Abstract
This chapter describes the ‘Performer’s cognition’ workshop, a collaborative endeavour, thought and participated by artists, neuroscientists, and performing arts scholars. The main goal of the workshop was to stimulate actors’ reflection on their practice by means of linking a number of exercises to current understandings and methodologies of cognitive neuroscience. Here, we aim at presenting this novel way in which cognitive neuroscience can inspire reflections on the training of the performer, starting from the experience of the workshop in relation to one of the exercises practiced, the ‘8 steps exercise’. We propose that the desired effects of continuous training may be achieved more efficiently when the underlying cognitive and neuronal processes have been explored. Also, we suggest that the relevance of continuous training will be more widely acknowledged through scientific explorations. This is of huge relevance, since actor training and in particular actors’ motivational forces (or the lack thereof) to engage in training particularly as a form of continuous professional development, is still poorly understood. The closer look at actors’ practice as discussed during the workshop and further examined here, will inevitably also impact on empirical research in the field of the actors’ profession.
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Notes
- 1.
The Fabrique Autonome des Acteurs (FAA) is an association founded in 2014 to provide an autonomous workspace for artists pertaining to diverse performance disciplines. Its purpose is to promote continuous learning for performing arts professionals, basic research, and transdisciplinarity via concrete actions. Within its Laboratory, the FAA focuses on the dialogue between performer’s practice and science, discovering privileged interlocutors among researchers linking theatre and neuroscience. Thus, the project entitled “The Performer’s Cognition” presents an original interdisciplinary format, in which theoretical sessions are suggested, stimulated and addressed precisely by the performer’s practice. Photographic and video archives of the workshop (included the 8 steps exercise described below) as well as information on the ongoing research can be found on the web site (www.fabriqueautonome.org).
- 2.
Bataville is the name given to an industrial complex and workers’ residence, built in the 1930s by Tomas Bata, founder of the namesake shoe brand. Located at the heart of Moselle, in Lorraine region, it is surrounded by forest trees and ponds. Its remarkable Bauhaus architecture earned it the recognition of Heritage of the twentieth century. The variety and the beauty of its working and living spaces, together with its feeling of quiet isolation, provide artists and researchers the opportunity to truly immerse themselves in their work, be it a seminar, a laboratory or a creative residency.
- 3.
The titles of the conference were: Gabriele Sofia: Action in theatre and neuroscience. Corinne Jola: Experimenting with Sensory Experiences in the Lab/in the Studio; Empirical Evidences of Shared Kinaesthetic Experiences. Victor Jacono: Erasing and drawing lines. Daria Lippi: My theatre, advanced techniques explained to my neighbours.
- 4.
Notably, there are considerable efforts in the field of dance to link ‘warm-ups’ and regular training with the creative process, such as ‘pre-choreographic elements’ (de Lahunta and Pascual-Bermudez 2013) or biological acting by Jan Fabre. Biological acting consists of several fixed exercises each performer who is participating in a working process with Jan Fabre has to go through. The idea that such exercises prepare for the creation is in line with research that proposed a new functionality of ‘warm-ups’: not to warm up the muscles but to activate representations of the desired actions (Ajemian et al. 2010). Hence, the idea of “warming-up” may be obsolete and should be discussed under the heading of mental preparation for performance.
- 5.
In this regard the philosopher Pierre Livet has remarked in a recent contribution that the collateral movements are essential for identifying the intention: «Adjustments like collateral movements, or like updatings of the position of the body and its limbs relative to the environment, are required both from the observer’s and the agent’s perspective in order to feel the movements as intentional» (Livet 2010: 189).
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Lippi, D., Jola, C., Jacono, V., Sofia, G. (2016). Steps Towards the Art of Placing Science in the Acting Practice. A Performance-Neuroscience Perspective. In: Kapoula, Z., Vernet, M. (eds) Aesthetics and Neuroscience. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46233-2_10
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