Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies and the Cognitive Turn

This anthology is the first of its kind. In addition to opening up fresh perspectives on theatre studies – with applications for dramatic criticism, performance analysis, acting practice, audience response, theatre history, and other important areas – the book sets the agenda for future work, helping to map the emergence of this new approach.

Following a comprehensive introduction, the contributors examine:

• the interfaces between cognitive studies and Lacanian psychoanalysis, phenomenology and communication theory
• different ideas from cognitive studies that open up the meanings of several plays
• the process of acting and the work of Antonio Damasio
• theatrical response: the dynamics of perception, and the riots that greeted the 1907 production of The Playboy of the Western World.

This original and authoritative work will be attractive to scholars and graduate students of drama, theatre, and performance.

Bruce McConachie is Professor of Theatre at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and specializes in theatre history, theatre historiography, and cognitive approaches to theatre.

F. Elizabeth Hart is Associate Professor of English at the University of Conneticut, Storrs, USA, where she teaches Renaissance studies, Shakespeare and cognitive approaches to literature.