al., ‘Brief Report’; Blythe A. Corbett, Deanna M. Swain, Catherine Coke, David Simon, Cassandra Newsom, Nea HouchinsJuarez, Ashley Jenson, Lily Wang, Yanna Song, ‘Improvement in Social Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders Using a Theatre-based, Peer-mediated Intervention’, Autism Research 7(1) (2014). 56 Corbett et al., ‘Improvement in Social Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders’. 57 Corbett et al., ‘Brief Report’. 58 Gabriel, ‘Everyone Can Play’; Sherratt and Peter, Developing Play and Drama. 59 See Laura Ann Guli, Alison D. Wilkinson, Margaret Semrud-Clikeman, Social Competence Intervention Program: A Drama-based Intervention for Youth on the Autism Spectrum (Champaign, IL : Research Press, 2008). 60 See Lerner et al., ‘Socio-Dramatic Affective-Relational Intervention’. 61 See Corbett et al., ‘Brief Report’. 62 See www.daytimemooncreations.org 63 See www.imaginationstage.org 64 See www.themiracleproject.org 65 See www.theredkiteproject.org 66 See http://spotlightprogram.com. 67 See Guli et al., Social Competence Intervention Program. 68 Corbett et al., ‘Brief Report’; Corbett et al., ‘Improvement in Social Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders’.

11 Theatre as a Valuable Tool for Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation 1

K. Ray Chaudhuri and Anthony H. Schapira, ‘Non-motor Symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease: Dopaminergic Pathophysiology and

NOTES

241

Treatment’, The Lancet Neurology 8 (2009); Andreas Charidimou, John Seamons, Caroline Selai, Anette Schrag, ‘The Role of Cognitivebehavioral Therapy for Patients with Depression in Parkinson’s Disease’ Parkinson’s Disease (2011). 2

C. Warren Olanow, Matthew B. Stern, Kapil D. Sethi, ‘The Scientific and Clinical Basis for the Treatment of Parkinson Disease’, Neurology 72(21 Suppl. 4) (2009).

3

See, for example, Modugno et al., ‘Active Theatre as a Complementary Therapy for Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation’, The Scientific World Journal 10 (2010).

4

Olanow et al., ‘The Scientific and Clinical Basis for the Treatment of Parkinson Disease’.

5

Peter Redgrave, Manuel Rodríguez, Yoland Smith, Maria C. Rodríguez-Oroz, Stephane Lehericy, Hagai Bergman, Yves Agid, Mahlon R. DeLong, José A. Obeso, ‘Goal-directed and Habitual Control in the Basal Ganglia: Implications for Parkinson’s Disease’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11 (2010).

6

Anders Björklund and Stephen B. Dunnett, ‘Dopamine Neuron Systems in the Brain: An Update’, Trends in Neurosciences 30 (2007).

7

H. Ehringer and Oleh Hornykiewicz, ‘Distribution of Noradrenaline and Dopamine (3-Hydroxytyramine) in the Human Brain and their Behavior in Diseases of the Extrapyramidal System’, Klinische Wochenschrift 38(1960); Obeso et al., ‘The Basal Ganglia and Disorders of Movement’.

8

Stephen J. Kish, K. Shannak, Oleh Hornykiewicz, ‘Uneven Pattern of Dopamine Loss in the Striatum of Patients with Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease. Pathophysiologic and Clinical Implications’, The New England Journal of Medicine 318 (1988); Erwan Bezard, Sandra Dovero, Caroline Prunier, Paula Ravenscroft, Sylvie Chalon, Denis Guilloteau, ‘Relationship Between the Appearance of Symptoms and the Level of Nigrostriatal Degeneration in a Progressive 1-Methyl-4-Phenyl-1,2,3,6-Tetrahydropyridine-Lesioned Macaque Model of Parkinson’s Disease’, Journal of Neuroscience 17 (2001); Deniz Kirik, Carl Rosenblad, Anders Björklund, ‘Characterization of Behavioral and Neurodegenerative Changes Following Partial Lesions of the Nigrostriatal Dopamine System Induced by Intrastriatal 6-Hydroxydopamine in the Rat’, Experimental Neurology 2 (1998).

9

Reproduced with permission from José A. Obeso, Maria C. RodríguezOroz, Manuel Rodríguez, Javier Arbizu, José M. Giménez-Amaya, ‘The Basal Ganglia and Disorders of Movement: Pathophysiological Mechanisms’, News in Physiological Science 17 (2002).

