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PART ONE
Theatre as a Space of Relationships: A Neurocognitive Perspective
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Introduction:
The Shared Space of Action
Clelia Falletti*
The dialogue between the disciplines of theatre and neuroscience, though still a difficult one, has a history behind it, a history launched by theatre makers and maintained by them over the years, through contexts they generated for this purpose.
This is not to deny the fact, however, that there are many theatre makers who make clear their bored disinterest in the subject: ‘But why on earth should we need to discuss this thing again? It won’t get us anywhere.’ This attitude, however, does not achieve anything, in my view, except to make the dialogue between neuroscience and theatre even more pressing and important. The same applies to scientists; they find it amazing and inexplicable that theatre makers should profess such a marked interest in some of their discoveries, wading through their treatises and publications, even going to the length of approaching them from a scientific point of view.
In this opening section of the book, I am putting forward theatre’s point of view, addressing a public that might not profess a particular expertise in neuroscience – neither do I, in fact. However, seeing that my approach to theatre leads me to consider it as pertaining to the field of the human sciences, I find myself having to delve into the recent discoveries of cognitive neuroscience and striving to grasp certain things; it is these that I wish to address here.
A shared space of action
To knock down fences and make the encounter easier with apparently far-distant areas, we should agree on the terms we use in our disciplines so as to open up new fields of research.
To begin with, I speak of ‘space’, a topic of great importance in theatre; it has a larger literature than ‘time’, which is an equally important concept in theatre and is the theme of Mariti’s contribution to this volume. ‘Space’ is also the subject of the two following chapters, by Umiltà and Committeri & Fini, who treat it from the viewpoint of their own fields, i.e. physiology, psychology, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. However, I shall try to tackle it from a point of view different to that of theatre.
I shall mention but a few of the many spaces possible: e.g. personal space, such as the sensory outer layer of cells covering the human organism, teeming with stimuli; or peri-personal space, which is the space surrounding each one of us.1 These spaces are specific to each of us, sometimes rendering us solitary individuals. Then there is interpersonal space, the space we share with others, a relational space, where exchanges occur. Each space is very different to the others, but all are physical spaces, not metaphoric ones.
Then I will call the reader’s attention to another space, until now unfamiliar, but one which is equally physical. It is not ‘metaphoric’ nor is it a ‘mental’ space – rather it is as concrete and measurable as peri-personal space, and as relational as the interpersonal one … there is however a fundamental difference about the space I am addressing: it isn’t outside of us, it is an inner space, ‘inner’ in the sense that it is a space inside the brain; it is a piece of the brain. Some might find this image disturbing, perhaps even repulsive … but that is how I visualize it. It has a name: ‘shared space of action’.2
It is a physical space, not metaphorical, meaning that when actions are carried out in the presence of others, in the brain of the doer there is an area of a few square millimetres that lights up and an identical area of a few square millimetres lights up in the brains of the others. This is an objective, scientific fact. Let us now apply this finding to the field of theatre; in saying that there is a shared space of action I would be holding that when an actor on stage executes an action (and in theatre that means – and we must not forget this – a motivated, conscious action with a precise aim, that is: an action with an intention), the implication in neurobiological terms is that the neurons of a certain area of his brain are activated; in other words we could say that in a certain area of the brain the ‘motor programme’ is put into action, making it possible for him to execute a certain action with a certain intention. I would also say that when this activity occurs in that area of the actor’s brain while on stage, the same activity would be occurring in the same brain area of those facing him – concomitantly – or consonantly – with him, or as in a mirror, one could say, independently of the will of both actor and spectator, provided, however, that the action is executed with intention: it is that intention that the brains of others pick up, echoing the agent’s motor programme in their own brains’ motor programmes.
We can say all this thanks to the recent discoveries of the cognitive sciences.
Let’s talk about mirror neurons
Let’s talk about mirror neurons, then. The 1990s were declared the decade for brain research, which resulted in a considerable, worldwide shift in focus of the scientific community’s research. The first immediate outcome was the acknowledgement of the brain’s plasticity, which resulted in the debunking of the earlier belief that the brain expands rapidly in its first days, months and years to then decline inexorably as age sets in. On the contrary, the more it works and the more it exercises itself, the more it expands and redesigns itself – quite like a muscle.
