Main description:

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

How can performances in theatre, dance and other media achieve more emotional and social impact?

How can we become more adept teachers and learners of performance both within and outside of classrooms?

What can the cognitive sciences reveal about the nature of drama and human nature in general?

How can knowledge transfer, from a synthesis of science and performance, assist professionals such as nurses, care-givers, therapists and emergency workers in their jobs?

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

Contents:

General Introduction

Bruce McConachie

Part I: Artistry

Introduction

Rick Kemp

Stanislavsky's prescience: The conscious self in the system and Active Analysis
as a theory of mind

Sharon Marie Carnicke

The improviser's lazy brain: improvisation and cognition
Gunter Loesel

Devising - embodied creation in distributed systems
Rick Kemp

Embodied cognition and Shakespearean performance
Darren Tunstall

The remains of ancient action: Understanding affect and empathy in Greek drama
Peter Meineck

Minding implicit constraints in dance improvisation
Pil Hansen

Applying developmental epistemic cognition to theatre for young audiences
Jeanne Klein

4E cognition for directing: Thornton Wilder's Our Town and Caryl Churchill's
Light Shining in Buckinghamshire

Rhonda Blair

Acting and Emotion
Vladimir Mirodan

Part II: Learning

Introduction

Bruce McConachie

Improvising communication in Pleistocene performances
Bruce McConachie

Ritual transformation and transmission
David Mason

Communities of gesture: Empathy and embodiment in Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane
Dance Company's 100 Migrations

Ariel Nereson

Creative storytelling, crossing boundaries, high-impact learning and
social engagement

Nancy Kindelan

From banana phones to the bard: The developmental psychology of acting
Thalia R. Goldstein

'I'm giving everybody notes using his body': Framing actors' observation of performance
Claire Syler

Acting technique, Jacques Lecoq, and embodied meaning
Rick Kemp

Part III: Scholarship

Introduction

Bruce McConachie

Systems theory, enaction and performing arts
Gabriele Sofia

Watching movement: Phenomenology, cognition, performance
Stanton B. Garner, Jr.

Attention to theatrical performances
James Hamilton

Emergence, meaning and presence: An interdisciplinary approach to a disciplinary question
Amy Cook

Relishing performance: Rasa as participatory sense-making
Erin B. Mee

The self, ethics, agency and tragedy
David Palmer

Aesthetics and the sensible
John Lutterbie

Talk this dance: On the conceptualization of dance as fictive conversation
Ana Margarida Abrantes and Esther Pascual

Distributed cognition: Studying theatre in the wild
Evelyn Tribble and Robin Dixon

Part IV: Translational Applications

Introduction

Rick Kemp

A theatrical intervention to lower the risk of Alzheimer's and other forms of
dementia

Tony and Helga Noice

The Performance of Caring: Theatre, empathetic communication and healthcare
Rick Kemp and Rachel DeSoto-Jackson

Awareness performing: Practice and protocol
Experience Bryon

Imagining the ecologies of autism
Melissa Trimingham and Nicola Shaughnessy

Toward consilience: Integrating performance history with the coevolution
of our species

Bruce McConachie