242

NOTES

10 Michael J. Zigmond, Elizabeth D. Abercrombie, Theodore W. Berger, Anthony A. Grace, Edward M. Stricker, ‘Compensations after Lesions of Central Dopaminergic Neurons: Some Clinical and Basic Implications’, Trends in Neurosciences 7 (1990). 11 Ronald B. Postuma and Jacques Montplaisir, ‘Predicting Parkinson’s Disease: Why, When, and How?’ Parkinsonism and Related Disorders 15, Suppl. 3 (2009). 12 Obeso et al., ‘The Basal Ganglia and Disorders of Movement’. 13 George C. Cotzias, P. S. Papavasiliou, R. Gellene, ‘L-dopa in Parkinson’s Syndrome’, The New England Journal of Medicine 281 (1969); Stanley Fahn, ‘The History of Dopamine and Levodopa in the Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease’, Movement Disorder 23 (2008). 14 Anthony E. Lang and Andres M. Lozano, ‘Parkinson’s Disease’, The New England Journal of Medicine 339 (1998). 15 Stanley Fahn, ‘The Spectrum of Levodopa-induced Dyskinesias’, Annals of Neurology 47(suppl. 1) (2000). 16 C. David Marsden and David Parkes, ‘Success and Problems of Long-term Levodopa Therapy in Parkinson’s Disease’, The Lancet 1 (1977). 17 Alim Louis Benabid, Stephan Chabardes, John Mitrofanis, Pierre Pollak, ‘Deep Brain Stimulation of the Subthalamic Nucleus for the Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease’, The Lancet Neurology 8 (2009). 18 Anna Castrioto, Eugènie Lhommée, Elena Moro, Paul Krack, ‘Mood and Behavioural Effects of Subthalamic Stimulation in Parkinson’s Disease’, The Lancet Neurology 13 (2014). 19 Lynn Dixon, Dawn C. Duncan, Paul Johnson, Liz Kirkby, Helen O’Connell, Hilary J. Taylor, Katherine H. Deane, ‘Occupational Therapy for Patients with Parkinson’s Disease’, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews CD 002813 (2007). 20 See, e.g., Claudio Pacchetti, Francesca Mancini, Roberto Aglieri, Cira Fundaro, Emilia Martignoni, Giuseppe Nappi, ‘Active Music Therapy in Parkinson’s Disease: An Integrative Method for Motor and Emotional Rehabilitation’, Psychosomatic Medicine 62 (2000); and William Carne, David X. Cifu, Paul Marcinko, Mark Baron, Treven Pickett, Abu Qutubuddin, Vincent Calabrese, Peggy Roberge, Kathryn Holloway, Brian Mutchler, ‘Efficacy of Multidisciplinary Treatment Program on Long-term Outcomes of Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease’, Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development 42 (2005). 21 Modugno et al., ‘Active Theatre as a Complementary Therapy for Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation’.

NOTES

243

22 Richard W. Bohannon, ‘Physical Rehabilitation in Neurologic Diseases’, Current Opinion in Neurology 6 (1993). 23 Modugno et al., ‘Active Theatre as a Complementary Therapy for Parkinson’s Disease Rehabilitation’. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Giovanni Mirabella, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go? Conceptual Underpinnings of Goal-directed Actions’, Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience (in press). 27 Pietro Mazzoni, Anna Hristova, John W. Krakauer, ‘Why Don’t We Move Faster? Parkinson’s Disease, Movement Vigor, and Implicit Motivation’, The Journal of Neuroscience 27 (2007). 28 Ibid.; and Mirabella, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’. 29 Herta Flor, Thomas Elbert, Stefan Knecht, Christian Wienbruch, Christo Knecht, Niels Birbaumer, Wolfgang Larbig and Edward Taub, ‘Phantom-limb pain as a perceptual correlate of cortical reorganization following arm amputation’, Nature 375 (1995). 30 Thomas Elbert, Christo Pantev, Christian Wienbruch, Brigitte Rockstroh, Edward Taub, ‘Increased Cortical Representation of the Fingers of the Left Hand in String Players’, Science 270 (1995); Mikhail A. Lebedev, Giovanni Mirabella, Irina Erchova, Matthew E. Diamond, ‘Experience-dependent Plasticity of Rat Barrel Cortex: Redistribution of Activity Across Barrel-columns’, Cerebral Cortex 2000; 10 (2007).

12 Theatre and Therapy 1

This expression ‘theatre stricto sensu’ is sometimes used in ethnoscenology to refer to Euro-American theatre and the performance forms associated with it, to distinguish them from performance arts proper to cultures founded on other inheritances and cosmographies. Jean-Marie Pradier, ‘L’ethnocentrisme nominal & arts du spectacle vivant’, in Béatrice Bonhomme, Christine Di Benedetto and Jean-Pierre Triffaux (eds), Babel revisitée: L’intervalle d’une langue à l’autre, du texte à la scène (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012, collection du CTEL ‘Thyrse’, 3).

2

Stéphane Boussat and Michel Boussat, ‘À propos de Henri Collomb (1913–1979): de la psychiatrie coloniale à une psychiatrie sans frontières’, L’Autre 3 (2002/3).

244

NOTES

3

Koulsy Lamko, ‘Émergence difficile d’un théâtre de la participation en Afrique Noire francophone’, PhD diss., University of Limoges, 2003.

4

Anne Devailly, ‘Des cours de théâtre pour les futurs médecins de Montpellier. Encadrés par des acteurs, les étudiants de 4e année se préparent aux annonces difficiles’, Le Monde (12 Septembre 2013).

5

Jacques Jouanna, Hippocrates (Baltimora MD : Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 110; see also pp. 114–15 and 120–1, 265.

6

Ibid., p.110.

7

Claude Bernard, who admitted his doubts as to the scientific character of medicine and its effectiveness, retraced the history of his Chair at the Collège de France, as he wrote to his friend Madame Raffalovich, ‘to prove that there is no comparison to be established between the teaching of Medicine at the Collège de france (sic) and that of a faculty of medicine. The first has no other preoccupation than pure science, the second cannot isolate itself from the professional point of view’, letter of 15 February 1873 published in Lettres Parisiennes 1868–1878 (Lyon: Fondation Marcel Merieux, 1978) p. 109. We find the same distinction between fundamental research and applied research in the field of theatre with reference to Jerzy Grotowski.