One of the lines of research was that of brain mapping, with the functions of the various sectors being identified. Some areas were already well known, charted and described, such as Broca’s area, to mention one classic example. There was an unceasing effort to map as many areas as possible and to identify their respective functions. Active on this track, the researchers forming part of neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti’s team in his University of Parma laboratory were carrying out experiments to study a macaque monkey’s brain when, quite by chance, as so often happens, they hit upon something surprising. Imagine this scenario: the macaque monkey is sitting at its desk, at its table, everything is ready, all sensors have been attached, the monitor is on, ready to register the first firings of the monkey’s brain when the neurons corresponding to a specific action are activated. In the planned experiment, on being provided with a number of objects, the monkey was to move things about on the table or pick up food – apples or peanuts – to eat. What was being investigated were the actions of grasping, carrying to the mouth, moving objects about, and so on, so as to map the brain areas and neurons activated for these operations. What happened at that point is something about which many anecdotes have done the rounds. One of the scientists carrying out the tests came in and while setting up the objects he put something in his mouth, a peanut, maybe … perhaps he came in eating an ice cream … whatever. What happened at that moment was that the scientist heard and saw, on the monitor, that some areas in the monkey’s brain were lighting up. He heard them, in fact, because the monitor does not only show them lighting up – one also hears them ‘firing’, as the sound of the brain’s electrical activity is referred to, something very similar to the sound a drop of water makes when it falls on red-hot metal. What he found to be odd was the fact that the brain areas which had lit up, those which had fired, were the same areas and neurons which would have been activated had the monkey picked up a peanut to eat it, but it wasn’t the monkey that had done the picking up and eating actions – he had. He looked at the macaque; it was motionless … and pokerfaced. For all intents and purposes, the macaque was doing nothing, no muscle was twitching, even; clearly enough, however, its brain was working – it was eating a peanut. It was something like the discovery of America – America had always been there, so nothing had actually been discovered; still, there’s no denying the fact that something had been made known to everybody, in a very precise manner. The relative areas had been mapped, moreover, even to the extent of demonstrating which neuron was engaged in which action, neuron by neuron, even checking and revealing that each neuron was, in fact, also that activated when the subject observes – but does not execute – the action. This is, indeed, a very important discovery. Let us say, therefore, that they discovered a precise, anatomical locus in the brain where a mechanism mirrors the actions of others; to their surprise, then – theirs, and that of the entire scientific community – they demonstrated that this mirroring system coincided with the motor system, which controls the doing of that same action when the subject himself executes it. The name the research team gave to these neurons is highly imaginative: mirror neurons. The beauty of the name itself – mirror neuron system – must have contributed greatly to the extent to which the discovery caught even the general public’s attention. The author of the first chapter, Maria Alessandra Umiltà, was a member of that research team.
These neurons fire in the brain both when one executes a specific action as well as when one sees others carrying it out. These neurons fire or, in other words, the brain’s motor programme kicks in, taking on the same action we would be observing, irrespective of whether that action would then be actually executed, manifestly, in the space outside us. Indeed, it is a motor programme.
Since then, research has moved on. This discovery hypothesizes, explains and scientifically proves something extremely interesting. At the very moment we observe an action being carried out, our motor programme kicks in to carry out that very same action in that self-same moment; furthermore, it also is the self-same moment in which (and also the reason whereby!) we understand that action which is occurring before our eyes. This means that the response is immediate, one that is not processed by any presumed (and perhaps now no longer presumable) areas of higher cognitive processes. In other words, comprehension is immediate; I understand ‘simply’ because I am ‘simply’ redoing the same action that I see in front of me. The brain’s motor programme is not a lower level, a mechanical one, bereft of intelligence, as distinct from an abstract high level, one for elaboration and understanding.3 A concrete example would be a girl, bent over her notebook, taking notes, raising her hand to pull her hair back so as to see better whatever she is writing; as she does this, an area of a few square millimetres of her brain lights up, and the same thing happens in my brain as I look at her. Let us say, however, that while her hand is going up to her hair it changes direction (which means her intention changes) shooting up to catch a fly, instead – and another area of a few square millimetres is set in action in her brain, and the same thing is also happening in my brain. If she were to keep shifting intentions (and brain areas, one after the other, different, distant to each other), she would design a dancing map in her brain, as well as in the brain of whoever is observing her.
By now it should be clear how interesting this can be to theatre makers.
In theatre – which is, par excellence, the locus for beholding – each member of the audience is doing his dance with the actor. The two of them together are creating a dynamic shared space of action; that dynamic space is, at the same time, both a dance and a critical crossroads of intentions.
