Acting and Science

doi:10.1017/9781108676533.012

11 - Acting and Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2021

Rhonda Blair

Edited by

Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr

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Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr: Affiliation:
University of Oxford

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Summary

Chapter 11: This chapter surveys intersections between views of acting and paradigms of science, and addresses views of the human. The chapter begins with a brief historical overview, starting with Plato and Aristotle and proceeding to early twentieth-century scientists such as Pavlov and Freud. The focus is on late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century cognitive sciences and neuroscience, which provide the actor with concrete, material information about how body and brain work. This helps to eliminate misapprehensions about how different aspects of the self operate and offers insight into imagination, intellect, emotion, memory, and language, among other aspects of our experience. The discussion addresses the fact of actors as complex processes, inextricably connected to each other and their environments, and how the actor might utilize the findings of science.

Keywords

4E cognition acting and cognition action cognitive ecologies cognitive science embodiment history of performance and cognition imagination

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science , pp. 162 - 175

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108676533.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

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References

Suggested Reading

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