8

See Jean-Marie Pradier, La scène et la fabrique des corps. Ethnoscénologie du spectacle vivant en Occident (Ve siècle av. J.C.XVIIIe siècle) (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, coll. ‘Corps de l’Esprit’, 1997).

9

Aphorisms, 5, 2: 9. ‘When one wishes to purge, he should put the body into a fluent state’; 10. ‘Bodies not properly cleansed, the more you nourish the more you injure’; 12. ‘What remains in diseases after the crisis is apt to produce relapses’; 22. ‘Diseases which arise from repletion are cured by depletion; and those that arise from depletion are cured by repletion; and in general, diseases are cured by their contraries.’ Aphorisms by Hippocrates translated by Francis Adams (1849), The Internet Classics Archive: Daniel C. Stevenson, Web Atomics, 1994–2000. See http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browseHippocrates.html.

10 A general panorama of clinical interpretations of the notion of catharsis is presented in Dominique Barrucand, La catharsis dans le théâtre, la psychanalyse et la psychothérapie de groupe (Paris: Editions de l’Epi, 1970). 11 Jacob Bernays, Zwei Abhandlungen über die aristotelische Theorie des Drama (1880; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968).

NOTES

245

12 Henri F. Ellenberger, Histoire de la découverte de l’inconscient (1970; Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1994), pp. 515–16. Cf. Wilhelm Wetz, Shakespeare vom Standtpunkte der vergleichenden Literaturgeschischte (Hamburg: Haendke, Lehmkübe, 1897), p. 30. 13 Illusion which becomes part of the favoured themes of learned and naïve discourse which culture entertains around emotion. The idea that the theatre performance has a cathartic efficacy is nowadays criticized in specialist literature, which also underlines the ambiguous character of the notion and the practices associated with it. Several comparative studies suggest that only role play activities – close to ‘doing’ rather than ‘seeing’ theatre – have any cathartic effectiveness. Leslie S. Greenberg, Jeremy D. Safran, Emotion in Psychotherapy (New York: The Guilford Press, 1987), pp. 89 and f. 14 Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, Studien über Hysterie (Leipzig and Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1895). 15 See Paulette Ghiron-Bistagne, Recherches sur les acteurs en la Grece antique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976), III chapter, pp. 191–202. 16 Camille Beuve, Cabots de banlieue (Paris: Masques, Revue Internationale d’Art Dramatique, 1947). 17 Donald Hebb, The Organization of Behavior (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1949). 18 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners (Oxford: Blackwell/New York: Urizen Books, 1978). 19 Hermann Oppenheim, Die traumatischen Neurosen nach den in der Nervenklinik der Charité in den letzten 5 Jahren gesammelten Beobachtungen (Berlin: A. Hirschwald, 1889). 20 Susana Bloch, Sylvie Paulet, Madeleine Lemeignan, ‘Reproducing Emotion-specific Effector Patterns: A Bottom-up Method for Inducing Emotions (Alba Emoting)’, Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Society for Research on Emotions, ed. Nico H. Frijda (Storrs Ct: ISRE Publications, 1995). 21 Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (1994; rev. edn New York: Penguin, 2005). 22 See the works of the philologist and historian of medicine Jackie Pigeaud. 23 Latin reference quoted by Jackie Pigeaud, La maladie de l’âme. Étude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans la tradition médico– philosophique antique (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1989).

246

NOTES

24 Ovide, Remèdes à l’amour, quoted from the text established and translated into French by Henri Bornecque, 2nd edn (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1961), p. 36. 25 Danny Wedding and Raymond J. Corsini, Current Psychotherapies, 10th edn (Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2013). 26 Renée Emunah, Acting for Real: Drama Therapy Process, Technique, and Performance (New York and London: Brunner/Routledge, 1994).

INDEX

Page numbers in bold refer to figures, page numbers in italics refer to tables. Abramovich, Marina 65 abstract art perception 18–21, 19, 20 action and ambiguity 13–14 and the body 25–6 and body-mind system 51 and the brain 26 and cognition 107–8 control 132, 138 definition 49–50 and distance judgement 28 and intention 52–3 kinaesthesia 66 microstops 13–14 and mirror neurons 5–8 motor programmes 5, 7 and perception 51, 57 process 13–14 random 150 reflexive 124–5 resonance 119 role of 108 and sensory feedback 52–3 shared space of 3–14, 94, 97–8, 99 simultaneity of 149 understanding 12 action co-representation 25–6 actors 9 comparison with doctors 191–2

creative growth 103 distance from audience 34 pedagogy 103–4, 105–7, 111–14, 114–15, 115–16 process 110 relationship with spectator 94, 97 actor training 105–6, 112–14, 115, 116, 119, 125–6, 132, 138, 182, see also performer training Aeschylus, Eumenides 198 aesthetics of risk xvii aesthetic studies 44 affection xv affective athleticism 66 affordances 24 Alba Emoting 195–6 Alfred Jarry Theatre 95 allocentric reference frames 25, 29–30 Alzheimer’s disease 159–60 ambiguity 13–14 Angevin, Elisa xviii animals 70 anthropology xv, 44 anticipatory mechanisms 57 Appia, Adolphe 9 apprehension 122 approach xv Aristotle 63, 67, 69, 192, 198 247