Two reflections immediately follow.
First: neurophysiologists tell us that in our brain there are myriads of neurons (or nerve cells) firing away ceaselessly, every instant. We are in the eye of a storm, a sort of terrible confusion, over which we have no control. The key to being efficient in whatever we are doing, they tell us, is to have fewer neurons firing, not more. The first thing brought about by the performer’s ability to create and maintain – in himself and in the audience – a shared space of action is that the space he has created is under control; regulated, one may say, and even intentional; it is similar to when one is concentrating hard on a difficult task and suddenly the turbulence seems to ease off for a moment, allowing for that task to be executed with its wealth of detail (the more details to be attended to the better it is, for one’s attention to be bewitched).
The second reflection is more fascinating. This joint dance of ours has its consequences in other areas … the areas of the emotions (other square millimetres lighting up simultaneously): we enjoy being together, we strive not to lose contact, fearing we may not manage. It gives us a sense of fulfillment, of being at one with the present, a sharp sense of proprioception. The end result of the actor/spectator relationship is that in that moment they are not alone in their task – they are two.
A more authoritative scientific confirmation for the observations of theatre makers and scholars can hardly be found: Peter Brook, who says that in sharing sounds and movements with the audience, the actor overcomes and transcends all linguistic and cultural barriers, making the spectators part of an event which they themselves have to contribute to and create; Reinhardt, who speaks of the magical moment in which the audience’s breathing merges with that of the actors; traditional theatre’s working jargon, which speaks of the harmony of the actors on stage as a sort of breathing together – which influences even the rhythm of the audience’s breathing.
The revolution in theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century
Thousands of years ago theatre was sacred, a ritual, a locus for collective celebration presided over by the shaman. The shaman was a bridge between Man and his gods … perhaps. What is certain is that he bonded the members of a group, weaved the community together by repeating songs, words, invocations, liturgies and representations, narrating stories of the divine and of the heroic deeds of that people. This conscious capability to collectively tap the divine outside of and within us was, however, lost … or so we are told. Was it indeed lost, though? At a point in time early in the twentieth century, a number of persons took up theatre-making; they did not know each other; they were not in touch; the places where the phenomenon occurred were far from each other. Konstantin Stanislavsky, Jacques Copeau, Vsevolod E. Meyerhold, Adolphe Appia, Edward Gordon Craig … They had something in common: they rebelled against the theatre of their time, commercialized, degraded into an industry of mediocre entertainment. They reasserted its sacredness, its ethic and its artistry. Meyerhold defined theatre as the art of Man, by which he meant that while theatre is made by the human being, as poetry, painting, sculpture, music and all the other arts are, theatre is made of the human being, in that its subject, its agent force and its medium is Man himself. Painters use canvas, pigments and brush. Not so the actor: he employs himself, which results in that self needing to be highly trained, armed with techniques enabling him to execute his artistic work in the presence of the spectator.
In their time, these reformers were rebels; having since assimilated them, we risk denying them their rebellion. More often than not, they were amateurs in the field of theatre; they were not professionals, often self-taught, ever driven by a search for theatre’s deepest meaning.
Repudiating the theatre of their time, setting out on a search for a theatre that was more than theatre and whose meaningfulness lay beyond mere spectacle, they came to find a sense for it. Faced by the onset of the new media, they withdrew to the background, an archaic stance one could say, identifying the human being as theatre’s very essence – Man the actor/Man the spectator: theatre is made up of the link between the human-being-performer and the human-being-spectator, both constituting a whole in a two-way feedback loop. It is at this level that we best recognize the sweeping powers theatre embodies, the psychophysiological dilation it can trigger in the spectator in resonance with the performer’s psychophysiological dilation. This is the theatre they envisaged. Here we find ourselves face to face with theatre’s very foundations, a level at which there is no staging, no text, no curtain and no costume.
The twentieth century abounded in research aiming to tease out the performer’s ‘secret’. From Stanislavsky’s early twentieth-century reflections and research, right through to Grotowski’s at its tail end, up to today with Eugenio Barba and theatre anthropology, much effort was expended in trying to understand and explain theatre’s base level ‘scientifically’. Imagine a spectator sitting in the stalls, mesmerized by an actor who, deploying nothing but his presence on stage, holds him spellbound, attentive, concentrated and vigilant...
