The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre

Stephen Di Benedetto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136974083
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Di Benedetto considers theatrical practice through the lens of contemporary neuroscientific discoveries in this provoking study, which lays the foundation for considering the physiological basis of the power of theatre practice to affect human behavior. He presents a basic summary of the ways that the senses function in relation to cognitive science and physiology, offering an overview of dominant trends of discussion on the realm of the senses in performance. Also presented are examples of how those ideas are illustrated in recent theatrical presentations, and how the different senses form the structure of a theatrical event. Di Benedetto concludes by suggesting the possible implications these neuroscientific ideas have upon our understanding of theatrical composition, audience response, and the generation of meaning.

1
Our Sensing Bodies

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Understanding Live Theatrical Experience

Theatrical form is an expression of contemporary thought processes; the world changes, and so too do our ways of representing it. Virtual technology has transformed modes of creating and viewing art, thrusting the art world into a state of flux where live art events often occur in unfamiliar environments and where the attendant may not be able to judge the work by utilizing conventional analytical modes. An understanding of physiology and neurology of the human body as a receiver of outside stimuli can assist the artist in using sensorial stimuli to compose a live theatrical event and create an in-between state of experience and awareness. Likewise, the attendant can be aided in the process of restructuring those stimuli through cognitive thought processes for a visceral analysis of the event. I will explore how application of theories drawn from cognitive science and physiology affect live art practice and the attendant’s experience of the performance. To be an “attendant” of a live theatrical performance does not necessarily imply conscious awareness of sensorial stimulation. Whereas our bodies are constantly attendant to the world around us, they note change and decide whether or not to respond. Mimesis, then, stimulates our brains. As Michael Gazzanga argues, to stimulate the brain is to constantly remodel its neural pathways to accommodate and store new information.¹

Theatre Studies has a long tradition of speaking about the visual in relation to art practice that takes into consideration physiology as well as perception and psychology. As advances in neurobiology and neuro-psychology continue to elucidate for us many of our assumptions about theatrical and visual representation, it is important that we look to these scientific hypotheses as we investigate contemporary live performance. Many of the ideas and concepts outlined here from neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychology are generalized and basic from a scientific standpoint; however, they serve to instigate a series of questions about the relationship between sensorial perception and performance. Scientific discoveries are rapidly changing our understanding of the human brain and the ways in which we experience and understand the world. Those from whose work I draw have extrapolated the conclusions of published scientific experiments to explain in layman’s terms the status of brain science today. It is not my intent to add to that body of knowledge, but rather to consider what implications these scientific explanations of the senses can suggest to theatre and performance scholars and to practitioners. There are already a number of theatre scholars working on various approaches that articulate systematically the content of seminal cognitive science researches.² Taken together, all of these studies provide the foundation for understanding the ways in which cognitive neuroscience can provide a new framework for understanding theatrical expression. To understand the ways in which stimulation of human brain processes can be used in the creation and interpretation of theatrical and performance practice, we need to consider how our perception and processing systems function. Physiology and cognitive science provide a framework for theatre studies to consider and apply our understanding of mimesis and its significance. The usefulness of vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell lies in how they each aid cognition, and for our purposes, it is how they aid the creation, reception, and interpretation of mimetic representation.

The brain is what it is because of the structural and functional properties of neurons. It contains between one billion and one trillion neurons that signal by transmitting electrical impulses along their axons. It is through these impulses that we perceive, monitor, and interpret the data that our senses collect. The fragments of sensations that sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell present to the nervous system are the means by which we create the world around us. Typical neurons are made up of three parts: its dendrites, the cell body, and the axon. Dendrites branch out to obtain information from other neurons and bring it to the cell body. The cell body contains the nucleus of the cell and DNA. Finally, the axon brings information away from the cell body to other neurons. It is a cable of sorts that can reach the extremities. A synapse is the point of communication between one neuron and another. They transmit electrical impulses towards the dendrites of the neighboring neurons. The process is like a relay race, passing messages from the senses to each neuron until the message reaches the brain for processing. All of the senses are sending fragments of information that the brain puts together into a percept. A neuron receives either an excitatory signal that triggers it to fire off and send a message to the next neuron or an inhibitory signal that tries to prevent the firing. Neuronal messages can be turned on and shut off depending on how much stimuli fuel them. Because neurons do not touch, they depend on chemical massagers to bridge the gap of the synapse to excite or inhibit action. It is like a giant stadium wave cresting and falling into a frenzy of activity. When fewer people participate, the wave dies out. All we sense and perceive relies on this chemical process, whose goal is cognition.³

To understand how cognition works, we first must familiarize ourselves with the basic mechanics of the brain and the senses, because they provide the input that cognition uses to create thought. The brain is one of the largest of adult organs, consisting of over one hundred billion neurons and weighing about three pounds. It is typically divided into four parts: the cerebrum; the cerebellum; the diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus); and the brain stem (medulla oblongata, pons, midbrain), which is an extension of the spinal cord.