248

INDEX

Art, Aesthetics and the Brain xvi Artaud, Antonin xviii, 59, 66 ‘An Affective Athleticism’ 95 on gratuitousness 98–9 ‘La fausse supériorité des élites’ 97 plague metaphor 96–7, 98–9 science of the emotions 97 The Theatre and its Double 95, 97 theory of effective action 93–9 artificial intelligence 44 art therapy 157–62 Alzheimer’s disease 159–60 autism spectrum disorders 163–75 cancer 190–1 collaborative co-creation 168–9, 173, 175 definition 157 dementia 158–9 disciplines 160–1 dramatized therapies 198 effectiveness 157–9, 161–2, 171–2, 171–3, 184, 185, 190–1 emotion management 195–8 forms 159 group social skills interventions 163–4, 174 impact 161 improvisation 167–8, 172–3 katharsis 192–5 limitations 159 MATISSE trial (Multicentre study of Art Therapy in Schizophrenia: Systematic Evaluation) 158 Parkinson’s disease 160, 177–85 performance 170–1, 173 potential 159, 161–2 programme length 161

rehearsal processes 169–70, 173, 174–5 schizophrenia 158, 159–60 studies 157–9, 161 theatre and 160–1, 187–98 Theatre Games 166–7, 172–3, 174 audience breathing 8 dance experience 75–91, 83, 85, 87, 88 distance from actors 34 engagement xv, 8, 10, 11–12, 13–14, 35–6, 41 experience of co-presence 84, 85 experience of presence 82–4, 83, 85, 86, 89–91 feedback loops 12 see also spectators audio-visual mirror neurons 18 Auslander, Philip 78 autism spectrum disorders xviii, 163 art therapy 163–75, 174–5 art therapy effectiveness 171–3 cognitive models 164–6, 171–2, 175 collaborative co-creation 168–9, 172, 173, 175 emotion recognition 167, 170, 173 emotion recognition deficits 164–5 enactive mind model 165, 169, 170 group social skills interventions 163–4, 174 improvisation 167–8, 171, 172–3 performance 170–1, 172, 173 rehearsal processes 169–70, 172, 173, 174–5

INDEX

self-regulation framework 165–6, 167, 168, 169 social knowledge 165, 170 social pragmatics model 164, 167, 168, 171, 173 theatre and 166, 174–5 Theatre Games 166–7, 171, 172–3, 174 theory of mind (ToM) hypothesis 164, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173 treatment approaches 163–4 weak central coherence model 165 Bacon, Francis 65 balance in action 10 Barba, Eugenio 10, 13, 14, 64, 70, 71, 146, 152–3 Barker, Martin 77–8 Barrault, Denys 40 Bausch, Pina 65 Beckerman, Bernard 77 behavioural experiments 132 beholders 119, 120–6 beholding 8 being 106, 140 being held 121 Benjamin, Walter 96 Bergson, Henri 28, 141 Bernays, Jacob 193 Berthoz, Alain 111 Beuve, Camille 195 Biomechanics 66, 108 bio-politics 63 Bloch, Susana 195–6 bodily dialogue 34 body xviii, 64–5 and action 25–6 control 11 and corporeity 62–3 corporeity 65 and environment 51–2

249

equilibrium 11 motor posture 33–4 as protagonist 63 rediscovery of 65 scenic 9–10 and space perception 24–5, 25–6, 33–4 as sujet agent-patient 63 body art 64, 65 body/flesh 64–5 body-mind system 50, 51, 63, 68, 95 body presence 24–34, 27, 32 body schema, the 54 body techniques 63 Bouissac, Paul 36, 39, 42 Boura, Michel 39, 39–40 bradykinesia 185 brain and action 26 activity 6 and the enteric nervous system 69 inner space 4 modifications in xviii motor programmes 5, 7 motor system 7 response to dance 75–6 role of 71 volume increase 126 brain activity and dance 75–6 dancers 34 brain imaging technologies 76 brain injury 159 brain mapping 5–7 brain plasticity 5, 43, 159, 161, 185 Breuer, Josef 193, 194 Bringer, Professor Jacques 190–1 Brook, Peter 8, 139, 150 Browning, Tod 37 Buccino, Giovanni 132

250

INDEX

cabinets of curiosities 37 Caelius Aurelianus 197 Calvo-Merino, Beatriz 34 camera movements 21 cancer 190–1 Castellucci, Romeo 65 catharsis 95, 98–9, 192–5, 194 cerebrocentric outlook 50 Chalmers, David 73 chaos 14 Chaos Theory 109 Chaplin, Charlie 38 charisma 77, 191–2 chronotopy 140 circus xvii, 11 as art of abstraction 41 as art of incarnation 41 meaning 41–2 and movement analysis 37–8 semiotics of 39 circus actors 35–45 audience engagement 35–6, 41 cognitive approach 42–5 discipline 37 historical background 37–8 interactions 43 living and performing conditions 42 and meaning 44–5 motor aspects 43–4 nature of the art 44 pathology onset 40 perceptive aspects 43–4 practice 36 processes 43–4 professional context 36 professional education 36 references 40–1 relationship to strangeness 37 risk 40–1, 42, 44–5 scientific approach to 38–42 self-destabilization 40–1, 42 skills 35–6

