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Spring 2011 63 Introduction: Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism’s Special Section on Cognitive Studies, Theatre, and Performance Rhonda Blair and John Lutterbie For over a decade theatre and performance scholars and practitioners have been exploring how current research in the cognitive and neurosciences can illuminate understanding and advance our various disciplines. Cognitive sciences began surfacing in theatre and performance studies in the late 1990s. By 2001, papers were being presented at American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) seminars and articles were appearing in theatre journals and scholarly collections (e.g., Blair’s “The Method and the Computational Theory of Mind” in David Krasner’s Method Acting Reconsidered—an essay she now finds problematic).1 By 2004 there were working groups at both ASTR and the Performance Studies Focus Group preconference of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). The first survey book on the subject, Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies and the Cognitive Turn, edited by Bruce McConachie and F. Elizabeth Hart, appeared in 2006.2 David Saltz edited a special issue of Theatre Journal on “Performance and Cognition” in late 2007.3 In 2008 the first full-length monographs were published: McConachie’s Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre and Blair’s The Actor, Image, and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience.4 Palgrave initiated a new series entitled Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, under the editorial leadership of McConachie and Blakey Vermeule. A representative sample of recent books includes Amy Cook’s Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance through Cognitive Science (2010) and Lutterbie’s Toward a General Rhonda Blair is professor of theatre at Southern Methodist University and president of the American Society for Theatre Research (2009-2012). She is author of The Actor, Image, and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience and editor of a new edition of Richard Boleslavsky's Acting: The First Six Lessons that includes previously unpublished documents from the American Laboratory Theatre (both from Routledge). Her essays appear in Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies and the Cognitive Turn; Women in American Theatre; Upstaging Big Daddy: Directing Theater as if Race and Gender Matter; TDR: The Drama Review; and Theatre Topics, among others. She makes original performance pieces and directs. John Lutterbie is a professor at Stony Brook University and serves on the board of directors of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. He is the author of Hearing Voices: Modern Drama and the Problem of Subjectivity (University of Michigan Press) and Toward a General Theory of Acting: Cognitive Science and Performance (Palgrave MacMillan). Other publications have appeared in Upstaging Big Daddy: Directing Theory as if Race and Gender Matter; Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies and the Cognitive Turn; Theatre Journal; Journal of Psychiatry and the Humanities; and Modern Drama, among others. 64 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism Theory of Acting: Cognitive Science and Performance (2011).5 Because the cognitive sciences deal with fundamental aspects of human existence and experience, we believe they can be a useful, even necessary part of the foundation for work in theatre and performance studies. The sciences provide new ways of perceiving the interrelationship of mind and body, new definitions of fundamental categories such as emotion, feeling, and action, and, perhaps more fundamentally, new definitions of “self” and “other.” The findings of these sciences place us on the cusp of a paradigm shift. This does not call for us to reject other approaches to theatre and performance studies, but rather it supplements and deepens other methodologies used by our fields, while providing new tools and perspectives. We approach this project with care, mindful of the ease with which research in different fields can be opportunistically misappropriated by those not expert in a given discipline, and mindful of the disagreements and variations among those who are expert, as they tease out and argue about the implications of their findings. These sciences can support and enrich our appreciation of a whole range of existing performance and theatre theories. Research in neural simulation systems provides evidence of the organic basis for the power of imitation, first argued by Plato andAristotle. Research in the neural bases of imagination describes...
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