The most important part for our purposes is the cerebrum because it is most closely related to the receiving and processing of the senses. We are what we are because within the human cortex lies our sensory capacities and sensitivities to the external world, our motor skills, our aptitudes for reasoning and imagining, and our unique language abilities. The cerebrum is made up of two sides, the right and left cerebral hemispheres, which are interconnected by the corpus callosum. Though asymmetrical, the two hemispheres are mirrored, each with centers for receiving sensory (afferent) information and for initiating motor (efferent) responses. The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of the cerebral hemispheres, which is composed of gray matter. It also is divided into two hemispheres, both of which are able to analyze sensory data, perform memory functions, learn new information, form thoughts, and make decisions. The cortex is divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital (named after the cranial bones under which they are situated). The frontal lobe is involved in planning, organizing, problem solving, the ability to concentrate and to attend, personality, and a variety of higher cognitive functions including behavior and emotions. The parietal lobes contain the primary sensory cortex, which controls sensation (touch, pressure). Behind the primary sensory cortex is a large association area that controls fine sensation (judgment of texture, weight, size, shape). The temporal lobes allow us to tell the smell of grease paint from the smell of bacon grease and a hooting owl from a car horn. They also help in sorting new information and are believed to be responsible for short-term memory, as well as being responsible for visual reception and processing. It also contains association areas that help in the visual recognition of shapes and colors. In summary, the cerebrum gives us awareness of one’s self and one’s environment, thought, reasoning and memory, vision, hearing, touch, speech, language, motor control, and emotions. It controls our responses to the theatrical events that we are attendant to.

The cerebellum is the second largest brain structure. It sits below the cerebrum. Like the cerebrum, the cerebellum has an outer cortex of gray matter and two hemispheres. It receives and relays information by way of the brain stem. Its major functions have to do with skeletal–muscle control: balance and equilibrium of the trunk; muscle tension, spinal nerve reflexes, posture, and balance of the limbs; and fine motor control and eye movement. This is the system that enables us to walk into the theatre, watch the movements of the actors, and turn our heads to better see a lighting effect that might occur in the periphery of our vision.

The diencephalon is located between the cerebrum and the midbrain. It is made up of the thalamus and hypothalamus. The thalamus is a bilateral mass of gray matter serving as the main synaptic relay center that receives and relays sensory information to and from the cerebral cortex. The hypothalamus is a collection of ganglia and is associated with the pituitary gland. It has a variety of functions, including sensing changes in body temperature, controlling autonomic activities, controlling the pituitary gland, regulating appetite, functioning as part of the arousal or alerting mechanism, and linking the mind (emotions) to the body. It allows us to notice when the air conditioning clicks on and reminds us to have a snack at intermission. In summary, it controls voluntary movement and motor integration, perception, sensory, and mind–body integration, temperature, and appetite.

The brain stem controls our most basic life functions: breathing; heart rate; blood pressure; reflex centers for pupillary reflexes and eye movements; and vomiting, coughing, sneezing, swallowing, and hiccupping. All functions of the brain stem are associated with cranial nerves. There are twelve pairs of cranial nerves: ofactory (smell), optic (vision), oculomotor (eyelid and eyeball movement), trochlear (turns eye downward and laterally), trigeminal (chewing, face and mouth, touch and pain), abducens (turns eye laterally), facial (controls most facial expressions, secretion of tears and saliva, taste), vestibulocochlear (hearing, equilibrium sensation), glossopharyngeal (taste, senses carotid blood pressure), vagus (senses aortic blood pressure, slows heart rate, stimulates digestive organs, taste), spinal accessory (controls swallowing movements), and hypoglossal (controls tongue movements).⁴ These are the basic tools the actor uses to move across the stage, speak lines, and create a character. Although a thorough understanding of this biology is not necessary for theatre practitioners, becoming aware of the basic biology of brain function that we share with humankind can remind us that despite culture, race, and identity we all share the most basic elements that define our experience of the world as a human.