sounds 42 study approach 36 syntagmas 41 workload 40 circus medicine 40 co-constitutional performative experience 58 codified action patterns xvi cognition 45, 76, 111 cognitive functions xv cognitive operation 12–13 cognitive psychology 44 cognitive rehabilitation 177–85 cognitive skills collaborative co-creation 168–9 improvisation 168 performance 170–1 rehearsal processes 169–70 Theatre Games 167 collaborations xiv collaborative co-creation 168–9, 172, 173, 175 collective celebration, locus for 9 Collomb, Dr General Henri 189 Committeri, Giorgia xvii, 4 complexity and complex systems xviii, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 115, 116, 124 comprehension 7 confession 121 conjoint action 111–14 consciousness 51–2, 114–15 control 43–4, 131–2 conviction 120–1, 122, 123–4 coordination 43–4 Copeau, Jacques 9, 71, 106 Copeland, Roger 78–9 co-presence 55–6 audience experience of 75–91, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88 dataset 79–80, 81–2, 90–1 definition 77, 89

INDEX

and enjoyment ratings 89–90, 91 and gaze 91 importance of 78 negatively experienced 90 proximity analyses 86 qualitative interviews 81–2, 89 and reciprocity 81–2, 89 incorporated knowledge 63 corporeity 65 Corsini, Raymond J. 198 Craig, Edward Gordon 9 creative growth 103 creative nature 105 Cruciani, Fabrizio 116 cybernetics 43 Dakar 189 Damasio, Antonio 196 dance xvi–xvii, 73 art therapy 160 audience experience 75–91 corporeity 65 dataset 79–82, 90–1 experience of co-presence 84, 85, 91 experience of presence 82–4, 83, 85, 86, 89–91, 91 kinaesthesia 66 and mirror neurons 75–6 negatively experienced 90 neuronal modification 86, 87, 88 neuronal responses 79–80, 89–90 proximity analyses 86 sensorimotor simulation 86, 87, 88, 90, 91 dance of oppositions 10 dancers, brain activity 34 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 146 decision making xvi, xviii

251

declarative memory 114 Decroux, Étienne 71, 114 deep techniques xvii Degas, Edgar 37 Delsarte, François 66 De Marinis, Marco xviii, 49, 50, 55, 58 dementia 158–9 Deonna, Waldemar 38 de Pluvinel, Antoine 37–8 De Rosa, E. 67–8 ‘Dialogues between Theatre and Neuroscience’ xv Diderot, Denis 53, 193 director, the, role 59 discontinuity, dialectic of 145–6 distance judgement and action 28 allocentric reference frames 25, 29–30 Dummy RF 27, 27, 29, 30 egocentric reference frames 31–4, 32 and motion 29–30 near/far thresholds 26–7, 30, 31–4, 32 Object RF 27, 27, 29 Other RF 27, 27, 29, 30 social scaling 28 and space perception 26–34, 27, 32 space perception reduction 23 Tied-Other RF 27, 28 divine, tapping the 9 doctors, presence 191–2 doing 106 doings 120 Donald, Merlin 107, 128 dopamine neurons 178–9 dual process thinking 138 Dumenil, Lorraine xviii, 59 Dynamical Systems Theory 109

252

INDEX

École Nationale Supérieure d’Art Dramatique de Montpellier 190–1 ecological psychology 24 educational sciences xv effective action, theory pf 93–9 egocentric reference frames 25, 31–4, 32 Einfühlung theoreticians 67 Eisenstein, Sergei 14, 53–4, 66, 71 Ellenberger, Henri F. 193 ellipsis 150 embodied cognition 24, 49–50, 50, 52–3 embodied knowing 108, 119 embodied knowledge 63 embodied language xviii, 116, 131–8 behavioural experiments 132 behavioural test 135–7, 136 data analysis 137 errors 137 experimental subjects 133–4, 134 ‘go’/‘no go’ paradigm 132 interference on movement 133 movement time (MT) 137 neuroimaging techniques 132 non-semantic task 135–6 reaction time (RT) 137 semantic task 135, 136 verbs 132, 134, 135 embodied performative experience 57 embodied responses 124–5 embodied simulation xviii, 71–2, 98, 99, 143, 147 embodied theatrology xviii, 49–59, 73 and action and perception 51 the body and the environment 51–2

and cerebrocentric outlook 50 and the opposition between inside and outside 52–3, 54 origins of concept 49 and performer’s 53–4 and spectator’s 54–8 and the spectator’s performative experience 55–8 use 50 embodiment 50, 63, 118 Emotional Effector Patterns 196 emotion management 195–8 emotions xvii, 8, 65–7, 82 control techniques 196–7 impact of theatre on 197–8 role of 196 science of 97 empathic mesh 58 empathy 72, 80–1, 81, 84, 86, 91 Emunah, Renée 198 enactive view 111 encounter, performer–beholder 120–2 engagement, audience xv, 8, 10, 11–12, 13–14, 35–6, 41 Engel, Johann Jacob 146 enjoyment 84, 89–90, 91 enteric nervous system 69–70 environmental conditions 51–2, 107 episodic memory 122–3, 128–9 epistemology 44, 105–7, 109 ethnic therapeutic practices 188–9 ethnodramas 189 ethnopsychiatry 188–9 Ethnoscenology 54, 55, 70 everlasting now 146 exchanges xiv excitation 148 expectation 57

