Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being

This book explores new developments in the dialogues between science and theatre. The cognitive revolution in the humanities is creating new insights into the audience experience, performance processes and training. Scientists are collaborating with artists to investigate how our brains and bodies engage with performance to create new understanding of perception, emotion, imagination and empathy. Throughout its history theatre has provided exciting and accessible stagings of science, while contemporary practitioners are increasingly working with scientific and medical material (e.g. Clod Ensemble’s ‘performing medicine’ and Bobby Baker’s work using live art to explore mental health). Further examples of companies engaging with science include Curious Directive, Third Angel, Unlimited, and Reckless Sleepers . As Honour Bayes reported in The Guardian last year, the relationships between theatre, science and performance are “exciting, explosive and unexpected”. This book charts new directions in the relations between disciplines, exploring how science and theatre can impact upon each other with reference to training, drama texts, performance and spectatorship