How and what the senses perceive are important to developing an understanding of the potential interpretive strategies that are available as we become attendant to sensory perception. Our senses areany of the physical processes by which stimuli are received, transduced (converted from one form to another), and conducted as impulses to be interpreted in the brain. The spinal cord is the main nerve trunk, bringing all the sensory data of the body up to the brain and carrying the control signals back to the organs of the body. The nervous system is the body’s information gatherer, storage center, and control system. Its overall functions are to collect information about the body’s external/internal states and transfer this information to the brain to analyze and send impulses out to initiate appropriate motor responses to meet the body’s needs. All information transfer in the brain and in the nervous system is mediated by neurons. They trigger any cerebral process, ranging from the higher functions (learning and language) to the simplest spinal reflex. Neurons bring sensory data from both internal and external sensors about the state of the organs, the working of muscles, the perception of sound vision, taste, touch and smell, which are all handled by way of bundles of nerves known as the “afferent nerves” traveling into the brain. Efferent nerve bundles traveling out of the brain control our muscles and our general response to incoming stimuli. All the various inputs are channeled into the nervous system.

The nervous system is divided into the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). They function together, with nerves from the periphery entering and becoming part of the CNS, and nerves from the central entering and becoming part of the PNS. In the PNS, collections of neurons are called ganglia; in the CNS, collections of neurons are called nuclei. The CNS is made up of the spinal cord and the brain. The spinal cord conducts sensory information from the PNS (both somatic and autonomic), and the brain conducts motor information from the brain to our various effectors. The somatic nervous system consists of peripheral nerve fibers that send sensory information to the CNS and motor nerve fibers that project to skeletal muscle. The autonomic nervous system is divided into three parts: the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, and the enteric nervous system. Together they control smooth muscle of the internal organs and glands.

Somatosensory receptors are our input to the nervous system in the form of our five senses. Pain, temperature, and pressure are known as somatic senses. Sensory receptors are classified according to the type of energy the receptor can detect and respond to. These include the mechanoreceptors, which detect and respond to energy related to hearing and balance; stretching; photoreceptors, which detect and respond to light; chemoreceptors, which detect and respond to energy related to smell and taste, as well as internal sensors in the digestive and circulatory systems; thermoreceptors, which respond to and detect changes in temperature; and electroreceptors, which detect electrical currents in the surrounding environment.⁵

PERCEPTION, CONSCIOUSNESS, ATTENTION, AND EMOTIONAL RESPONSE

Perception, consciousness, and attention are the component means by which we understand and interpret stimuli. There are a number of conflicting theories being explored by researchers offering multiple perspectives of the ways in which the brain processes and interprets data. The different disciplines of evolutionary biology, neuropsychology, and memory studies all offer differing interpretations of new discoveries in brain science. Although these fields lack definitive answers of why we respond to the world in the way that we do, they suggest that the senses shape our consciousness. The aim of considering these concepts in relation to performance is to suggest that they also will determine how a theatre of the future may be willfully created, and how its experience may be understood more readily through conscious analytical methodologies. Arlette Steri offers one perspective:

Perception is a process by means of which the organism becomes aware of its environment on the basis of information taken in by its senses …from the cognitive standpoint, one of the functions of perception is to interpret sensory data, and hence to process information… This function is assumed to involve two types of processing: data drive… and concept-or-representation-driven…. the part played by each type depends on whether the processing bears primarily on the sensory information drawn directly from stimuli, or on the subject’s knowledge, expectations, motivations and so on.⁶

Our perception is influenced by both conscious and unconscious mechanisms. We both assess sensory data that streams into our neuro-processing center, as well as assess sensory data according to experience. Whereas we are aware of make-believe, there is little difference between our reception of mimesis or reality, because they share the stimulations of neurons that fire within the different regions of the brain. As the brain fires and experiences the sensations that stimulation and context provide, the triggers become a part of our experience. The attendant’s body is pivotal to the theatrical event because the body is both the means by which the attendant’s brain receives stimulus and the means by which the brain interprets the event.

Norman Doidge describes our continuous active engagement with the world around us:

The perceiving brain is active and alw...

Table of contents

• Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Our Sensing Bodies
• 2 Scintillating Visions and Visual Perception
• 3 Attendant to Touch
• 4 Noses, Tongues, and Other Surprising Possibilities
• 5 Aural Landscapes
• 6 The Sentient Body
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index