INDEX

experienced risk 78 explicit awareness 33 extra-personal space allocentric reference frames 25, 29–30 behavioural studies 24–34, 27, 32 definition 25 and distance judgement 26–34, 27, 32 distance reduction 23 egocentric reference frames 31–4, 32 and motion 29–30 near/far thresholds 26–7, 30, 31–4, 32 sectors 25 sharing 32 social scaling 28 space perception 23–34 extrastriate body area (EBA) 26, 31 Fabre, Jan 65 Falletti, Clelia xviii, 94, 111, 115–16 feedback loops 12, 77 fictional time 146 film 21, 81 Fini, Chiara xvii, 4 first-person experience 54–5 Fischer-Lichte, Erika 77 flesh xviii, 64–5 Flow 127 focal extra-personal space 25 Forsythe, William 65 France 39, 188, 190 Freaks (film) 37 Freud, Sigmund 193, 194 Fujinami, Tsutomu 128–9 Gabriel, Jenna xviii Gallagher, Shaun 54

253

Gallese, Vittorio 72, 99 Garner, Stanton 77 gaze 77, 81, 91 Gazzola, Valeria 18 Genet, Jean 45 Goodall, Glyn 64 Goudard, Philippe xvii, 11 gratuitousness 94, 98–9 Greece, ancient 194–5, 195 Grotowski, Jerzy 10, 67, 71, 112, 114, 119, 122, 125, 143 group social skills interventions (GSSIs) 163–4, 174 Grüsser, Otto-Joachim 25, 33 Haiti 189 Hamayon, Roberte 192 Hapgood, Elizabeth 106 healing potential, theatre 188–9 Hebb, Donald 195 Hegemon 194 Hitchcock, Alfred 147 human-being-performer, the 9–10 human-being-spectator, the 9–10 human performativity 70 human sciences xv Husserl, Edmund 55, 64, 111 hypochondria 189–90 identification 66, 67 imagination 44, 198 imitation 67, 120, 143 immaculate Perception 143 improvisation 167–8, 171, 172–3 incongruity, noticing 129 India 69 inner space 4 inside, and outside 52–3, 54, 65–7 inspiration 104 intensity 82 intentionality 52–3, 143–4 intentions 127, 128

254

INDEX

interdisciplinary exchange xiv interdisciplinary studies xvi International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA) 64 Internet, the 43 interpersonal space 4 interstitial time 144–5 Iran 195 Jola, Corinne xviii, 55–6, 91 Jouanna, Jacques 191 Jousse, Marcel 67, 68 katharsis 192–5 Keaton, Buster 38 kinaesthesia xviii, 65–7, 71, 72, 91 kinaesthetic learning 112–13 knowing 105–6, 107, 115, 118 embodied 108 process of 108–10 knowledge 63, 105 Kusch, Imogen xix, 182 Language, see embodied language Lendra, I Wayan 112–13 Lerner, Matthew xviii Lévi-Strauss, Claude 39, 95 Libet, Benjamin 144 Lieber, Gérard 39 lilâ 195 Lindh, Ingemar 64 linguistic interference, on motor control 133, 135–6, 136, 137–8 linguistics 44 lived time 152 liveness 77–8, 81 live presence, impact of 75–91, 83, 85, 87, 88 Living Theatre 143 Lorca, Garcia xvii Lowers, Jan 65

magic 94–5, 96, 97 magician, the 96 Marey, Edouard-Jules 38 Mariti, Luciano xviii, 4, 115 Mars, Dr Louis 189 MATISSE trial (Multicentre study of Art Therapy in Schizophrenia: Systematic Evaluation) 158 Mauss, Marcel 63 Mazzoni, Pietro 185 medecine 96, 97–8 medicalization, of society 190 medicines, overconsumption of 190 Méliès, Georges 38 memory 110 declarative 114 episodic 122–3, 128–9 mental simulation 28 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 55, 64 metaphoric space 4 Method, the 66 Meyerhold, Vsevolod E. 9, 13, 14, 53, 66, 71, 108, 114, 146, 152 micro-actions 126–7, 129 mimism 67 Mirabella, Giovanni xvii, xviii, xix, 115–16, 132–3 mirror neurons 5–8, 12–13, 13, 34, 67, 71–2, 73, 94, 99 and abstract art perception 18–21 and action 51 activation 15–16, 19–21 anticipatory mechanisms 57 audio-visual 18 cortical activation 18–21 and dance 75–6 definition 16 functional role 16 and knowing 119

INDEX

mechanisms 15–22 motor templates 17 and movies 21 parietal 16 and pedagogy 111–12, 113 and perception 18–22, 19, 20, 51 reaction to sound 17–18 resonance 120 response onset times 17 and time 143–4 mirror neuron system (MNS) 120, 122–5 mise-en-scène 150 Modugno, Nicola xviii–xix, 182 Morin, Edgar 104, 109 Morocco 195 motion, and space perception 29–30 motion capture xvii motion perception 26 motor acts activation 19–21 definition 16 triggers 16–17 visual consequences 18–21, 19, 20 motor control behavioural test 135–6, 136 data analysis 137 errors 137 experimental subjects 133–4, 134 and language 131–8 linguistic interference on 133, 135–6, 136, 137–8 movement time (MT) 137 non-semantic task 135–6 reaction time (RT) 137 semantic task 136 motor heritage 73 motoric control 132

255

motor programmes 5, 7 motor skills, dance xvi–xvii motor system 57 motor templates 17 motricity 50 movement analysis, and the circus 37–8 movement, linguistic interference on 133, 135–6, 136, 137–8 Muscat, Richard 64 muscular empathy 67, 71 music, and time 146–7 music training 126 mutual presence 56, 82 Muybridge, Eadweard James 38 narrative capacity 115 narratives 57, 118 narrative twists 121 narratology 142 Near Extra-personal Space (NES) 23–4, 33 nervous system, complexity 107 neuro-aesthetics 63, 71 neuroimaging techniques 132 neuronal discharge 99 neurons 8 and action and perception 51 dopamine 178–9 see also mirror neurones neurophenomenological approach 55 neuroscience xv, xix New Theatre 63 New Theatrology 54, 62 Nietzsche, Friedrich 193 non-identification, and identification 66 North American Performance Studies 62 objectivity 127 organization 131

256

INDEX

organized human performing behaviour (OHPB) 188 otkaz 13 outside, and inside 52–3, 54, 65–7 Ovid 197–8 Pane, Gina 65 parietal mirror neurons 16 parietal-premotor mirror circuit 16 Paris 195 Parkinson’s disease xix, 160, 178–80, 179, 185 actor training 182 art therapy 160, 177–85 art therapy effectiveness 183–4, 185 bradykinesia 185 motor disturbances 177 physiotherapy 182–3 rehabilitation strategies 181, 184–5 theatre and 177, 181–5 treatment 180–1, 182–3 Parma, University of 5–7 Pavis, Patrice 122 pedagogy actors 103–4, 105–7, 111–14, 114–15, 115–16 consciousness development 114–15 inter-subjective dimension 112–13 mechanisms 111–14 and mirror neurons 111–12, 113 perception 76 of action 51, 57 constructive 143 immaculate 143 and mirror neurons 18–22, 19, 20 process 52

of time 139–53 world 24 perceptual experience 24 performance xvi–xvii, 106, 170–1, 172, 173 Performance Theory 70 performative body schema 54 performative experience co-constitutional 58 corporal dimension 62–3 embodied 57 predictive 57–8 relational 56 spectator’s 55–8, 62–3 performative material, construction of 123–4 performative practices, biological theory of 70–1 performer–beholder encounter 120–6 performer, the centrality of xviii conviction 120–1 doings 120 and embodied theatrology 53–4 feedback loops 12 gaze 77 giving 119–20 performative body schema 54 the pre-expressive of 12 presence 121 performer training 125–6, 126–30, see also actor training peripersonal space 4, 25, 31, 33 Perrin, Philippe 40 personal space 4 Petit, Jean-Luc 111 phenomenology 55, 111 philosophy 44 Pitches, Jonathan 104

INDEX

Pitozzi, Enrico 65 Plato 192 play 67–8 point of view, spectator’s 54–5 posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) 26 Pradier, Jean-Marie xix, xx, 61, 64, 70, 70–1 precision xviii predictive mechanisms 57–8 predictive performative experience 57–8 pre-expressive level, the 10 prejudices xvi presence and age 84 creative strategies of xvii definition 76–9, 89 doctors 191–2 and empathy 84, 86 and enjoyment ratings 84, 89–90 experience of 82–4, 83, 85, 86, 89–91 manifestation 78–9 performers 121 and proximity 78–9, 86 reciprocal 81–2, 91 Previc, Fred H. 25, 33 problem-solving process 168–9 process xix–xx process-time 153 product xix–xx proxemics 25 proximity 55–6 audience experience of 75–91, 83, 85, 87, 88 benefit 80–1 dataset 79–81, 90–1 definition 77, 89 and empathy 81 and enjoyment ratings 89–90, 91

257

negatively experienced 90 and presence 78–9 qualitative interviews 80, 80–1, 89 psychology xv rasaesthetics 72 rasic theatre 68, 68–9 reaching movements 133 reaction time xviii reality 24, 58 Reason, Matthew xviii, 55–6 reciprocity 81–2, 89 reflexive action 124–5 rehabilitation xviii–xix rehearsal processes 169–70, 172, 173, 174–5 relational performative experience 56 replay 67–8 representation, role of 45 researcher’s point of view 54–5 subjectivity 50 resistances 127 resonance mechanisms 34 rhythm 139–40, 144–5, 151–3 risk aesthetics of xvii circus actors 40–1, 42, 44–5 experienced 78 ritual 70, 95 Rizzolatti, Giacomo 5–7, 12, 111–12, 113, 128 Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugene 38 Rosch, Eleanor 111 Rosen, Tamara xviii Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 193 sacredness, of theatre 9 Sapienza University, Rome, Department of Performing Arts and Sciences xv

258

INDEX

Sato, Marc 132, 133, 134 sats 13 Savage, the 37 Schechner, Richard 68, 69, 70 schizophrenia 158, 159–60 Schlaug, Gottfried 126 Schranz, John J. xviii, 64, 115 scientific analysis 108 scientific legitimacy 93 self-consciousness 114 self-destabilization, circus actors 40–1, 42 sensorimotor cortical circuits 19–21 sensorimotor simulation 86, 87, 88, 90, 91 sensory feedback 52–3 shamanic practice 9, 192 shared action space 33 shared moment, the 81 shared space of action 3–14, 94, 97–8, 99 boundaries 13 definition 4–5 and mirror neurons 5–8, 12–13 significance 11–13 Sinigaglia, Corrado 12, 111–12, 113 social cognition 15, 22 Social Competence Intervention Program (SCIP) 174 Social Emotional NeuroScience Endocrinology Theatre (SENSE Theatre) 174 social experience 76 social neuroscience 56 social relationships 15 social space 34 Société Française de Médecine du Cirque 36 society, medicalization of 190 socio-cultural dynamics 107, 108

Socio-Dramatic AffectiveRelational Intervention (SDARI) 174 sociology xv Sofia, Gabriele xviii, 62, 73, 115–16 somatic societies 63 sophrosuné 198 sounds, circus actors 42 space accessible 32 and action 3–14 categorization of 25, 29–30 extra-personal 23–34 focal extra-personal 25 inner 4 interpersonal 4 metaphoric 4 Near Extra-personal Space (NES) 23–34, 33 perception of xvii peripersonal 4, 25, 31, 33 personal 4 physical 4 social 34 and time 140 types of 4–5 space of resonance 33 space perception allocentric reference frames 25, 29–30 behavioural studies 24–34, 27, 32 and the body 24–5, 25–6, 31, 33–4 and distance judgement 26–34, 27, 32 distance reduction 23 Dummy RF 27, 27, 29, 30 egocentric reference frames 31–4, 32 extra-personal space 23–35 influences on 23–4

INDEX

and motion 29–30 near/far thresholds 26–7, 30, 31–4, 32 Object RF 27, 27, 29 Other RF 27, 27, 29, 30 reference frame (RF) 25, 33 social scaling 28 Tied-Other RF 27, 28 Spadacenta, Silvia xviii, 115–16 spatial relationships, reference frame (RF) 25 spectator, the xviii and embodied theatrology 54–8 gaze 77, 81 motor heritage 73 neuronal discharge 99 performative experience 55–8, 62–3 performative role 56 point of view 54–5 the pre-reflexive of 12 and proximity 80–1 as relational figure 56 relationship with actors 94, 97 self-consciousness 82 sense of invisibility 82 subjectivity 54–5 see also audience spontaneity 145 sporting activities 36 Stanislavsky, Konstantin 9, 10, 53, 66, 67, 105, 106, 114, 120, 123, 125, 126, 127, 146, 152 system 103–5, 108 Stengers, Isabelle 105 stereotypes xvi Stiker, Henry-Jacques 37 stimulation, mechanisms of xvii Strehly, George 38 subconscious, the 104

259

subjectivity 50, 54–5, 127 subspace systems 24–5 surgeon, the 96 surprise 57 suspense 147–51 suspension 144, 147–51 syntagmas 41 Szondi, Peter 146 Ta’zieh performance 195 television 81 Teschigawara, Saburo 65 theatre art therapy and 160–1, 187–98 autism spectrum disorders and 166, 174–5 boundaries xv discipline of xv emotional movement 197–8 healing potential 188–9 ideal 198 interdisciplinary studies xvi Parkinson’s disease and 177, 181–5 plague metaphor 96–7, 98–9 twentieth century revolution 9–11 violence 194–5 theatre anthropology 10–11, 14, 54, 70, 72 Theatre Games 166–7, 171, 172–3, 174 theatre of participation 189 theatre stricto sensu 188 theatre studies 61–2 theatre theory 93 theatre which heals xix, 187–98 emotion management 195–8 healing potential 188–9 katharsis 192–5 theatrical efficacy 93–9 theatrical events, study of 54–5

260

theatricalism 188 theatrical representation, magical quality of 94–5, 96–7 theatrical somatizations 189–90 theoretical models, need for 61–2 thinking in action xvi Thompson, Evan 111 threadwork 127–9 time 145–6 accelerations 150 and the body 151–2 chronological sequence 142 continuum of perception 142 decelerations 150 duration 140, 144, 151 everlasting now 146 fictional 146 frequency 140 importance of 139–40 interstitial 144–5 irreversibility of 140 limits 148 lived 152 and mirror neurons 143–4 and music 146–7 order 140 perception of xviii, 4, 115, 139–53 and performance 142 the present moment 150 qualities of 140–2 quality 153 quantity 153 space and 140 suspension 147–51 tempo-rhythm 151–3

INDEX

training regimens xviii actor 105–6, 112–14, 115, 116, 119, 125–6, 132, 138, 182 music 126 performer 125–6, 126–30 treatment care and cure 189–90 dehumanization of 190 effect of science 192–5 emotion management 195–8 katharsis 192–5 theatrical aspect of 189 traditional 189 Tuccarro, Arcangelo 37–8 Turner, Victor 70 Umiltà, Maria Alessandra xvii, xx, 4, 7 unexpected, the 14 unpredictable, the 104–5 Varela, Francisco 45, 49–50, 51, 51–2, 54, 55, 58, 111 Varley, Julia 110 Versace, Rémy 110 Vesque, Marthe and Juliette 38 violence 194–5 vision 97–8, 98–9 visual contagion 98 Wedding, Danny 198 Welles, Orson 146 Wetz, Wilhelm 193 witnesses 122 Wurtzler, Steve 77 Xenophon 195 Ychou, Marc 190